The Banana Tree of Jean Louis

North & South

2012-02-07T17:02:00.001-05:00

4 BANANAS: Maybe it's just the Anglophile in me, but British period dramas are so much crack! North & South suffers a bit for its heroine's at-times slow uptake, and I couldn't help thinking, halfway through, that maybe the Masters of the industrial revolution were right about their workers. Still, I like Mrs. Thornton a great deal. She has a fierce love for her boy. And John Thornton is a harder, even crueler Darcy, the kind of man you want the girl to get but can't imagine her laughing with -- until he finally smiles.

4 50-minute episodes

2004

BBC

The Woman in Black

2012-02-07T15:34:00.000-05:00

3 BANANAS: I saw the London stage production of The Woman in Black when I was in England in the summer of 2001. It was the first play I saw in my four weeks there, so I did what was suggested and bought my tickets at the Half-Price Ticket Booth in Leicester Square, unaware that half-price sometimes comes with a high price. My seat was stage left, front row, right in front of the fog machines. Which meant that I spent a good deal of the performance peering dimly through the mists, trying not to cough, cut off from the rest of the audience in a weird, delightful mirror of Arthur Kipps' isolation at Eel Marsh. No surprise then that my favorite scenes in James Watkins' adaptation are easily those that take place outside the gates of the house, when the fog rolls in around young Mr. Kipps, it and the tide cutting him off from the village beyond -- which, turns out, isn't much safer than the house itself.

Written by Jane Goldman

Directed by James Watkins

2012

Chronicle

2012-02-07T15:22:00.000-05:00

2 BANANAS: Chronicle misses the opportunity to be even more than a compelling narrative about three teens with super powers. And that's unfortunate, as its premise and several of its sequences are very good. Maybe its makers just don't have much to say, and in place of any meaningful commentary on the loneliness of being a teenage outcast, they opt out for simplicity. It's easier, after all, to paint in broad strokes: the weirdo as the bad guy, the handsome kid as the good guy. The third act smacks of needless ambition, too. Why destroy ~~Capetown~~ Seattle, when three kids battling alone in the sky would have sufficed?

Written by Max Landis

Directed by Josh Trank

2012

The Tree of Life

2012-02-07T15:11:00.000-05:00

1 BANANA: Proof that even dinosaurs can be boring.

Written and directed by Terrence "I Used to Make Good Movies" Malick

2011

Hugo

2012-02-02T09:15:00.001-05:00

4 BANANAS: We missed Hugo in 3D, and that makes me a little sad. But movies are movies, gimmicks or none, and there was no less magic in the trick for seeing it in 2D. Hugo is about how movies inform our lives. How they're important. How, even in the earliest days of the medium, it was understood that happy endings, as Georges Méliès puts it, are only for the movies. What a lovely sentiment.

Written by John Logan

Directed by Martin Scorcese

2011

Attack the Block

2012-02-02T08:55:00.000-05:00

3 BANANAS: Again, another genre piece that exists for the pure pleasure of genre. It seems to me Attack the Block must have been a movie everyone had fun making, especially the kids -- which, in the end, is what the movie's all about. A tight, elegant script that moves nimbly through its structure and beats and delivers on its promise: laughs and scares.

Written and directed by Joe Cornish

2011

Haywire

2012-02-02T08:51:00.000-05:00

4 BANANAS: Critics seem frustrated by Haywire because they can't ascribe any higher purpose to it than Soderbergh intends (a genre exercise), so they've given it a great deal of faint praise: "...good for what it is..." and the like. As if genre fiction needs to explain itself, to have some higher purpose. I think we can do better than "good for what it is" and say that Haywire is a fantastic, 90-something-minute delight, featuring the debut of an actress every bit as striking and enigmatic as Godard's Anna Karina (only with thicker thighs and the ability to walk up walls).

Written by Lem "Dark City" Dobbs

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

2011

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2012-01-23T17:11:00.000-05:00

3 BANANAS: One of the summer's best movies, I guess, and I didn't even see it on the big screen. It's not surprising that Andy Serkis would turn in a great performance, but it's surprising that the screenwriters of this movie would give him such a solid, confident script to work from. James Franco's performance and his character are both upstaged and somewhat inconsequential, but fortunately he isn't given much screen time. I was left wondering why Serkis' name wasn't first in the end credits. Anyway, I was honest-to-goodness emotionally invested in the mountain gorilla's attack on that helicopter!

Written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver

Directed by Rupert Wyatt

2011

My Week with Marilyn

2012-01-23T17:02:00.000-05:00

4 BANANAS: There's a moment in My Week with Marilyn that pulls everything into focus: a little dance Michelle Williams does before the camera. All alone on screen, but then there's us, the audience, in the dark. And all alone on set, except for Olivier and the rest of the crew behind the lens. The magnetism of the moment is undeniable and multi-layered, and in this we find the film's insight into the greatness of Marilyn Monroe: she was a natural talent. All alone in a roomful of stars.

Written by Adrian Hodges

Directed by Simon Curtis

2011

The Adventures of Tintin

2012-01-23T16:52:00.002-05:00

2 BANANAS: Tintin is plenty entertaining, at times a real delight, but Spielberg's Tintin is no Indiana Jones, and so the lack of character development creates an emptiness at the movie's center you might not even notice. But, as Mr. Plinkett says, "Your brain did."

Written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish

Directed by Steven Spielberg

2011

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

2012-01-23T16:27:00.000-05:00

3 BANANAS: Ghost Protocol, what seemed six months ago the clunkiest title since Quantum of Solace (and we all got used to that one, right?), emerged as the box office champ this past Christmas. Tom Cruise, it seems, is still impervious to, well, everything. I got a real kick out of this one. Of course, the bit with the building is amazing, but I was far more impressed, ultimately, with the car chase set in a sandstorm. What an original and inspired idea. The best of the entire series, even though Brian DePalma still has my heart.

Written by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec

Directed by Brad Bird

2011

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-23T16:20:00.000-05:00

4 BANANAS: There's something appealing about a high-profile director like Fincher offering up unabashed genre pulp. Yes, I've read the novel, and it's exciting, and yes, I've seen the Swedish film, and it's good, too. But, of the three, I much prefer Fincher's movie, if only because Rooney Mara's Lisbeth Salander is a new movie heroine for the millennium, a far cry from the stereotype she might have been -- instead, everything but: a mystery.

Written by Steven Zaillian

Directed by David Fincher

2011

War Horse

2012-01-23T16:13:00.002-05:00

3 BANANAS: When Spielberg cares about a project, he makes a good movie. War Horse isn't flawless, but I had no problems with what most critics didn't like, namely the narrative's shifting allegiances from one character to another. If you cry in movies -- in other words, if sentiment and animal cruelty bring the tears -- expect to walk out feeling like you've been whipped in the face with a wet towel. In a good way, I guess.

Written by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis

Directed by Steven Spielberg

2011

Win Win

2012-01-23T16:07:00.001-05:00

3 BANANAS: Win Win has the feel of a Little Miss Sunshine without verging into precious territory (no bright yellow buses with faulty horns -- though the boy is awfully blond). Paul Giamatti sells everyman like no one else, and while the ending has a tidiness to it that isn't really necessary, I don't mind so much. I like the characters and I like the writing.

Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy

2011

Drive

2011-10-12T11:00:00.003-04:00

5 BANANAS: Drive owes its soul to the films of Jean Pierre Melville without feeling creaky or dated. It's the best movie I've seen in theaters all year. And, in the minimalist spirit of the kind of hero I admire most, I've little else to say.

Written by Hossein Amini

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

2011

All Creatures Great and Small: Seasons 1 and 2

2011-09-26T16:35:00.000-04:00

5 BANANAS

Based on the books by James Herriot

Top Shot: Seasons 1 and 2

2011-09-26T16:28:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: Weird as it may seem, Top Shot's a thrilling show to me, if only because it inflames that gut desire we all have to be damn good at one thing. Shooting guns is what these folks are good at, and my favorite characters are the ones who consistently surprise me. Maybe none was so surprising as the big muscled sniper who missed his shot when it counted most. In the movies, the girl or the golf instructor would have won, the true underdog story. Here, well, it's usually the guy who wants it most. I find that weirdly refreshing.

Hosted by The Survivor

2010

Dirty Dancing

2011-09-26T16:17:00.001-04:00

2 BANANAS: Nostalgia is a glass through which we, as a movie-going public, see dimly, at best. Lucky for me, I missed Dirty Dancing in its prime, a film that falls into the sentimental category of what my wife jokingly calls my "Eighties Education." (I would, of course, contend that any kid who sat through Howard the Duck as many times as I did (and liked it) should be exempt from such schooling.) Anyway, there's no rose-tinted gel over my eyes when it comes to this one, an oddly serious and turn-on-a-dime ridiculous movie. In the age of "Two Girls, One Cup," the scandalous nature of the dancing is borderline silly. I wonder, too, if people forget that Dirty Dancing is a period film, and so the famous song is preposterous in its inclusion in the grand finale. "Nobody puts Baby in a corner" is a line so often quoted I wonder whether anyone remembers how un-memorable it really is within the context of the movie. "Well," I wanted to quibble, "Actually, she probably chose the corner herself because she was upset; there's no indication that her father -- an understanding and good man -- deliberately sequestered her." Oh, I know, pipe down, shut up, it doesn't matter. But what about that business with the elderly Jewish pickpockets, conveniently arrested off-screen when the plot demands it? As I told Crystal, the tale of an elderly couple cross-country-scamming rich resort-goers by stealing their wallets...now that's the movie I want to see.

Written by Eleanor Bergstein

Directed by Emile Ardolino

1987

The Debt

2011-09-26T16:01:00.000-04:00

2 BANANAS: It's been a while since I've seen a movie blow its good will so strangely in its final five minutes as The Debt. Of course, it's not likely a major studio would have allowed the ending I wanted. Perhaps Helen Mirren is now a victim of her own appeal: her character must find Hollywood's sort of bogus redemption, even at the contrived point of a needle.

Written by Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and Peter Straughn

Directed by John Madden

2010

Rubber

2011-09-26T15:54:00.000-04:00

2 BANANAS: Movies that seek to be utterly strange are fine by me, but I wish young cowboy hipsters like Quentin Dupieux also understood that strange is beyond hip -- that we have no need of irony here, no especial want for a post-modern chorus of characters to justify an idea as splendidly odd (and endearing) as his murderous, psychic tire.

Written and directed by Quentin Dupieux

2010

Passion Play

2011-09-26T15:50:00.000-04:00

1 BANANA: Passion Play was so universally derided I couldn't miss it, and while it's not absolutely worthless (the cinematography is now-and-then breathtaking), it never really becomes bearable. Disparate performances and an uneven style. Megan Fox has wings, and yes, she flies. Bill Murray as a mopey gangster. Awful. But there's also something of Mickey Rourke's handsome, hopeful barfly Henry Chinaski in this, in the sad little way Rourke hooks his hat on the toe of his improbably pointed shoe. Worth a banana in any context, good or lousy.

Written and directed by Mitch Glazer

2010

Mary and Max

2011-09-26T15:02:00.001-04:00

4 BANANAS: What a bizarre, dismal, and delightful story. I don't automatically go for the tin-can, gutter aesthetic in animated films, but Mary and Max wins me over completely.

Written and directed by Adam Elliot

2009

Red

2011-09-26T15:00:00.000-04:00

2 BANANAS: Fun, as dumb fun goes, but fun in a less-than-cool and kind of irritating way. Fun the way the ocean is until you walk out with sand in your shorts. Bruce Willis does a fine job being Bruce Willis (he's rarely asked to do little else these days), as do Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman in taking a run at their own respectively edgy and warm personalities. Tonally, Red never settles down, and it's too goofy to not take seriously when you consider how much money was spent simply paying the principles. I want to see all of these people in other things.

Written by Jon and Erich Hoeber

Directed by Robert Schwentke

2010

Your Highness

2011-09-20T14:57:00.000-04:00

NO BANANAS: Your Highness begs the question: will ~~David Gordon Green~~ any of these people ever make a good movie again? Green is from my home state of Arkansas (born there, anyway), and his earlier movies like George Washington and All the Real Girls seem to inhabit their own mythologies central to the south. They feel like they matter to the director. I suppose you could make the case for Your Highness mattering, but what a stupid place to inhabit. I could blame Danny McBride, I guess, one of the most overrated personalities in Hollywood. But Green's made his choices, hasn't he.

Written by Danny McBride and Ben Best

Directed by David Gordon Green

2011

The Guard

2011-08-30T13:41:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: The Guard is a pleasure worth an extra thirty minutes in the car, with the promise of pizza afterward. There's just enough western here to remind me of James Coburn in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his tumble before his fall. Another fine ending, too.

Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh

2011

Fright Night (2011)

2011-08-30T13:32:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: The new Fright Night is a tidier bit of writing than the old Fright Night, which is far from bad. It's slicker, too, which isn't always a good thing (horror flicks play best a little rough around the edges), but Colin Farrell makes a nice contrast to Chris Sarandon. Here, Jerry's rooted in a cover that makes sense, seems well thought out, and all the pieces fit nicely in this way, from the location of Vegas to David Tennant's Peter Vincent. Enjoyed it thoroughly.

Written by Marti Noxon

Directed by Craig Gillespie

2011

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

2011-08-21T09:55:00.002-04:00

4 BANANAS: Crazy Stupid Love is a well structured romantic comedy, operating splendidly within the bounds of its genre in the way of Love Actually -- only it isn't going for quite the same effect. Here, there's a lovely admission that sometimes telling the girl you love her doesn't always get the girl (though, admittedly, it might get you pre-existing naked pictures of her). Between this one and Cap's missed date, it's been an August of fine endings.

Written by Dan Fogelman
Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
2011

- Posted from my iPad

Cowboys & Aliens

2011-08-12T11:57:00.000-04:00

NO BANANAS: "Harrison, is this a Western?" "No, Daniel, it's not." "Is it science fiction?" "Whatever, kid. Just hit your goddamn marks." Anyway, I think it says a lot about Cowboys & Aliens that I completely forgot to review it after seeing it a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it even says enough. Yes, in fact, I think it does.

Written by 5-8 people (including those Star Trek guys)
Directed by Jon "Not Really the Talent We Think He Is" Favreau
2011

True Blood: Season One

2011-08-10T10:36:00.005-04:00

NO BANANAS: At long last, friends, I get to review this awful show. For those of you who love it, I apologize if I offend, but I cannot stand True Blood. Here's why: the writing is terrible, the main character is infuriatingly stupid and entirely unlikable (Anna Paquin is lousy), and the show's depiction of southernness is the laziest kind of caricature. It's a show that should have been cancelled after one season, but it opened a vein in popular culture and continues to lap at the hot blood gushing out. Some might say that's an accomplishment in and of itself, but I'd argue it's no great shakes to stand on the shoulders of other vampires. What's more, True Blood never uses sex in interesting ways; instead, it panders to an up-all-night male viewer mentality, even when I imagine most of the show's ardent viewers are women. I do like the credits a lot, but the show never delivers on their promise. TV like this just makes American culture dumber.

Created by Alan "Remember Six Feet Under?" Ball

2008

Deadwood: Season One

2011-08-10T10:22:00.000-04:00

5 BANANAS: Deadwood deserves whatever superlatives I can throw at it, but I know nothing in the tongue of E.B. Farnum, whose voice is the melancholy, dissatisfied soul of this show. If the Old West was about wanting more, laying a few more miles toward the Pacific, digging deeper in the earth for a larger vein, then Deadwood is about the arrested nature of civilization, everything it affords and everything lost in its establishment. It's all personified in Al Swearengen, the man who sees his grasp all but loosening, even as he tightens his grip on the railing of his balcony. He's a fierce opponent and, by season's end, an unlikely ally. I can't wait to keep watching.

Created by David Milch

2004

Les Diaboliques

2011-08-10T10:13:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: It's not hard to believe that Simone Signoret could lift a man's body into a tub of water and drown him. Nor is it hard to believe the film's final plot twist, if only because Clouzot has set it up so splendidly. I enjoyed learning about the fire this film lit under Hitchcock to make a comparable flick. Clouzot beat him to the punch, and then, of course, Hitchcock went and made something incomparable by way of response. He was still playing second fiddle. Clouzot had beaten him to the incomparable, too, in Les Diaboliques.

Written by Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jerome Geronimi

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot

1955

The Magician

2011-08-10T09:57:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: Bergman's odd, funny, and occasionally scary film about theater was the first in a box of DVDs my wife bought me for my birthday. She said when choosing between this one and The Seventh Seal, she had to go with The Magician, if only because it seemed more fun. It was, without a doubt, and that's the best review I can think of writing.

Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman

1958

Little Miss Sunshine

2011-08-10T09:53:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: I was tough on Little Miss Sunshine when I first saw it — or if I wasn't tough I was dismissive. I was also wrong. Watching it years later, after the glow has faded, I find there's a surprising profundity at work in its characters' lives, their small, significant revelations about who they are, where they're coming from and where they're going. And it's the ending that I admire most, set in a beauty pageant grotesquery where Greg Kinnear — the clueless, self-absorbed, well-meaning, not always likeable dad — is first to understand the score.

Written by Michael Ardnt

Directed by Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris

2006

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-07-30T08:54:00.003-04:00

3 BANANAS: With every comic book and fantasy film released, I worry that the genre — a potentially rich and inexhaustible one — grows a little more stale. Not so, thankfully, with Captain America, a welcomed and delightful departure, more resembling Raiders of the Lost Ark in pacing and tone. This is, friends, a fun movie, with the first truly great ending — and great final line — of any film this summer. At this point, I couldn't be looking forward to The Avengers more, if only because it will mean the return of my favorite Marvel hero (and movie) so far.

Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely

Directed by Joe "Rocketeer, not Wolfman" Johnston

2011

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

2011-07-30T08:45:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: A sometimes curiously un-rousing send-off for ten years of movie history, Deathly Hallows Part 2 is appropriately somber and grave. Snape's end is fine and fitting and better than anything Rowling wrote, and I like how Dumbledore (I almost typed "Doubledork" — see Mad) turns out to be not so nice a guy. I may always contend that the final entry in the series is a bevy of missed cinematic opportunities, but I can't really futz about any of the story points. There's a very real, justifiable sense of having arrived at the finish line exhausted, and so I say hats off to the filmmakers for all they've accomplished — and for that nifty, bloody little Voldemort fetus-thing.

Written by Steve Kloves

Directed by David Yates

2011

Battle Los Angeles

2011-07-30T08:37:00.000-04:00

2 BANANAS: There's a squandered good idea in Battle Los Angeles, lost in a mire of sloppy writing and lazy "character" development: what would an alien invasion look like from the point of view of a grunt? Anyway, this one's a great big shrug.

Written by Christopher Bertolini

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

2011

Jane Eyre

2011-07-30T08:34:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: Crystal and I saw Jane Eyre back in June. I don't know why I forgot to review it. It's been a busy summer. In shorter form than usual, it's pleasantly Gothic and stars Michael Fassbender. That's enough, isn't it?

Written by Moira Buffini

Directed by Cary Fukunaga

2011

Pale Flower

2011-07-20T08:13:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: I've become a great fan of Japanese noir this past year. Filmmakers in the fifties and sixties tapped into the despair of post-war Japan and made beautiful and entertaining pot-boilers. Here, twenty years after the war, Japan seems to have mostly recovered, and the time has come for men and women to question their lives as gangsters, ex-gangsters, etc. Emptiness, loneliness. "Isn't there a way for decent people to live?" Saeko asks. Of course there is, but it's not for you.

Written by Masaru Baba

Directed by Masahiro Shinoda

1964

Harry Potter and the Banana Tree of Jean Louis

2011-07-15T08:53:00.002-04:00

There won't be any shortage of critics remarking this summer on the remarkable nature of the Harry Potter film franchise — unique in the history of movies, magical by its very nature, etc.

As Crystal and I re-watched all seven films in anticipation of the final big event, it occurred to me that the Banana Tree would be remiss not to attempt to contribute in some small way to ten years' culmination of Potter patter. After all, watching the films again, I realized that my own ideas about their strengths and weaknesses have shifted over time. So, taking my cue from Entertainment Weekly's most recent, impressive issue, I decided to have a look back at my reviews of the films — reviews that, by and large, were surprisingly ho-hum in their impressions of the individual movies.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone came out a scant month after September 11, 2001, a detail no critic's overlooking as the contextualizing of this franchise gets underway. Don't get swept up in this conversation, though, dear readers: these movies are about childhood, innocence to experience. In this, there's a timelessness to them — and a larger and more satisfying context in which to place them. I gave Sorcerer's Stone three bananas and called it "enchanting enough." This was upon a second or third viewing of the film, five years after its release. Now, having re-watched it, I'm struck by what a singular movie it is, how nothing like it had ever come before.

I gave Chamber of Secrets two bananas (yikes!) and harangued returning director Chris Columbus for being "earnest but lazy." "It has its moments," I said, "but God, it's tedious." It's hardly that bad, and I no longer count it the weakest in the series. It still feels long, but there's a great joy to be had in watching Ron Weasley pull awkward faces and spit up slugs. Hermione is strangely absent in Chamber, and her absence is felt. She is, after all, the heart of the series.

The Prisoner of Azkaban remains the best of the films, a fine and artful movie. A tale told in the language of cinema. My review of four bananas stands. Those we love, Sirius Black tells Harry, never truly leave us. A sentiment Gary Oldman sells beautifully in a movie whose chief motifs are time and proximity.

And then we come to Goblet of Fire. What a mixed bag this one is. Forty-five minutes in the middle are golden, but they seem to belong in another movie entirely. A more entertaining movie, too. Still, watching the films back-to-back as we have, I've come around regarding the violence and danger students of witchcraft and wizardry are exposed to. It's a world apart from the Muggle world, in which children are sheltered and pampered. This, it now seems to me, is one of Rowling's great themes: the journey to adulthood is dangerous, and the only way to deal with those dangers is by squaring them head on.

Order of the Phoenix inaugurates David Yates into the franchise, and he moves in to stay. Here, some would say, the tone shifts dark, but I'd argue it's been dark ever since the beginning. Also, the fifth movie remains pretty much the only film in the series that's about school — teachers and students, the value of learning in a wizard's life.

In The Half-Blood Prince, screenwriter Steve Kloves and Alan Rickman get right what Rowling gets wrong in her own creation. Severus Snape, officially everyone's favorite character according to MTV, only gains dimension in the novels after Rickman's first few outings as the character. The one great failing of Rowling with regard to Snape and Harry is their relationship, namely that it never quite evolves past mutual dislike. Folks have argued otherwise, but I stand by my assertion that if the writer herself doesn't address the issue, she hasn't been successful. Rickman pulls it all off, though, with characteristic understatement: "I am the Half-Blood Prince."

In my initial review of Part 1 of The Deathly Hallows, I called it the most satisfying emotional experience of the bunch. Now, re-watching it, it feels the opposite, a placeholder in a series that didn't really need to stretch to eight films. Still, there's no death in the entire series more moving or handled better than Dobby's, and I imagine I'll still feel that way when the credits roll at the end of Part 2, a death set up at the end of Chamber of Secrets.

And that is the beauty and singularity of this series: eight films comprising one story arc over a decade, each informing the other in small and poignant ways, the ultimate theme of friendship as sacrifice taking center stage. It's a kind of storytelling magic the film industry rarely commits to. A kind of magic, in the end, peculiar to Muggles. After all, wizards and witches may have Hogwarts, dear readers, but we have Hollywood.

Sucker Punch

2011-07-12T15:38:00.000-04:00

NO BANANAS: The opening shot of Sucker Punch surprised me, because I expected everything about the movie to be bad. By shot 2, my expectations were met. What's oddest here is how earnest Zack Snyder seems to be in his assertion that highly objectified women can, in fact, represent female empowerment. If I cared enough to blame anyone for that dumb male notion, I'd blame Deborah Snyder, who apparently has no opinion on the subject. Even more puzzling is how weirdly sleazy the movie feels for a PG-13 flick. Of course, in the end, it's just preposterous and dumb, which is one adjective too far to still be entertaining.

Written by Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya

Directed by Zack Snyder

2011

Cars 2

2011-07-12T15:26:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: I'm not sure I understand the ire directed at John Lasseter's breezy little spy movie. Critics have had more fun than a barrel of monkeys lambasting this one, the general consensus being Cars 2 is the nadir of Pixar. Whatever. It's cute. It's fun. And it's better than 90% of the animation other major American studios turn out, including Disney. My only complaint is that Lasseter hasn't worked a black Trans Am into his weird, endearing little world.

Written by Ben Queen

Directed by John Lasseter and Brad Lewis

2011

Bad Teacher

2011-06-27T12:52:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: Bad Teacher is a movie of no consequence and few scruples, even as it tries to offer up a genuinely sweet and moral center. It certainly provides a sufficient dose of fantasy for any educator who's ever graded a bad term paper. Which makes me wonder: why is it those of us who pride ourselves on being good teachers desire nothing so much as to be well and truly bad? Elizabeth Halsey is a wretched teacher (she was never good), and maybe that's the ultimate disconnect with audiences — comprised, I bet, mostly of good teachers — Bad Teacher may have to weather. It's not Bridesmaids, but then so few things are. Cameron Diaz, however, is great.

Written by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky

Directed by Jake Kasdan

2011

Green Lantern

2011-06-22T15:39:00.000-04:00

NO BANANAS: See that sincere look on Ryan Reynolds' face? He tried. But a bad script is a bad script until someone fixes it, and, apparently, no one did. That said, the reviews of Green Lantern have revealed an interesting undercurrent of snark against "fanboys" and "geeks," almost as if one really bad comic book movie was all it took to open the door to criticizing comic-book readers and comics, in general. I, more than anyone, would be happy for the tide to turn away from comic book adaptations, but the fact is Green Lantern indicates nothing about the state of things in comics and the lives of those who read them, only the general lack of creativity in Hollywood. Martin Campbell can talk all day about making this one for "the fans," but no self-respecting Green Lantern reader buys that crap. Green Lantern is a cool character, one of DC's coolest, and the movie Warner Bros. concocted pays almost no service to the coolest idea at the character's core: that imagination is strength. No one seeing this movie could ever argue it made that point.

Written by four people

Directed by Martin Campbell

2011

The Purple Rose of Cairo

2011-06-22T15:21:00.000-04:00

5 BANANAS: Allen makes sadness whimsical. How is that even possible? The ending of The Purple Rose of Cairo is one for the book, not necessarily a better ending than Midnight's, but a stronger, harsher statement on the nature of dreams and fantasy. Beware the man with a song in his throat.

Written and directed by Woody Allen

1985

Midnight in Paris

2011-06-22T15:16:00.002-04:00

4 BANANAS: Midnight in Paris is pretty damn great, if only because Allen's leading man quickly loses interest in a conversation between Hemingway and Picasso and moves, instead, into the room where the girl has gone to sit to wait the argument out. The best of Woody Allen's heroes know when to avoid the prats and pay attention to a beautiful woman. Wilson's a great actor (I'm so glad he didn't succeed in killing himself a few years back). Most would peg Clooney as our modern-day Cary Grant, but I'd like to cast a vote for Dignan, if I may: a joy to watch and hear as he glides effortlessly from scene to scene. Or maybe he's more Jimmy Stewart than that: a character to root for, a hard thing to find these days. Especially in summer.

Written and directed by Woody Allen

2011

Alien

2011-06-22T15:08:00.000-04:00

5 BANANAS: Alien, it turns out, is a movie about a cat. I don't know why I never got this before.

Written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett

Directed by Ridley Scott

1979

Super 8

2011-06-22T15:05:00.001-04:00

2 BANANAS: Super 8's a movie about kids who love movies, and for that — represented by an end-credits short I would have gladly paid full ticket price for without the promise of the CG spectacle that came before — I can't entirely fault it. But it's also got its problems, chief among them a script that rings false at all the crucial moments and a monster that, in no way, shape, or form, lives up to the hype surrounding it. Abrams, if pressed, would probably say the monster is incidental, a MacGuffin. Tell that to Chrissy Watkins. "It wasn't a propeller. It wasn't any coral reef. And it wasn't Jack the Ripper. It was a shark." There's nothing as resolute as this in Abrams' creature.

Written and directed by J.J. Abrams

2011

JAWS

2011-06-09T09:11:00.002-04:00

JY CINEMASHUP - Jaws & Oates from Jeff Yorkes on Vimeo.

5 BANANAS: It's that time of year again.

Written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb

"Indianapolis Speech" by John Milius, Howard Sackler, and Robert Shaw

Directed by Steven Spielberg

1975

The Name of the Rose

2011-06-08T09:15:00.000-04:00

2 BANANAS: The central theological question of The Name of the Rose seems to be, "Does God laugh?" Stated so baldly, we have a tendency to chuckle, but really, isn't it a nice thought. It's a simple, straightforward question no monk can answer: the perfect theological mystery. How exactly this (or Aristotle) ties into the more earthbound mystery of murdered monks in a medieval monastery is less simplistic, less perfect. Many reviewers in 1986 noted that Annaud's film is populated by a freakshow befitting a Fellini film. To that I would counter that Fellini, unlike Annaud, seemed to understand the purpose and necessity of laughter on a level that Annaud doesn't; therefore, the parallel isn't entirely apt. Sean Connery spends most of the movie being Sean Connery (no faults there), Christian Slater spends most of the movie being impossibly naive, and Ron Perlman gives his most laughable, earnest performance ever. Somehow, adapted from Eco's dour book, this movie should have been more fun.

Written by four people (never a good sign, is it?)

Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud

1986

Stand by Me

2011-06-08T08:17:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: From Gordie's opening line — "I was twelve going on thirteen the first time I saw a dead human being." — to the penultimate scene, as friends part ways, Stand by Me is a frank, honest portrait of boyhood eroding. Coming back to it all these years later, I was struck by how small these kids are — and by how big they seemed in my memory. Just children, really. Twelve is a powerful age, when boys find themselves on the cusp of a larger, more frightening world. "Junior high," Chris Chambers breathes. It touches me deeply, these four boys hoping to be on TV, interviewed on the radio, just heard and seen. Vern brings a comb ("If we're on TV, we want to look good, don't we?"), a small, funny gesture — and perhaps the movie's most innocent, earnest gesture. Vern simply wants to be presentable. He wants someone to be proud of him. It's inevitable that the comb will be lost. Chris Chambers, on the other hand, brings a gun. His old man's gun. And so Stand by Me is a movie about fathers and sons, with the fathers largely absent. "I wish the hell I was your dad," Chris tells Gordie. "You wouldn't be talking about taking these stupid shop classes if I was." What an old thing for a kid to say. When the boys part ways back in Castle Rock, it's a haunting, even fleeting moment, the kind you know you should hold onto but can't. You get the sense they've aged immeasurably, and no friendship, no bond, will ever be as easy as the one they shared before Ray Brower.

Written by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans
Directed by Rob Reiner

1986

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-04T18:42:00.000-04:00

2 BANANAS: Matthew Vaughn directs a deft montage, no doubt about that, but shouldn't a movie whose title suggests it's about the founding a school actually be about the founding of a school? And anyway, what's the point of showing us how fast Beast can run and then never paying it off? The gag, I suppose, the chuckle elicited (how many jokes about baldness can we cram in, guys?), is its own reward. And that's the real trouble with X-Men: First Class. It's fun, but it's also just goofy. I remember X2's moments of humor, how they lightly illuminated character (Iceman freezing a Dr. Pepper for Wolverine, when what Wolverine really wanted was a beer). Here, there's precious little character touches to be found, just a grab-bag of kids whose abilities haven't featured in the franchise yet pitted against cartoon bad guys who'd be more at home in Goldfinger or You Only Live Twice. In other words, the movie fails to get a foothold in any emotional or physical reality. The trailers built my expectations high: did the X-men work covertly with the CIA to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis? An intriguing premise, yeah? Turns out, they just kind of watched the news and then, well, showed up. Charles Xavier is a brilliant man, right? I thought he was. But it seems a brilliant man might spend a little more time strategizing how to announce to the world the presence of his students in a way that wouldn't very nearly get them all killed. I had hoped that Vaughn might restore a bit of the gravitas Singer engendered in the series; instead, he tried to turn an X-Men movie into a James Bond lark. "Does it hurt when they come out?" Rogue once asked Wolverine. In the case of each post-Singer sequel, the big guy's answer is apt: "Every time."

Written by four people

Directed by Matthew Vaughn

2011

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

2011-06-01T16:20:00.003-04:00

4 BANANAS: Crystal and I drove to Atlanta to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams last Sunday. Much to my disappointment, the Tara wasn't showing it in 3D. The one summer movie I want to see in three dimensions I can't. Sad, but oh well. On a more satisfying note, the first bit of synchronicity between The Banana Tree and The Bogdanovich Chorus in a good long while has occurred. Nathan, you're right. Herzog is interested in people. It's nowhere more evident than in his portraits of his subjects, long moments in which the camera's eye fixes its frank and open (and admiring) gaze upon the men and women who tend the mysteries of Chauvet cave. Herzog, of course, being Herzog, is not content to stop at wonder. He probes further into our intentions and designs, suggesting in a haunting — and yes, jarring — postscript that we seek to re-shape nature even as we fail to comprehend its mysteries. I wonder if Herzog doesn't identify with that aboriginal man who sees the need to restore the long-faded works of others.

Written, directed, and narrated by Werner Herzog

2010

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

2011-05-31T10:30:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: David Lynch and Werner Herzog should have met a long time ago. Though one imagines their ideas about introspection might result in loggerheads (Herzog doesn't like to look at himself in the mirror; Lynch delves deep into the "100% pure bliss" of transcendental meditation), as artists they're kindred souls. The mystery at the heart of My Son, My Son is the mystery at the heart of Laura Palmer's murder, of Fred Madison's schism: what, exactly, brings Michael Shannon's character to the precipice of reality? Was it his mother's unique insanity, or was it something deeper, some dark, more primal madness that was waiting for him in the jungles of Peru?

Written by Werner Herzog and Herbert Golder

Produced by David Lynch

Directed by Werner Herzog

2009

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

2011-05-31T09:55:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: You couldn't ask for a finer sequence in a summer movie than the mermaids' attack in Pirates. If you happen to find yourself at a beach this June through July, there's no other movie to see. If you're nowhere near sand and surf, you might just as easily skip it. The most pleasant summer breezes are mild, and the fourth Pirates film is nothing if not that. Still, I'd much rather see Jack Sparrow jumping nimbly from coach to coach and kissing Judi Dench than riding the mast of a ship through the desert or following it to the bottom of a whirlpool. There's nothing particularly wrong with this one — and even one or two things right.

Written by Ted Elliot and Terri Rossio
Directed by Rob Marshall
2011

Bridesmaids

2011-05-17T12:33:00.001-04:00

5 BANANAS: There's a way I laugh when it's best: my feet come off the floor and my upper body bends forward to meet my rising knees, so that I'm actually, for a moment, suspended in what feels like zero-g bliss. I can't count how many times I laughed this way in Bridesmaids.

Written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo

Directed by Paul Feig

2011

Thor

2011-05-09T08:39:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: It's delightful for a superhero to kiss a girl's hand — not her lips — and walk away. If Thor held any real disappointments, it was only that Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman finally did lock lips in the obligatory fashion. Still, it's hard to be too disappointed when you know what you're getting into. Thor is goofy in mostly the right ways, with a villain I'm guessing will make a fine adversary for Joss Whedon's Avengers. Most of the critics are right: Thor seems shrewdly and commercially made. Still, Branagh directs the movie with a warm and wry sense of humor. It's not a far stretch to imagine this man behind the camera.

Written by lots of people

Directed by Kenneth Branagh

2011

Happy Summer Movie Season Opening Weekend!

2011-05-06T11:05:00.000-04:00

Let's kick things off properly, shall we?

Thelma & Louise

2011-05-06T11:04:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: Easily one of Ridley Scott's more enjoyable outings, Thelma & Louise makes minor missteps along the way to its famous ending, an ending that deserves better than pop-culture's treatment of it as a girl-power cliche. Those missteps include Hollywood's annoying tendency to pass off California as every state in the union (it resembles Arkansas in no way) and the persistent tongue-wagging of a trucker, whose sub-plot concludes in satisfyingly fun but ludicrous fashion. The script for Thelma & Louise is its real greatness, a story that proceeds in convincing and confident steps toward the inevitable abyss: tragedy as transcendence. "Something's crossed over in me," Thelma tells Louise. "I can't go back, I mean I just couldn't live."

Written by Callie Khouri

Directed by Ridley Scott

1991

Billy Jack

2011-05-06T10:26:00.001-04:00

2 BANANAS: There's something undeniably winning about a movie whose hero is a half-Indian martial arts expert who beats up rednecks in defense of downtrodden hippie children. It sounds like the kind of thing Sam Fuller might have made great had this script ever crossed his desk — a rewrite or two, the pistol's fired, the thrill is on. Unfortunately, the great premise here is weakened — though not squandered — by lackluster directing by the title character, who has a tendency to clap hands and sing along about peace, love, and understanding a little too often. Too bad. I was hoping the Billy Jack series could sustain my interest through the third film, for its title alone: Billy Jack Goes to Washington.

Written by (and starring) Tom Laughlin and Delores Taylor

Directed by Tom Laughlin
1971

Blow Out

2011-05-06T10:15:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: If Blow Out were any other director's movie, it would have spent its hard-earned good will in the wacky last act, as Jack Terry's jeep hurtles crazily through the paraded streets of Philadelphia. However, it's De Palma's movie, and so the insanity of the sequence — ever-heightening to its improbable conclusion — feels right. As does the movie's final sting, which just might make the short list of considerations for my now-mythical-status book project, The Endings.

Written and directed by Brian De Palma

1981

Honkytonk Man

2011-05-01T23:18:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: You've got to hand it to Clint: Arkansas and Oklahoma look nothing like southern California, but a budget's a budget and Eastwood, director and musician, rightly saved his travel expenses for the Ryman in Nashville. My only complaint about Honkytonk Man is that it makes a girl's heart's only desire the butt of a joke and then knocks her up, both strangely uncharitable and cynical acts in an otherwise sweet, even romantic movie.

Written by Clancy Carlile

From his novel

Directed by Clint Eastwood

1982

Jackass 3D

2011-04-22T01:12:00.000-04:00

3 BANANAS: "The Invisible Man," pictured above, is sufficient evidence to argue the place of Jackass in the modern world as a kind of latter-day performance art. Johnny Knoxville is the cackling incarnation of something horrifying and magnificent in the American boy's psyche. If Loki, Norse god of mischief, were given the keys to a Lamborghini, I think he probably would use the Italian sports car to pull a friend's tooth, and he'd look like Knoxville doing it. It's a brilliantly conceived and executed gag, much like the opening and end sequences of the movie — full of their own grace and yes, even beauty. Of course, for every midget brawl in a country western bar or slingshot gag, there's the inevitable stunt which climaxes with Steve-O doused in someone else's shit and his own frequent puke. Weirdly enough, that's also part of its charm.

Directed by Jeff Tremaine

2010

Tale of a Vampire

2011-04-14T21:56:00.000-04:00

NO BANANAS: Julian Sands plays the lousiest vampire in the history of vampires, a creature of the night whose introductory scene involves — no kidding — lapping the blood of a stray cat! Now, it seems to me, if ever this vampire had been a cat owner, he'd know it's much easier to catch and kill a homeless drunk than a cat. Besides, no cat would walk right into the lair of a vampire and meow at his bedside. Wouldn't a vampire suspect some foul magic at work if a cat did something so bold and brash in his unnatural presence? Oh, wait, I forgot: Julian Sands' vampire doesn't believe in magic. Which is why he spends all his time reading occult books in an occult library, right? I ask you: what intended victim ever met a vampire who said, "I don't believe in magic"?

I will definitely be checking out Sato's other films, "Birth of the Wizard" and "The Fiend with Twenty Faces."

Written and directed by Shimako Sato

1992

Tron: Legacy

2011-04-14T21:41:00.000-04:00

1 BANANA: Tron: Legacy suffers, like a few other post-Lebowski films, from Jeff Bridges' too-eager desire to embrace The Dude as a philosophical point of view. Isn't Jeffrey Lebowski special because he is, in fact, the one-and-only Jeffrey Lebowski? Anyway, Tron: Legacy more or less rehashes its predecessor's story in a much less philosophical way, with the savior figure fending off hordes of fascist programs instead of a nameless entity. The special effects are so perfect they're bloodless, all except for Clu, an effect I want to like for its oddness, but it ultimately fails because we're supposed to believe his digital face is real, as opposed to what it looks like: a digital face. My only faint praise is that someone in this flick's team of six writers — probably the dudes from Lost — thought it fit to put a scrappy girl in the middle of it all.

Written primarily by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

2010

Tron

2011-04-14T21:26:00.001-04:00

2 BANANAS: Tron is tolerable — but just barely. People talk about a movie being "underrated in its day" and "ahead of its time." Sometimes, friends, a so-called "underrated" movie was, in fact, just damn boring. Of course, sometimes, movies that are boring can also be ahead of their time, and so I guess Tron fits half the nostalgic bill with its groovy animation and effects. It's just too bad the script was leaden and uninspired.

Written and directed by Steven Lisberger

1982

Hobo With a Shotgun

2011-04-06T10:48:00.001-04:00

2 BANANAS: I've decided that pre-theatrical rentals through Amazon are awesome things. While Hobo With a Shotgun might not have made it to any cinemas in my area anyway, it's a relief to know I won't waste gas and money driving to something I hope to like and ultimately don't. My favorite stuff in Hobo is easily Rutger Hauer's, along with the sometimes cloying sentiment that accompanies neo-exploitation flicks ("And that's why you don't hug a bear...") But the violence is so anarchical, so bizarre, so fetishistic, that it occasionally feels like the cinematic equivalent of reading rape fantasies. Not too interesting in the grand scheme of things.

Written by John Davies and Jason Eisener and Rob Coterill

Directed by Jason Eisener

2011

Rhinestone

2011-04-03T23:06:00.002-04:00

3 BANANAS: About a month ago, I got a jones for Rhinestone, a movie I must have watched a hundred times when I was a kid. It began innocently enough, as an after-thought, a half-remembered snatch of music, followed by a curious search of Instant Netflix. Little did I know that finding a copy of Rhinestone would become my obsession, my quest, an Internet-surfing odyssey that would span weeks of my life. In attempting to track the movie down, I learned of an Anchor Bay DVD edition, currently out of print. The only copies were listed at upwards of a hundred and forty bucks on e-bay and Amazon — not my idea of money well spent. Eventually, I discovered an online video store (are there any other kind these days?) that sells region non-specific DVDs at bargain prices, which is, of course, perfectly legal and not at all shady. The movie arrived in my mailbox last Thursday. Crystal and I watched it Friday. It was exactly as I remembered it. It's odd, occasionally funny, overly simplistic, and weirdly perfect for what it is: a casting stunt with a plot hung around it like a bad suit. The big payoff in finding the film was the epiphany that came when Crystal noted how my conception of women as objects of romantic and sexual love was largely informed by Dolly Parton: Rhinestone, 9 to 5, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Epiphany: apparently my deep and abiding love for Dolly Parton has to do with far more than her beautiful voice. Also proof, I guess, that movies — no matter how familiar they seem in our memory — can still surprise us.

Written by Phil Alden Robinson and Sylvester Stallone

Directed by Bob Clark

1984

Animal Kingdom

2011-03-29T11:48:00.001-04:00

4 BANANAS: The story of a crime family quietly unraveling, Animal Kingdom is punctuated by large and fine moments of surprise and suspense. Its girded by Jacki Weaver's mother, who's every bit as frightening as her psychotic sons. It looks good, it's acted well, and it's written well. Worth your time.

Written and directed by David Michôd

2010

Black Death

2011-03-29T11:35:00.001-04:00

2 BANANAS: Sean Bean's resume no doubt reads "Master Swordsman," and Black Death sails on his long-shanked, anti-charisma for most of its run-time, a seriously minded and fairly realistic portrait of the Middle Ages (though under-cranked shaky cam footage kind of destroys the illusion). Still, can you have witch burnings in your movie, post-Monty Python? Or peasants? I don't know. I guess. Black Death's real crime is its ending, which overshoots the better end by seven minutes, turning our destroyed monk into a character that resembles, no kidding, Anakin Skywalker. At which point one longs desperately for Arthur, King of the Britons, to appear and dub him a knight and close The Book of the Film.

Written by Dario "I Had Nothing to Do With Season of the Witch, I Assure You" Poloni

Directed by Christopher "Dario's Not Kidding; We Made a Serious Movie" Smith

2010

Paul

2011-03-24T22:47:00.005-04:00

3 BANANAS: Paul is a fun Tuesday night at the movies, if you're feeling like playing hooky from something. Yes, it's a love letter to Steven Spielberg, but it's addressed to Spielberg in 1980, when Spielberg was the coolest director in Hollywood. Besides, the fact that he agreed to do what he does in this film shows there's still good in him, that he's only forgotten his true self. Anyway, I think I'm going to take issue with the one note almost all the critics are hitting: it's a shame Edgar Wright didn't direct it. I don't get that, because Greg Mottola obviously loves movies, too. A honky-tonk version of the Modal Nodes' cantina theme and a near shot-for-shot reproduction of Obi-Wan's bar fight are proof enough. Paul reminds me with laser precision not just why I love movies, but why I love particular movies. And any director who does that with such originality is okay by me.

Written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost

Directed by Greg Mottola

2011

Never Let Me Go

2011-03-24T22:33:00.002-04:00

3 BANANAS: If I'm not careful, this review could turn ugly fast. Mark Romanek's movie is a fine enough thing, an occasionally lyrical, even funny meditation on being human that has real emotional punch. It occurred to me that Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield have quietly become two of my favorite people to watch on screen. That said, I struggled through Ishiguro's relatively short novel for at least two months, reading a handful of pages each night until the mediocrity of the language and the infuriating banality of the characters left me dulled to sleep. See? It just got ugly. This is about the movie, not the book. And the movie deserves a lot of credit for improving on a pretty tepid thing (I don't care what The New York Times thought of it...oops, see, there I go again....).

Written by Alex Garland

Directed by Mark Romanek

2010

Sweet Smell of Success

2011-03-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: There's a moment in Sweet Smell of Success — it happens in the scene pictured — when a woman asks Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) if he's an actor. A publicist and a pimp, Falco beams. J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) nearly guffaws: "Sidney? An actor?" "But he's so pretty," the woman says. Part of the charm of this scene is the knowledge that Curtis felt like he had something to prove in this movie, namely that he was more than a pretty face. He throws himself into being a bastard with pep, vim, and verve. Lancaster is King of the Bastards, though. He plays the snob as intimidator. This is the one that finally made me fall for him.

Written by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick

1957

Cedar Rapids

2011-03-20T16:34:00.000-04:00

4 BANANAS: Cedar Rapids feels like a movie that's never been made before, though it has. It's this almost-naive quality that lends the movie its charm. I also happen to enjoy watching every one of the principles, especially Isiah Whitlock, Jr., whose Ronimal is about as far from Clay Davis as you can get. The movie's greatest asset is its sincerity. There's not a hint of irony when Ziegler pledges his loyalty to Tim. That's rare in today's Hollywood.

Written by Phil Johnston

Directed by Miguel Arteta

2011

Time Bandits

2011-03-04T14:07:00.000-05:00

4 BANANAS: Time Bandits understands that to be an imaginative only child is to know grand loneliness of the sort that gives you room to create. Appropriate, given that God himself in the movie is a detached experimenter who, like Kevin with his toys, surrounds himself with people smaller than he is. The dwarfs are anything but the punchline, though. It's the stunted adults with their missing arms and bad backs and "problems" who are frequently the butt of the jokes here. Also appropriate. Some movies you loved as a kid fall apart when you grow up. Time Bandits is full of doors that continue to open.

Written by Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam

Directed by Terry Gilliam

1981

Sapphire

2011-03-04T12:59:00.000-05:00

3 BANANAS: Sapphire isn't all that compelling as a whodunnit because the answer is fairly obvious early on. As social commentary, it's dated, but certain scenes have a raw edge that still scrape against a nerve or two. The central character is what you'd expect from a bland voice-of-reason type. I can imagine, at one time, this movie seemed very bold. Now, it's more than a little pat.

Written by Janet Green and Lukas Heller

Directed by Basil Dearden

1959

Exit Through the Gift Shop

2011-03-04T12:53:00.000-05:00

4 BANANAS: The first documentary I've seen in which the story being documented literally transforms halfway through — Banksy hijacks Thierry Guetta's footage of street artists and makes the record of their work that Thierry can't — and then transforms again into a fascinating consideration of both talent and profits in the art world. This isn't a movie about street artists so much as the American entrepreneurial dream as obsession. You get the feeling Thierry Guetta cares very little for the money he makes. The guy really just wants to be a part of something bigger than himself. There's a weird naive quality to his brokenness, and that makes him fascinating.

Directed by Banksy

2010

Arthur

2011-03-04T12:41:00.000-05:00

4 BANANAS: Arthur is great because it's an adolescent's fantasy of adulthood, a never-ending comic routine in which the money matters and the booze doesn't. But when the hero gets drunk, he's as sharp as ever. That and the bit about the moose puts this one past three for me.

Written and directed by Steve Gordon

1981

The Night of the Hunter

2011-03-04T12:33:00.002-05:00

5 BANANAS: "It's a hard world for little things," goes the line the Coen Brothers would eventually echo in Raising Arizona. It's easy to see why a film like The Night of the Hunter would appeal to them, even inspire them. It's part horror, part comedy, with elements of the fantastic thrown in. Judging from True Grit and A Serious Man, the fantastic is the direction they're leaning these days. But this is a review about Charles Laughton's movie, isn't it. Well, that's easy. As movies go, it's among the finest.

Written and directed by James Agee and Charles Laughton (uncredited)

From the novel by Davis Grubb

Directed by Charles Laughton

1955

Days of Thunder

2011-02-26T23:59:00.002-05:00

4 BANANAS: In an early episode of The Simpsons, Homer — almost a month dry of Duff beer — remarks with wonder from the baseball bleachers, "I never knew how boring this game could be." Before I ever saw stock-car racing at the Cochran Speedway, I anticipated similar sentiments and so brought beer with that first and only time. Crystal and I left early, around 11 p.m., just as the featured race was getting underway. If Days of Thunder proves anything, it's that editing and narrative arcs are excellent substitutes for alcohol in making NASCAR not only exciting but downright epic. Of course, it also proves that Tom Cruise was once a movie star, Nicole Kidman was once astoundingly beautiful, and Robert Towne, author of Chinatown, once wrote a script about stock-car hotshots and has-beens. What can I say: this movie's a blast.

Written by Robert Towne

From a story by Robert Towne and Tom Cruise

Directed by Tony Scott

1990

A Review of the Sixth Annual Macon Film Festival

2011-02-21T17:36:00.005-05:00

This past Saturday, my wife and I went to the Sixth Annual Macon Film Festival. We purchased a couple of day tickets to attend screenings in three separate locations: the Macon City Center Marriott, the Douglass Theater, and the Cox Capitol Theater. Until Saturday, the only other film festival I'd ever attended was an even smaller festival in Starkville, Mississippi, years ago, an experience made memorable by the theater's lack of heat in January and by one director's claim that his father's death from cancer had been the gift he'd needed to jump start his film career. ("Thanks, Dad, for the budget!")

Which is to underscore: I went into this with an open mind.

We started at 9 a.m. at the Marriott, where a warm and friendly volunteer met us at the information kiosk set up in the hotel lobby. The screening room was small, no more than forty chairs. Everything, of course, was digital, which means that when the image is projected on a larger screen it loses a great deal of resolution. The first short we viewed was less-than-amateur and as awful as anything your typical teenager with a camcorder might make for a class project, and I immediately wondered who was selecting these and how awful those that weren't picked for inclusion in the festival might have been. (This was a thought that would continue to occur to me throughout the day.)

I don't know if you've ever watched porn with other people, but for those of you who haven't, the experience of watching a bad short film made by amateur filmmakers in a public, group setting is a very similar experience. Nervous laughter or incredulity are the only outs ("Is he really doing that with a chicken?!"), a kind of desperate acknowledgment that yes, we're fully aware that what we're all doing here is silly and not quite right, but we paid for it, damn it.

The second and third shorts we watched, however, weren't bad at all. They weren't great, but they managed to be worthy of a respectable small-time festival's standards, I'd imagine.

From the Marriott we drove to the festival's main office on Cherry Street downtown. There, we picked up our official passes for the day. I overheard part of a phone conversation between a volunteer and a caller inquiring about which screenings would feature actors, directors, etc. It seemed, according to the volunteer, that no one was really certain which screenings these folks would show up at during the daytime events, whereas the nighttime events were locks for minor celebrity sightings (that guy who was in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and was Scabious in The Deathly Hallows).

We grabbed a leisurely early lunch and headed over to the Douglass for the next round of showings (sessions were running concurrently at all three locations throughout the day). The Douglass, for any locals who've never been, is a great little theater. It's old and restored, has the air of authenticity, not nearly as mead-hallish as its boor of a cousin, the Cox. There, we watched a feature called Passenger Pigeons. The director showed up, a non-committal Generation Y chick with tattoos. The audience numbered about eight, so small a turn-out that the host was actually heard apologizing to the filmmaker. The movie concerned miners in Kentucky and something about mountain top preservation, both subjects interwoven not incompetently -- just dully -- into a narrative that supposedly got a strong reception at South by Southwest. We all clapped, but I got the sense it was more to show a kind of vague encouragement of creativity and to offer up reassurance to the moviemaker that her work mattered to someone -- but that someone had just opted for the venue that served beer and popcorn a few blocks up. As the applause died and the director took a question or two, I thought of the French, how they boo films at Cannes by directors like Lars Von Trier, how they damn near knife each other in the lobby they take movies so seriously. It occurred to me that Americans, when it comes to movies, may have somehow overlooked a true appreciation of the finer things.

We ended the day with a series of shorts and experimentals in the Cox, where the Scene was happening. If you aren't familiar with the Scene in Macon, Georgia, I guess you can read about it here. The Scene at the Cox was actually one of rude patrons who couldn't sit still during screenings, teens milling about in the back and talking, and clueless Americans saying things to intelligent Japanese female directors like, "You should come and live in America, dear." (Kudos to my wife for asking the only question of substance during this Q and A; its substance was so shocking the chatterers in front of us whipped round as if someone behind them were suddenly shouting in a foreign language). Add to this the program MC's viewing publicity videos on his laptop with the sound on behind us while movies played on the big screen in front of us, and what you have is an experience at once ghastly, entertaining, and vastly informative.

This is, apparently, the indignity that small-time and legitimate filmmakers like Momi Yamashita have to endure: a festival run not by ardent cinema goers but by publicity hounds and social climbers whose ideas about art or film are about as profound and accomplished as the narrative of "Stormedge: Rise of the Darkness," an animation entry in this year's festival.

I suppose, if the Lord of Darkness really is out there awaiting and searching for galactic domination, it could very well be social promoters and local celebrities looking to build something with their names on it he strikes a deal with, awful middlemen who wear the masks of respect for a medium while quietly chipping away at anything and everything that even resembles it.

Sanshiro Sugata

2011-02-21T16:20:00.001-05:00

4 BANANAS: Kurosawa is a fascinating director in that he seemed to be fully formed as an artist from the very first. Here, in his debut film, he steps boldly into movies with all the accomplished trademarks of his reputation: lyricism, atmosphere, and a strong moral center in the hearts of his very human protagonists. At this point, anything I say about him as one of my favorite filmmakers is old news on this blog. I will say, without hesitation, that I have something approaching a kind of religious faith in his work.

Written and directed by Akira Kurosawa

1943

Blue Valentine

2011-02-15T13:54:00.000-05:00

2 BANANAS: Blue Valentine manages to be a romantic film in spite of itself, and those precious few scenes of smiles and jokes save it from being an altogether ugly movie-going experience. On the other hand, it is like sitting through a seriously minded graduate student's seriously minded adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story. Its narrative is generous to Dean without reserving much empathy for his wife (it's telling I remember his name, not hers), and there's a weird sexism at work in this. If you're of the mindset that directors shouldn't embarrass their actors with so much weeping, then avoid it at all costs. It has truth, but there's better things to go to movies for.

Written by 3 people

Directed by Derek Cianfrance

2010

Alice in Wonderland

2011-02-04T00:20:00.000-05:00

1 BANANA: The only things right about Tim Burton's overlong and overly expensive exercise in topping weird for weird are Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway as the respective Red and White Queens. These feel like genuine performances, as opposed to Johnny Depp's, who may have been at his career worst in 2010. Alice's dogged insistence that she's having a dream robs Wonderland (Underland?) of its wonder, rendering this 3D world about as soulless and imaginary as a piece of cardboard painted red. But at least cardboard has texture! Here, the special effects are absolutely terrible, lifeless and fake. (I'm not convinced Crispin Glover actually acted in this movie; it seems to be only his head!) A stalwart British voice cast only serves to remind us what professionals the Brits are -- and that Stephen Fry and Michael Sheen should have made the casting call for the Potterverse. Twenty years ago, Spielberg tried to grow Peter Pan up in Hook with about as much success, artistically speaking, but at least Steven understood that a sense of childhood had to be preserved or the whole enterprise is pointless.

Written by Linda "I Can't Believe She Also Wrote Beauty and the Beast" Woolverton

Directed by Tim Burton

2010

The League of Gentlemen

2011-02-04T00:07:00.003-05:00

4 BANANAS: The melancholy notes this great cynical comedy plucks in my British heart strings are true and fine. One imagines Graham Chapman might step out from behind a tree any moment and object to the content of this heist sequence. The bank heist is one of the more memorably staged I've seen in the genre. It may not be up there in cool with, say, Le Cercle Rouge, but what is, darlings. What is.

Written by Bryan Forbes

Directed by Basil Dearden

1960

127 Hours

2011-02-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

3 BANANAS: Aron Ralston's plight is never less than compelling, and it's surprisingly often funny. There's a great deal of our own pain and suffering (in the existential fashion) you could read into this mostly blank slate of a dude, and in that regard 127 Hours achieves a mild transcendence. On the other hand (ha ha), I don't think I ever want to see this again. How can you say that about anything above a three? I applaud (ha ha ha) my wife for sitting through what was, indeed, a truly horrifying minute. I think a James Franco performance is worth a severed nerve string or two, don't you?

Written Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy

Directed by Danny Boyle

2010

Machete

2011-01-20T23:31:00.000-05:00

2 BANANAS: Leave it to Hot Rod Rodriguez to churn out a script that makes Jessica Alba the instigator of La Revolucion. "We didn't cross the border!" she cries, fist thrust in the air. "The border crossed us." I'm not anti-Jessica Alba, but what's she been in that's good? I hope Michelle Rodriguez (no relation, but isn't that obvious?) has the sense to stay out of Robert's Austin company of players, as she's too cool for this. Same for Jeff Fahey, who plays his villain as honest and earnest as a professional actor can (I think it's what Stallone was hoping for in Eric Roberts this past summer). Then there's Danny Trejo, a surprisingly understated and capable talent who, in a better script that wasn't masking its sincere boyish wish to be cool behind layers of irony and post-modern creakiness, makes a fine action hero. It's inconceivable, though, that Jessica Alba would take this man to her bed as if he were Sean Connery. No character scores as much poontang as this Mexican and still gets to call himself a myth! And finally, what of Lindsay, misused and abused still? Rodriguez takes the obvious route to the punchline, making her a crack-whore. There's exploitation and there's Exploitation. The latter is Lohan. The former is putting Robert DeNiro in a taxi. With an ending that pays homage to Cannonball Run II -- only with less grace and style the source material -- one longs for best friend Quentin to appear and tell a joke. No such luck.

Written by Robert Rodriguez and Alvaro Rodriguez

Directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis

2010

I'm Still Here

2011-01-20T22:53:00.004-05:00

3 BANANAS: As bogus and careless as this whole enterprise is, I can't help feeling there's truth at work here, be the film a statement about celebrity or the media or even humanity in general. People from both sides of the screen -- those who attend (or even once hosted) the Oscars and those who watch them on TV -- are quick to be cruel. Of course, Phoenix himself (the fictional self) is quick to be cruel in return, flashing from pathetic prick to fists and fury. There's more invention than fiction here. This is a portrait of a fragile but raging id begot and forgot by the entertainment machine. Why hip-hop? Why not? It's the antithesis of Johnny Cash, that swell impersonation that almost won JP the Oscar. He got as far away as he could get (and I'd like to believe Sean Combs wasn't in on the joke in what is, arguably, the movie's funniest scene) and he fooled us all -- for a little while. In the end, hoax or part, it doesn't matter. I'm Not Here is nothing less than a strategic and manufactured self-destruction, a weird kind of momentary career martyrdom for the cause of I don't know what. It's compelling, right up until the last.

Written by Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck

Directed by Casey Affleck

2010

The King's Speech

2011-01-15T23:13:00.001-05:00

5 BANANAS: It's always a delight to go into the cinema expecting to like the thing you're seeing and walk out loving it. That's happened twice now this winter. The King's Speech is a movie about the human voice, what it's capable of when encouraged. A very likely but simple theme of the English monarchy, that institution which, as the Duke of York puts it, serves little purpose in the modern world but to reassure the people in times of crisis, to speak to its subjects as though the King himself were greeting them warmly in their homes. This is not a movie about history, though. It's an intimate and splendid portrait -- splendid in all respects: writing, directing, acting -- of a friendship between two men, both of whom were defined by the times in which they lived.

Written by David Seidler

Directed by Tom Hooper
2010

The Green Hornet

2011-01-15T11:39:00.003-05:00

1 BANANA: Among the myriad problems with The Green Hornet, chief is its spirit. It's all well and good and funny for Seth Rogen's Hornet to get into fist-fights with gangbangers in search of purpose and meaning, but if he hasn't found purpose and meaning by the midpoint of Act II, something is terribly wrong with both the script and the intent. Rogen's take on costumed heroes is unbearably crass and cynical, even mean-spirited. So many innocent people get murdered and maimed in this violent, frat-antic driven mess, with no accounting for it, that the "heroes" deserve nothing less than the electric chair. Crystal called this the apotheosis of bromance. I agree. It's the moment when you and your bro top the rise of guy-love movies and suddenly see the desert spread vast and wide before you, and you realize this is what we've come to, Seth, a wasteland of sentiment couched in harmful play. Even Gondry, with his superb sense of visual whimsy, can't ride in on a stitched-together horse and save what amounts to the ultimate dudes-in-love fantasy. It's kind of appalling, when you think about it. But hey, dude, that car was awesome!

Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

Directed by Michel Gondry

2011

Season of the Witch

2011-01-15T11:19:00.000-05:00

NO BANANAS: My wife likes Nicolas Cage — or, as I suggested after Season of the Witch, the idea of Nicolas Cage — and so we sometimes walk headlong into what we both know will be nothing less than a fiasco. We also cling to the stubborn hope that the experience may prove amusing. In the case of Season of the Witch, we had more fun reading the credits than watching the movie. Our mood was owed in part to the blissful relief that it was over, but also some small but genuine delight at all those Nordic names. It could have been the end credits of a Bergman film! And then we came to "Mr. Perlman's driver," a fellow by the name of Gabor, and it struck me that the only thing approaching happiness anyone must have felt on this shoot came on those cold nights when the evening began with promise, when Ron Perlman got into the car and said, "Gabor, take me to the place where the girls have really big tits."

Written by Bragi Schut

Directed by Dominic Sena

2011

Notting Hill

2011-01-15T10:58:00.002-05:00

4 BANANAS: Notting Hill is the best kind of inconsequential romantic comedy, not as singular as Bridget Jones's Diary, not as moving as Four Weddings and a Funeral, but every bit as watchable and compelling. I say it's not as moving, but in a film where contrivance is the greatest weakness, there's something powerful in Act II's final scene, when Roberts confesses her love to Grant and he rejects her. The movie could end right there, with his forgiveness of her, and we'd be happy enough. Instead, the screenwriter gives Grant his self-respect, what he's been lacking all along. And then he gets the girl. That's more generous to a male romantic lead than most such comedies ever are. It sets this one apart and earns that final shot, perfect ease in another's company.

Written by Richard Curtis

Directed by Roger Michell

1999

True Grit (2010)

2011-01-06T23:05:00.000-05:00

5 BANANAS: We pay for everything in this life, Mattie Ross assures us. All that's free in this world is God's grace. It's an apt sentiment to begin True Grit, which is nothing less than a hymn of retribution. Carter Burwell suggests through his score that Mattie's strength comes from some everlasting hold, though the arms she leans on are mostly her own. She pays for her vengeance with one of those arms, and the grace she's afforded under the stars comes not from God but a one-eyed fat man whose loyalty to Mattie, like LaBoeuf's tongue, would spill the banks of English. Mattie repays that love in kind, and so True Grit becomes less a story about vengeance and more a story about justice, which is to say one evil for another and a kindness for a kindness.

Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Based on the novel by Charles Portis

2010

Frozen

2011-01-06T22:43:00.000-05:00

3 BANANAS: Frozen's virtue is its full-on embrace of the ick factor in being trapped for two days on a ski lift. Where do you pee when you have to pee? What happens if you fall asleep with your bare hand holding metal? (And yes, there's a clever reason she has her glove off.) Or what happens if you try to hand-over-hand it along steel cable? Most importantly, however, how about those wolves? It finds its inspiration, oddly enough, in Jaws -- a scary movie that showed us just enough without revealing too much. Sure, the characters are all types, but it's three kids in a horror movie that genuinely curls your toes. No reason not to see it.

Written and directed by Adam Green

2010

Un Flic

2011-01-04T22:28:00.001-05:00

2 BANANAS: Here's a movie that damn near diminishes a great career in writing and directing. Melville's working at his strengths, but the money simply isn't there, and the great man and his star have never seemed so old and weary (in all the wrong ways). From an over-dubbed Richard Crenna to the non-presence of Catherine Deneuve, Un Flic is a yawn of a caper yarn. Its stand-out strength: a transsexual informer. Its stand-out failure: letting Delon smack her around. Skip it.

Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
1972

Black Swan

2010-12-27T09:15:00.003-05:00

2 BANANAS: Crystal and I saw Black Swan in Atlanta before Christmas, so this review comes delayed and possibly fragmented. We talked at length about the movie afterward. We talked about characters, passion, art, eroticism -- and how most of these weren't handled very well in the film. There's little about Natalie Portman's Nina Sayers I buy in the modern world (maybe melodrama itself has no place when set in the twenty-first century); anyone striving to make it as a ballerina in New York would have to be more self-aware than she. I don't believe, for example, that such a girl goes clubbing, gets wasted, pops pills, sleeps with strangers, has an intense lesbian fantasy -- all for the first time ever -- and then shows up the next morning to perform on point (I also doubt, very seriously, any ballet director, even one as randy as Vincent Cassell, would allow a girl with visible tattoos to turn so much as a pirouette on his stage). It's distasteful, too, how sex is presented with such an adolescent eye, women objectified like the feverish lesbo-masturbation fantasies of a dude. My greatest stick with the film, in the end, is its presumption that what Portman's character desires -- to dance the lead like her crazy mother or a drunk Winona Ryder -- is compelling enough to remain a driving motivation throughout the picture. Powell and Pressburger made me believe a girl would dance herself to death for love, not make-up and costuming. There's no romance in this mess, only a plot constructed coolly around a more-hit-than-miss filmmaker's short-sighted idea of what passes for madness in a neurotic girl's mind.

Written by four people (uh-oh!)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

2010

About a Boy

2010-12-15T11:37:00.002-05:00

5 BANANAS: About a Boy is the kind of movie a scriptwriter learns from, a straightforward and far-from-simple example of all the elements of plot, character, and dialogue working in perfect concert. It's funny, but it's not a comedy. It's dramatic, but it's not a drama. There's a girl, but it's not a romance. About a Boy achieves that extraordinary quality of the indefinable. And yet there's everything you need to know in its title, the story of a boy's coming of age -- a boy who just happens to be a man.

Written by Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz

Directed by Chris and Paul Weitz

2002

Love Actually

2010-12-15T11:24:00.000-05:00

5 BANANAS: There's no reason in the world why a post-9/11 Christmas Card like Love Actually should still work seven years after its release, in this present age of intrusive pat-downs and full-body X-rays. And yet: here it is, still perfect in its tempered optimism, still generous and blessedly naive in its faith in people. For this, it finds its permanent place in the Christmas season, not a movie to be watched any other time of the year. I've never been a Grinch about hopeful movies, and if there's anything Christmas has to offer those who'd rather steal toys than give them, I guess it's this: your heart, too, has room to grow. So if you really love Christmas, come on and let it snow.

Written and directed by Richard Curtis

2003

Mad Men: Season One

2010-12-13T11:23:00.000-05:00

4 BANANAS: I like a show that shines in the writing department, and Mad Men does nothing if not that. I'm most impressed with Pete Campbell and Betty Draper, the two characters who end up toting and wielding guns -- both unhappy in marriage and life. Pete's fantasy is to hunt a rabbit, kill it, and eat it in front of the woman who cooks it, a sublimation of everything he can't say, everything hidden behind his cool exterior, his drive to conform. Vincent Kartheiser's performance is one of the most nuanced and restrained I've seen in TV, a character fully realized by the actor who plays him. And Betty in her frustrated silence, grasping the hand of a child, so much more than that herself.

Created by Matthew Weiner

2007

Unstoppable

2010-12-13T10:58:00.002-05:00

3 BANANAS: Tony Scott has directed a handful of movies I think are good, and while his misses are more frequent than his hits, he does occasionally score (Days of Thunder, Top Gun, The Hunger). Unstoppable scores. Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, and Rosario Dawson are all appealing actors to watch, their smiles as genuine and easy as the suspense is earned. Scott doesn't make trains lyrical (lyricism isn't his strong suit, though he's capable of it), but he does possess these giant machines with an almost prehistoric majesty. They're grand things -- and also very dangerous.

Written by Mark Bomback

Directed by Tony Scott

2010

Nick of Time

2010-12-10T09:28:00.001-05:00

2 BANANAS: I like the idea of a movie that unfolds in real time. In Nick of Time, however, there's the inevitable scene (or two or three) the writer includes to simply stretch things to the ninety-minute mark. The challenge is how to make downtime interesting: going to the bathroom, having a drink, getting a shoeshine. Instead of really trying, writer Duncan and director Badham opt to have Depp running from one place to another while trying to avoid the watchful eyes of Christopher Walken, all of which gets ridiculous pretty quickly -- and then backs off to remind us this is "real." The one moment where the movie embraces its bat-shit tendencies wholeheartedly -- Depp shoots Walken and goes over a railing to fall thirty stories in the Bonaventure Hotel atrium -- turns out to be a fantasy sequence. Disappointing. Christopher Walken is an actor who could read utility bills and rouse me, but even he can't save the film from unraveling. No doubt, it's the kind of script a director loves to find in his stack -- full of opportunities for impressive shots and long Orwellian takes -- but sometimes you should just keep digging.

Written by Patrick Sheane Duncan

Directed by John Badham

1995