Reeling

The 27th Miami Film Festival announces its lineup, and it's good

Miami-Dade College held a press conference this morning to unveil the 27th Miami International Film Festival, which runs March 5-14. I haven't seen any of the films in this year's slate, but I've heard about a lot of them, and I am officially psyched. Here is the 2010 festival poster, created by Miami artist Carlos Betancourt.

I'm glad to see that the festival's programming continues on the ambitious and sometimes challenging path that artistic director Tiziana Finzi began last year. The festival will open with Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, about a middle-aged postman who starts seeking life advice from famed soccer star Eric Cantona (who plays himself. The closing night film will be the Argentine drama The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos), about a retired prosecutor (the great Ricardo Darin) who reopens the unsolved case of the rape and murder of a young woman.

The recipient of this year's Career Achievement Tribute will be Margarethe von Trotta, the German actress and director who became an icon of international feminist cinema in the 1970s. Several of her films will be screened, including her latest, Vision, based on the life of the German nun Hildegard von Bingen, the renowned author and composer.

Tickets will go on sale Feb. 5 for Film Society members and Feb. 19 for the general public. Festival screenings will be held at the Gusman Theater, Regal South Beach, Bill Cosford Cinema, the Miami Beach Cinematheque and the Tower Theater.

I'm still working my way through the program, but here are some other festival selections I'm really looking forward to seeing. You can check out the complete lineup here sometime later today:

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Everyone I know who's read Stieg Larsson's bestseller, the first in a trilogy, has raved about it and told me to read it immediately. I've been holding out for director Niels Arden Oplev's film adaptation, made for Swedish TV, about a journalist and a computer hacker who uncover all kinds of scary business while investigating a disappearance.

Kinatay: Phillippine director Brillante Mendoza won the Best Director prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival for this galvanizing and controversial thriller about a kidnapping that goes horribly awry. The festival is also screening Mendoza's latest film, Lola, about two grandmothers implicated in a robbery-homicide.

Sins of My Father (Pecados de mi padre): Director Nicolas Entel's documentary allows Pablo Escobar's eldest son, who fled Colombia in 1993 after his notorious father was killed, to talk about growing up with the world's most wanted drug dealer as your father.

Trash Humpers: Love them or hate them, Harmony Korine's movies (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy) leave a searing imprint. His latest, an "ode to vandalism," follows four lunatic senior citizens as they embark on a crazed rampage.

Samson & Delilah: Australian director Warwick Thornon's acclaimed love story centers on two teenagers from an Aboriginal colony who discover life among outsiders can be just as hard as life within your own clan.

Kiddo (Chamaco): The latest from Cuban director Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti (Viva Cuba, Nothing More) tackles the taboo subject of desperate young men living on the island who resort to prostitution.

 

Please Give: Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener (Walking and Talking) returns with this comedy about a married couple (Hialeah homegirl Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt) who make a living passing off cheaply acquired furniture as high-priced treasures in their Manhattan store.

Review: ''Crazy Heart''

Movies like Crazy Heart, a homespun, refreshingly modest portrait of a washed-up country singer, live or die by their performances. You need a great actor in order to build an entire picture around a character like Bad Blake, a lonely, self-destructive boozer who has given up on himself as he approaches 60. He's an embodiment of the sad songs he sings, except that there's nothing romantic about his melancholy. If Blake doesn't care about his life, then why should we?

Blake has bourbon for breakfast and bourbon for lunch: Dinner is something he shoves in between drinks. During the day, he holes up in ratty motel rooms, smoking and drinking until he passes out. Even when he takes the stage to perform dusty hits at bowling alleys, Blake is so soused he has to take puke breaks between songs. While his former musical partner, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), became a superstar, Blake quietly faded into obscurity. Down to his last $10 and with nary a friend in the world, he is essentially a man waiting to die.

And yet Jeff Bridges, who plays Blake, never lets you lose sight of the man's humanity - of a reason to care about him. Actor-turned-filmmaker Scott Cooper, who wrote and directed Crazy Heart (based on the novel by Thomas Cobb), doesn't give Blake any big moments that tug at your sympathy, and he doesn't try to find any cheap pathos in the sight of Blake with his head in a toilet bowl or laid up in the hospital.

Instead, Cooper lets you experience Blake's gradual reawakening right along with him, and Bridges' superb performance - not the slight plot - carries the weight. When romance blooms between Blake and Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist assigned to interview him, the relationship initially feels forced. What could this beautiful, intelligent young woman see in such a ramshackle man?

 But Bridges subtly lets us feel how much Jean, a single mother careful of whom she allows into her life, means to Blake: She inspires him to live up to his potential, and that is what seduces her. Blake's competitive attitude toward his former protege (exceptionally played by Farrell) is imbued with the same emotional complexity. We understand why Blake can't bring himself to write songs for the younger singer, even though the deal would bring him a fat paycheck.

Crazy Heart is the sort of picture that exists primarily to showcase its actors: The smart camera angles and edits are unobtrusive to the point of invisibility. Inspired by the opportunity to sing and play guitar for the first time in a film (the catchy songs were written by T. Bone Burnett and the late Stephen Bruton), Bridges brings his 50 years of acting experience to this one captivating, surprisingly moving performance.

 Late in the film, when Blake musters up the courage to make a difficult phone call, your heart is in your throat, because by then Bridges has led you to sympathize with this complicated man, and you recognize his attempt to right past wrongs. But has he waited too long? I know Crazy Heart probably sounds like a movie you wouldn't go out of your way to see, especially if you're not fond of country music. Within 10 minutes, Bridges will make you glad you gave it a chance.

Crazy Heart opens Friday, Jan. 29 at Aventura, Sunset Place and South Beach in Miami and Sunrise in Fort Lauderdale.

Review: ''Edge of Darkness''

Edge of Darkness, a thriller boasting Mel Gibson's first starring role in eight years, elicits a gigantic wow - as in "Wow, does this movie suck!" How did this canny, savvy performer get roped into such a dud for his big acting comeback? Gibson's previous work as an actor ran the gamut like anyone else's, but even in his worst films, he always seemed energized and plugged in and alive. When the picture around him sank, Gibson went down proudly, giving it the utmost effort.

In Edge of Darkness, Gibson seems disengaged, distracted and a little spacey, like a guy with voices in his head who tries hard to pretend he doesn't hear them. As Thomas Craven, a Boston detective investigating the murder of his daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic), Gibson looks as if he's ready to kill someone right from the opening scene, when she's still alive and well. His performance consists of the same monotonous note endlessly replayed: A cop willing to do anything for revenge.

Unfortunately, that revenge consists primarily of talking people to death. Gibson has played the role of avenging angel often, and with 1999's underrated Payback he seemed to be saying his final, definitive word on the vigilante genre. But here he is again, back to the same-old, inserted into a near-impenetrable conspiracy involving nuclear research.

The screenplay for Edge of Darkness, which is based on a BBC miniseries, is credited to William Monahan (The Departed) and Andrew Bovell (Dogwoman: The Legend of Dogwoman). I am going to take a wild guess and say that the Dogwoman guy did the bulk of the writing. The movie was directed by Martin Campbell, who made Casino Royale but also made Vertical Limit and Beyond Borders. Edge of Darkness makes a convincing case that, with Casino Royale, Campbell just got lucky.

Campbell also directed the original BBC Edge of Darkness, which has to have been far more stimulating than this talky,muddled remake. Getting even has never felt less satisfying or more confusing. How could Gibson not notice how dull this movie is? Does he have the same agent as Harrison Ford? Robert DeNiro, originally cast as a CIA agent assigned to cover up the murder of Craven's daughter, abruptly walked off the project after mere days (he was replaced by Ray Winstone). His departure was attributed to "creative differences." Or maybe DeNiro kept falling asleep on the set.

The characters in Edge of Darkness say such things as "It isn't what it is, Tommy. It is never what it is." and "There is something about ... the darkness. I don't like it." In one scene, two bad guys have a conversation intended to help the viewer catch up with the plot, and when one exclaimed "Surely you're not saying this!" I tried with all my might to will the other guy to reply "I am saying this. And don't call me Shirley." No luck.

 I momentarily perked up when Gibson snarled "I'm not interested in talking any more s--t!" but then he went right back to doing just that. Even though he's enjoyed remarkable success as a director, Gibson was going to act again sooner or later. Now that he's purged that craving from his system, hopefully he will get back behind the camera soon (he's currently preparing a huge Viking epic with Leonardo DiCaprio). Too many more movies like Edge of Darkness will kill even the most resilient career.

Edge of Darkness opens in South Florida on Friday, Jan. 29.

Random appearances by owls in movies

Blade Runner (1982) dir. Ridley Scott

When an owl pops up in a movie, there's almost always something shady going down, because owls like danger and mystery.

''Avatar,'' interrupted

 A crack appeared in Avatar's shiny blue armor last night, when Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker won the big prize at the 21st annual Producers Guild Awards, a reliable (but not infallible) bellwether for the Best Picture Oscar winner.

Buoyed by the revenues earned from higher-than-usual IMAX ticket prices, Avatar has grossed an astounding $552 million and is poised to surpass the current all-time champ Titanic by the end of this week. Even though Avatar remains far behind Titanic in terms of actual admissions, Avatar will also eke past the former champ's $1.8 billion international haul sometime this week (although if you adjust the grosses for inflation, Avatar is only 26th on the all-time list.)

Obviously, I was more than a little wrong when I wrote "there's just no way this movie is going to come close to Titanic's grosses." Movie critics have no business trying to be box office prognosticators. I am genuinely baffled by the film's amazing success - I knew it would be big, but not this big - and I have tried to go back and see Avatar again, to see what it is about the film that has connected with so many people.

But although I saw Titanic three times in the theater, I haven't been able to muster up the energy to sit through Avatar again. I feel like there is nothing to be gained from a second viewing: The thin plot is certainly not going to reveal any new shadings, the 3D annoyed more than anything else, and my emotional engagement with the film was too remote to lure me back for seconds. I liked Avatar better the first time I saw it, when it was called Aliens.

Still, the film's phenomenal popularity seemed destined to be coronated by a Best Picture Oscar in March - at least until last night, when the PGA declared "We don't all love Avatar, either." I don't think James Cameron stands a chance of besting his ex-wife Bigelow for the Best Director prize, and suddenly Avatar is no longer a lock for Best Picture. The movie is still the front-runner, but it is not unbeatable.

This all helps make this year's Oscars a little more interesting, which is good, because the race is pretty boring. Even though the nominations won't be announced until Feb. 2, most of the major categories have already been decided (Jeff Bridges, Mo'Nique, Christoph Waltz, etc.) The only real question, other than Best Picture, is whether the Academy will finally give Meryl Streep another Oscar or allow Sandra Bullock into the winners' circle.

Jeff Bridges talks ''True Grit'' and ''Heaven's Gate''

 Jeff Bridges came one step closer to fulfilling his Oscar destiny by winning the Best Actor prize at last night's Screen Actors Guild awards for his performance as a run-down country singer in Crazy Heart. Here's a link to my interview with Bridges, which ran in today's paper.

I normally don't like writing actor profiles based on telephone interviews, because you miss so much of their personality and presence if you're not in the room with them. But Bridges' youthful voice and speaking manner are so distinctive, I immediately felt like I was riding shotgun in his car when he called me Tuesday afternoon while he was driving to Santa Barbara.

At the end of the interview, I asked Bridges about his upcoming one-two punch of Tron 2.0 and True Grit, both due in December. He didn't have much to say about Tron other than it was a lot of fun to make and everyone was great, blah blah blah yawners.

 True Grit starts filming in March. Here's what Bridges said when I asked him how it felt to be taking on one of John Wayne's most iconic roles (and the only one to win him an Oscar): The tough old coot Marshal Reuben J. Cogburn.

"I'm not thinking of it on those terms. I get my direction from [Joel and Ethan] Coen, who aren't really thinking of it as a remake of the John Wayne movie but as another version of the novel by Charles Portis, which is a wonderful book and was very big when it came out. That's really what the Coens are referencing, and that's what I'm doing as well. I'm not really going to study The Duke's performance or anything like that. I'm just looking forward to working with Matt Damon and Josh Brolin. It's going to be a wonderful team."

I also asked Bridges how he felt towards that gigantic flop Heaven's Gate (which he co-starred in) all these years later.

 "Over 50 percent - maybe it's as high as 80 percent - of the moviegoing experience depends on what kind of baggage the audience is bringing in with them and what kinds of reviews they've read. A movie like Heaven's Gate was doomed, because of that initial hysterical review [written by Vincent Canby in The New York Times] that ruined other people's experience of seeing the movie. Everyone saw it through the filter of this critic's eyes. He was supposed to know what a good movie is and he missed it."

Review: ''Extraordinary Measures''

Extraordinary Measures is the first release from the newly formed CBS Films, where the company credo seems to be "Let's trick people into paying to see movies at the theater they wouldn't watch for free at home!"

Everything about this excruciatingly dull, talky film screams made-for-network-TV: The I'm-only-here-for-a-paycheck performances by famous actors; the Crate and Barrel catalog mise-en-scene; the syrupy score that lays the pathos on so thickly you gag on it.

And there is no shortage of pathos in a movie that constantly cuts away to shots of smiling, terminally ill kids in wheelchairs. Extraordinary Measures is based on Geeta Anand's nonfiction book The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million - and Bucked the Medical Establishment - in a Quest to Save His Children. There, I've just saved you two hours you would have never gotten back.

Even if this feeble film weren't based on a book with a gigantic plot-spoiler title, it would still feel like something you endure more than watch. Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell star as John and Aileen Crowley, a couple with two children (Meredith Droeger and Diego Velazquez) afflicted by the rare genetic disorder Pompe disease. The life expectancy of such children is nine years, and the Crowleys' daughter has just turned 8.

 

Thanks to helpful, fifth-grade-level dialogue by screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs, we learn that conventional medicine has no more resources to offer. ("Now I wish we had a drug to treat Pompe," a doctor tells the couple, speaking slowly and clearly, as if they were mentally challenged. "But we simply don't. I'm sorry.") After the desperate John learns about Dr. Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford), a researcher at the University of Nebraska working on an enzyme that could help treat the disease, he quits his job, convinces the cranky professor to become his business partner and plunges into the cut-throat biotech industry to find investors to fund Stonehill's research.

Their partnership leads to lots of unbelievably boring scenes in which the pair uses scientific jargon to pitch medical companies: Not even Scorsese could do much with such aggressively uncinematic material. The rest of Extraordinary Measures alternates between scenes of people arguing (there are a lot of arguments in this movie) and scenes conveying the children's deteriorating condition. The movie's producers include the esteemed Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, who made Erin Brockovich and World Trade Center. But their knack for investing fact-based stories with dramatic energy completely abandons them this time, and director Tom Vaughan displays the same inability to pace a movie he showed in What Happens in Vegas.

Ford always takes top billing in his movies (he even took top billing in Working Girl), but his name appears second in the credits of Extraordinary Measures. Frasier is first-billed and gets the most screen time as the distraught dad, but the actor is badly miscast. Often, Fraser's facial expressions of despair recall his work as an unearthed caveman in Encino Man.

There is some fun to be had in watching Ford as a crabby professor - what Indiana Jones might have become if he had hung up his whip at 60. But Dr. Stonehill, like everyone else in Extraordinary Measures, is a superficial sketch - a compendium of likes (fishing, classic rock) and dislikes (people, his ex-wife's cats) that never really digs into the intriguing man's life.

Having Ford in the cast drew strong actors to throwaway roles (Dee Wallace, aka E.T.'s mom, shows up for 30 seconds as a waitress). But the filmmakers might as well have gone with cheaper unknowns, because Extraordinary Measures never aims for anything beyond disease-of-the-week clichés. CBS would have fared better keeping this one on the tube,  where Ford's name would have drawn big ratings, and the film's utter conventionality would have felt comforting instead of taxing.

The network could have even used the telecast to help raise funds to fight Pompe disease by asking viewers to donate. Forcing you to buy a ticket to see Extraordinary Measures feels like robbery.

And then there were nine

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has whittled down the 65 entries for this year's Foreign-Language Oscar to a short list of nine films. They are:

- El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina)

- Samson & Delilah (Australia)

- The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner (Bulgaria)

- Un Prophete (France)

- The White Ribbon (Germany)

- Ajami (Israel)

- Kelin (Kazakhstan)

- Winter in Wartime (The Netherlands)

- The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)

The final five nominees for the award will be announced along with the rest of this year's Oscar contenders on Feb. 2. I haven't seen any of these movies yet, although I'll finally be seeing Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon next week (Sony Pictures Classics is opening the movie in Miami on Feb. 5, a couple of days after the nominations).

 I've been a huge fan of Haneke ever since I unsuspectingly wandered into a screening of Funny Games at the Toronto Film Festival in 1997, knowing nothing whatsoever about the movie, and came out with my world completely rocked. Later that afternoon, I happened to be riding a hotel elevator and Haneke got on (I recognized him from his photo in the festival program book). Normally I would have said hello, but that movie had rattled me so much I was a little afraid of him.

I formally interviewed Haneke two years ago for his English-language Funny Games remake, which didn't get much love from most critics, but what the hell do they know? I am blindly guessing Haneke will win an Oscar this year, since The White Ribbon is supposed to be fantastic and he has earned so much respect from the international film community for his body of work.

Last week Roger Ebert wrote a fascinating, mammoth dissectation of Haneke's Cache (Hidden), which Martin Scorsese is planning to remake with Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of the husband. If you've seen Cache, check out Ebert's story here.

Who will direct the next ''Spider-Man'' movie?

Update: The hiring of Marc Webb is now official. 

Now that director Sam Raimi and actor Tobey Maguire are off the franchise, and Sony Pictures has decided to reboot the Spider-Man series and start the Peter Parker saga from scratch, a guessing game has begun about who the studio will hire to direct the new film.

Rumors are swirling that Matthew Vaughn (whose upcoming superhero comedy Kick-Ass has earned strong early praise) and Wes Anderson are in the running. But the smart money has (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb taking over the webslinger's reins. Deadline Hollywood reports Webb has already met with Sony executives and that the deal is all but official.

Shooting would start this summer with an intended 2012 release date. Speculation also suggests the studio will shoot the film in 3-D (I hope not). Webb would be an inspired choice: He's a smart and energetic filmmaker who brought a distinct but inobtrusive visual style to a genre (the romantic comedy) that usually defies a strong directorial touch.

Nobody knows whether Sony will opt to go with an unknown or a familiar name to star in the reboot. But the script by James Vanderbilt (which was being written at the same time Raimi was working on the fourth film; the studio always intended to start from scratch with the fifth movie) reportedly skews young, keeping Parker a teenager like he was in the comics (Maguire always seemed a bit old to be playing a high schooler).

Most superhero franchises are dormant for a while before they get relaunched: Batman Begins came eight years after the last Batman movie, and there were nearly 20 years between the last two Superman films. Raimi's take on Spider-Man will still be relatively fresh in two years, and I was one of the few people who actually liked Spider-Man 3 (even Raimi has disowned it). I'm not exactly thrilled by the idea of having to sit through the origin story again so soon, either. So whoever ends up directing Spider-Man is going to be under tremendous pressure to make the new movie feel like more than a cash grab.

Review: ''The Messenger''

 

They're always bit players in movies, never the stars - those grim, uniformed men who knock on doors, bearing news of a U.S. soldier killed in action. One of the reasons The Messenger, the confident first film by director Oren Moverman, so engrosses is that movies have rarely explored the angst of these protagonists - officers of the Army Casualty Notification service.

Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is new to the job, assigned after being wounded in Iraq. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) is an experienced pro who has learned to distance himself emotionally from his work and tries to coach his new partner to do the same. But Will's combat experiences are too fresh and painful for him to remain detached: The explosions of grief and emotion he must constantly witness only worsen his own torment.

The Israeli-born Moverman, a military veteran who wrote The Messenger with Alessandro Camon, doesn't give you any of the expected story beats: There are no flashbacks to the horrors Will survived in Iraq, no big revelations about a shocking secret in Tony's past (even his struggle with alcoholism is handled in a straightforward manner). Instead, the filmmakers concentrate on the day-to-day reality of their characters, saddled with an unthinkable job, trying to make their way in a world of civilians who simply cannot relate to their state of mind.

Foster wisely underplays the role of the haunted, volatile Will, and Harrelson taps into an emotional darkness that he rarely gets to display. They convincingly portray the growing bond between their mismatched characters: The initial awkwardness and combative nature of their working relationship gradually gives way to a mutual respect that feels lived-in and real. As they come to understand each other, we understand them, too.

The Messenger isn't much for plot: The movie is less effective when it follows Will's tentative romance with a recently widowed mother (Samantha Morton) than when it simply observes human behavior, such as in a pair of scenes with an inconsolable man (a terrific Steve Buscemi) who learns his son has been killed and lashes out at the bearers of the tragic news. With the insight and sensitivity of an insider, The Messenger illuminates the sometimes invisible victims of war - the survivors - and a pain that is tolerated but never quite healed.

The Messenger opens Friday, Jan. 15 at the Regal Southland in Miami and the Gateway in Fort Lauderdale.

Review: ''The Lovely Bones''

Watching The Lovely Bones, you wonder if Peter Jackson thought he was still remaking King Kong. Alice Sebold's beloved 2002 novel, about a 14-year-old girl who looks down from heaven as her family struggles with the aftermath of her murder, is the sort of delicate story that requires a light directorial touch and a careful balancing of emotional tones. But Jackson bears down on the material with every special effect and camera trick in his arsenal. The result is almost suffocating: a movie that has been tinkered and fussed with until there is no spontaneity left -- no warmth or life or messiness.

The Lovely Bones offers only directorial bombast and grandeur. I don't mean to sound flippant, but Jackson was a better director when he was shaggy, overweight and unknown. Now that he's a svelte, well-groomed Oscar winner, he's become vain and self-important. At one point, he gives himself a cameo (he's a customer in a photo shop peering through a video camera), the way Hitchcock famously did, except Jackson's cameo goes on and on to the point of distraction, as if to make sure no one misses it.

Jackson's presence permeates The Lovely Bones to a fault: When two kids stand in a school hallway talking about Othello, you don't hear a word they're saying, because all you can notice is the show-off camera moves and edits. Style doesn't serve the story in The Lovely Bones: Style becomes the story, and it's boring.

Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) is well cast as the doomed Susie Salmon, a lovestruck teen destined to be raped and murdered by the serial killer (a creepy Stanley Tucci) lurking in her neighborhood. Living in 1973 Pennsylvania with her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) and two siblings, Susie is spirited and funny and likable, and Ronan's performance draws you into the early portions of the film. You also feel her terror when she is trapped beneath the ground in a room with the pervert who will take her life -- the first instance when The Lovely Bones takes leave of its naturalistic style and becomes an overwrought, if effective, horror film.

Based on a screenplay Jackson crafted with his usual writing partners, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, The Lovely Bones emphasizes the thriller aspects of Sebold's story above all else. The movie showcases Tucci's generic but unnerving killer and wrings the last bit of suspense inherent in the scenario of a madman living unnoticed in suburbia (there's a long, effective sequence in which a close-up of hands turning the pages of a book sets you squirming). But Jackson errs badly in his decision to render heaven as a surreal landscape of giant beach balls, bottled ships crashing on rocks and DayGlo colors. Who knew heaven looked like the cover of a Yes album?

What's worse, Ronan's heavenly encounters with her killer's other victims come off like Girl Scout singalongs, and the constant cutting away from the real world to Jackson's CGI paradise critically undercuts the performances of Wahlberg and Weisz as the grieving parents. When Weisz, unable to cope with her daughter's absence, suddenly abandons the family and runs away to become a grape picker in California, her decision feels inexplicable and profoundly selfish. You can't understand why the woman would do such a thing, because the film never lets you inside her head.

Susan Sarandon gets a big, comical entrance as the alcoholic grandma who swoops in to help keep the family together. But after her elaborate introduction, she, too, fades into the background. Jackson, who started out making fiendishly dark horror pictures, shows little interest in the lives of ordinary people in The Lovely Bones. His imagination is much more seized by the demented psycho and by the Disneyesque visions of the afterlife his computer-effects team have dreamed up. The Lovely Bones dazzles the eye but leaves the heart untouched. It's a hollow tragedy.

Random appearances by owls in movies*

Blow Out (1981) dir. Brian De Palma.

*An occasional feature. Because owls are cool.

Review: ''The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus''

Actor Heath Ledger died halfway through the filming of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and the fact that he enters the picture with a noose around his neck, about to commit suicide, is a sad accident -- a brief intrusion of melancholic reality into a movie that is all fluffy fantasy.

Soon, though, you forget all about Ledger's tragic death and get lost -- literally -- in director Terry Gilliam's vision. No matter who happens to be before the cameras, Gilliam is always the star of his movies: He takes the auteur theory to flattening extremes. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a step up from Gilliam's two previous pictures (the ineffectual The Brothers Grimm and the torturous Tideland), but it still feels like a cobbled collection of ideas and conceits rather than a stand-alone story.

Imaginarium lacks the focus and pacing of Gilliam's best films (Brazil, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys), the sense that the movie is actually going somewhere, and even many of its whimsical interludes into magical landscapes feel dull. A shot of a man walking on stilts so tall his head is in the clouds makes for a lovely image, but Gilliam doesn't do anything with it, and the whole movie is like that -- free-floating, disconnected fancy.

Based on a script by Gilliam and Charles McKeown, Imaginarium focuses on the eponymous doctor (played by Christopher Plummer), a traveling showman who invites audiences to step through his magic mirror and encounter wonderful, wish-fulfilling sights on the other side -- heaven on Earth, tailor-made for each customer's deepest desires. Visitors with less-than-pure hearts, however, may not like what they find inside the imaginarium.

Parnassus has made a secret bet with the devil (Tom Waits), with the soul of his teenage daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) hanging in the balance. She, along with two other travelers (Verne Troyer and Andrew Garfield) and the suicidal amnesiac (Ledger) form his troupe of assistants, all unaware of the dark forces in which Parnassus dabbles.

The setup is promising, but Gilliam allows Imaginarium to circle lazily in on itself, never providing the narrative momentum to carry the director's surfeit of wondrous visuals -- such as a palace that breaks into pieces and floats away into a vast darkness or a shopper's vision of paradise: A world filled with giant shoes, diamond bracelets and floating pearls.

As Tony, the amnesiac whose memory is slowly returning, Ledger helps ground the film with a raggedy charm, but the spell is broken whenever Tony steps through the mirror and turns into another actor (Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, in turn), a brusque reminder of the truth beyond the screen. Gilliam does what he can, but The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus never becomes the transporting trip the movie was meant to be: Instead, it's a special effects-laden elegy.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus opens in South Florida today.

Review: ''Youth in Revolt''

"Does that movie come with tampons for your p---y?'' a bully mocks the teenage Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) as he's renting a copy of La Strada from the video store. Nick, the sensitive hero of Youth in Revolt, is a shy, gangly kid who tolerates adolescence more than he experiences it. An aspiring writer, Sinatra devotee and hopeless virgin, Nick is quietly resigned to the fact that he'll have to wait out his torturous high-school years before his life can really begin.

Then Nick meets Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), an odd, spirited girl who knows who Jean-Paul Belmondo and Yasujiro Ozu are, who loves Tokyo Story and Serge Gainsbourg and wants to live in Paris someday. Sheeni lives in a trailer park with her "religious fanatic'' parents, but her world view is grand and adventurous and enticing, and, unlike most girls her age, she doesn't just look right through Nick: She actually gets him, and she seems to like what she sees.

And suddenly, Nick's life changes. Adapted by screenwriter Gustin Nash and director Miguel Arteta from the cult novel by C.D. Payne, Youth in Revolt follows what happens when a good kid turns hilariously rotten for the sake of love.

"You have to be bad, Nicky,'' Sheeni implores. "Be very, very bad.'' The lovestruck boy complies by conjuring an alter ego: Francois (also played by Cera), who sports blue eyes, a pencil moustache and a reckless, defiant attitude.

Like Jiminy Cricket's evil twin, Francois constantly encourages Nick to engage in the sort of rebellious behavior that could land him in juvenile detention and raise the ire of his mother's policeman boyfriend (Ray Liotta). Vandalism, the destruction of public property, cross-country road trips and hiding out from the law are some of the escapades in which Nick participates, all for the sake of growing closer to his beloved. Sheeni hasn't definitely broken things off with her poet, champion-swimmer boyfriend. But you have to have hope, right?

Director Arteta (The Good Girl, Chuck and Buck), who has previously demonstrated a flair for empathy with people on the fringes of life, keeps on the side of the increasingly mischievous (but always polite) Nick, played with Cera's typical mix of affable nerdiness and intelligence. Francois is a radically different sort -- an affected, comically evil bad boy -- and the conceit frees up something in Cera, allowing him to dive into the role of a suave troublemaker without worrying about the consequences. Francois is pure id, a refreshing change of pace for an actor who specializes in playing super egos, and the slight but enjoyable Youth in Revolt finds plenty of mayhem to take advantage of Cera's against-type performance. Oh, the things we do for love.

Youth in Revolt opens in South Florida today.

Herald Movie Yearbook 2009 edition

I'm taking a few days off and will return to work on January 11. I leave you with this year's edition of the Herald Movie Yearbook, which ran in today's paper. Here's a taste. Check out the whole thing here.

Best opening sequence: A French farmer, a Nazi colonel and two delicious glasses of milk in Inglourious Basterds.

Best explosion: The climactic bang in Angels and Demons.

Best special-effects demo reel: The implosion of Los Angeles in Roland Emmerich's 2012.

Best kiss: Ellen Page and Landon Pigg's underwater makeout session in Whip It; hold your breath.

Worst kiss: Paul Rudd and Thomas Lennon in I Love You, Man; the perils of man-dates. (``He got up in there. A whole bunch of tongue, deep in my mouth.'')

Best closing shot: Stormy weather approaches in A Serious Man.

Best closing line (tie): ``This may well be my masterpiece.'' -- Inglourious Basterds / ``Nice to meet you; I'm Autumn.'' -- (500) Days of Summer.

Best portrayal of a woman under the influence: Tilda Swinton as the titular heroine in Julia, who hatches the worst kidnapping plot in history. It always seems like a good idea after eight cocktails. 

Best opening credits: Watchmen. Four decades of (revised) American history squeezed into five minutes, set to Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'.

Best closing credits: The Hangover. Did I really just see what I think I saw?

Best offscreen death: In A Serious Man, a curve in the road, a left-hand turn signal and a blinking taillight.

Best use of split-screen: The ``Expectations'' vs. ``Reality'' sequence in (500) Days of Summer.

Best rationalization: ``Before you know it, you'll be on to new opportunities,'' corporate cleaner George Clooney, hired by companies to inform people they're being laid off, in Up in the Air.

Best fight: A bank loan officer (Alison Lohman) and an old gypsy (Lorna Raver) get it on inside a car in Sam Raimi's delirious Drag Me To Hell. Bring it!

Best shoot-out: Clive Owen fends off wave after wave of bad guys inside the Guggenheim Museum, until the walls look like they're made of cheese, in The International.

Best example of getting to the point: The one-word title of Fighting.

Best proof all he ever wanted to do was animate: Director Wes Anderson's endearing Fantastic Mr. Fox, the stop-motion cartoon he always had in him.

Most educational film: The British political satire In the Loop, which taught us 8 million new ways to curse, taunt and insult.

Biggest box office underperformer: Kathryn Bigelow's searing war drama The Hurt Locker.

Biggest box office overperformer: Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Most discomfiting use of nudity: A streaker runs amok in a shopping mall in Observe and Report.

 

Most discomfiting sex scene: In An Education, an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) preparing to deflower his 16-year-old girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) offers her a banana, thinking it might help. Uh, no.

Best career comeback: After fading somewhat from the public eye, Sandra Bullock returned big time with three movies (The Proposal, All About Steve and The Blind Side), two of them box office smashes.

Worst movie: The Ugly Truth.

Longest stretch of sustained suspense: A British film critic, a German movie star and two Basterds play a drinking game with Nazis for 25 nail-biting minutes in Inglourious Basterds.

Most unfairly maligned movie: The widely panned flop Jennifer's Body. There's more than meets the eye here.

Best cinematography: The impossibly luminous black-and-white images by cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. in Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro; or, Rumble Fish Redux.

Best use of a hackneyed plot twist: The hunter becomes the hunted in District 9. What's wrong with his hand?

Best silent sequence : The depiction of a lifelong romance, from beginning to end, in Pixar Animation's Up.

Most rousing use of sports-movie cliches: Drew Barrymore's roller derby comedy Whip It (sports as slumber party).

Dullest use of sports-movie cliches: Clint Eastwood's snooze-inducing Invictus (sports as politics).

Best proof all that numerology nonsense in Knowing may not have been so crazy: 9, Nine and District 9 were all released in -- gulp -- 2009.

Best Miami homeboy made good: Phil Lord (pictured above, left), co-writer and director (with Chris Miller, on the right) of the trippy $120 million hit Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

Most phoned-in performance: Dennis Quaid in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Because celebrities need to pay their mortgages, too.

Best justification to go through the trouble of seeing James Cameron's Avatar in IMAX 3D: The brief but seriously awesome shots of mano-a-mano combat between the 10-foot-tall Na'vi aliens and human marines (reportedly the most expensive and difficult shots in the entire movie). More, please.

Best remake: Star Trek.

Worst remake: Fame.

Most redundant remake: All the unnecessary horror film remakes no one went to see (The Last House on the Left, Friday the 13th, The Stepfather, Halloween II).

Best sequel: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Bring on those deathly hallows!

Worst sequel (tie): Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian and The Pink Panther 2.

Most bloated sequel: Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

Most superfluous sequel: Terminator Salvation.

Best-kept plot secret: The big surprise in the evil-seed thriller Orphan. Didn't see that one coming!

Best dunce: The slack-jawed male gigolo in Mike Judge's Extract (played by Dustin Milligan) -- a mouth-breather extraordinaire.

Best jump-scare: Death by exploding cellphone in Law Abiding Citizen.

Best example of a movie trailer giving away the whole show: Judd Apatow's Funny People. You want to know why your movie flopped? Because people saw it for free the first time around, when you crammed the entire thing into three-and-a-half minutes.

Most controversial use of high-def cameras: Michael Mann's love-it or hate-it Public Enemies, recreating the past using toys from the future.

Most effective use of high-def cameras: Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience.

Best musical number: Best Morning Ever. In (500) Days of Summer, a young man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) walks to work the day after spending the night for the first time with his new girlfriend (Zooey Deschanel) while the city around him celebrates him with a Hall & Oates song.

Best use of a music video within a film: Gael Garcia Bernal's Spanish-language cover of Cheap Trick's I Want You to Want Me in Rudo y Cursi.

Strangest third act: Richard Kelly's supposedly mainstream The Box, unmooring itself from all reality in its final half-hour and wafting away on a cloud of wonderful weirdness.

Best surprise cameo: You-know-who in Zombieland.

2010 movie I am most anticipating: Christopher Nolan's Inception.