Precious

2009 // USA // Lee Daniels // December 1, 2009 // Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Moolah Theater)

B- - It's tempting to dismiss Lee Daniels' Precious as a miserablist ordeal that puts its protagonist—the obese, illiterate teenage mother whose name serves as the title—through the proverbial wringer in order to elicit vague guilt and sanctimonious tongue-clucking from its audience. The film leans heavily on the conventions of ghetto melodrama, but Precious is both too slight and too poetic to permit hasty categorization. There's a tinge of knowing fatalism to the film's despair, no doubt derived in part from the real-life experiences woven into Sapphire's original novel. Daniels flits between a dizzying array of social and cultural issues, but Precious retains an unsettled, even impressionistic tone that prevents it from descending into preachiness. The film's formalist flourishes—such as Precious' (Gabourey Sidibe's) gauzy fantasies of fame and fortune, or the unexpected use of gospel and R&B to add a fresh twist to familiar narrative situations—mute the asphalt horror and lend credence to the film's fuzzy, humanistic message. While it's Sidibe that provides the film with its restless, wounded mood, it's hard to deny that, Oscar-bait or not, there's something mesmerizing about sassy comedian Mo'Nique portraying one the most blisteringly vile mothers since Shelley Winters in A Patch of Blue.

Star Trek

2009 // USA // J. J. Abrams // November 24, 2009 // Blu-ray - Paramount (2009)

B- - With his reboot of the moribund Star Trek franchise, J. J. Abrams has chucked out the moralizing and paper-thin social allegory that characterized Gene Rodenberry's original series and delivered something closer to a Buck Rogers-style swashbuckling space opera. Abrams is keenly aware that for Trekkies and casual viewers alike, the iconic characters are always what lent the series its endurance. His tactic is to transplant those characters into a rollicking adventure, while retaining the physics mumbo-jumbo and desperate gambits that have always been the franchise's bread-and-butter. The film is also an arch variant on the "Getting the Team Together" formula, as Kirk, Spock, McCoy, et al. are slotted into place for their syndicated television destiny. Predictably, the elaborate, time-hopping plot is only sketchily conveyed, and without William Shatner's hammy presence, it is shockingly evident (to this non-Trekkie) that James T. Kirk was always a bit of an asshole. Still, Star Trek is dazzling, giddy stuff, a complete re-purposing of a pop culture institution for distinctly old school cinematic thrills, complete with black holes, monstrous aliens, and doomsday weapons. If Abrams' only goal was to render Starfleet officers as the badass successors of pirates and cowboys, then mission accomplished.

Julia

2008 // France - USA // Erick Zonca // October 11, 2009 // DVD - Magnolia (2009)

C - Erick Zonca's Julia confirms that Tilda Swinton is an actor of the finest stripe, a woman who can elevate even a sprawling mess of a thriller into something exceedingly watchable. Swinton disappears into the skin of the Los Angeles party girl of the title, a prickly, forty-something alcoholic with bottomless reserves of cynicism. Unemployed and desperate, Julia latches onto a kidnapping scheme so ludicrous it has no chance of success. However, Zonca and his co-writers seem to recognize as much, in that the plan goes to shit almost instantly. Thereafter, Julia is a marathon chase film, where things seem to go from bad to worse to completely bollixed. This cascade of misfortune is due primarily to Julia's relentless stupidity and cowardice, which admittedly makes it hard to give a damn about her. The film doesn't earn its clumsy gestures of sympathy for her or the eventual tenderness between captor and hostage. Swinton still manages to engage with her stammering vulnerability and undercurrent of ruthless swagger, but the film falters despite her. The final eighty (!) minutes comprise an aimless, exasperating string of scenes, lacking the necessary emotional propulsion.

Observe and Report

2009 // USA // Jody Hill // October 7, 2009 // DVD - Warner Brothers (2009)

B- - Had it portrayed Seth Rogen's mall security guard, Ronnie Barnhardt, as a mere ridiculed sad-sack with an inflated sense of self-importance, Observe and Report might have been a much more forgettable feature, and also less problematic. Director Jody Hill and Rogen both deserve audacity points for constructing a pitch-black comedy around a protagonist who is a violent, racist, megalomaniacal date rapist. And, indeed, most of the film's distinctly uneasy laughs work because of Rogen's fearless embrace of an appalling character, one so repugnant that his cluelessness engenders no sympathy. Both Hill's dialog and Rogen's delivery are brilliant stuff, yet I hesitate to label Observe "entertaining." Like Burn After Reading, this is an unpleasant story about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things, and it will undoubtedly not be everyone's cup of tea. Alas, Hill lacks the Coens' aesthetic mastery and their nose for cosmic absurdity. While Observe succeeds as an exhilarating prodding of comedic boundaries, flabbiness creeps into the story as the film wears on, and Ronnie's erratic demeanor alone can't energize the proceedings. Moreover, one is left wondering what Hill's intentions were, particularly when Observe concludes with the contemptible Ronnie "winning" (in a fashion) and getting the girl.

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

2008 // Germany // Uli Edel // September 29, 2009 // Theatrical Print

C+ - Uli Edel's blood-spattered marathon retelling of the Red Army Faction's rise and fall succeeds at establishing a fitting mood of social disintegration and open intra-cultural warfare. Feverishly tearing through two decades of history while piling on endless, brutal setpieces, The Baader-Meinhof Complex foregrounds thrills and atmosphere, while neglecting character and context. Writer Bernd Eichinger, who scribed the captivating Downfall, at least acknowledges the notion that the RAF was the ugly endpoint of the post-Nazi generation's recoil from fascism. The violent radicals depicted in Complex, however, are caricatures of unquenchable rage, not the best proxies for psychological delvings or an exploration of the origins of revolutionary zeal in affluent societies.  What Edel delivers is a relentless film that works primarily as grim entertainment, albeit one that non-Germans may have difficult absorbing, as the historical arcana come fast and furious. Yet even as a depiction of revolution as process, Complex falls far short of last year's mesmerizing Che, which was both more artistically daring and more coherent. While Edel is adept at conjuring the madhouse spirit of the RAF's murderous glory days, Complex is undemanding globetrotting drama at bottom, a grueling thriller with a dash of chilly Teutonic style.

Hunger

2008 // UK - Ireland // Steve McQueen // September 13, 2009 // DVD - IFC (2009)

A - On a purely sensory level, Hunger functions as a grim, riveting depiction of humanity's capacity for depraved indifference to others and to the self. In portraying the conditions inside a British prison during the IRA's "blanket strike" and "no-wash strike" in 1981, first-time director Steve McQueen conveys a searing sense of place through texture and sound, especially minute details such as a single snowflake melting on skin. Hunger is a film of pregnant silences and violent outbursts, but the fulcrum of the film is a mesmerizing conversation where IRA zealot Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) explains to a priest (Liam Cunningham) why he is about to start a hunger strike. In this peerless sequence, which consists mainly of a single shot and lasts more than fifteen minutes by my count, McQueen drills down into the humane essence of the film, beyond the spectacle of the grueling battle of wills between guards and prisoners. Hunger's concerns are ethical, even transcendental, conveyed with the authority of a supremely focused and confident film-maker. With disturbing intensity, McQueen asks us to consider the meaning of sacrifice, and whether it is morally superior to dehumanize oneself rather than suffer the cruelties inflicted by others.