Beyonce reps for singles with excellent single, not much more
Beyonce’s never been our most
innovative R&B artist, she’s just been our best. So maybe the
overused alter ego theme of I Am... Sasha Fierce might have
been enlivened by her fiery presence alone (just think: we get two
of her!). But unfortunately, neither Beyonce nor her other half can
salvage the limp and facile songwriting that covers both sides of
this double LP.
Release Date: Dec. 25 Director: David Frankel Writer: Scott Frank and Don Roos (screenplay), Josh Grogan (novel) Cinematographer: Florian Ballhaus Starring: Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, Eric Dane, Kathleen Turner, Alan Arkin Studio/Run Time: Twentieth Century-Fox, 120 mins.
If the trailer and marketing for Marley & Me accurately portrayed the film, it would be about following a
dog and its owners through a lifetime of misadventures.What the film’s actually about is a pair of people
who marry and soon afterward find themselves overwhelmed by the
responsibilities of work and family, all of which is somewhat exacerbated by
their ill-behaved pet.It’s a big
switcheroo, but Fox is smart and its choice of showcasing the attractive dog rather
than the depressing realities of maturing is a big PR coup. Marley himself is
the biggest MacGuffin this side of Hitchcock.
Release Date: Dec. 26 Director: Sam Mendes Writer: Justin Haythe (screenplay), Richard Yates (novel) Cinematographer: Roger Deakins Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates Studio/Run Time: Paramount Vantage, 119 mins.
Winslet and DiCaprio deliver Oscar-bound performances in Mendes’ send-up of 1950s suburbia
Nearly a decade after director Sam Mendes crafted American Beauty,
one of the finest depictions ever of decaying love and sociological
discord, he returns to nearly identical themes in an adaptation of the
Richard Yates novel Revolutionary Road. The film also marks an
ironic reunion for Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, whose passionate
affair in 1997’s Titanic made for the highest-grossing movie of all
time. While James Cameron’s romantic epic detailed the timeless appeal
of star-crossed love, Mendes spoils the illusion by showing what
happens after the honeymoon ends and resentment replaces infatuation.
Release date (limited): Dec. 26 Director/Producer/Writer: Ari Folman Art Director: David Polonsky Starring: Folman, Ori Sivan Studio/Run Time: 
Sony Pictures Classics, 87 mins.
Animated “documentary” reclaims darkest memories
As much about memory’s hallucinatory inventions as the facts of the 1982 massacre at a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut by the so-called Phalangist Christian militia, Ari Folman’s animated Waltz With Bashir begins with 26 barking dogs rushing through a city. From there, the emotional intensity doesn’t let up. Though Folman, a veteran Israeli documentarian, calls Bashir a documentary based on the interviews at its core (mostly with fellow soldiers), his cameras go places the handiest cinematographer could never venture: Beams of light bend between branches during a forest battle; and the dream images of rising naked from the sea—while balls of fire fall from the sky—are just as real as the chasm-like blank spots in Folman’s mind as he reconstructs his mission into Lebanon. Powerful beyond a doubt, especially during a fourth-wall shattering climax, Waltz With Bashir borrows the visualized mind games of Richard Linklater’s recent efforts and dances them to the deep end. Watch the trailer for Waltz With Bashir:
Because of a crazy clock built to run backward, Benjamin Button
Release Date: Dec. 25
Director: David Fincher
Writer: Eric Roth (story by Eric
Roth and Robin Swicord)
Cinematographer: Claudio Miranda
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate
Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormond, Tilda Swinton
Studio Information: Paramount
Pictures, 159 mins.
Because of a crazy clock built to run
backward, Benjamin Button was born with a strange malady. This is not
the sort of thing we question in a film like this. We simply accept
it and move on. He starts his life with the wrinkled skin and
arthritic joints of an old man and seems to look and feel younger as
he ages. As Arthur says of Merlyn in Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot,
"He lives backward. He doesn't age. He youthens."
The grand idea behind Valkyrie, director Bryan Singer's first n
Release Date: Dec. 25
Director: Bryan Singer
Writer: Christopher McQuarrie,
Nathan Alexander
Starring: Tom Cruise, Tom
Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Eddie Izzard
Studio/Run Time: United Artists,
110 mins.
Nazis were people, too
The grand idea behind Valkyrie,
director Bryan Singer's first non-superhero feature since 1998's Apt
Pupil, is "Nazis weren't all bad." Paul Verhoeven
successfully mined similar ground in Black Book, and with two
of Valkyrie's actors, Carice van Houten and Waldemar Kobus,
but there's still plenty of material to explore. With the added
resonance of catching Tom Cruise partway through a career resurgence
(courtesy of Tropic Thunder) all Singer needed was a taut script
to keep the gears moving in time.
You can read a book at your own pace.
Skip a boring chapter or skim the last page; it's up to you. But a
movie in a theater controls you. A 151-minute film takes 151 minutes
to watch, and there's nothing the audience can do short of leaving.
Surprisingly few filmmakers use this unusual aspect of cinema to
carry any meaning of its own, but a hallmark of great films is a
distinctive use of length. Deciding what to lavish with the camera's
gaze, and for how long, is a part of the cinematic art, and the goal
is not always to flatter or give comfort to the audience.
Writer Will Eisner (Characters), Frank Miller (Script)
Cinematographer: Bill Pope
Starring: Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Dan Lauria
Studio/Run Time: Lionsgate, 108 mins.
Comically inept directing leaves ghost of a watchable movie
If we lived in a reality where the dead could rise from the
grave to enact vengeance against sins unforgivable, golden-age comic scribe Will Eisner would have good reason to revisit Frank Miller. Eisner
advanced the medium during the '40s with his seminal strip, The
Spirit,
creating a grounded protagonist noted for his flaws and humanity in lieu
of biceps and heat vision. Miller, another icon of literary spandex and the creator of Sin City and 300, plied much of his trade under Eisner and felt
compelled to helm the author’s series into cinema.
Unfortunately, The Spirit has as much in common with its inspired source
material as it does with decent filmmaking.
Release Date: Dec. 25 (limited) Director/Writer: Joel Hopkins Cinematographer: John de Borman
 Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Eileen Atkins, James Brolin, Kathy Baker Studio/Run Time: Overture Films, 99 mins.
Run-of-the-mill rom-com from top-shelf cast
With two Oscar-winning leads, Last Chance Harvey is the kind of
movie you want to be great—with a capital G. It’s not just the talent
of the stars that spurs this expectation, but their uncanny ability to
choose excellent roles, even as co-stars (their previous joint effort
being the quietly poignant Stranger Than Fiction), which is why Last Chance Harvey is ultimately disappointing.
Release Date: Dec. 19 Director: Darren Aronofsky Writer: Robert Siegel Cinematographer: Maryse Alberti Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Todd Barry Studio/Run Time: Fox Searchlight, 105 mins.
Powerful film gives viewers something to grapple with
American filmmakers may have rediscovered emotional realism, but no conversion is more surprising than Darren Aronofsky’s. His unadorned portrait of a pro-wrestling has-been is built around a fantastic, physical performance by Mickey Rourke, captured with a documentary style that renders his dingy world all the more strange, funny and heartbreaking. In his own words, he’s “a broken-down piece of meat,” and Rourke, back from actor purgatory, brings ample baggage to the role—including his bulked-up, modified body, his sandpapered larynx and his craving for an unlikely comeback. Randy “The Ram” Robinson can’t keep doing pile drivers forever, especially as the game evolves into something even more brutal, but what else is there? He’s distant from his daughter, but he has a flirtatious, tentative relationship with an aging stripper (Marisa Tomei) who’s facing the same injustice of the ticking clock. The movie, with its dime-store romance, breezy dialogue and telegraphed emotion, feels a bit like a grungier Rocky, but at times the understated attitude, grime and destitution are closer to Raging Bull. Watch the trailer for The Wrestler:
Paste publisher Nick Purdy and podcast host Kevin Keller feature some of their favorite new (and not so new) songs for the season.
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