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:

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."

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.

Release Date: Dec. 24

Director: Abdel Kechiche

Writer: Abdel Kechiche

Cinematographer: Lubomir Bakchev

Starring: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache, Abdelhamid Aktouche

Studio Information: Pathé Distribution, 151 mins.

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.

Release Date: Dec. 25

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: