The Best (And Worst) Movies of 2012

Didn’t anyone get the memo that cinema is dead? 2012 came into greatness notoriously late in the year (if not trickling into next year), but the amount of quality that came out of big budget blockbusters, prestigious Oscar bait and critical darlings is too convincing to say that TV continued to dominate the cultural conversation this year. I can be cynical, but I’d rather just celebrate the movies with a generous round up of everything I hope you’re talking about and just waiting to discover.

joaquin-phoenix-the-master

1. The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson has me in his control. “The Master” is elegant, ambiguous, malleable and powerful. With Scientology as only the setting, it’s a difficult, dream-like film open to interpretation, but its strongest themes are the power and reach of the human mind and the capabilities of man. Joaquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the two best performances of the year are titans at war, one filled with unpredictable rage, repressed sexuality and energy, the other a deafening force of eloquence and conviction. Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s 70mm photography ripples with color and fantasy. Jonny Greenwood’s score pulses with animalistic alacrity. Watching “The Master” and assigning it meaning is a testament to the richness and complexity of mankind.

2. Life of Pi

If “Life of Pi” cannot make you believe in God, it at the very least can provide the faith that there is beauty and excitement in the world. Ang Lee’s innovative use of 3-D places us on an infinite plain of existence, one that has stunning natural beauty, visceral thrills, comedic charms, emotional poignancy and none of the Disney-fied cuteness. Pi’s sea voyage is pure visual poetry that resonates with you on a deeply spiritual level.

3. Moonrise Kingdom

Perhaps no director today has a more distinct visual and tonal style than Wes Anderson, but “Moonrise Kingdom” is his most personal and close to the heart by far. Anderson funnels his love of classical music, the French New Wave and low rent spectacle into a magical film about kids living beyond their age. It finds the beauty of young love in a joyous, colorful and hilarious art house movie that anyone can relate to.

4. Beasts of the Southern Wild

“Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a wondrous, poetic, beautiful film about all the things humans can do when we stop acting like people afraid of nature and start living like brave beasts that become one with the world. It’s about color, light and discovery. It’s about being loved by the world, loving it back and understanding how to truly live. It’s about facing the other beasts of the world, and doing it head on.” (Excerpt from my review)

5. The Kid With a Bike

When a boy is abandoned by his father at an orphanage, he spends months blindly fighting to get back to him while rejecting the love and affection of others. The French film “The Kid With a Bike” is about the attachments we place on the things we love and the unexpected consequences that come of them. The Dardenne brothers’ simple and rugged film digs deep in its grainy and grizzled surface to find the sentimentality within.

6. Skyfall

At 50 years old, James Bond has never looked better. “Skyfall” marks the first time we’ve asked about Bond’s past and questioned his future, but we do so in by far the most exciting and stylish action movie of the year. Roger Deakins’s digital cinematography turns Bond’s fist fights into elegant shadow ballets, and Javier Bardem’s snake-like sexuality and compulsions make for some of the finest screen villainy this century.

7. The Invisible War

Nearly 20 percent of all women who have served in the armed forces are sexually assaulted during their line of duty. That’s the horrifying truth at the heart of “The Invisible War,” a documentary that for that statistic alone is essential viewing for anyone in the military. But more so, Kirby Dick’s film is moving in its unification of women (and men!) who once all considered themselves an army of one. What sacrifices are we really asking our soldiers to make for our country?

8. Lincoln

Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is the stirring American vision we deserve. A remarkably authentic account of the effort to abolish slavery, the story of “Lincoln” is a war of words, not worlds, yet remains as intense and rousing as any action movie this year. Daniel Day-Lewis melts into the visage of our 16th President while making the role all his own, and the monumental performances of Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field anchor the best screen ensemble of the year.

9. Looper

Destined to be an action sci-fi classic, “Looper” accomplishes the impossible by being cool and accessible while staying dark and emotional. Director Rian Johnson makes the time travel conceit something other than an exercise in futility, devoting more attention to the film’s cocky, narcissistic heroes (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, his best dramatic work since “The Sixth Sense”), who are really both the same person. “Looper” is even a powerful forewarning of our civilization’s decline into more and more crime and violence, a nuance that along with its lens flares, canted angles and impressive visual effects, make it refreshingly modern.

10. Rust and Bone

“Rust and Bone” is a powerful and aggressively emotional film about people who are incomplete. A French romance of imperfect characters who are mending physically but damaged emotionally, Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts give tough, often unsentimental performances that are not without humor and heart. Director Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet”) finds a mix between moments and visuals that feel stark and lonely, such as a lengthy wide shot of Cotillard lying in a hospital bed, and those between Cotillard and a whale, that are elegant statements of forming a bond.

Turin_House

Honorable Mention – The Turin Horse

Looking and feeling the way “The Turin Horse” does, one would believe it is a tortured, yet essential classic belonging to another time. But it came out in 2012 and may be the last film from the elderly Hungarian master Bela Tarr. It is bleak and draining beyond belief. In black and white and with only 30 shots, it is an excruciating sit. It is almost completely empty of activity, plot or dialogue. It will make you sick at the sight of baked potatoes. And by the end of it, you will feel as if the world is ending. Yet to call it anything other than spellbinding is a gross understatement.

SilverLiningsPlaybook

11th Place Continue reading “The Best (And Worst) Movies of 2012”

The Imposter

“The Imposter” has the wildest and most unbelievable, mind-bending story seen in a documentary since “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” The 23-year-old Frenchman Frederic Bourdin played a simple Texas family for chumps by posing as their missing child, but what’s really impressive is that the movie plays us like a violin too.

The whole thing started with just a phone call. Frederic Bourdin was a drifter on the street in Spain. He called the cops from a payphone pretending to be a tourist and claimed to have found a child. But when the cops arrived, it was him posing as that child, nervous, hostile, scared and lonely. His motivation was to simply get off the streets and get care and shelter in a home. But when the cops demanded to know his identity, he invented a story that he was an American and needed an evening alone to phone his parents and let him know he was okay. He used this time to dredge up info on missing children in the US and finally claimed to be Texas’s own Nicholas Barclay.

This is where it gets interesting. Nicholas was only 13 when he disappeared and had been missing for four years when Frederic made the call stateside. Naturally, Carey Gibson, Nicholas’s sister, was on the first flight to Spain to pick up her brother. Despite the unlikelihood of Nicholas showing up, in Spain of all places, despite having dark, five o’clock shadow, despite a thick French accent and despite not having Nick’s blue eyes and blonde hair, Carey and her family bought it.

They wanted so badly to believe that they missed all of the red flags, and Frederic had dug himself so deep that he was forced to just keep digging until he came out the other side. Frederic was granted American citizenship, and he returned home to Texas to attend high school and live with Nicholas’s family. He concocted a horror story that he was part of an elaborate sex slave ring, one that changed the color of his hair and eyes, caused him to forget his past and be an essentially changed person. It was even enough to fool the FBI.

What’s more interesting here: why Frederic perpetuated his lie or why so many people believed him? “The Imposter” leads us toward both lines of questioning. Director Bart Layton stages the whole film as a dim, noir thriller, muffling voices over the phone, adding haze and static to the already gritty home videos of Nicholas and including ominous recreations of the events. Frederic’s centered close-ups during his interviews make it look as though he could be acting, partaking in his own form of screen villainy.

What really happened here? Are we seeing Frederic being filmed from jail? Did he escape? Does the family know because he came clean? What happened to Nicholas? In its final few minutes, “The Imposter” attains a level of multi-faceted urgency. It turns the table on us and for a moment makes us believe Frederic’s lie. It’s a film that not only tells an impossible story but lets us know that under the right circumstances, we can believe anything.

3 ½ stars

The Comedy

“I was reading this the other day… hobo cocks are one of the purest things on the planet.”

This is the kind of phrase with the disgusting, blunt and uncomfortable imagery that just makes you want to shut your brain off. And the speaker of this, Swanson (Tim Heidecker), can talk about this awfully long without cracking a smile.

As an audience, we’re not supposed to think Swanson is funny. We pay attention to the first part of his sentence: “I was reading this the other day.” Here’s proof that this is a bad guy who takes being repellent and abrasive very seriously, so much so that no matter how much pain he’s in, he might not be able to turn it off.

The ironically titled “The Comedy” then is a portrait of such a broken man. Its character is insulting, rude and without purpose or merit, but the film itself isn’t. It acknowledges how after a while, it must be tough always being the jackass.

Swanson might’ve once gotten many a laugh or a rise by egging people on, but now everyone knows his game, and most won’t even dignify it with a response. He carries on a Southern accent in front of his unfazed sister-in-law until he looks very pathetic. When he finally asks how his brother is doing in prison, she replies, “Are you really asking that?” He ruins the moment of course, but if she has to ask, she’s not willing to give him a serious response anyway.

Some might think “The Comedy” is a character study about a guy who gets sick pleasure out of this, but the film is more nuanced than that. At one point Swanson poses as a gardener and instigates a rich couple by asking if he can cool down in their pool. When they surprisingly agree, he storms off in a huff. Later he starts hurling around stereotypes in an African American bar, a scene so uncomfortable because he’s a second away from getting stabbed. It reminded me of Michael Fassbender’s character in “Shame,” another guy who no longer gets any pleasure from his addiction and in fact endangers himself in the pursuit of it.

Heidecker, a man who specializes in such broad anti-humor on his show, “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!”, anchors “The Comedy” on his unsympathetic performance. He walks a fine line in acting very sincere about the act of being insincere.

But director Rick Alverson has transformed the goofy performances of Heidecker into something real, painful and human. In another setting, there might be something funny to Swanson sliding around on church pews, but in Alverson’s jarring close-ups, jostling camera and sporadic editing befitting Heidecker’s show, there’s something more unsettling going on.

“The Comedy” is a hard pill to swallow, a difficult indie film with even more obnoxious people and situations at its core. But it’s a sharp realization that even these awful, monstrous individuals are human enough to hit rock bottom.

3 ½ stars

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present

You might have to stare at Marina Abramovic’s artwork a long time before you accept it as anything other than pretentious. This HBO documentary named for her Museum of Modern Art exhibition in 2010, “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present,” maybe places too much weight on the artist’s brilliance without questioning her methods. But the more you watch, you become enchanted by how sincere it really is.

This is precisely what happened to nearly 750,000 people back in March through May of 2010. Abramovic, a Yugoslavian modern artist known as the Grandmother of performance art, staged her simplest, yet most daring performance to date. In a large empty room in New York’s MoMA, Abramovic sat motionless at a table as she gazed into the eyes of anyone who chose to sit in front of her.

They sat, and she looked back, mysteriously and sympathetically. The longer they stayed, the more she became a mirror unto them. This film beautifully captures the pain, happiness, sadness and anger in countless faces.

Abramovic’s art, as the film explains, has always been about being forced to engage with a person in ways you may not have prepared for. For years, her art involved her posing naked or abusing her body such that you could not look away. It was striking work, and the film’s editing splices all of these shocking images together in super quick flashes of obscurity.

More importantly, it gives us Abramovic’s modest moments that reveal her humanity and her struggle. Now she’s 65 and has been accepted as an alternative artist, but she’s at an age where she’s long done with being alternative. She meets with David Blaine, who at first gives a convincing proposal for a joint collaboration in which he hacks her to pieces with an emergency axe, but she soon realizes that this stunt would go completely against her artistic philosophy.

She believes that unlike in movies or theater, in art there is a fine line between performance and acting. If she isn’t totally in the moment and is just playing a part, why should anyone believe that she isn’t just doing a stunt for shock value?

“The Artist is Present” walks this line as well, and it wins you over because it believes in its artist as much as those people in that gallery believe her.

3 ½ stars

Off the Red Carpet: Week of 12/12 – 12/19

‘Tis the awards season for many lists and nominations. I’ve had a lot of fun doing this column, but this is probably my last of this sort. Next week I’ll likely take off because of the holiday, and the following week I’ll put together an article of my final Oscar predictions, charting the ups and downs of certain films based on the preliminary predictions I’ve made each week since.

This is the point when most Oscar bloggers say that all that’s left are the Oscars. The Best of lists have started trickling out, the Golden Globes have been named and subsequently ignored and all the movies have been seen. You and I both know that last bit isn’t true, because I’ll likely miss “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Amour,” “On the Road,” “Not Fade Away,” “Searching for Sugarman,” “Rust and Bone,” “How to Survive a Plague,” “The House I Live In” and “The Gatekeepers” and “West of Memphis” before the year is out, and God knows I’m trying much harder than you to see these.

But nevertheless, I’ll cobble together a Best of the Year list myself along with some other fun features in the next few days. So for the last time, here’s this week’s roundup.

Golden Globe Nominations Announced

The Golden Globes have a tendency to be plain embarrassing. They’ll nominate something “The Tourist” to get Johnny Depp in attendance, and their ridiculous split between drama and comedy or musical means that nothing gets snubbed, except of course for things that are actually interesting. Last Thursday, “Lincoln” led the pack with seven nominations, and the only real surprise of a nomination were the multiple for “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.” Okay, whatever, we’ll let you have that one.

Scott Feinberg’s analysis is by the far the best of them, mentioning what a big deal it is to see Nicole Kidman, Rachel Weisz, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Richard Gere, Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor and Leonardo DiCaprio, although he probably lends a little more weight to the Globes than I do. The biggest, yet predictable omissions included “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “Amour.”

What really piqued my interest in Feinberg’s analysis was one statistic that said people who are nominated for a SAG award, Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe all go on to an Oscar nomination, and he’s got a list of five in the Best Actor race already. Those names are Bradley Cooper, Daniel Day-Lewis, John Hawkes, Hugh Jackman and Denzel Washington. You tell me who’s missing. (Full list via The Race)

Hair and Makeup Category Shortlisted

Here’s the list of the seven films advancing in the newly revised Makeup category that now also includes work for hair dressing.

“Hitchcock”
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
“Les Misérables”
“Lincoln”
“Looper”
“Men in Black 3”
“Snow White and the Huntsman”

The two big snubs here are “Cloud Atlas” and “Holy Motors,” both of which involve characters going through multiple performances and appearances, and “Holy Motors” especially calls attention to its makeup. I also would’ve liked to see “The Impossible” on this list for the amount of blood stained clothes and Naomi Watts looking ghastly that’s in that movie. (via Oscars.com)

ZeroDarkThirty

“Zero Dark Thirty” selected by Chicago Film Critics

Hailing from Chicago myself (I didn’t vote. Don’t flatter yourself), I always find these interesting. Announced on Monday, the Chicago critics selected “Zero Dark Thirty” as their winner for Best Picture while granting it four other awards. “The Master” came in second with four awards. This is an interesting list, one that goes against the grain a tiny bit by selecting “The Invisible War” as Best Doc and “ParaNorman” as Best Animated. The full list of winners is below. (Full list of nominees via CFCA website)

Best Picture – Zero Dark Thirty

Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow

Best Actor – Daniel Day-Lewis

Best Actress – Jessica Chastain

Best Supporting Actor – Phillip Seymour Hoffman

Best Supporting Actress – Amy Adams

Best Original Screenplay – Zero Dark Thirty

Best Adapted Screenplay – Lincoln

Best Foreign Language Film – Amour

Best Documentary – The Invisible War

Best Animated Feature – ParaNorman

Best Cinematography – The Master

Best Original Score – The Master

Best Art Direction – Moonrise Kingdom

Best Editing – Zero Dark Thirty

Most Promising Performer – Quvenzhane Wallis

Most Promising Filmmaker – Benh Zeitlin

New York Times Best of the Year Lists

If the New York Times sounds off on anything it’s a big deal, but what I loved about A.O. Scott’s and Manohla Dargis’s lists was the optimism brimming from them about the state of cinema, all this coming from a year where people have been mostly negative. Dargis didn’t rank hers, but Scott picked 25. They’re must-reads. (Dargis’s list and Scott’s list via NYT.com)

Manohla Dargis

Amour

The Deep Blue Sea

The Gatekeepers

Holy Motors

Moonrise Kingdom

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Searching for Sugarman

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

A.O. Scott

1. Amour

2. Lincoln

3. Beasts of the Southern Wild

4. Footnote

5. The Master

6. Zero Dark Thirty

7. Django Unchained

8. Goodbye, First Love

9. Neighboring Sounds

10. The Grey

holy-motors-05

New consensus emerges from critic polls

I feel Metacritic’s aggregation is fairly comprehensive in terms of evaluating the best movie of the year, but both Indiewire and Village Voice conducted their own critics polls and selected “Holy Motors” and “The Master” respectfully. It’s almost funny considering that it’s likely neither of those will be nominated for Best Picture (but we’ll hold out for “The Master.”) and the other consensus title, “Zero Dark Thirty,” may just win Best Picture. Indiewire also did a cut and dry determination of what the Oscar nominees would be based on their votes, and of the 10 Best Picture nominees, they selected six potential Oscar nominees. Here are the individual critic poll Top 10 lists:

Indiewire

  1. Holy Motors
  2. The Master
  3. Zero Dark Thirty
  4. Amour
  5. This is Not a Film
  6. Moonrise Kingdom
  7. Beasts of the Southern Wild
  8. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
  9. The Turin Horse
  10. Lincoln

Village Voice

  1. The Master
  2. Zero Dark Thirty
  3. Holy Motors
  4. Moonrise Kingdom
  5. This is Not a Film
  6. Amour
  7. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
  8. The Turin Horse
  9. Lincoln
  10. Tabu

Continue reading “Off the Red Carpet: Week of 12/12 – 12/19”

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Let “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” be a lesson to those thinking of adapting a novel to the screen. “An Unexpected Journey” is the first of three movies spread out over the next two years designed to retell J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” a children’s book and prequel to the Lord of the Rings series.

As it stands, Peter Jackson has made a lumbering, long, familiar and padded opening to a trilogy that I fear is equally as bloated. It falls prey to nerd-baiting, deciding the best way to adapt a novel is to be brutally faithful to the source, shoe-horning in meandering details and piddling small talk that do nothing to make the characters interesting or attempt to surpass the level of spectacle found in Jackson’s original LOTR franchise.

All this has little to do with Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” itself. Yes, it is a different story altogether, one that is more whimsical, lighter in tone and not as dense of a mythological tome. But “An Unexpected Journey” finds Jackson basically making a grandly proportioned cartoon, not least of all helped by the fact that in 3-D and 48 frames per second it looks like one (more on that later).

A far stretch from the visceral, but bloodless action of the original trilogy, here we see dwarves leaping and dangling from trees, trolls scratching their butts, giant rock titans fighting Transformers style and talking orcs that look like they have scrotums dangling from their chins. It’s chaotic, nonsensical action befitting a Dreamworks kids movie, not fantastical, just a CGI maelstrom that defies logic.

All of this somehow seems familiar. The initial journey from the Shire followed by set pieces across New Zealand mountains and on to Rivendell: we’ve been to all these places before, and none of it is as fresh or spectacular.

They feel obligatory, because neither Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) nor the 12 dwarves he’s accompanying have much of a purpose for this quest; they’re just on an adventure.

Take Bilbo, who we get to know by watching him say “Don’t eat that” and “That’s an antique” over and over to the oafish dwarves who have without warning invaded his house and begun eating his food. He’s been informed through a lengthy backstory and obligatory flashback battle sequence that these 12 dwarves are embarking on a quest to reclaim their home, Erebor, from a dragon called Smaug. In order to do so, they need a stealthy hobbit who can sneak past Smaug. And after just a little prodding, he chooses to go because the plot needs to move forward.

But Bilbo doesn’t even really have much to do for a solid hour or more. He virtually disappears from sight amongst all the chases, flashbacks and side plots. His part involves cracking wise in front of some dumb trolls and of course Gollum (Andy Serkis, as deliciously funny and expressive in his motion capture ware as ever), which don’t really get the dwarves any closer to Erebor, but they’re supposed to be fun or funny I guess.

If this really is a faithful adaptation of the novel, the dialogue is awfully reductive and hardly literary. Much of it is low-brow and silly, but every once and a while Gandalf (Ian McKellen) has a fortune cookie line about bravery and the movie can call itself epic and profound.

There’s so much that feels weird and half-baked about “The Hobbit,” but most of all it just doesn’t look cinematic. 48 fps is designed to reduce the amount of strobing and blurring effects typically seen as the camera is quickly panning or tracking, and this can be very noticeable when watching a movie in 3-D. You’d arguably want this when you’re watching sports or other live TV. The typical line is that it’s “like looking through a window.”

But if everything in your movie is computer generated or you place your actors in front of movie sets, everything you see through that window is going to look fake. The movie is bursting with unnecessary amounts of light, the CGI looks strangely cheap, and the characters look like cardboard cutouts in front of a backdrop. If the blurring problem has gone away, it now looks like objects are awkwardly brushing up against the frame.

These have been comments that critics have made against 3-D itself for the longest time, and now Jackson has almost willfully amplified those problems for the sake of “accuracy.” It reflects the broader problem of “An Unexpected Journey,” which is that faithfulness to “reality” or to “source material” does not intrinsically make for a compelling movie.

2 stars

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Ai Weiwei exists on the border of all things. This Chinese artist is presented in the documentary “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” as a man who operates outside of the system, both in the art world and the political arena, and yet is deeply involved in each. This has not only allowed him to operate as an outspoken artist, activist and individual in a Communist society, but also kept him alive.

Weiwei is a modern Chinese artist who has amassed a global following by taking to the web and to Twitter because his own nation has censored his free speech. He became famous for designing the Bird’s Nest Stadium as part of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but it ironically also gave him the power and cultural influence necessary to criticize the government that established him.

Now he’s noted for his alternative, yet straight forward and forthright artwork. One piece is a photograph of him giving the finger to Tiananmen Square. Another piece has his entire staff reciting “Fuck You Motherland” in various Chinese dialects. A third is him shattering an ancient Chinese urn from the 7th Century, a simple reminder that this desecration of history happens every day without anyone thinking about it.

After an earthquake ravaged China and left thousands dead, many of them not accounted for by the government, Weiwei took action and made a series of documentaries intended to shine a light on China’s lack of effort. This is the sort of work that is in your face and shocking, but not pretentious or inclusive. And like its subject, “Never Sorry” is a flashy documentary, but ultimately direct in its careful historical documenting.

What Director Alison Klayman is quick to notice is that other journalists and activists have disappeared for less than what Weiwei has said. She walks a careful line in portraying Weiwei as the forward-thinking genius that he is without glorifying him to the point that he’ll be in danger.

But Weiwei walks that treacherous line enough himself. After being beaten by government thugs to prevent him from testifying at a hearing, Weiwei decides to make a stand by simply filing a complaint. He knows full well that the system is broken and that his request will go nowhere. But it’s important to work within the system to show just how flawed it is.

“Never Sorry” paints Weiwei as someone with gigantic resonance and influence around the globe. His actions and elicited reactions have made him a symbol, a martyr, and to some in China, something of a god. But all the same, both the film and the man recognize that his reach is limited. Weiwei has been beaten, censored, watched and financially harmed. It’s the avatar that has all the influence, and above all this film shows that in this day and age anyone can be just as powerful and expressive as he.

3 ½ stars

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

If it wasn’t already taken, I might’ve called “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” “The Master.” Here is a cute documentary about the best sushi chef in all of Tokyo, and yet through little pieces of fish it examines the idea of mastery and the endless pursuit for it.

Jiro Ono is an 85-year old sushi chef, or shokunin, with a small restaurant in Tokyo. Jiro only serves sushi, no appetizers or drinks. If you’re a fast eater, a meal may be done in 15 minutes. This gets you about 20 pieces of sushi. There are also only 10 seats at a short bar inside, and Jiro stands with assertive patience as he waits for you to eat. Some feel it’s a scary, intimidating experience. But at a starting price of 30,000 yen, or roughly $360, it’s also scary good.

Jiro runs the only restaurant of his size that has received a perfect three star rating from the Michelin Guide, which quite literally suggests traveling across countries to try this sushi. Food journalists all agree that he’s the best, that you never have a lackluster piece of sushi while you’re there, and that what he does is tantamount to an art form.

The film feels the same way, editing together Jiro and his team massaging an octopus, cooking rice or delicately placing sushi on the plate in slow motion and to classical music with true, visual virtuosity.

It begins to get at the mentality that governs all Japanese culture, not that you should simply enjoy your job but that you should become a master of it. Jiro has been working all his life to improve upon the art his teachers believed to have mastered. Now he even expects mastery from those he works with, employing fish vendors who are the utmost experts on a given fish and requiring apprenticeships that last for 10 years before you’re even allowed to cook the eggs.

But Jiro is just a simple, nice man. Whether or not his sushi really is the best, his legacy has surpassed it. One employee explains that if Jiro’s son were equally as good as his father, he would still be seen as inferior. Only if he became twice as good could they be equals in spirit. That’s the nature of mastery.

3 stars

Rapid Response: Stranger Than Fiction

Usually I write full reviews for movies that came out in the 2000s, but I had seen “Stranger Than Fiction” a lot, just not in probably seven years. I was reminded of it by this year’s “Ruby Sparks,” which is also a fantasy in which a writer can control the actions of a girl he has written and materialized in real life.

But I would argue “Stranger Than Fiction” is a much better film, one that gets at how authors and literature works without falling into the traps of most “writerly” movies, such as rapid fire dialogue, characters who are overly eloquent or extended passages of people sitting at typewriters.

It tells the story of Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), an office drone with the IRS who fastidiously counts strokes while brushing his teeth, lives a rigorously scheduled life and is a math whiz, who suddenly hears a voice in his head that appears to be narrating his life. This gimmick works beautifully because it comes so immediately. There’s a quick intro, and then Harold is instantly aware. There’s also little question as to what is happening to Harold, and it enables the screenplay with endless possibilities.

What makes it even more fun is that the voice is the salty and cynical work of Emma Thompson as acclaimed tragedy writer Karen Eiffel. She hasn’t published a novel in a decade and is plagued with severe writer’s block. She doesn’t know how to kill Harold Crick. But she knows it must happen, and she says as much in his internal narration: “Little did he know he would soon be met with his imminent death.”

The film was somewhat underrated upon its release because it struck critics as Charlie Kuafman lite (he fresh of “Eternal Sunshine” at this point), a clever fantasy idea of metaphors and morals but without as much of the cinematic whimsy. But the beauty of “Stranger Than Fiction” is its simplicity. Kaufman never wrote a conceit this tidy: man hears voices in his head and realizes he’s part of a story he cannot control. Even “The Truman Show” has more rules and fantastical gimmicks than this does.

I guess the bigger problem is not the premise but the payoff, which is admittedly not golden but is far from terrible. A small part of me wanted Harold to die at the end based on what he reads in Eiffel’s book, but that would never happen in a Hollywood movie. The argument is that his relationship with Maggie Gyllenhaal is never fully developed, but I’m here for the premise, and the excitement of Harold meeting Karen for the first time and hearing that his fate is already sealed can’t be matched.

This is also the only movie that convinces me Will Ferrell can act. He’s so perfect as Harold Crick partly because of his range in being funny and subdued and partly because he’s one of the few comedians who can shout to the heavens at a bus stop full of people without hesitation and not feel embarrassed. Harold becomes a delicious mix of a comedic and tragic figure that befits great literature, and he has a hilarious scene with Dustin Hoffman by simply parroting him saying “King of the Trolls.”

Hoffman too is a treasure of intellect, unpredictable quips and droll, ironic humor before switching to dramatic prowess in an instant. His out of body moment is in asking Harold if he counted all the tiles in the bathroom, a task that previously belonged to himself as the Rain Man. This is probably his best role of the last decade. Even Queen Latifah hasn’t been this good since.

The director is Marc Forster, who has arguably and sadly gotten worse since this film. His resume used to consist of “Monster’s Ball” and “Finding Neverland” and now includes a lame adaptation of “The Kite Runner,” “Quantum of Solace” and “Machine Gun Preacher.”

I believe that a film as simple and clever as “Stranger Than Fiction” can be made again, I just don’t think it’ll include Ferrell, Hoffman or Forster.

Take This Waltz

We applaud when women in the movies are strong, self-assured and dealing with problems the best they can. But they can’t all be headstrong and confident. Surely some of them are immature and even destructive.

Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz” is an admirable attempt to paint such a woman, but its ideas feel vague and uncertain, and its lead character Margo feels strange and unbelievable, even with one of today’s best and most relatable actresses at the helm, Michelle Williams.

We meet Margo on a plane ride home after a business trip, where she’s just met a handsome, but somehow cocky guy named Daniel (Luke Kirby). They talk on the plane and share a cab, and it turns out he lives quite literally across the street from Margo. This is already too good to be true, so as she’s about to leave the cab, she says, “I’m married.” This is the sort of thing you say when you’ve at least thought of sleeping with someone, but it goes against your better judgment.

And it’s a good thing, because Margo is in a fairly happy marriage with the loveable Lou, played by the equally loveable Seth Rogen. The two whisper abusive sweet nothings to one another in bed for fun (“I’m going to skin you alive with a potato peeler,” “I bought a melon baller and want to gauge your eyes out”), which is weird. They seem happy, but without warning she’ll become distant to his games, and of course she hasn’t stopped flirting with that guy across the street (he’s got some violent imagery played off as romantic too).

Margo’s problem is oddly specific. It’s a fear of being afraid. She doesn’t like to “be in-between things.” It takes her the whole movie to figure out that not all of life is full of action, which is fine, but the number of problems caused in her life because of this insecurity makes you wonder if Margo is really just unhealthy. Daniel annoys her at times, but she can’t tell him to screw off, nor just screw him. She won’t address the problems with her husband, but she won’t leave him either.

What does she want? I don’t think she knows. Maybe that’s intentional, but for a while it doesn’t seem like the movie knows either, and for how much we like Lou, audiences may get uncomfortable at Polley over-stylizing these moments of emotional adultery. We see Margo and Daniel swimming elegantly in a glistening indoor pool, their sex scene is dizzyingly erotic and her carnival ride with Daniel to the tune “Video Killed the Radio Star” makes you wonder why she doesn’t have more moments like that with her loving husband.

2 ½ stars