This Is Not A Film (2012)

You got that right!  This is Iranian film director Jafar Panahi shuffling around his apartment, watching television, reading the newspaper, watering plants, etc.  Oh, and to spice things up, the cute college student stops by to collect his trash.  I'm guessing this is to illustrate a kind of "artistic castration", since he's awaiting the government to hand down a decision whether or not he will go to prison, or be banned from making films.  There are bigger tragedies, but the situation is shameful and ludicrous.  Unfortunately, this footage that sheds light on Panhari's fate (which was smuggled out of Iran in a birthday cake) is boring.

The Wise Kids (2012)

Drama written and directed by Stephen Cone about three teens (Eric Hulsebos, Tyler Ross, and the unfortunately named Molly Kunz) who are about to leave their small Southern town for college in the big city.  All three, aside from the big leap they're making from childhood to adulthood,  are going through other major transformations:  One is terrified that her world and friends are slipping away, the other, a pastor's daughter, loses her faith, and the third is realizing that he is homosexual and is pretty much okay with it.  More instructional than college is the fact that most of the adults around them are mistaken...about how they live their own lives, mistaken about everything, really.  This comes through clear as a bell to these wise kids, and they're the most well adjusted and happy characters in the film.  The acting from the kids (a filmmaker hired actual teens for once) is faultless and beautifully simplistic, and the film overall has a nice gentility to it.  Also starring the director himself in a major role (he's quite good) and Matt DeCaro.

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (2011)

A Turkish police drama directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylon that has a bunch of small-town policeman dragging two murder suspects around the Anatolian countryside looking for the spot where they buried a body.  It's obvious that the film was made with care and taste, but beautifully composed shots and ponderous dialogue do not a satisfying movie make.  Ceylon seems to be aiming for an Antonioni-style character study (deadly pacing, unanswered mysteries, a plot that disintegrates), but without Antonioni's  passion and wildly arty eye for design.  There are stunning moments (a sudden lightning strike that reveals a face in the darkness, a midnight dinner at a farm house, the chilling opening shot) but these moments seem arbitrarily placed in a film that is ultimately about isolation (again, Antonioni tackled this subject time and again with more invention and economy).   Instead of a mystery that lingers in the mind, the film evaporates before our eyes.

Chico & Rita (2012)

A Spanish animated film set in pre-Castro Havana about the love affair between a Cuban bandleader and his singer.  It's a romance with a standard rags-to-riches showbiz story...we've seen it before, just not in animated form.  The animation is pleasing to the eye and shows us glimpses of Havana's jet setting days, plus the music is okay.  I just don't quite understand why this story had to be told, especially in animated form.  I still cannot get the image of cartoon tits and beaver out of my head.

Pitch Perfect (2012)

Very, very corny comedy about college a cappella singing competitions.  The entire "teenage" cast is pushing thirty and the script is hard-sell and joke-filled.  Some of the jokes are actually funny (one girl with large areolas is nicknamed "bologna tits").  But the film tries to straddle the line between sincerity and snark, and comes up short on both.  Glee meets Bring It On, if that sounds like a winning combo to you, then be my guest.

Beasts Of The Southern Wild (2012)

A little girl named Hushpuppy is raised on the margins of society in the Louisiana swamps, with an insane father and lots of floor-stompin', jug-swillin', toothless bayou stereotypes.  The "point" of the movie (I suppose) is to show how the least of the world (the smallest insect/these people) are just as vital as everything/everyone else, and that these people are slowly being killed off to the detriment of the planet..."balance of nature" metaphors abound.   Also, retarded dialogue, hammy acting, clumsy surrealism, and nauseating camera moves are in full supply.  I couldn't wait for it to be over.  What a crock of shit. 

Keep The Lights On (2012)

Gay movies.  Ugh.  They have a built-in audience, therefore they don't have to be good, and ninety-five percent of the time they're not.  As a gay man, I try to imagine the characters heterosexual and ask myself if I'd still be interested in the story.  Usually the answer is no, this time the answer is "meh".   It stars Thure Lindhart as a documentarian and Zachary Booth as a young, drug addicted lawyer who embark on a nine year tumultuous relationship.  Good acting and enthusiastic sex scenes by the two leads barely keep this from becoming one of those depressing relationship movies, like the terminally dreary Blue Valentine.  Plus, I've always wanted to see Zachary Booth naked, ever since first seeing him as Glenn Close's teenage son on Damages (he read "gay" then, yet he still proclaims his heterosexuality in interviews, he must be a very good actor).  Very sincere and ultimately insignificant.  Not a fraction as good as another gay film that came out about a year ago, the fantastic and perceptive Weekend...a film that anyone would find moving, gay or straight.