Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

* * *
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Evageline Lily

I was a bit cool on An Unexpected Journey, the first entry in the Hobbit trilogy, finding it overly padded and lacking in impact compared to The Lord of the Rings series, though I did ultimately find more to like about it than to dislike. I'm more enthusiastic with respect to the follow up, The Desolation of Smaug, though I still think that The Hobbit is a far cry from the magic of The Lord of the Rings, and I still think that this new series has some pretty serious structural and narrative problems. On the plus side, this film isn't stopped dead by singing and it has a pretty exciting villain in its titular character. The downside is that the presence of so many Dwarves still hasn't been justified, given that only about four of them have discernible personalities, a problem exacerbated by the arrival of a bunch of new characters.

Review: No (2012)

* * *
Director: Pablo Larrain
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal

Much of politics is a matter of advertising, of selling one candidate over another, of taking complex ideological stances and simplifying them as much as possible to make them not just palatable, but appealing to the electorate. Advertising can reduce a political race to "good" and "bad" or "us" and "them," and it can be used to create the illusion that there's a race at all, allowing dictatorship to carry on in disguise as Democracy. Pablo Larrain's No is set during Chile's 1988 plebiscite to determine whether or not the rule of Augusto Pinochet would be extended for another eight years, and unlike many politically themed movies it isn't about the battle between democratic ideals and the tyrannical forces of power, but about the triumph of marketing and turning politics (and, by extension, Democracy) into a commodity. That may sound cynical, but No really isn't a cynical movie - or, at least, it doesn't feel that way because it depicts an instance where the use of manipulative tactics yielded the good result rather than reinforcing the bad status quo.

Review: The Spectacular Now (2013)

* * * 1/2
Director: James Ponsoldt
Starring: Miles Teller, Shaileen Woodley

Now is what matters. The past is done and the future has too many variables, too many opportunities for disappointment, but now is as perfect as it is fleeting. "This is the youngest that we're ever going to be," the protagonist of The Spectacular Now states, nostalgic for the moment even as he's living it, aware that he's about to be forced to cross over to a new phase he feels ill-prepared for. A movie about teenagers that is refreshingly sincere and sensitive without being patronizing, James Ponsoldt's latest is one of the better films of its kind, even if it doesn't necessarily explore one of its main themes in full.

Review: Drug War (2013)

* * * 1/2
Director: Johnnie To
Starring: Sun Honglei, Louis Koo

A successful film doesn't necessarily have to do something new, it just has to take the familiar and make it seem fresh. Johnnie To's Drug War is a genre picture through and through, a police procedural where a cop teams up with a con in the name of justice, but questions whether he can really trust his informant. While far from innovative, the film is so meticulously put together, and unfolds so expertly, that the skill it brings to the table is really all that it needs. Given the film's genre trappings, and the fact that Hollywood loves to remake successful non-English language films, I fully expect to see an English language remake within the next couple of years (with a drastically different ending, presumably), but I don't expect it would hold a candle to the original.

Review: Short Term 12 (2013)

* * * *
Director: Destin Cretton
Starring: Brie Larson, Kaitlyn Dever, John Gallagher, Jr.

Children are often credited with possessing a preternatural ability towards resilience, but the pains endured in childhood can be the slowest to heal. Destin Cretton's Short Term 12 is about people in pain, suffering from the still open wounds of bad childhoods, struggling not to let that pain define or consume them. It's a sharp, character driven film that unfolds without affectation, driven forward by the compelling performance at its center. Although it falters ever so slightly in its final act, moving away from realism to engage in a climax that is purely the thing of movies, for the most part Short Term 12 rings with blunt authenticity. It's not always nice, but it feels real.