In Theaters: Godzilla (2014)

Godzilla is a film that feels well overdue. There was, of course, one past attempt at making an American take on the character, and while I'll always have a soft spot for it, the filmmakers basically dodged a lot of the inherent challenge by making their monster less grandiose, less powerful, and theoretically more plausible as a result. After that didn't quite work, Toho brought back the "proper" Godzilla for a series of films that, while sometimes good, never had much of a reason for being other than reasserting tradition. Godzilla has been dormant for ten years, falling out of favor even in his native Japan, and so making a true, traditional Godzilla film for American audiences used to seeing him as a camp figure seemed like a long shot.

Gareth Edwards, director of Monsters, is at the helm for what turns out to be a slow, methodical burn of a monster movie. Godzilla eases the audience into the concept of a giant radioactive dinosaur who fights other giant radioactive monsters, knocking over skyscrapers in the process. People have complained that the King of the Monsters doesn't get enough screentime, and to be sure there's a lot of teasing involved, but the payoff is worth it. It's both a fantastic reintroduction to the kaiju eiga genre, and a film about reckoning with forces greater than ourselves.

In Theaters: The Lego Movie

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If something called The Lego Movie were going to work on anyone, it probably would work on me. I had a tubful of those damned bricks as a kid, and to this day, they exert a certain hold- it's hard NOT to start building something with them, and harder still to keep that construction from growing increasingly elaborate, until of course I realize I need even more of the bricks to round out my concept. I think they may actually create some kind of chemical dependency. But I was wary when seeing these generic toys made into a movie; it could either work really well or come off as the most cynical, calculated exercise imaginable.

It works. Oh man, does it work. The makers of Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street would be the ones to make such an unlikely concept sing, and they bring to this colorful brickfest a fittingly anarchic sense of humor, melded with a sincere and kind of sophisticated message about human creative potential. It's a film that gives us a peppy song called "Everything is Awesome" first satirically, then enthusiastically, a film that deflates the myth of the Chosen Hero of Destiny before building it up all over again, and a film full of surprises.

In Theaters: The Wolf of Wall Street

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The Wolf of Wall Street has been accused of glamorizing the life of Jordan Belfort, a broker who made millions on bad and often fradulent stock deals before being caught and serving a minor sentence in a minimum security prison. And to be sure, it's a very decadent experience, full of sex, wild parties, and frankly absurd displays of opulence for opulence's sake. The mood, however, is not quite aspirational, and not quite cautionary, but something intense, insane, and energetic. Martin Scorcese's work is almost always animated by a kind of mania, and in this case it's ideally suited to confronting the mindset that has dominated the financial world for so long.

In Theaters: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is probably not a great film. It has a number of flaws, and signs of compromises made in the name of box office appeal. But there's something remarkable about it. It's often beautiful, meditative, and disarmingly sincere. It really isn't much of an adaptation of the short story and at many times seems to drift away from the very premise, but since fidelity to the source material and actual quality are two completely separate things, the worst that happens is the film gets a little unfocused. It has all the signs of the familiar Oscar-bait feel good picture, but its true atmosphere is more relaxed. And there's the very real danger that the conventional elements of the film, as well as its nature as an adaptation, will overshadow its very real and very odd strengths.

In Theaters: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

It's hard to separate one's feelings about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug from one's opinion on Peter Jackson and company's entire approach to the trilogy. Much more than the Lord of the Rings films, this is a radical rehaul of the source material, expanding upon it in such a way that the focus and tone fundamentally changes. There are downsides to this approach, on display in Desolation of Smaug as in the first film; an inevitable sense of bloat, a story that feels stretched and oddly contorted, characters getting lost in the cutaways. But even if the whole thing comes off a little indulgent and undisciplined, there's still a lot to be entertained by, from elven cities and dark foreboding secrets to a terrifying dragon with the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch. It's just a little bit tighter and better focused than its predecessor as well, and its changes to the source material start to pay off in interesting ways.

In Theaters: Gravity

I'm writing this review under a bit of a time crunch, partly because I want to jump ahead to Halloween stuff but also because Gravity is a film that needs to be caught while it's in theaters, and while it's playing in 3-D on a good large screen. The movie is a rare event, a roadshow spectacle, and that makes it a little hard to judge. The common thinking that if a movie is so dependent on visual splendor that it needs to be seen in the best circumstances to have its full impact, it can't be that good. But the impact Gravity has is so powerful that it feels unfair to downgrade it for its exclusivity. I of course expected great things when the director of Children of Men tackled science fiction (or something like it) again, but had my doubts as to how to sustain the story of two people lost in the void of space. But the film's conceptual simplicity is its great strength, resulting in a disciplined, tense, and beautiful experience, one which shows just how difficult it can be to cling to our lives.

In Theaters: The World's End

It may have taken six years, but Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have finally finished the "Cornetto" trilogy. After red zombie horror/romance and a yellow giallo mystery, we reach blue, which is apparently the color of… well, that would be telling. Well I guess it is sort of melancholy, and The World's End is a film primarily about middle age and the fact that you can never go home again. Though more an ensemble piece than a buddy picture, the film is still dominated by Pegg and Nick Frost, giving performances that flip their normal dynamic, and the results are not only extremely funny but dramatically compelling. It's a film about the inevitability of change and how that can be the most terrifying thing of all.

In Theaters: Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim is a rare kind of spectacle. A Westernized fusion of kaiju eiga and mecha shows, not based on any existing IP, Guillermo del Toro's latest feels like some kind of weird nerd indulgence, something that shouldn't have gotten through the Hollywood assembly line but for a few vague resemblances to the Transformers series. The movie is a toybox, packed full of nifty sights and sounds and concepts, but what really makes it sing is that del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham not only take their concept seriously and sincerely, but make sure there's a heart beating at its center. A film this dense and chaotic may be easy to write off as a jumble of special effects, but on closer examination it's a lot more finely crafted than that.

In Theaters: Man of Steel

I really have to wonder who it was in the Warner Bros./DC hierarchy that looked at Superman Returns and decided the big problem was it wasn't solemn enough. I know I'm in something of a minority concerning my very positive opinion of Bryan Singer's take on the comic book legend by way of Richard Donner, but I was still willing to give a fair chance to Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan's reboot. Man of Steel is a very reverent and sincere try at placing the original comic book superhero in the pantheon of modern superhero movies, an ambitious retelling of the title character's beginnings and ascent to legendary status which takes some controversial liberties in the name of keeping things fresh, but what brings it down is not its emphasis on violent spectacle nor its changes to the character. No, the problem is the sheer weight of the plot, which crushes warmth, humor, and characterization underfoot while trying to tell the story of an alien finding his essential humanity.

In Theaters: The Great Gatsby

The worst thing I can find to say about Baz Luhrmann's film version of The Great Gatsby is that it's not as good as the book. It's the best adaptation we're likely to get, though, and that's because it engages with its source material rather than reveres it. The theoretical blasphemy of adding 3-D, hyperkinetic cinematography, loads of CGI, and Jay-Z to a richly nuanced critique of Jazz Age decadence turns out to be just the thing to make the story work in another medium, and the real surprise is that this approach doesn't drown out the book's tricky subtleties. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald's original work, it's both cynical and deeply moving, a tragic sort of love story which sees the futility of dreams as something to admire.

In Theaters: Star Trek Into Darkness

I'm always up for a good spaceship movie, so it's been a long wait for the sequel to J. J. Abrams' Star Trek. I went into Star Trek Into Darkness with some misgivings, some about rumored callbacks to the franchise's past (and more on that later), some about how early trailers made it seem as though most of the film took place on Earth in large piles of rubble. The film's obtuse marketing campaign has done it no favors, but not only have Abrams and company managed to craft an enjoyable space saga which delivers most of the things one expects from the genre, they've also managed to touch on the long-neglected "big ideas" of the Trek franchise, marrying some pointed social commentary with an affirmation of what Trek's core values ought to be. It's not really deep, but it is smart enough to be fun.

There will be spoilers below.

In Theaters: Django Unchained

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Django Unchained feels like a movie we should have gotten a long time ago. Hollywood's reluctance to deal frankly with race and the history of black/white relations in America is disappointing for many reasons, but the main one has to be that we too often miss out on the simple pleasure of watching black cowboys battle slaveowners. There are some films along these lines, but not many, and few this high profile. Quentin Tarantino gave us another kind of guilty catharsis in Inglourious Basterds, and at first glance this is cut from the same cloth; a brutally violent exploitation picture about the oppressed taking revenge on bigots, but given a good amount of dramatic weight and narrative complexity. It's not exactly a redressed remake, though, and while Basterds was more about images of violence, Django draws its power from a brutal and uncompromising picture of the ugliness of American slavery. By presenting this material in action/exploitation dress, Tarantino lets this material reach people who wouldn't be caught dead at a respectful biopic of Harriet Tubman.

In Theaters: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

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It's been over ten years since the first of Peter Jackson's films of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings arrived in theaters, and it honestly was starting to feel like we were overdue for a return visit. So The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey feels like an indulgence, expanding Tolkien's much more concise children's story into three epics bolstered with expanded subplots and backstory. And perhaps it can be said to lack the discipline used to tame the earlier material. It's just a little sloppy. But it is Middle Earth, real and sumptuous and inviting, and Jackson makes us feel at home in a fun rambling story that promises to provide three Christmases worth of ornate, overstuffed adventure.

In Theaters: Cloud Atlas

Cynicism results when we don't see just consequences to our actions, when crimes go unpunished and good deeds seem to be in vain. Cloud Atlas, a staggering epic of multiple stories and people reborn in era after era, is about a lot of things, but I think it's mostly an argument against cynicism. It posits that all of our actions matter, that every gesture has some impact, if not in our lifetime, then in the next, and in ages afterward. But it's as much a work of pure cinema as a philosophical statement; working from the novel by David Mitchell, Tom Tykwer and Lily and Lana Wachowski have created a film that's wonderfully alive and agile. It's fun and surprisingly lightweight for a three-hour epic, a series of well-spun yarns that work on their own as well as together.

In Theaters: Looper

Looper is one of the great surprises of the fall movie season, a picture that without much buildup emerges as a minor sci-fi classic. Time travel stories can be complicated affairs, and you risk losing even the attentive viewer among the contrivances needed to make the plot work. Writer-director Rian Johnson isn't averse to the fancy stuff, but he knows how to present it, and he manages to make it the background for a touching, character-driven story, surrounded by a smart and efficient action thriller.

In Theaters: Killer Joe

A movie like Killer Joe is one I feel compelled to support almost out of principle, because anyone braving the NC-17 rating in this day and age is clearly taking some considerable risk. Never let it be said that William Friedkin has mellowed with age. As with Bug, Tracy Letts adapts from his play, and the results are just as disturbing but in an entirely different way. It's a classic crime thriller in form, but the tone hints at something else altogether, a slippery blend of drama and black comedy that doesn't fall back on the genre's usual beats. Instead it goes to some uniquely terrifying and memorable places, and makes something fresh out of a well-trod genre.

In Theaters: Beasts of the Southern Wild

It's notable that the two best films this year so far are about children interpreting the world through their own fantasies. Beasts of the Southern Wild isn't cut from quite the same cloth as Moonrise Kingdom but it invites a similar level of immersion; in order for it to work at all you have to accept its reality as true. For this reason it's hard to actually judge the film; it plays by its own set of narrative rules and asks the viewer to take it or leave it. But it is absolutely what it sets out to be, and offers a compelling vision of a society on the fringe of what most of us are familiar with.

In Theaters: The Dark Knight Rises

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At this point there's no shortage of opinions about The Dark Knight Rises; even mentioning that it's the last in director Christopher Nolan's trilogy of Batman pictures is just saying what most people know already. But it's been just polarizing enough that I feel like weighing in. No, it's not as good as The Dark Knight. It's long and it does take a while to get going. But the payoff is remarkable in its scope and complexity; it's a memorable portrait of social breakdown that touches on issues of the day without feeling confined by them. And it provides the Batman story with an ending that, in a way, is as fitting as Frank Miller's legendary The Dark Knight Returns.

In Theaters: Moonrise Kingdom

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Moonrise Kingdom is a true original. It's hard to describe just what it is- a story of young love, a children's adventure that's not entirely appropriate for children, a droll comedy that nonetheless can be deadly serious about the feelings involved. I've never seen a movie quite like it, but it's endearing, beautifully made, and even though it has so many of Wes Anderson's signature touches, it feels like a quantum leap for him. This is a special one, folks.

In Theaters: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

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Camp works best when taken seriously. The more absurd a premise is, the more heartfelt the people advancing it should be in their belief. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has its premise spelled out in the title, and it would seem to demand a tongue-in-cheek treatment from that alone. But not only have the filmmakers (including Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote the screenplay based on his own novel) played the premise straight, they manage to justify it by making the familiar undead hordes into a symbol for everything Lincoln was seen to fight against. While many have complained about the serious approach the movie takes, in the end we've got a really strong and skillfully done action movie which is just funny enough to temper our disbelief. It deserves better than it's getting.