If movies are shared dreams, then Christopher Nolan is surely one of Hollywood’s most inventive dreamers, given the evidence of his commandingly clever “Inception.” Applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the subconscious, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian’s “Rififi,” that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality. As such, it’s a conceptual tour de force unlikely to rank with Batman at the B.O., though post-”Dark Knight” anticipation and Leonardo DiCaprio should still position it as one of the summer’s hottest, classiest tickets.

Our guide to this world of high-stakes corporate espionage is Dom Cobb (DiCaprio), an “extractor” paid to invade the dreams of various titans of industry and steal their top-secret ideas. Cobb plunders the psyche with practiced skill, though he’s increasingly haunted by the memory of his late wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), who has a nasty habit of showing up in his subconscious and wreaking havoc on his missions.

This latest film Christopher Nolan (“Memento,” “The Dark Knight,” “The Prestige”) practically defies description. It’s a metaphysical crime caper/action epic that unfolds almost exclusively in the dreams of its characters.

Dreams, of course, are where anything can happen, where the subconscious comes out to play or to torment itself, where our deepest fears are manifested.

In the near future of “Inception” our dreams can be invaded. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a corporate spy skilled at “extraction.” Using a briefcase-size machine (it’s like a fancy lie detector with wires to connect the participants), he and his colleagues can enter the dreams of a sleeping target and root around for the deepest secrets.

This is no simple task. Cobb and his team create dream environments and scenarios so real that their drugged subjects don’t suspect they’re asleep, yet so subtly calibrated that they push just the right emotional and intellectual buttons. When subjects wake up, they have no memory of being violated; Cobb walks away with valuable information.

But Cobb is an international fugitive, accused of murder and unable to re-enter the U.S. to be with his two young children. This makes him vulnerable to the entreaties of the powerful industrialist Saito (Ken Watanabe), who recruits him to go after Fischer (Cillian Muphy), the heir to a rival conglomerate.

Instead of just extracting information, though, Saito envisions a far more dangerous “inception”: planting ideas into Fischer’s subconscious – ideas that would lead him to sell off his family’s extensive holdings.

If Cobb can accomplish this, Saito will pull strings to ensure his safe return home.

Nolan’s screenplay has two main sections. In the first, Cobb and his associate (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) recruit a new team – Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao and Watanabe – and begin building the dream world in which they will operate.

The second half of the film is the actual job, and it’s truly mind-blowing, a labyrinth of dreams within dreams within dreams. The stakes are high. In a standard extraction, when a dream spy “dies” he simply wakes up in the real world. But should you die in the ever-deeper levels of an “inception,” you’ll find yourself in limbo, unable to return to our dimension.

Things are further complicated by Cobb’s own iffy mental state. Though he has kept it a secret from his colleagues, while on the job he’s often visited by his late wife and former extraction partner (Marion Cotillard), who may appear as a lover or as a gun-toting adversary. She’s obviously a manifestation of Cobb’s own tortured conscience, and her presence threatens everything.

Yeah, that’s a lot to wrap your head around. But Nolan is such a skilled storyteller that it all somehow makes sense. He finds ways to delineate between the ever-descending dream environments Cobb’s team must navigate so that we can sense just where we are at any moment.

And these dreamscapes make for some dazzling moments, like a brawl between Gordon-Levitt’s character and several thugs in a gravity-free hotel hallway. It’s like “The Matrix” on steroids… you can hardly believe what you’re seeing.

Shot across four continents by Nolan’s regular d.p., Wally Pfister, and outfitted by production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, “Inception” is easily the director’s most visually unbridled work; its canvas stretches from the skyscrapers of Tokyo to the bazaars of Tangiers, from an amber-lit hotel corridor to a snowy mountain compound (a setpiece that plays like an homage to “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”). Pic has arresting effects and images to spare, such as the sight of Paris folding in on itself like a book or Gordon-Levitt’s Arthur performing a fight scene in zero gravity (the explanation for which is even more dazzling).

“Inception” is a work of staggering imagination that’s almost undone by its very coolness. What it accomplishes is phenomenal. And yet on a fundamental dramatic level it feels vacant, an awesome display of filmmaking brio that offers plenty for the eyes, ears and head but precious little for the heart.

Nolan is a very clever fellow, no argument there. He’s skilled at juggling big ideas and making us think. Now if he can just make us feel.

A Warner Bros. release presented in association with Legendary Pictures of a Syncopy production. Produced by Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan. Executive producers, Chris Brigham, Thomas Tull. Co-producer, Jordan Goldberg. Directed, written by Christopher Nolan.

In the new “Robin Hood,” Russell Crowe’s iconic medieval hero wears no tights, shows little interest in redistribution of wealth, scarcely bothers with the Sheriff of Nottingham, fights alongside Maid — sorry, Lady Marion and all but forces King John to sign the Magna Carta. In other words, director Ridley Scott and his producers were so determined this would not be your father’s Robin Hood that a checklist of familiar incidents and legendary exploits to avoid must have been handed to writers Brian Helgeland (story and screenplay), Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris (story).

The result is less a Robin Hood story than an epic action movie that sees Crowe at the center of English history at the turn of the 13th century. It’s “Gladiator” in Sherwood Forest — only please don’t mention Sherwood Forest either.

Scott supplies a supple visual design and terrific action choreography while Helgeland’s screenplay conjures up robust characters that often lack dimension but make up for this with vigor. The film, which premieres Wednesday at the Festival de Cannes as the fest’s opening movie, could be a crowd-pleaser. If that crowd extends from devotees of the Robin of Olde to teen action fans and admirers of Crowe and Cate Blanchett, Universal may have an international hit.

It’s 1199 A.D., and Robin Longstride (Crowe, who produced with Scott and Brian Grazer) is an honorable Briton and skilled archer in the crusading army of King Richard (Danny Huston) — who, in contrast to most versions of the story, appears at the beginning rather than the end. Fed up with their lot as soldiers, Robin and his men — who include a slimmer-than-usual Little John (Kevin Durand), contributing a few moments of bawdy humor — flee a battle with French soldiers shortly after Richard himself is killed in action.

A few skirmishes later, Robin finds himself in possession of the late monarch’s crown, which he bears back to London disguised as a knight of the realm, Sir Robert Loxley. Along the way, the film introduces its principal villains, although Richard’s cruel successor, John (Oscar Isaac), turns out to be a mere tool for his suspiciously bilingual adviser, Godfrey (chrome-domed Mark Strong, once again typecast).

While Godfrey sets the stage for a Gallic invasion, sabotaging John’s relations with the local barons and their ruthlessly overtaxed citizens, Robin nobly seeks out the family of the fallen Sir Robert. The journey leads him to Nottingham, where he meets the knight’s aging father, Sir Walter (Max von Sydow), and his widow, Lady Marion — no damsel in distress, but a dagger-wielding spitfire played with relish by Cate Blanchett.

The formative Robin Hood gang is there, with Little John (Kevin Durand) most prominent, followed by Friar Tuck (Mark Addy), so we don’t entirely lose our bearings. But now there is a framework for their coming together, and a snapshot into their characteristics.

The battle scenes are muddy and bloody, the artefacts of ancient warfare a fascinating study of man’s ingenuity when it comes to killing machines, and the sounds of battle help make these scenes a visceral experience. Ridley Scott likes to paint on a large cinematic canvas, and he makes good use of all the tools at his command, from aerial views of armies – like the French landing on English shores – to the arrow-cam, sparingly used but to great effect.

This Robin Hood has the Ridley Scott epic treatment all over it, and much like gladiator marks a clear path through a thicket of characters in the story line. Summed up in the headstone quote, “Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions,” the message is simple. Don’t give up until whatever you’re fighting against has been conquered. When you are knocked down, you will become stronger each time you rise.

A Universal release presented with Imagine Entertainment in association with Relativity Media of a Brian Grazer production in association with Scott Free Prods. Produced by Grazer, Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe. Executive producers, Charles J.D. Schlissel, Michael Costigan, Jim Whitaker, Ryan Kavanaugh. Co-producer, Nikolas Korda. Co-executive producer, Michael Ellenberg. Directed by Ridley Scott. Screenplay, Brian Helgeland; story, Helgeland, Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris.

• Genre: Family

• Director: David Nixon
• Cast: Robyn Lively, Jeffrey S.S. Johnson, Maree Cheatham, Tanner Maguire, Michael Christopher Bolten, Bailee Madison, Ralph Waite

With a Facebook fan page of nearly 43,000 friends and its own Youtube channel with equally as many, this movie flew in under Hollywood’s radar and opens this weekend on over 800 screens.

From one of the producers of “Fireproof” and “Facing The Giants,” this heartfelt tale of inspiration, hope and redemption, “Letters to God” is the story of what happens when one boy’s walk of faith crosses paths with one man’s search for meaning — the resulting transformational journey touches the lives of everyone around them.

Tyler Doherty (TANNER MAGUIRE) is an extraordinary eight-year-old boy. Surrounded by a loving family and community, and armed with the courage of his faith, he faces his daily battle against cancer with bravery and grace. To Tyler, God is a friend, a teacher and the ultimate pen pal — Tyler’s prayers take the form of letters, which he composes and mails on a daily basis. The letters find their way into the hands of Brady McDaniels (JEFFREY S.S. JOHNSON), a beleaguered postman standing at a crossroads in his life.

At first, he is confused and conflicted over what to do with the letters. Over time he begins to form a friendship with the Doherty family – getting to know not just Tyler but his tough, tender yet overwhelmed mom (ROBYN LIVELY), stalwart grandmother (MAREE CHEATHAM) and teen brother Ben (MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER BOLTEN) – who are each trying to stand strong against the doubts that come with the chaotic turn their lives have taken. Moved by Tyler’s courage, Brady realizes what he must do with the letters, a surprise decision that will transform his heart and uplift his newfound friends and community – in an exhilarating act of testament to the contagious effect of one boy’s unwavering faith against the odds.

This is a powerful movie, well acted, and based on a true story, that will have the same staying power as “Fireproof” did. The message of this movie is that there is hope because God is listening.

Click on this link to go to the Facebook Fan Page and read the newsfeed. Thousands of people have already been touched by the pre-release screenings. This is a movie for the whole family. No special effects or 3d glasses needed. Just a great story and bring some Kleenex.

Click on pictures to view…

Official movie trailer

Music video

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton reteam once again – this time it’s for an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland.

Mia Wasikowska is 19 year old Alice, a girl who’s facing the possibility of being married off to a man she doesn’t love and on the verge of enduring a life she really doesn’t want.

As she runs off to consider the proposal, she falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself in Wonderland.

However, on her entrance to Wonderland, she finds she has a destiny to fulfill – she must free the land from the tyranny of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter) and restore happiness to the land she visited as a child in her dreams.

But with the Red Queen on the war path, and the evil Jabberwocky to be unleashed, it looks like Alice really has her work cut out.

Alice in Wonderland sees an older version of a classic character returning to old haunts and meeting up with old friends. For some reason the Alice in Wonderland script, by Linda Woolverton, keeps Alice utterly in the dark for the entire film. We know that she’s been to Wonderland before, the other characters know it, but bafflingly she doesn’t. And when she does remember, right at the end, it’s presented as some kind of big reveal. Huh? What makes it all the weirder is that the movie doesn’t always feel like a sequel to Lewis Carroll’s original work but some kind of weird echo, or a reboot.

To dispense with the obvious: Tim Burton’s new Disney movie is not Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece of dream illogic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but more of a C. S. Lewis Carroll Alice in Narnia with your horror host Johnny Depp. In Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, characters, tropes, and actual verses of Alice’s Adventures … and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, are folded into an action-fantasy in which the 19-year-old Alice (in her second plunge down the rabbit hole) must prove her mettle by rising up on the frabjous day and slaying the Jabberwock (“Callooh! Callay!”), thereby saving “Underland” (allegedly the subterranean kingdom’s real name) from the nasty Red Queen.

It all seemed like such a natural fit — Burton and Lewis Carroll, Depp as the key component in fiction’s most eccentric tea party, and 3D put at the service of a story offering unlimited visual possibilities. Not that it’s gone all wrong; not entirely. But for all its clever design, beguiling creatures and witty actors, the picture feels far more conventional than it should; it’s a Disney film illustrated by Burton, rather than a Burton film that happens to be released by Disney.

“You’ve lost your muchness,” Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter remarks to his newly shrunken teenage friend, and much the same could be said of Tim Burton in the wake of his encounter with a Victorian-era heroine of imaginative powers even wilder than his own. Quite like what one would expect from such a match of filmmaker and material and also something less, this “Alice in Wonderland” has its moments of delight, humor and bedazzlement. But it also becomes more ordinary as it goes along, building to a generic battle climax similar to any number of others in CGI-heavy movies of the past few years.

Click on the picture to watch the trailer (it may take a minute to load, so please wait for it).

A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Walt Disney Pictures presentation of a Roth Films/Zanuck Co. production. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd, Joe Roth. Executive producers, Peter Tobyansen, Chris Lebenzon. Co-producers, Katterli Frauenfelder, Tom Peitzman. Directed by Tim Burton. Screenplay, Linda Woolverton, based on the books “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll.

BEST MOTION PICTURE ==> THE HURT LOCKER  Even though the box office was minimal at best there is too much this film has in its favor not to win. The Academy loves to award the underdog.

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE ==> This one is easy… JEFF BRIDGES for his brilliant work in CRAZY HEART. Everyone else agrees.

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLL  ==> CHRISTOPH WALTZ for his ability to set us on edge in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. There were times we were holding our breath waiting for all heck to break loose and he kept ramping up the tension.

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE ==> SANDRA BULLOCK for her uncanny ability to channel Leanne Tuohy in THE BLIND SIDE. When she spoke our hearts simply melted and yet she could take on a street gang as a force of nature.

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE ==> MO’NIQUE for the role of a lifetime in PRECIOUS. Her abuse left us all wanting to rescue her daughter and granddaughters.

And the rest is up to you… I saw Roger Ebert on the Oprah Winfrey show. Even though thyroid cancer has taken his voice box and his jaw, he still reviews movies. He is presently cancer free and lives one day at a time as he is fed through a tube to his stomach. Speaking through a computer interface he said this was one of the easiest years to predict who would win. His predictions and mine are identical, so I’m in good company. We’ll talk after the show. — wf

When I first saw this movie, I knew right away it was rooted in the Cohen brothers personal experiences. It was shot in Minnesota (like “Fargo”) and is deeply rooted in the Jewish communities and settlements of that state. If you are not familiar with their work, Joel and Ethan Cohen have written and directed sixteen movies and are currently working on a remake of “True Grit.” Most of their movies have high critical acclaim, but are not box-office blockbusters. Last year “No Country For Old Men” was awarded four Oscars including Best Motion Picture. “A Serious Man” is the kind of movie you make after that kind of critical recognition. It’s the kind of movie you make when you have the support and funding to make the movie you’ve always wanted to make, whether someone sees it or not. It’s probably why few people have seen it and yet it made the Best Picture nomination.

If you are a Cohen brothers fan, then you will be familiar with the story line. Someone wants to have a normal life, but may do something imoral, illegal, or unethical that eventually “snowballs” into impossible and sometimes fatal circumstances. This particular movie is one of their very few that doesn’t crescendo into bloody violence. There is an ice pick incident in the first five minutes, but it’s relatively minor compared to “No Country…” or “Fargo.” Also, the Cohens are fond of retelling classic stories and “A Simple Man” is basically a revisited Bible story.

Did you hear the one about the guy who lived in the land of Uz, who was perfect and upright and feared God? His name was Job. In the new movie version, “A Serious Man,” some details have been changed. He’s called Larry Gopnik and he lives in Minnesota, where he teaches physics at a university. When we first meet Larry, in the spring of 1967, his tenure case is pending, his son’s bar mitzvah is approaching, and, as in the original, a lot of bad stuff is about to happen, for no apparent reason.

At work, Larry specializes in topics like Schrödinger’s Paradox and the Heisenberg Principle — complex and esoteric ideas that can be summarized by the layman, more or less, as “God knows.” Because we can’t. Though if he does, he isn’t saying much.

Larry, played with poignant, brow-furrowed deadpan by Michael Stuhlbarg, does not exactly fear the divinity whom he, like other devout Jews, calls Hashem (“the name” in Hebrew). It’s more that he’s puzzled, beleaguered, perplexed. What does God want from us? What should we expect from him? As weird inconveniences spiral into operatic miseries, Larry dutifully searches for clues, answers, signs. He talks to learned rabbis and listens to recordings of famous cantors. What he encounters, apart from haunting music and drab suburban sacred architecture, is silence, nonsense and — from the rest of us sitting and watching — laughter.

Everything that happens to Larry takes on a sinister cast. A student (David Kang) protests an “unjust” grade and tries to bribe him. Someone is sending letters to the tenure committee smearing Larry’s good name, while the Columbia Record Club peppers him with dunning calls. His brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), at work on a mad mystico-mathematical text that will unlock the secrets of the cosmos, has moved into Larry’s ranch-style house, taking his physical and mental health issues with him.

And in that house there is sibling warfare (between the bar mitzvah boy, played by Aaron Wolff, and his older sister, played by Jessica McManus), poor reception on the television and, all of a sudden, a collapsed marriage. Larry’s wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), has taken up with an older widower named Sy Ableman (the unctuous Fred Melamed) — allegory, anyone? — who pompously lays claim to the movie’s title role.

Forget plot summary, though. “A Serious Man,” like “No Country for Old Men” and “Burn After Reading,” is fundamentally a shaggy dog story. But while it is funnier than either of those movies, it also has more gravity to it. This is not just because it represents something of a homecoming for the brothers, who grew up in the heavily Jewish Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park in the 1960s. They are hardly the kind to be sentimental about the old neighborhood. But in that milieu their smart-alecky nihilism feels authentic rather than arch — you understand, maybe for the first time, where they are coming from.

While the movie is nominated for Best Picture, it’s doubtful it will win. They won last year and the academy rarely awards sequentially. It is a movie worth seeing, but be warned, “A Serious Man” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has drug use, swearing and the repeated violation of Commandments 3, 5 and 7 to 10.

Click on the picture to view the trailer:

The Cohen brothers talking about “A Serious Man”

A celebration of intellectual curiosity and personal adventure through a portrait of 16-year-old English girl’s questionable romance with a man twice her age, “An Education” is a wonderful coming-of-age film. As a serious student in love with all things French who can’t wait to shake off the constraints of her sheltered suburban London upbringing, circa 1961, Carey Mulligan shines in a captivating performance. Lone Scherfig’s emotionally pulsing, culturally observant picture simply bursts with life.

Based on a memoir by British journalist Lynn Barber, Nick Hornby’s insightful script deftly captures the inner life of a cloistered girl selectively aware of the pleasures, both brainy and sensual, awaiting in the larger world, but who remains restricted by her blinkered parents in Twickenham and the constraints of a strict girls’ school. Since this was a small film with limited release and most reading this will not have seen the film, I’ll provide a short plot synopsis that won’t spoil the finer points of the movie if you decide to rent it.

One rainy day, when Jenny is carrying her cello home from an orchestra rehearsal, super-smooth David pulls up in his flashy car and coolly offers her a lift. He is played by American actor Peter Sarsgaard with a slowish, carefully enunciated English voice that by accident or design really does sound very creepy. David captivates her with his casual directness, his exotic Jewishness, his worldly manner. David has a compulsive liar’s sixth sense for other people’s weaknesses. He picks up on Jenny’s need to be taken seriously – and to escape. Their meeting in the pouring rain on a London street is one of the cutest of meet-cutes. A music lover, David tells her to put the cello she’s carrying into his car to keep it dry and walk alongside since she surely wouldn’t take a ride with a strange man. Who could resist? Certainly not this curious, impressionable girl.

The story, as it is played out, is not too far from the kitchen-sink dramas from the 60s era of Billy Liar and A Taste of Honey. Traditionally, it’s the working-class girl who gets above herself, gets into trouble and has to get it sorted. But this girl is middle class and pregnancy isn’t what happens: what is aborted, or almost aborted, is Jenny’s Oxford career. Her horrible and quite genuinely antisemitic headmistress – a great cameo from Emma Thompson – expels her on learning that she is engaged to a Jew. In the book, there is a brilliantly awful and all-too-real moment when her poor old dad has to go cap-in-hand to the headmistress after the affair has collapsed, begging her to let his humiliated daughter return and sit the Oxbridge exams after all. In the film, Jenny stays heroically defiant, and gets private coaching.

Carey Mulligan captures every nuance of the character with an understated charm reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn. Her transformation from an English schoolgirl in a gray uniform to a lovely young and desirable woman is nothing short of miraculous and took the Sundance Film Festival crowd by storm. But, without Sarsgaard’s restrained and morally ambiguous performance, Mulligan would not be able to shine as brightly. Dominic Cooper is suitably smarmy as Danny, David’s best friend and partner in crime, and Rosamund Pike as his party girl girlfriend is a perfect new role model for Jenny. What makes “An Education” a special piece of work are the social forces going on beneath the surface that inform these all-too-human characters.

The film is brilliant, as is the acting and it earns it’s nomination for Best Motion Picture. I doubt it will win, but it is still worth seeing. The performances are filled with charm and carry the story along with skill.

Click on the picture to see the trailer
[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

A Sony Pictures Classics release of a BBC Films and Endgame Entertainment presentation. (International sales: Odyssey Entertainment, London.) Produced by Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey. Executive producers, James Stern, Wendy Japhet, Douglas Hansen. Directed by Lone Scherfig. Screenplay, Nick Hornby, based on a memoir by Lynn Barber.

So I took a look at the TV schedule and notice that the Academy Awards will be televised next Sunday night and I realized I still have to review the remaining three movies nominated for Best Motion Picture of the Year. So I will be finishing them up this week and then presenting my own predictions for this year’s Oscars. In the past I’ve had a 95% average so listen up and I give you a head start on your Oscar party (if you’re going to one). I do love the movies. It’s a truly American art form that we have invented and shared with the world.

I’ve very happy that an animated feature like “Up” made it into this category. It deserves the nomination. I don’t believe it will get the award, no animated feature ever has, but this is Pixar’s best work to date. “Up” is a captivating odd-couple adventure that becomes funnier and more exciting as it flies along. Tale of an unlikely journey to uncharted geographic and emotional territory by an old codger and a young explorer could easily have been cloying, but instead proves disarming in its deep reserves of narrative imagination and surprise, as well as its poignant thematic balance of dreams deferred and dreams fulfilled. Like all of Pixar’s features, this one enjoys a rewardingly long ride in all venues and formats. It also had the privilege of being the first animated film to open the Cannes Film Festival, on May 13 of last year. No small achievement.

Probably most of you reading this have already seen the movie so I won’t go long on the story line. Pixar has always developed story long before applying any of their stunning trademark animation. Let’s just say the two leading men are 78 and 8 years old, and the age range of those who will appreciate the picture is even a bit wider than that. Like previous classic films about escape from the mundane, from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Wall-E” and many in between, “Up” is universal in its appeal. If you haven’t seen it, rent it. And if you own a blu-ray player, rent the blu-ray disk. The colors are stunning and the animation is razor sharp. This is a wonderfully enjoyable 89 minute ride that you may even want to watch twice to catch all the subtle nuances of humor. I saw it in 3D which again, came off brilliantly without being a distraction.

I couldn’t resist including some “Upisodes” in this post. These are shorts that were not included in the movie. They are in 480p HD and require your computer to have the quicktime player and codec installed. If you have a Mac you’re ready to go. Windows machines with iTunes should be fine as well. When you click on the pictures, give the movie file time to load, they are large. I’m stressing the server a bit, but they are worth it. Enjoy!

Click on pictures to view “Upisodes”

First Aid

Arrival

Trap

A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Walt Disney Pictures presentation of a Pixar Animation Studios production. Produced by Jonas Rivera. Executive producers, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton. Directed by Pete Docter. Co-director, Bob Peterson. Screenplay, Peterson, Docter; story, Docter, Peterson, Tom McCarthy.

This is the movie the Academy is whispering about. No Academy member will own up to it or even admit they discussed this with another member because of the secretive nature of the voting and membership. But, it’s been “rumored” this just may be the movie of the year. My source is non-committal; “Just watch…” is all that was said.

The reasons for The Hurt Locker’s popularity among Academy members are numerous. It’s a low budget movie with a strong script about the effects of the Iraq war on the soldier’s psyche. Some of the scenes are brutally honest in the way this urban war is being waged and the emotional fallout for both civilians and those fighting the uphill battles. The language is strong and the bloodshed is even stronger.

Both Avatar and The Hurt Locker are tied with nine Academy nominations apiece. A bit of irony is the fact that Kathryn Bigelow, Locker’s director, is the ex-wife of James Cameron, Avatar’s director. But that’s where any connection or similarity ends. Whereas Avatar has James Cameron’s signature on every frame, after I watched The Hurt Locker I had to be reminded of who directed it. The story is so powerful and the storytelling is so compelling that everything else doesn’t really matter.

The drama starts with a bang when the soldiers who spend their days clearing the streets of improvisational explosive devices (IEDs) in Baghdad are lifted off their feet by an exploding bomb. With only 38 days left in their rotation, the primary mission for Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) is simply to stay alive long enough to make it back home. Complicating that is their new boss, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), a soldier seemingly impervious to both peril and common sense, who leads his men into impossible situations.

Screenwriter Mark Boal was a war correspondent in Iraq who covered a bomb disposal unit there, which may explain why a film so filled with action and unending suspense eventually emerges as more of a character-driven drama.  James is a man fighting wars on all fronts, so doggedly determined to march to his own tune that he alienates the men around him. Ignoring danger he rushes headlong into action, exponentially increasing risk for himself and his team. He has a life waiting for him back in the States, including a baby, but his service has upended all that. Some soldiers in the Vietnam war came back home addicted to heroin, but the monkeys on James’ back in this 21st century conflict are adrenalin and the suspicion that the skills he’s honed in Iraq have no place in civilian life.

Bigelow and her team have done a fantastic job of recreating the conditions of a country under siege where threats lurk around every corner and even children become pawns in the war machine. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s constantly roving camera further ratchets up the tension. Visually, The Hurt Locker is a stunner, but what makes it so different from the Iraq movies that came before are not its riveting images, forceful performances or engrossing story, but the film’s stance. It is not so much that Bigelow and Boal are apolitical; it is simply that they let the tale speak for itself. The Hurt Locker does not present the Iraq war as something to be for or against, but simply as something that is. Bigelow does not hold back on portraying war’s brutality (the film is R rated), but the focus is strictly on the individual, not on the bigger picture, and the overall effect is more powerful and devastating for it.

It’s a powerful film. It just might be the movie of the year.

Click on picture to view trailer:

A Voltage Pictures presentation, in association with Grosvenor Park Media and FCEF, of a Voltage Pictures, First Light, Kingsgate Films production. (International sales: Voltage, Los Angeles.) Produced by Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro. Executive producer, Tony Mark. Co-producer, Donall McCusker. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Screenplay, Mark Boal.

An urban nightmare with a surfeit of soul, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” is like a diamond — clear, bright, but oh so hard. To simply call it harrowing or unsparing doesn’t quite cut it; “Precious” is also courageous and uncompromising, a shaken cocktail of debasement and elation, despair and hope. Everyone involved deserves credit for creating a movie so dangerous, problematic and ultimately elevating. Marketing has been a problem because the shorthand description is so unpalatable. But this is, for all its scorched-earth emotion, a film to be loved.

Adapted by Damien Paul from the work by one-time Harlem teacher and poet Sapphire, the pic tells the story of Claireece “Precious” Jones (newcomer Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe), a character who might have sprung from the collective brain of Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison and whoever carved the heads on Easter Island. With a jutting jaw and barely visible eyes, Claireece’s face is a monument to the racial crimes of the past 400 years (that this miserable child of 16 can look in the mirror and fantasize seeing a blonde white girl is pungent shorthand for a raft of evils).

The movie drifts starkly between fantasy and reality. Whenever Precious finds herself in a despair so great it can only be described as impossible, she turns to fantasy, impossible and improbable fantasy to cope. At first the blunt transitions are jarring, but so is the horror of her real life. At the age of sixteen she is pregnant for the second time by her father who later in the movie dies from AIDS. She’s also cruelly oppressed by her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique), whose daily routine consists of watching daytime TV, smoking cigarettes and treating her daughter like a slave (any historical parallels are not an accident). The situation is so dire that you almost have to laugh — the way you might laugh, nervously, during the darkest moments of a horror movie. The movie is painful to watch and yet, this is the real life of so many who live in the inner city without hope of ever rising from their circumstances.

Precious has an ability in math which is noticed by her teacher. Her principal gets her enrolled in a special charter school for girls in similar circumstances that show promise. Her teacher takes her in and begins mentoring her. She progresses in reading and writing, as well as math. She also begins taking responsiblity for herself and her children.

In many ways this movie is a much rougher, “R” rated version of “The Blind Side,” but with an uncertain ending. Like “The Blind Side” it demonstrates how a person, regardless of circumstances, can move forward in life and even excel if someone will just believe in them.

“Precious” has already won 19 awards and garnered 26 nominations including Golden Globes for Sidibe and Mo’Nique. I predict there will be several Oscar nominations as well. Morally the film takes you into some of the darkest places of the human condition, but the art in the story telling and the acting is often breathtaking. This movie is disturbing, but good art often is.

Trailer (click on picture)
[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

A Lee Daniels Entertainment and Smokewood Entertainment presentation. (International sales: Elephant Eye Films, New York.) Produced by Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness. Executive producers, Lisa Cortes, Tom Heller. Co-producer, Mark Mathis. Directed by Lee Daniels. Screenplay, Damien Paul, based on the novel by Sapphire.