There’s still a lot to get excited about in the superhero genre. This year alone, we finally get THE AVENGERS, Marvel Studios’ culmination of all the hard work that went into creating this movie universe where superheroes and their villainous counterparts seem right at home (we’ll pretend to forget about IRON MAN 2). After that, we get the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman trilogy, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, which should put quite the exclamation point on a series that had to come a long way on the road to recovery after the damage done by BATMAN AND ROBIN. Last year, we had the excellent Marvel duo of THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA to keep things going on the right track, as well as 20th Century Fox breathing new life into the X-MEN franchise they all but killed themselves. However, in the midst of all those successes, we get saddled with the likes of GREEN LANTERN, which was a failure of cosmic proportions, a reboot of Spider-Man just five years after the last trilogy of films wrapped that no one was demanding and another GHOST RIDER that stands to most likely be even worse than the first. As a result, criticism of whether or not the superhero well is running dry is quite fair and justified on some levels. Sequels and reboots seem to be all that’s left after the rush on comic book properties that brought forth subpar visions of Daredevil, the Fantastic Four, the Punisher and others destroyed so many of these characters on the film front.

Then something unique like CHRONICLE comes along, and gives you hope that there’s still a lot of life left in those superheroes. Directed by Josh Trank and written by Max Landis, CHRONICLE is a bare bones superhero tale at its very core. Gone are the glossy costumes and overcomplicated plots by evil doers, replaced by a trio of teens who stumble upon some type of foreign object that looks a lot like Superman’s baby ship buried beneath the ground one night outside of a high school party and emerge with extraordinary powers. However, as impressive as the powers being put on display by Andrew (Dane DeHaan), Matt (Alex Russell) and Steve (Michael B. Jordan), CHRONICLE is at its best dealing with the emotions that teenagers deal with in navigating through the social hierarchy of high school, coupling that with the responsibility that comes with being able to manipulate objects in space, including yourself into patterns of flight.

These are three kids that you can find in just about any high school in America. Steve is the popular kid at school. He dates a cheerleader. He’s a shoo-in for Senior Class President. He’s a star on the high school football team. He’s “It” roaming the halls on a daily basis. But what does he really have beyond a bunch of kids thinking he’s cool as shit? How many true friends does he really have in the bunch? Who can really lay claim to knowing who he is, outside of the easy labels his high school accomplishments have placed upon him? Beyond that, you have Andrew, who is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. For all intents and purposes, most of his peers would see him as a loser. He claims to be shy, but it leads more to him isolating himself further from his classmates than anything else. He’s the guy who just doesn’t fit in, and he’s typically picked on as a result, either because he’s seen as a weak target by the bullying type or because he’s just so socially awkward that it’s too easy not to take advantage of. Then there’s Matt, Andrew’s cousin, who is too cool for school, and might as well be too cool for everyone else, too. He has this elitist attitude about him that parties and cliques and the usual high school activities are beneath him, which creates his own problems as far as fitting in. All three have connected with others on a personal level, but somehow these three kindred spirits managed to find each other through this freak occurrence.

In typical high school dumbass fashion, they have no respect whatsoever for their powers. They’re throwing baseballs at each other in the hopes of being able to stop them mid-flight before they can make contact. They can use telekinetic powers to move objects with their mind, starting out with Legos before graduating to parked automobiles, toys and shopping carts in a rather funny toy store sequence. Their powers operate like a muscle, or at least that’s what they believe… the more they use it and work it out, the stronger it gets. But quickly they learn how it can come to harm people if they’re not careful about using it, with Andrew sending some redneck tailgater off the side of the road, through a guardrail and into the hospital. We can already start to see the seeds being planted as to which of the three will begin using their powers in anger, turning into the de facto villain of the film, when they begin to believe they’re a greater being than the average human. For CHRONICLE, that’s quite alright, because the predictability isn’t so much an obstacle, because you’re too emotionally invested in the film’s characters to be distracted by the fact that you know the next beat of the story. You’re locked into the realness of these characters, and you want to ride it out to the end with them, no matter what.

DeHaan’s Andrew is the one with the most depth to him. After all, it’s because of him that we get the whole found footage concept incorporated in the film, as he’s bought a camera and decided to film everything. We never quite get a clear answer as to why, since he makes such a purchase before he has super powers, but it could have something to do with capturing his last moments with his dying mother or documenting the physical, verbal and emotionally abuse he endures regularly from his drunk of a father. With this glimpse into Andrew’s home life, we get a better understanding of who he is, but more importantly where he comes from, which ultimately shapes who he’ll later become in CHRONICLE. He’s not a bad kid. He’s just had a shitty home life, bringing the nature versus nurture argument into play as far as who is better served to deal with and control their powers.

The film’s third act is really where things rise to a new level, after having established the characters for the first third of the film and their powers right smack in the middle. This is where sides get drawn, feelings are examined even deeper and you get a true sense of each character’s true self. Have the powers changed them, or are they just amplifications of what was always there to begin with? The film’s climactic battle has traces of the Superman/Zod fight from SUPERMAN II all over it (always a good thing), although this is much more grounded in reality… or at least as grounded in reality as a movie dealing with real-life superheroes can be. This is a full-blown super battle, which is executed quite well by Trank on an emotional level. It’s not about how cool it looks at times, though that’s certainly a bonus. This is about who wins and who loses, and those stakes are given importance by creating characters we have no trouble identifying with. We care what happens to them, which lends added weight to how the story resolves itself. If only more films could pay attention to giving us people we can become invested in during the story… CHRONICLE goes for the substance more than the style, which is why it works.

As for the style itself, I could have done without the found footage model. I can see why it’s used, to capture these characters on a more personal level, drawing you further into their story, making that connection with you as if you’re there with them every step of the way. However, for the first time, I found myself distracting by the shakiness of the handheld camera at times. Plus, because they can make objects float in mid-air at will, the camcorder style of filming becomes a cop out, with basically the reason for Andrew’s camera shooting everything now being reduced to no good reason at all. It works better when CHRONICLE factors in video surveillance camera footage or footage of what’s being recorded by police helicopters or news cameras, but, because the story is strong on so many levels, had it been filmed in a more traditional manner, I don’t think it would have taken away from the effectiveness of the movie.

CHRONICLE is a really good film, and, especially if you’re into superheroes and comic books, I would strongly suggest checking it out. Even if you’re not, there’s enough solid character work to draw you into the personal details of these three guys as they figure out how superpowers can work for, not against them, through the end of their high school careers. As Uncle Ben famously stated, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In CHRONICLE, some learn that lesson in a much harder way than others. However, I get the feeling director Josh Trank really felt the impact of those words the most, because, when you head into making a superhero movie, there are immense pressures to make it really good, because anything less than that is unacceptable in the fanboy community. Well, Trank need not worry any more, because with his power to make a superhero flick, he responsibly made a good one.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK desperately wants to scare you. Unlike the majority of half-assed horror films out there that just go through the motions generating your laughs more than your screams, THE WOMAN IN BLACK tries its absolute hardest to send thrills and chills through your body as a result of what you’re seeing play out on-screen. Unfortunately, to its own detriment, THE WOMAN IN BLACK doesn’t know when enough is enough and tries too hard to frighten you, much to its own detriment. It’s like that sad guy who doesn’t realize how badly he’s smothering a prospective girlfriend candidate by bombarding her with phone calls and text messages all the time, which is only going to lead her to lose interest along the way. It’s just too much. THE WOMAN IN BLACK is that sad guy, choosing to walk a path bordering on a slasher film, over-reliant on jump scares to drum up any reaction from the audience. Any semblance of creepiness is abandoned after the first five minutes, replaced by the cheap tactics of being startled by something unknown lurking around the corner or in the darkness, ready to be sprung on you when least expected. The mystery of the Woman in Black is so thrown together, reduced to a reveal in one fast-paced voiceover letter-reading sequence, which trivializes any events that are supposed to be connected to her, because there is no explanation for any of it as it’s happening to convey to you that it’s important. And, as for the Woman in Black herself, she’s absent for most of the film, rendering the loaded allotment of scares empty, because there’s no weight to any of them. How can anything be truly terrifying when you have no idea what it is that’s supposed to be causing the terror? THE WOMAN IN BLACK is tone deaf to the gothic horror tools it has at its disposal, selecting the physical horror over the psychological, which makes the film far weaker than it really should be.

At first it’s a tad awkward watching a grown Daniel Radcliffe, sans his iconic Harry Potter specs. This is no longer the boy wizard chasing Horcruxes and battling Lord Voldemort. Radcliffe operates as an adult in THE WOMAN IN BLACK, complete with a grown-up job, the memory of his late wife and a son he must care for all by himself. Once you get through the first few minutes of that readjustment period, your memories of Potter fade, and you’re able to accept Radcliffe as Arthur Kipps, a lawyer sent on assignment into the English countryside to settle the legal affairs of a recently deceased woman in some small village. Having lost his wife in childbirth, he’s burdened with a life he wasn’t expecting to take on alone. He does his best for his boy, but the only thing he really has going for him these days is sadness and grief. This particular job is that moment for him to get on with his life – to keep things moving, to get back to work, to get back to happily spending time with his kid. It’s a return to normalcy, or at least as normal as it can possibly be going forward. Be happy with the few introductory scenes with Radcliffe establishing this bit of Kipps early in the film, because once he heads out of town, you’re not going to get anything more. THE WOMAN IN BLACK treats any further character development beyond what we get when first meeting someone like the plague, and stays far away from offering up any substantial new details about anyone that would make this more than Daniel Radcliffe and a bunch of background players.

No one wants Mr. Kipps in their little town. The innkeeper is unfriendly enough to deny him a room in the hopes that he’ll turn around and go home. The rest of the townspeople shoot him funny looks, and the one person who’s supposed to assist him with getting all the paperwork he needs in order is in such a rush for Kipps to get the hell out of town that he has an envelope with some sort of documents already prepared upon his arrival. But why is it they want him to go so badly? What possible danger or threat does he bring with him into town? Well, that isn’t quite clear, because Kipps has no ties whatsoever to whatever has been going on here for years, namely the urban myth of this Woman in Black who comes for the town’s children one at a time whenever she’s seen. Those are the rules, as vague as can be, as to what sets the Woman in Black in motion. Is it just the town’s children in danger? Can the Woman in black expand to other towns? What if the town runs out of children? What if an out-of-towner spots her? Can she then go after their children? If yes, must they be within her own town limits, or can she seek them out elsewhere? There are all types of endless possibilities you can come up with concerning the supposed unlimited reach of the Woman in Black, and the film never really cares much to establish rules around what she can or cannot do, which is a huge problem. If there’s no way to stop the Woman in Black, then what are we even doing here, watching this thing? There’s no thought given as to how she can be defeated, if that’s even the right word for eliminating some type of supernatural entity before she takes down your kid. There’s no weakness given. She’s just free to roam and do as she pleases while the town still has living children, because as long as she’s seen, even just out of the corner of their eye, she can kill again. What if she only thinks they saw her, but really they were looking at something behind her, never really noticing her? It’s a weak premise, and one that I simply couldn’t get past. If she’s to receive any instructions for operation, at least put some thought into it. Don’t get lazy by tossing out some half-baked idea whose vagueness collapses the whole thing.

It’s also a shame that once you get accustomed to Radcliffe in his new role, there’s not much the film allows him to do in it. THE WOMAN IN BLACK becomes quite tiresome to watch, as a great deal of the film is centered around Radcliffe wandering around a dark and rundown house, chasing every last sound, shadow and vision he hears and sees, wondering what it is. That;s because the unfriendly townspeople who are so terrified of the Woman in Black and what she’s done in the past fail to tell Mr. Kipps anything. Yet they still get pissed off at him as if it’s his fault when kids start dying. How was he supposed to know the woman he saw lingering in the house’s courtyard was something of another world and not just some lost old lady.  THE WOMAN IN BLACK bogs Radcliffe down into a story where, for large portions, he roams from room to room with really no idea as to what he’s looking for. There’s a creak in the floorboards. He’d better go check it out. A rocking chair is moving on its own. Let’s investigate. How about a vision of zombie children emerging from the marsh? I still have no idea why all of a sudden they can be seen, in addition to the Woman in Black. Huge chunks of THE WOMAN IN BLACK are an absolute mess, which might be where the overuse of jump scares come in. Director James Watkins is hoping to shock you into forgetting that THE WOMAN IN BLACK doesn’t make much sense.

The one thing I did come away liking was the end of the film, which poetically tied up the predictable direction I knew the movie was heading in since early on. Within the context of the film, it makes perfect sense, and it works with what the film does put on the table. However, one well thought out ending doesn’t excuse the lack of brain power that went into the rest of the film. My standards for horror are much too high to succumb to something of this sort, which isn’t to say that THE WOMAN IN BLACK is a bad movie… it’s just not a particularly good one either. The film feels quite stale at times, which is to be expected when your protagonist’s solution to the problem is borrowing heavily from THE RING, and I’ve found more fright walking through a haunted house with live actors, who at least understand that timing is key to scaring the audience, not a constant bombardment that eventually desensitizes those watching from the bigger ones down the lines. THE WOMAN IN BLACK is a disappointment on the horror front, as is Daniel Radcliffe who wastes away in the film with nothing really to do, except look in various directions where noise is emanating. Post-HARRY POTTER, he’s capable of so much more, having really worked hard on his craft to be a better actor. He deserves better than THE WOMAN IN BLACK… but, then again, so do we.

“Holy shit…”

Those were the first words that managed to escape my mouth after surviving the suffocating experience of THE GREY, Joe Carnahan’s masterfully brilliant film about a group of oil workers trapped out in the middle of nowhere, battling for survival against the elements and a pack of aggressive wolves after their plane crashes. This is so much more than Liam Neeson, armed with a set of special skills, fighting wolves with his bare hands, although I’m pretty sure that flick would have been remarkably bad-ass. THE GREY is an emotional journey shared with seven men – men with families they have fond memories of, with loved ones waiting for them at home, with lives still left to live – trying to escape from Fuck City as one calls it. It’s unrelenting and devastating, never once taking its foot off the pedal of intensity.

Liam Neeson is at the heart of the group, as Ottway, a hired killer who works for a big petroleum. No, he’s not out whacking those against the use of fossil fuels… but he is out taking down hungry wildlife who threaten the drill teams he’s sent to protect. In this job at the end of the world, he’s surrounded my men unfit for mankind – roughnecks, rednecks, tough guys, assholes, etc. It’s hardly where he saw himself being years earlier, and to say his life is full of regrets would be an understatement. Putting an end to it all has certainly crossed his mind, but instead of taking the cheap way out, Ottway continues to persevere, living solely off the memories of better times. At this point, all he wants is to be left alone and to keep to himself, something that’s going to be rather difficult when his flight home goes down in the middle of the frozen Alaskan tundra. It’s during a fierce plane crash sequence that your pulse begins to race, and THE GREY violently grabs hold of you, ready to take you on this exhilarating trek.

Neeson, exuding the same qualities that made him a quiet force to be reckoned with in TAKEN and UNKNOWN, becomes the de facto leader since he has the most knowledge of the wilderness. In a truly heartbreaking scene, it’s Neeson’s Ottway speaking to a fellow passenger whose survival is about to be short-lived. He’s honest with him about the fact that he’s going to die, and does his absolute best to help him find a few minutes of peace before it happens. It’s a brutally candid moment at a time when those who have managed to live through the crash are looking for some semblance of hope. We only crossed paths with this guy on the plane minutes ago, but we feel the pain of his loss. That’s how well Carnahan’s storytelling operates throughout the film. For guys we barely know anything about, over the course of THE GREY, we come to feel as if we’ve known them for quite some time, as if they’ve become our friends. There’s a vulnerability at this lowest point that allows each them to be opened up to us. These aren’t guys who are able to get by on talking tough anymore. After all, that doesn’t mean a damn thing when there are wild animals trying to hunt you down. It doesn’t amount to much when the possibility you could freeze to death is increasing. God willing, we’ll never have to go through anything even remotely similar, but we can understand and identify with their fears. We can put into perspective our own relationships with those we love, those we’re close to, and imagine how they would impact us in such dire circumstances. Those people are the driving forces for us to continue living. No one leads a perfect life, but we’re not done with them yet… not when we want that chance to see our spouses, our significant others, our parents, our kids, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. again. No matter how bad we think life is, there is always someone we think about who has the chance to make it better. That’s what we fight for. We fight for the idea that there is something good on the horizon, because of them, and there’s a part of us that fights to keep living for them as much as for us. That’s what makes THE GREY so punishing. We’re not watching some untouchable characters we barely recognize. We’re watching ourselves.

THE GREY refuses to show you any type of mercy, and why should it? What type of charity would a territorial wolfpack ever show towards another living creature they felt was intruding near their den? However, it’s not the wolves that weighed the heaviest on my mind watching the film; it was the hopelessness. It was the loss. It was the fight that could be triumphant one minute, and the next lead to your death. No matter what small victories this group of men may achieve, they may be for naught soon enough. “Dead is dead.” It doesn’t matter how long you last if, in the end, you all wind up in the same place. That’s the gut punch of THE GREY. No matter how badly things seem to be, they continue to feel as if they’re getting worse.

Other than Dermot Mulroney who absolutely disappears into his role as Talget, to the point that you barely even recognize it’s Dermot Mulroney in there, the true breakout performance in THE GREY is Frank Grillo. In every group, there’s always going to be one asshole, and Grillo’s John Diaz is it. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have any type of survival skills of his own, or that he doesn’t have the faintest clue about how to deal with wolves, or that he’d rather spend time rifling through the pockets of dead men for money he may never get to spend than searching for food or anything to burn for a fire. He’s another Alpha male locked up with Neeson’s Ottway, and that makes for some extra friction on this quest for safety and maybe rescue. He doesn’t like to be told what to do, even if it might be the best thing for him. But the days of being a loner are done. Being on your own out here means isolating yourself as an easy target for wolf dinner, so Diaz will have to come to terms with his own insecurities, his own fears, his own concerns to get on the same page as everyone else. After all, that’s his best and only chance for make it through this. Out of everyone, Grillo’s is the one performance that turns you over the course of the film, moving you from hoping he eventually gets his to hoping he makes it out alive. A lot of that can be credited to the formation and arc of the character, but how often have we seen that go by the wayside when in the hands of a lesser actor? Grillo is able to demand that you feel for John Diaz, because there’s a part of him that resides in all of us, too – the part that refuses to show weakness, to admit we’re afraid of anything. He’s a facade that’s stripped away little by little until we get to his core, until we get to see who he is and what he’s made of, which is awfully close to what’s inside everyone else. However, Grillo allows for a fascinating deconstruction of a man who starts off claiming he’s ready to take on whatever obstacles stand in his way and ends up really ready.

Joe Carnahan never pulls back to give you any detachment from THE GREY’s scenario. He locks you in close enough with this group of survivors that you might be fair game for the wolves yourself if you fall behind even a hair. Carnahan leaves the tension dial turned up as far as it will go, because, at any time, these wolves are capable of striking. We hear their howls in the not-so-far distance. Their growling and snarling accompanies the frozen breath we can see lurking. Their threat remains imminent at all times, keeping you on edge that every moment you spend with these characters may be the last. THE GREY never pulls back on the intensity, leaving you holding your breathe for two hours until you can finally exhale with satisfaction as the final credits begin to roll.

How much do I love THE GREY? I’ve already seen the film on three different occasions, with each time playing just as well as the last, each time hitting me with a wall of emotion at the same moments, with new moments added to the arsenal of stuff that really touches deep upon my feelings. It’s intense, it’s funny, it’s adventurous, it’s frightening, it makes you think… THE GREY is the full package, and one tremendous movie that I can’t recommend enough. You want to know a film you absolutely have to make it a point to see…? THE GREY is it. It’s that damn great.

It wouldn’t surprise me if somewhere throughout the annals of time, there existed a version of RED TAILS that dazzled and excited, while paying proper tribute to the legacy of the great men who helped at least bend the color barrier in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. George Lucas has been desperate to tell their story for quite some time, ever since the idea came up on his radar back around 1988. But, as we’ve experienced with George Lucas in the past, he never knows when to leave well enough alone, and, while I’m jumping to conclusions with my assumption here, I get the feeling he couldn’t take his hands off RED TAILS long enough without a nip here, a tuck there and tweaks all-around. There’s really no other explanation for the laughable mess that is RED TAILS. The aerial combat, while first-class to look at, has the distinct feel of action sequences I’ve already seen in the past, mostly throughout the STAR WARS saga. The dialogue is cringe-worthy, invoking memories of the ill-received prequels, making Anakin Skywalker’s famous “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth” lines sound like Shakespeare in comparison. As for the characters themselves, it’s an assortment of call signs that are too numerous to remember individually, but that might explain why each gets their own distinct character trait (one per pilot). As I remember them, you had the arrogant one, the leader who lacks confidence, the new guy, religious dude, man with the weird voice, etc. And even with those black marks on the film, RED TAILS still manages to look cheaply constructed at times with plain red font opening credits that look to have been lifted from a 1985 television movie and ADR so bad you can see the words not matching up with the mouth speaking it, wisely on the close-up of the character talking. That’s what happens when all your focus is on making the visual effects look nice.

The film pays no real attention to how the Tuskegee Airmen experiment came to be nor to how important they were in the context of history. Why would it? It makes way more sense to start some romantic subplot between one of the pilots and an Italian woman, hoping to inject some lighter moments into the film with their inability to understand each other’s native tongue. However, that speaks volumes about how much one could actually learn about the Tuskegee Airmen from RED TAILS. I got more information about how these two people met (she waved at him while he was flying over her town… yeah, that’s really it) than about anything concerning the Airmen’s place in the Army at the time. There’s really nothing to a Colonel (Bryan Cranston) trying to shut down the program, because he doesn’t like Negroes, or a bunch of officers denying entry into one of their clubs to one of the Airmen, simply because he’s black. Those examples of the racial divide that existed during this time of American history have become so cliché in films depicting the struggle of blacks before and during the civil rights movement that they are almost expected at this point, minimizing any impact they used to have, back when visualizing this behavior was still jarring. Of course, it only makes sense for the Airmen’s flying to gain them some acceptance with the very same people that despised them due to color only about 10 minutes earlier. So original.

When RED TAILS does want to play up the Airmen’s fight, not only for their country but for themselves, it allows Terrence Howard as Col. Bullard to get up on his soapbox and lecture you about how hard all of this is. It feels as if Howard is yelling at not only his men but you as well, hoping his volume will be enough to inspire you, but there’s no build to any of his words, no momentum. He might as well be trying to deliver Bill Pullman’s Presidential speech from INDEPENDENCE DAY, but not just at the film’s crescendo… every single time. It’s nice to see Cuba Gooding Jr. dusted off, but he might as well have gone back into storage to wait for a better project to be involved with, because RED TAILS certainly isn’t it. He’s given nothing more to do than mug for the camera with a pipe he never smokes, occasionally interjecting his own slightly more toned-down versions of Howard’s soliloquies.

Until the film’s climactic air assault, you never get the sense that the Airmen are ever in danger, anytime they take to the skies. They’re flying broken-down planes, being fired upon from all directions, and yet we’re supposed to believe that these men, who’ve never seen combat, are so good at it right from the get-go. The Germans only have one ace pilot who keeps recurring (they refer to him as Pretty Boy, and that’s exactly how he appears in the credits), and even he can’t even manage to make a dent in the Airmen’s ranks. When one is actually taken down and captured, his period of being prisoner is literally given about three minutes of screen time to be neatly wrapped up, and when a pilot is lost in combat, his leader lets out a “Damn you” for his death with about as much conviction as me asking for mayo when I order a sandwich. It’s as under-dramatic as Darth Vader’s “Noooooooo!” is overdramatic. RED TAILS simply just tries to do way too many things with way too many characters, except the one thing it was originally intended to do – tell the story of the Tuskegee Airmen.

John Ridley and Aaron McGruder’s script is ridiculously amateur, and Anthony Hemingway’s direction really can’t do anything to save the film from nose-diving into a fiery blaze. Speaking of crashes, this is the epitome of how bad RED TAILS gets – How does a plane drenched in fuel not explode after a crash landing until crews are able to rescue the pilot in time, saving his life? I think that about says it all. There have been rumors of lengthy reshoots of the film done by Lucas, after he was extremely unhappy with Hemingway’s work. The company line is that he only took it over, because Hemingway couldn’t return as a result of shooting another project, but, between the STAR WARS-style action and the terrible acting which delivers even worse dialogue, Lucas’ fingerprints are all over this thing, and it shows. For a film that’s been in the works for 24 years, RED TAILS is an extreme disappointment. One would think a movie that’s been in development for that long would have been better or just never have happened. Unfortunately, neither of those are the result, and both we and the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen suffer as a result.

Roman Polanski’s new film CARNAGE, based on the play Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage, features strong performances from each member of the film’s wonderful cast – Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz – with intriguing dialogue covering everything from morals and values to gender roles to world views to politics to parenting skills. However, while it can be hysterical at times, I couldn’t figure out why four people, who’ve come together to discuss an incident between their sons, and who clearly rub each other the wrong way, were still in the same place with each other after 79 minutes.

Foster and Reilly play the Longstreets, Penelope and Michael, whose kid was the victim of the “attack.” They’ve invited other the other involved child’s parents, Nancy and Alan Cowan (Winslet and Waltz) to hammer out a resolution to the entire situation. Easier said than done as what should be an easy yet slightly awkward conversation escalates into a full-blown war of words between the foursome where every man or woman is for themselves as their true beliefs on everything from children’s behavior to the war in the Sudan come rushing to the forefront and take precedent over the actual issue at hand.

How do we even get there? I’m not quite so sure. Both couples are set to leave each other on more than one occasion before circumstances surface solely for the purpose of keeping this disagreement raging more fiercely. Who invites people back inside for coffee when they’re already at the elevator ready to leave? Who rushes back inside of a place they’re desperate to leave to finish a phone call when they can pick it up at the tail end of the elevator, free from the misery they’ve been enduring for the past however minutes? It just doesn’t make any sense for these people to be in a room with each other for that long, and the act really starts wearing thin about halfway through when you begin wondering if anyone’s ever going to escape this place. It just seems to keep going and going and going with no end in sight, as the focus of the initial meeting is long gone and forgotten.

Foster is intriguing to watch as the overdramatic and overly emotional drama queen of the group, the one who continues to add on unnecessary jabs and comments to each statement, as if for her own satisfaction of knowing she’s on the right side of things. It’s not enough for her that there was an attack… it has to be a vicious attack. It’s not enough for her that her son to have had dental damage. It must be painful dental damage. Penelope is a grating personality, the likes of which I’ve had the displeasure of encountering in real life. I’ve actually dated a girl like that once, so I can see where everyone in CARNAGE transforms from pleasant to irritated to downright pissed mostly due to her prompting. Just spending a few minutes with someone with those traits is exhausting, so to see it play out on-screen has similar effects. Sure, it’s a good performance, but, in the overall vision of the film, this one character can go a long way in attempting to destroy your own happiness and the smile with which you started CARNAGE.

John C. Reilly is the stand-out of the film, which is no surprise to me, considering how much I’ve enjoyed his work over the years. As Michael, he is the ultimate compromiser. He doesn’t want to say anything that might ruffle any feathers or get anyone offended. He would like everyone to get along peacefully and put this bad situation behind them all. He has to placate his guests at all costs, putting out any fires that his sensitive wife may have started… but, when the shit really hits the fan, the calm he’s worked so hard to build is blown to smithereens, sending Michael from one extreme to the other. He’s hot-headed. He’s impulsive, and, in the moment, he doesn’t give a shit. He’s tired of playing nice. He has his own point of view, and goddamn it… he’d like it to be heard for once. This is the type of role best suited to Reilly, allowing him to play to both of his strengths – as a friendly, welcoming guy and as an explosive personality who can blow his top under the right circumstances.

Waltz also does a fine job as Alan, who tries to stay above the fray with his condescending intellect. He doesn’t have time for such pettiness. He’s legal counsel for a big pharmaceutical company dealing with the secret side effects of one of their drugs getting out. He’s got bigger problems than his kid knocking out some other kid’s teeth. “Yeah, he’s sorry; we’ll pay for it. Good-bye.” That’s about how much time he’d otherwise spent on something this “important,” and his constant time on the phone dealing with that business as opposed to this business is a pretty strong sign of where this meeting ranks on his list of priorities. His verbal jousting with Foster make it all worthwhile when the character is engaged, as his blunt honesty is refreshing and just about the only constant the film can claim. He’s largely the same person he was coming out that he was going in, but, in the hands of Waltz, watching an above-it-all prick like this is quite entertaining.

Winslet is the only one who really gets lost throughout the film, as Nancy just doesn’t have much to offer to the dynamic of the film for large periods of time. She’s the straight man by default for most of CARNAGE as everyone else’s bold personas take hold. She doesn’t necessarily have much of a problem with anyone involved here, except her own husband, who pays more attention to his Blackberry than to her. She has some beef with Reilly’s Michael about his treatment of the family pet hamster, but that can’t go too far beyond one conversation about it. Nancy is on the outskirts of the verbal battle constantly being waged during the film, and it’s a bit of a waste of Winslet’s talents that she’s so marginalized here with a role that doesn’t really have much to do.

There are quite a few unique perspectives and points of view to consider during CARNAGE’s running dialogue – Reilly’s stance on the couple and the family is priceless – but more than anything, it operates like the stage play it was initially conceived as. This window into situation where these individuals are forced to deal with each other doesn’t translate well to the screen at all. Yes, the conversations are thought-provoking, but, in a movie where nothing really happens, they have a tendency to come across as empty dialogue and sometimes time filler. CARNAGE is a story, if even that, grasping at straws to keep going, when it should have been over at a fraction of the time.

CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD

If only CONTRABAND didn’t look so amateurish and feel so stupid, it might have been a decent action flick for Mark Wahlberg to proudly add to his resume. Yeah, if only… instead what audiences are subjected to is a film with way too many plot twists and character turns, most of which are ridiculously unnecessary, a family filled with idiots at the center of the story and a director who clearly has no grasp of how to work a camera.

Wahlberg stars as Chris Farraday, a former smuggler who’s gotten out of the life after starting his own family (so this is what Han Solo’s life is like after RETURN OF THE JEDI). He’s got a wife (Kate Beckinsale), two kids, his own security business on the rise… he doesn’t need to be running anything illegal across the U.S. border anymore. Unfortunately, his wife Kate comes with some family of her own, which includes a dumb-ass of a brother-in-law (X-MEN: FIRST CLASS’ Caleb Landry Jones), who thought it might be a good idea to keep the smuggling profession in the family beyond Chris’ retirement, and when he has to dump a package that’s intended for a shady recipient, guess who’s going to have to step in and bail that idiot’s ass out of trouble? And, if you think it’s so easy as just letting your relative by marriage pay for his stupid mistake and get whacked, CONTRABAND throws in the caveat that such a debt is then passed onto the family when the brother-in-law is dead, so Wahlberg is still going to have to get involved, or else his immediate family is going to be put in danger by someone else’s actions. As you can tell, CONTRABAND wastes no time in drumming up the stupidity.

Giovanni Ribisi plays Tim Briggs, the man that’s owed, and it’s quite a shame that Ribisi has been reduced to these white trash scumbag roles over and over again, having seen what he’s capable of in roles beyond that, such as in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, BOILER ROOM and SKY CAPTAIN. But he turns it up enough to make Wahlberg’s Farraday look so clean by comparison that you forget the fact that you’re still supposed to root for a criminal… just the lesser of them. Chris Farraday is going to do what he has to do for his family, so that means with the help of his best friend and confidante Sebastian (Ben Foster), they’ll have to line up a new job that can net the type of money needed to pay off idiot brother-in-law’s outstanding balance.

Director Baltasar Kormákur starred in the original Icelandic version of the story, REYKJAVIK-ROTTERDAM, back in 2009, and apparently he thought it’d be a good idea to get behind the camera in bringing forth an Americanized version. Too bad that’s not the case. While Kormákur does have experience in the director’s chair prior to this film, you’d never know simply by how sloppy CONTRABAND looks. It’s as if it was smuggled from his editing suite to the projector without anyone from the studio ever getting a look at the final film. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he smuggled it right past his editor in much the same way. The movie is filled with all types of unnecessary camera movements, ranging from zoom-ins to zoom-outs, almost like they were still trying to figure out what’d look the best for the film during on-set rehearsals… only then, they decided to incorporate that practice into the film. The camera shakes and pans in jerky fashion, making you wonder if there was no money left in the budget for a camera rig or even a tripod of any kind, especially after the one explosion beauty shot that’s the one nice action moment the entire movie contains. CONTRABAND has the look of a student film made by someone getting their hands on a camera for the first time. Not like the story had drawn me in much to begin with, but it becomes even more distracting when you’re paying less and less attention to the rest of the movie.

The biggest issue with CONTRABAND though is it surrounds Wahlberg with a family full of dummies. Seriously, be it his wife or his brother-in-law, they’re incapable of combining their brain power to make one smart decision throughout the entire film, further complicating Chris Farraday’s situation and further increasing the number of eye-rolls I felt compelled to make. When Ribisi decides to pay Farraday’s wife a visit at their home, sending a message about what’ll happen without payment, it’d only make sense for Kate to put herself in a situation where she’s alone only a few days later for it to possibly happen again, even if it means telling her friend to leave, not just because she’s alright, but because it’s convenient for more confrontations to take place, cementing what a piece of shit Ribisi’s character really is… like we weren’t sure of that already. Plus, when you’re nearly accosted by your drunk friend who’s supposed to be watching out for you, it only makes sense that you go back to his place alone immediately in order to recover your stuff rather than waiting for a better time and probably one where someone can accompany you. So stupid.

I think I fully grasped how dumb things were about to get when, within the film’s first few minutes, you already had people talking about smuggling like it’s no big deal. They’re so nonchalant about their criminal activity that they discuss it openly in bars and at wedding receptions. How often do you hear drug dealers or bank robbers talking about their plans or past scores out in public, either in real life or in the movies? Never, because that’s the type of behavior that gets you pinched. However, that never seems to cross the mind of any of these morons, who might as well be inviting the cops to arrive with their personalized handcuffs.

CONTRABAND is your typical throwaway movie. You’re not damaged if you see it, but you’re certainly not missing out on anything if you don’t. There’s not much here that would have me recommending you check it out willingly, as I believe your time would be better served cleaning out your refrigerator. There’s not nearly enough action to make it enjoyable, and there’s definitely not enough intelligence involved to not have you walking away from the theatre feeling slightly insulted.

Every once in awhile, I may have my disagreements with The Mouse – renaming JOHN CARTER to get rid of OF MARS in the title, replacing Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride with that Winnie The Pooh ride in the Magic Kingdom, making PRINCE OF PERSIA, letting Eddie Murphy anywhere near THE HAUNTED MANSION, etc. – but one of the things they’ve done well since the very beginning is making sure their brand carries on with new generations. Oh, sure… it’s all in the mindset of making money, because dead people don’t buy Tinkerbell merchandise, but, strictly on an entertainment level, they’ve allowed parents to expose their kids to the Disney classics on a regular basis as originally intended, on the big screen, ensuring that those kids’ kids get to see it down the line and so on and so forth. Disney movies aren’t for one particular audience… they’re for everyone, and they’re really more than just films… they’re movie-going experiences to be shared with your family, with your friends, with your loved ones.

I always laugh when ignorant people claim to not watch movies like this past a certain age, chalking them up to cartoons, as if there’s something wrong with them for enjoying a good film in an animated package. Disney films, in particular those regarded as classics (How many people really remember THE SWORD IN THE STONE?), hold up remarkably well over time, because they’re good stories. There’s a reason CINDERELLA, SNOW WHITE, SLEEPING BEAUTY, DUMBO, PINOCCHIO, etc. have stayed with us for so long, beyond the theme parks, since they were originally released back in the early 20th Century. Adults like the opportunity to go back to their childhoods, to see the movies they loved growing up, to find that magic (I know, it’s such a Disney cliché) again in a theatre, something they’re not going to find with the latest Adam Sandler debacle. But, more than that, they want to share those feelings with their children, or their nephews, or their cousins, or whoever. It’s a bonding experience that they probably shared with their parents, or their cool aunt, or whoever got them hooked on Disney. I remember seeing SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES at the movie theatre as a kid. I remember seeing PETER PAN… and BAMBI, and countless others, as Disney stuck to their re-release schedule of seven to ten years for all of their greats.

It’s nice to see that’s happening in similar fashion now with some of the modern Disney classics. While I’d love for them to keep re-releasing some of their older films, not converted to 3-D, I’m fully on-board with The Mouse’s decision to bring people back to seeing some of their recent greats on the big screen. A lot of us have them on DVD, some on Blu-ray, but it’s still not the same as being able to walk into a theatre to watch these films with hundreds of others who share in the same affection for them. I absolutely made it a point to see the TOY STORY/TOY STORY 2 double-feature they put out there for us in 3-D not too long ago. I was excited to be able to revisit THE LION KING once again, I’m excited for FINDING NEMO’s re-release, this time in 3-D, as the Pixar films lend themselves quite well to the 3-D conversion (Wow… has it really been nine years?!), and the same goes for their planned re-releases of THE LITTLE MERMAID and MONSTERS INC. However, I was really quite pumped for the re-release of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Growing up, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and ALADDIN were my two favorites during the Disney Renaissance of the late-80s/early-90s. Others prefer Ariel’s above-water adventures or Simba’s rise to the throne, but, between Robin Williams’ turn as the Genie and the overall feel of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, those were the two Disney recent era films that have stuck with me most. I was a little apprehensive as to what the 3-D print would look after THE LION KING, in which the illusion was completely unnecessary, and played like a diorama, with two-dimensional images seemingly just layered upon each other to create depth of field. My greatest fear was that it’d be distracting and take away from the overall presentation of the first animated film to land an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. But there was hope fighting to eliminate my doomsday scenario. My wife Nikki had the pleasure of seeing BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in 3-D for its Blu-ray release, and couldn’t stop telling me about how wonderful it looked. Granted, the colors were a bit more vibrant due to the higher resolution, but she stated emphatically that the film looked beautiful. I had heard similar sentiments from those who saw the 3-D version back in 2010, when Disney initially planned to re-release it before shelving the idea. Good thing THE LION KING made all that money to change their minds. While I worried as I usually do about having to watch a movie that’s gone through the post-conversion, because it’s not the same as the real thing, there was optimism creeping in that this might turn out okay.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3D is more than okay. It looks incredible. Right from the opening prologue, the 3-D enhancements blow away anything shown in THE LION KING re-release. The trees have substance to them. They no longer look like drawings. The trunks have a roundness to them, as if they were real, and you can see such detailed texture in the bark. There is noticeable depth of field throughout the film,  in the various landscapes and settings, to further bring the film alive. Whether it’s a foreground shot of the Beast’s castle with his entrance gates clearly separating the distance or the gorgeous ballroom dancing sequence during the film’s title song, which makes the computer animation of the chandelier and marble columns stand out even better, the 3-D add-on doesn’t take away one bit from the film. It’s noticeable only when it’s making the film more attractive to the eye, but by and large, you don’t even know it’s there, which is the way it should be. It blends into the film rather than calling attention to itself, allowing you to enjoy the film with all the extra bells and whistles kept in the background. You never see the seams, unless you’re looking for them.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3D is the same great film I remember from 21 years ago. Belle isn’t your run-of-the-mill Disney princess. In fact, she’s not even starved for love, as some of the others. She’s an intellectual who wants so much more than her provincial life. She can’t talk to anyone in her small village but the bookseller, as he’s the only other person she interacts with who gets the appeal of reading. She’s not looking for love, and is even turned off by the immediate prospect of it, if her main options are Gaston and… well, that’s it. Belle’s not interesting in his muscles or his trophies, as most of the mindless and oddly all blonde maidens in town. She has a higher standard for her dream, and it doesn’t begin or end with an arrogant braggart who is more than happy to tell you about his hunting skills, his wrestling prowess or his ability to grow body hair. Gaston remains one of Disney’s more entertaining villains, as his boastful yet clueless ways make for a character who is far dumber than he looks, which can only lead to danger down the line.

The love story still holds true between these two unlikely candidates – a selfish prince-turned-beast who needs to find love and have love find him in order for the spell to be broken and his original appearance, as well as that of his servants and even his dog, to be restored, and this woman who happens into the Beast’s presence solely by accident, with no thoughts of love until her heart until BAM! There they are. It’s opposites attracted, even if the romance springs up a bit more suddenly it seems, looking at the film as an adult. Once they’re able to get past their own stubborn ways, Belle and the Beast begin to enjoy each other and to understand one another. However, after saving her life from a pack of violent wolves, it feels as if they bury that hatchet rather quickly.

That’s a minor nitpick though in an otherwise complete film. The music remains, from top to bottom, one of Disney’s best. There are no weak links in the soundtrack, and I gained a new appreciation for songs such as “Something There Before” and “The Mob Song,” along with the love I already had for “Belle (Bonjour),” “Gaston” and “Be Our Guest.” The supporting characters such as Lumiere, Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts bring their own charm to the film, without detracting from the core love story, although there’s a lot more doubt as to the point of LeFou’s existence this time around, other than to give Gaston a male worshipper of sorts.

This is a dazzling presentation of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and, for those of you who remember it fondly, make it a point to catch this one in theatres before it’s gone. The Blu-ray is now available, but, no matter how big your TV is, it can’t possibly do this one justice. If you haven’t seen BEAUTY AND THE BEAST yet, I’m not quite sure what you’re doing with your life, but now’s the time to change that. This time around, I was able to share my BEAUTY AND THE BEAST experience with my wife, who loves Disney animation probably even more than I, and my son Will who is right around 2 ½ now. Once again, it’s a bonding experience. He watches Disney films at home all the time (TOY STORY 3 and MONSTERS INC. rank as his favorites), and we’ve attempted to take him to the movies before to see how he’d handle it. While he’s always been relatively good, he’s never quite made it through one in the theatre in its entirety. That changed with BEAUTY & THE BEAST, as he was locked in from the very beginning. Is that a sign of his maturing age? Perhaps. Or could it be something beyond that, speaking to the ability of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST to engage audiences of all ages? I think I’ll go with that reasoning for this re-release of a “tale as old as time” that still as timeless as ever.

CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD

At the very beginning of THE DEVIL INSIDE, it is clearly stated that the Vatican doesn’t endorse exorcisms, but it also doesn’t endorse the film. Well, why would it? If the Vatican was finally going to put their stamp of approval on any movie, it certainly wasn’t going to be this mediocre attempt at horror. Exorcisms and possessions seem to be Hollywood’s new go-to in the genre, as just in the past couple of years, we’ve gotten THE LAST EXORCISM and THE RITE, neither of which made the grade for me (there’s plenty more over the last decade). If you’ve seen one exorcism movie, you’ve seen them all, as the same bag of tricks – body contortion, speaking in tongues, vulgar and sexually suggestive language – can getting spilled out over and over again. It’s a constant feeling that we’re watching the same movie over and over again, just with a different name slapped onto it. And to make it even worse, following the success of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY series (which has managed to make the demon interplay interesting and terrifying), found footage or faux-documentary seems to be the way to go as a new entry into the world of exorcism.

THE DEVIL INSIDE tries to do both at the same time, following Isabella Rossi (Fernanda Andrade) on her quest for answers regarding the mother she hasn’t seen in 20 years. That’s because back in 1989, she killed three people in her home – two priests and a nun – and, after being found not guilty by reason of insanity, was committed to a mental hospital before being transferred to a similar facility, but all the way in Rome. Hmmm… that’s awfully close to the Vatican and their exorcism school, no…? Anyway, Rossi thinks that the only way to really find out what’s going on with her mother is to of course make a documentary about it, recruiting filmmaker Michael Schaefer (Ionut Grama) to shoot the whole thing. I’m not sure why anyone would think that’s the best course of action – digging up the deepest, darkest secrets of your mom’s violent and possibly mental unstable history in movie form, but then again, I don’t understand why people choose to let their spouses know that their children might not really be theirs on national television either (I love you, MAURY).

Along the way, they’re able to get two rogue exorcists, Father Ben Rawlings (Simon Quarterman) and Father David Keane (Evan Helmuth), who operate outside of the permission of the Vatican while receiving its training, taking on cases, which the Church has rejected the candidates as being possessed. Isabella is able to get them interested enough in her own mother’s case that they’ll give her their own evaluation, and see if they can at least get it reconsidered by the Vatican if they uncover any true evidence of possession. If not, they’re probably going to release a bunch of hell (literally) upon themselves, since no two exorcisms are the same, and there’s no telling if they’ll be able to make a dent in whatever may be living within the elder Rossi.

There’s certainly enough exorcism going on in THE DEVIL INSIDE, but the problem with that is the film peaks way too soon with what it shows you. The priest duo insist that the only way Isabella is truly going to learn about possession and exorcism is by seeing it for herself, so you know that means they’re taking her out on a call. I guess that’s the equivalent of a police ride-along in the exorcist industry, which sounds quite ridiculous, considering how dangerous we’re told these things can be for the priests involved… now we’re inviting civilians onto the scene, which you know can’t end well.

Anyway, we get a first exorcism of a completely random possession case, complete with wall climbing, screaming, yadda yadda yadda, and then we’re left with a movie that still hasn’t even gotten into Isabella’s mother yet. So what really are we going to see going forward that we haven’t seen in this first, rather intense, sequence? It’s as if director/writer William Brent Bell figured the only way to top all these other exorcism movies was to have more in his own film. However, that leads to the audience being desensitized to exorcism over THE DEVIL INSIDE’s 87 minutes, with each new one losing its appeal and its scare factor, because it’s just more of the same. There’s no build in intensity, no evolution in the strength of these occurrences. THE DEVIL INSIDE goes ball-to-the-wall from the very first time a demon appears that, by the end, it all lacks impact.

Even worse is how nice THE DEVIL INSIDE is put together. Is it a “documentary”? Is it found footage? I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure neither does the film. It starts out as a fake doc, complete with news coverage of the Maria Rossi murders, interviews with exorcism experts, etc. But, in the end, the foursome we’ve been tagging along with have all become possessed (ah, mutliple demonic possessions allow for transference of the demons… sneaky sneaky) and die, so doesn’t that make this found footage? The director is dead, and, considering the lack of any type of budget for a “documentary” of this sort (if that’s the side it’s choosing for the moment), that probably means the film’s editor is dead, too. So why is the film put together with such a jumpy narrative, cutting from one interview to the next, one camera to the next, with quick edits that’d make Michael Bay drool? It’s a poorly constructed, rapid fire documentary, if that’s the case, but, if it’s found footage, it doesn’t make any bit of sense for someone to have gotten together the footage of the handheld camera, the car cameras, the interview camera and the confessional camera (oh, yeah… there’s one set up for each of the foursome to get into their own thoughts whenever they strike, like we’re watching THE REAL WORLD), and put it together in such a nice, clean package.

THE DEVIL INSIDE isn’t necessarily a terrible film, but it certainly is stupid enough to compete with some of those bottom-feeders. Large parts of the film just don’t exist in any sort of reality for a film trying to get you to believe it’s somewhat real, and suspension of disbelief isn’t enough to get you to buy into some of these characters behaving as they do. The film’s biggest scares are cheap (hello there, barking dog), and the overabundance of exorcisms throughout THE DEVIL INSIDE weakens the impact the bigger and more important of them should have when the film wanders back to its initial story. You’ll be more frightened when you consider how much money you may have spent on tickets, concessions and gas for your trip to see something this poorly conceived than you will by anything inside THE DEVIL INSIDE.

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is a spy movie really in name only, because it contains spies… or wait… does it? Come to think of it, there isn’t really much in the way of spy activity, as the adaptation of John le Carré’s focuses on finding a mole at the very top levels of British intelligence. Therefore, the one they’re trying to root out for sharing secrets with the Russians sits in an office and analyzes data and reports… but their time in the field is long over. So let me strike that original statement… it’s not really about spies at all. It’s certainly not a thriller, because that would indicate that there were thrills of some sort percolating at one time or another throughout the film, and there’s none of that. TINKER, TAILOR is probably closest to being a procedural in the mold of a LAW & ORDER or CSI:, but without the fun of watching the geniuses who are best at that kind of work actually solving their case. In TINKER, TAILOR, there are no real clues to lead you to suspect one person of interest over another. Hell, there isn’t much to get you invested in one of those suspects over another, as they’re merely tossed into the story by name only. Sure, it’s nice that those people are Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds and David Dencik, but when no attention is paid to establishing them as meaningful characters, installing them instead as just some other people at the Circus, what does it really matter if one of them might be the mole? All that leaves is Gary Oldman in a pair of glasses that epitomize the 70s thumbing through information that may lead him to find the leaking culprit, while we remain in the dark as to where this investigation is really heading.

I’m not really sure what TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is trying to be. It’s not a mystery in that respect, as there’s no mystery placed into the film. When a page is discovered missing from a vital piece of information that would support the story of a witness, it’s chalked up to the mole simply covering his tracks. That page won’t turn up later, like the candlestick “Tinker” or “Tailor” used in the conservatory, serving only as an indicator that Oldman’s back from retirement George Smiley is on the right track, but what use is being on the right track if the audience doesn’t even know?

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY also suffers from a lack of any character introduction or development, plunging you right into the British intelligence community, without so much as an explanation as to who everyone is, what they do, what their overall role is, etc. TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is so obese with characters that there are just too many to follow. Tomas Alfredson’s film treats you as if you’ve read the book, and have a rundown of who’s who, but, without that luxury, it makes even the slightest investigative development a tad empty. We’re unaware of who’s involved, and what that really means in the overall scheme of things. At two hours and change, the film feels like an eternity as it is, so it’d be a further disservice for the film to take even longer to establish the foundation needed to make this mole search work. Some books aren’t meant to be adapted to the big screen. There’s far too much information contained on the page for it to be streamlined enough, keeping the scope of the story. This feels like one of them.

Gary Oldman is fine in his performance as Smiley, but then again, he’s really the only character given any time to differentiate himself from the rest of the jumbled group. We certainly don’t come to know much about Bill Haydon (Firth), Roy Bland (Hinds), Percy Alleline (Jones), Tony Esterhase (Dencik) or any number of secondary characters. Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent as Smiley’s right hand man Peter Guillam, doing all the dirty work to keep the investigation a secret, but even the lone venture into his personal life seems tacked on, because the movie never veers into that territory for anyone other than Smiley. I would have liked more of this type of material mixed in, feeding into a sense that we might know something about these long line of characters, because the flashbacks to an office party do nothing to offer up anything substantial about any of them and feel more like filler than anything else. As a result, it’s only Oldman that stands out in TINKER, TAILOR, but solely by default.

The BBC had it right by bringing TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY to life as a mini-series back in the late-70s. However, I can’t imagine watching seven parts of this dull story, although, with more details filled in, it might have made it far more interesting to follow. For a two-hour movie, the material is much too dense to penetrate. That’s a no-go for me on TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY. I don’t necessarily need some fast-paced spy action to hold my attention, but, when I’m well-rested and with caffeine sitting in my cup holder, it’s never a good sign when such a tedious pace has my eyelids fighting to stay open.

I don’t know why everything surrounding WAR HORSE has been difficult for me. I tried to read the Michael Morpurgo’s novel before seeing the film, just to get a feel for the overall story, which is quite different than the movie, being that the narrative is told from the horse’s perspective. However, I couldn’t make it through a quick 165 pages… not because it wasn’t good, it was. I was really drawn into what I was reading, but the barrage of movies being thrown at me as the year wraps up, with every studio trying to get every last movie they have under the sun in 2011 seen before the holidays made it nearly impossible to sit down and read. Between other reviews and site maintenance and Kiddmas, what should have been an easy read wasn’t.

Even sitting down to write this review has been an extraordinary pain in the ass. Maybe it’s because it’s the end of the year. Maybe because this is the last review standing between me and some much needed relaxation. Maybe because I haven’t quite come up with the words to do it justice. This is now my sixth start on putting my thoughts on WAR HORSE into words, and, while it’d be easy to draw a line connecting my struggles with everything around WAR HORSE to my feelings on the film, that’s not really the case. While all of that has been more trouble than it’s worth, WAR HORSE is a delightful, heartfelt, emotionally charged film that reeks of old school Spielberg, sentimentality and all.

WAR HORSE takes place in the English countryside not too long before the start of World War I. The Narracott family in need of a plow horse for their farm doesn’t quite purchase the large stallion that by appearances would get the job done. Instead, drawn into a bidding war with his wealthy and hated landlord, father Ted (Peter Mullan) pays way over price for a beautiful yet much smaller horse who doesn’t look able to handle the workload needed for the crops to be planted, the harvest to be plentiful and the rent to be paid. The horse is named Joey, a spirited equine, who more than makes up for his lack of impressive size with an unmatchable will and determination to succeed. If compared to an athlete, Joey wouldn’t be the biggest physical specimen on the field, but he’d be the one with the most heart. Taken under the care of Albert (Jeremy Irvine), Ted’s son, Joey embraces his status as one spiteful bastard, who, in the eye of being told he can’t do something, most certainly will, almost as if he enjoys the satisfaction of proving you wrong. Taking on the job meant for a much larger horse, Joey is able to plow the fields against the words of naysayers and get the Narracott farm back on track.

Too bad for Joey, he can’t predict the weather, because a vicious storm wipes out the crops. He was set up to be the savior of the farm by doing the work, so they wouldn’t lose everything, and now all the plowing in the world can’t possibly do the trick. Oh well… Joey will just have to be used in other ways to get the rent paid, and is sold by Ted to Britain’s army, to join the war as the fine steed of Captain Nicholls (THOR’s Tom Hiddleston). He’s the mount that will help lead the troops into battle, and he’s going to need all the spirit he can muster if he’s going to make it through the war and potentially back to Albert.

From there, Joey bounces around from one location to the next, one keeper to the next, trying to survive the war, and trying to make it back home. Along the way, he’ll cross paths with a pair of German brothers who are going AWOL in order to secure their own safety, a young girl and her grandfather who are just looking for something positive at a time when the Germans raid all of their belongings for the war effort, a sympathetic German soldier who minds the horses and tries to protect them from the death and destruction that awaits them during war and soldiers on both sides who are fascinated by the effort to life of this spectacular creature who doesn’t know the meaning of “give up.”

If there’s one knock on WAR HORSE, it’d be that the emotional connection between Joey and Albert isn’t fully realized enough for my liking to make their departure and potential reunion as deep in meaning as it should have been. Going back to the book for a second (at least the parts I did read), Morpurgo was able to upset you with Joey’s departure for war and the idea that he was being ripped from his true owner in about 30 pages. In 30 minutes, Spielberg isn’t quite able to make as much or as meaningful of an impact. Richard Curtis and Lee Hall’s script focuses far more on Joey’s drive to overcome the odds with Albert at the reins, and not so much on the special type of bond Albert is able to form with him along the way. It becomes more about the work than the love, which is a disservice to the foundation of the film, which really needs that connection between them for the chance that they may meet again to mean everything.

Where WAR HORSE does succeed emotionally is in the lives touched by those who are able to spend any time at all with Joey. During a time of chaos and fighting, Joey is a bright spot in an otherwise dark world. He’s able to bring sadness, if even only for a short while, to those whose lives have been ravaged by the war. He’s a metaphor for hope, for all the things beautiful in the world, as pain and misery and suffering seem to consume everything with the further escalation of the war. Just his existence alone is able to bring about temporary peace between English and German soldiers, who can take a break from killing each other long enough to save a horse. The message may be a little over the top (basically who cares about the hurt people as long as the poor animals make it through okay), but it is a memorable and compelling scene that reinforces the idea that, even in doing battle for their countries, men who may be on opposing sides aren’t all that different in what they want and what they find important.

Spielberg and longtime cinematographer Janusz Kamiński have put forth another gorgeous film, whose wartime aesthetics match the incredible work of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. If you were to remove the heavy artillery of RYAN and replace it with soldiers on horseback riding into battle, this would be the result. War is ugly, but Spielberg has managed once again to put you right into the middle of the actions, deep into the trenches of the fighting in such a way that you’re hypnotized by how elegant it looks, even as the bodies are falling. There’s a sequence of the British engaging in a surprise attack on the Germans that just ends up in a massacre as the horses and swords are no match for Gatling guns firing off rounds at a dizzying pace. Spielberg manages to juxtapose the attacking riders on horseback with the horses coming out the other end in the forest with empty mounts. It’s a subtle change from showing the violence of the war, but the effect of the imagery is the same. War takes a toll on everyone involved, and you’re lucky if you come out alive.

Most Spielberg fans were surprised when he picked WAR HORSE as his next picture. He had been working on THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN. ROBOPOCALYPSE was on the agenda. LINCOLN perpetually seemed to be one movie away, and there had been rumblings about doing another JURASSIC PARK for some time. But, after seeing WAR HORSE and further contemplating its meanings, I’m pretty certain there was more that went into Spielberg’s decisions to make this film than just wanting to tell a story about a boy and his horse. These are troubled times we live in. The economic climate of the United States fell on hard times not too long ago, and it’s been slow to bounce back, with it perhaps not being in the cards for us to get back to where once were. The gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow. Our government is so gridlocked that no one can come to any type of compromise, because that would mean abandoning their principles to some. There seems to be no end to the fighting around the world. The United States’ involvement in Iraq may have come to an end, which means another new conflict could just be around the corner. People’s homes continue to be foreclosed upon. Unemployment is still high. People are hurting. So what’s so wrong about using a horse as a symbol of hope, to inspire belief that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that things might not always be so bad, that there is a chance for improvement in our lives but also in the world at large? There’s nothing bad about being optimistic, casting aside the pessimism and skepticism and cynicism and negativism for a little while to look forward and see something good waiting on the horizon. Spielberg’s WAR HORSE is an escape from everyday life where things might not be so rosy, offering up a far more encouraging outlook on life, and it’s a damn fine film along the way in accomplishing those purposes.