Catherine Hardwicke and Jonathan Liebesman: March Monstrosities

The early year blues have not ended yet, as new "films" Red Riding Hood and Battle Los Angeles oh so dismally prove.
Catherine Hardwicke is a criminally underrated auteur, who took her inspiration from the lusty teen angst of Larry Clark and ran with it, shaping her own strong vision about the moral dilemmas of growing up. Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown, The Nativity Story and Twilight were all fascinating mash-ups of private obsession and pop culture. Red Riding Hood, her newest, was a promising idea which proves to be her worst film, if not the most wretched film of the year(so far). She lazily envisions a legendary fairy tale into a pathetically messy bid for mainstream glory, ala Twilight. Yet Twilight was smart in its style and substance, manifesting its director's preoccupations into a pop culture phenomenon. Red Riding Hood, on the other hand, is a wreck from the get go, wasting a talented cast and stranding them in a wasteland of terrible costumes, inane dialogue, mediocre music, tepid pacing and cheesy CGI. Here's hoping her next outing is truer to who she is as an artist.
Jonathan Liebesman, on the other hand, has proven himself to be a supremely uninspired director, with the mediocre Darkness Falls and abysmal Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Now, with a little more studio backing, he has created the entirely mediocre Battle Los Angeles, which in the hands of a Spielberg or Bay or even Abrams could have been great or at least fun , and leaves us with a typical aliens invade the Earth action programmer, channeling Independence Day and War of the Worlds with none of their suspense or insight. It's pretty much what you'd expect, not even so bad it's good, but the masses eating it up with a grin anyway. Aaron Eckhart, Ramon Rodriguez and Michael Pena are deserving of a much better movie, and aside from them, the best thing about this monstrosity is Brian Tyler's riveting score and the state of the art visual effects.

Gore Verbinski: The Animated West

The Western, the most American of all motion picture genres, is not as dead as they say. We see it transmuted in shades permeating countless action, science fiction and thriller films littering the multiplexes across the nation. An actual western, though, is rare, so when an Open Range or The Proposition, a 3:10 to Yuma or True Grit crosses our paths, we must cherish it.

Gore Verbinski, to my mind an underrated big studio helmer, has shown himself to be a versatile craftsman of consistently entertaining and interesting mainstream films, including The Ring, The Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy and The Weather Man. Here he only adds to this with the excellent new animated film, Rango.

Johnny Depp delightfully voices the eponymous lizard hero, a jovial reptile who finds himself caught up in a Wild West land battle right outta the Lone Ranger, in a time proliferated by rodents and the like. Verbinski starts the film off brilliantly, with family pet Rango breaking the fourth wall and calling our attention to the very artifice of storytelling, and therefore movies in general. The sheer dynamism and pleasure Verbinski and his team of co-creators had in bringing this world to life is sheer and infectious, bolstered by an outstanding voice cast, including Isla Fisher, Ian McShane and Harry Dean Stanton.

The visuals pop along with the plot's stimulating originality, and it brings to mind even more the nauseating assembly line of anthropomorphous and alien CGI that's been done to death. Here, Verbinski is telling us, you can have those elements while retaining a spark of magic, lighting minds ablaze.

Hans Zimmer has fun with a saloony, mariachi tinged score, and Verbinski is tenderly referencing Sergio Leone, Hunter S. Thompson, John Ford, Clint Eastwood, Don Bluth and even Roman Polanski.

What he leaves us with is one of the best animated films to come along in quite some time.

Xavier Beauvois: To Leave is to Die

The tenuous line between faith and devotion is tread oh so discretely in gifted filmmaker Xavier Beauvois' austere, spellbinding film Of Gods and Men. Winner of the Grand Prize at last year's Tim Burton presided Cannes Film Festival, this work sneaks up on you and haunts you long after the credits roll.

Based on real events, the minimalist style complements the intricate plot in heavenly fashion. A group of Monks living in an Algerian monastery find themselves caught up in the political strife of their rural area, where terrorists lurk, butchered bodies are discovered daily, and the low key villagers rely on them for medical attention, friendship and fatherly advice. Their (non) reaction to the atrocities and danger around them, and their mysteriously poignant decision to remain where the Lord has called them to be provide the heavy heart of Beauvois' story.

The cast is perfection, with Lambert Wilson stoic yet torn in his heart as their leader, and French film legend Michel Lonsdale exceptional as the kind hearted old doctor (looking after the villagers as if they were his own children) wonderfully affecting. A later scene where the men share a humble meal to Tchaikovsky is a triumph of style and substance in glorious union.

The true gift herein is this light handed director's ability to place us inside a world, to allow us to identify with these men of God, and to end the film in a transcendent, phantasmal yet simple way. Beauvois pays homage to the supreme masters of cinema, Robert Bresson ( his sublime Diary of a Country Priest comes to mind) and Jean Renoir (the moral solemnity of the men and snowbound climax evoke Grand Illusion) with his pondering of the moral and religious states and fates of these pious men of God, while making his voice and visions heard and seen by taking us to a place few artists dare to go.

George Nolfi:The Appearance of Free Will

The mind bending faction of sci-fi dramas have their own corner in the cinematic arena, and enclosed there are the varied, yet deceptively close film adaptations of master craftsman Philip K. Dick's twisting works of futuristic paranoia. Paul Verhoeven, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and Richard Linklater are among the singular auteurs who have made Dick fiercely their own, and now novice scribe turned director George Nolfi comes to the fore with his teasing, enthralling The Adjustment Bureau.

The film begins as a quaint character study about a would be, down to earth politician(Matt Damon) and his rocky campaign for a senate seat, until he crosses paths with the gorgeous, unconventional Emily Blunt. From here, Nolfi gets a little tangled in his sci-fi plot concerning a secret establishment in charge of making the world go according to "the boss'" plan, which may well be God. "They", including a conscience stricken Anthony Mackie, are bent on keeping Damon and Blunt apart.

Although this long bit is a tad convoluted, it remains fascinating, seguing into the best part of the film, a chase through doorways and dimensions, and ultimately, a powerful love story. Damon and Blunt are palpable, John Toll's cinematography is saturated and invigorating, and Thomas Newman's score perfectly sweeping.

Nolfi, a screenwriter on the last Bourne film, has an endearing penchant for old fashioned exposition and emotion, and coming amid the recent onslaught of numbing cash cows, his uneven but  moving debut is a marvel of free will in and of itself.

Michael Dowse: Yesterday Once More

The recapturing of the quintessential eighties film is a fleeting and joyous subgenre, when done right(The Informers) elicits a rare nostalgic utopia, when done wrong(too many to name) an elongated cringe.
Michael Dowse's Take Me Home Tonight is simple, formulaic and stretched thin, but also hits every note right that we recall from our favorite popcorn me decade teen comedies.
The all in one night party, the lovable shmoe protag, his blundering, clownish chubby buddy, the brainy sister, the jerk jock boyfriend, the (seemingly) unobtainable it girl are all here, adeptly laid bare by Dowse and his writers, who exploit and comment on the cliches, fleshing thwm out, reviving them and reveling in the cult that is the 80's, the sounds and the sights.
Topher Grace is perfect as our hero, his honest emotion and boyish face mark his place as our most amiable young comedy lead. His ensemble of co-stars are near perfect at inhabiting these tried and (un)true characters.
Although the plot mechanisms and rote cliches are painfully obvious, they are a tribute to the subgenre in its entirety, enforcing the limits of joy bringing back yesterday once more.

Miguel Arteta: We're All Selling Something

Christian middle America, red state greed, loneliness, kinky sex, true friendship, rural drug abuse and insurance all meet at the crossroads of semi-independent comedic cinema in underrated filmmaker Arteta's genuine and perceptive new film, Cedar Rapids.

Comedian and Hangover alumnus Ed Helms is achingly good as a sheltered, good hearted insurance agent who, as a result of a hushed up scandal, is dispatched by his  creepy boss to a midwest convention to scoop up a coveted industry award. Along the way of a conventional plot, Arteta captures countless spontaneous moments which make his film feel fresh and original. It takes a truly talented director to meld a well written run of the mill script and unleash, if not gold, then silver.

Arteta has proven himself a craftsman with an affected touch, bringing deftness and humanity to his comedic gems; Star Maps, Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt all bared teeth and heart,  tough acts to accomplish.

In Cedar Rapids he is abetted impassably by an ultra-cast fronted by the kooky, endearing Helms, the brilliant John C. Reilly, not to mention the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Kurtwood Smith and Anne Heche.

What's left behind is honest and hilarious within the plot frame of a typical comedy, typified by one of the best lines in the film, when the hooker tells Helms' character that we're all selling something, be it sex, drugs or insurance.

How Mr. Arteta has presented that here is what every Hollywood comedy should aspire to.

Bobby and Peter Farrelly: Child is the Future of Man

The Farrelly Brothers have carved a distinctive niche for themselves in American comedic film. Their envelope pushing gross out methods mask a deeper humanistic and cultural tendency to lay bare our foibles, secrets and inconsistencies.

Almost all of their films have been successful at this task, while also being misunderstood, mislabeled or aggrandized as Hollywood pomp, when anyone with the heart and mind could see them for who they truly are-arguably the finest directors of comedy in our country.

Now don't get me wrong. They have faltered before, in tone, pace and overall judgment for a film, but rarely. Their newest, Hall Pass, is unfortunately one of these. The amiable Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis are the perpetual boy men of American comedic movie lore, married but ogling the next best thing, mired in their immaturity and loving every second of it. Their wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate), sick of their antics, give them a "hall pass" for a week off of marriage, to do what they will and ergo strengthen the ties that bind.

What ensues is a series of sexual hi-jinks, many of them hilarious, all outrageously offensive. Yet the film cannot escape the tiresome plot mechanisms entrapping it and almost all mainstream comedy.  Still, there is the inescapable fact that beneath it all is the Farrelly heart, which is more than a hundred Hangovers could say to us.