Most Anticipated Movies of 2015: Bodice Rippers, Tentacle Girlfriends, & Kristen Stewart — #20-11

by Gabriel Valdez

Once more unto the breach. Let’s dive right in:

20. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

You could also call this Most Anticipated Bodice Ripper. Let me just quote the IMDB summary for a second: “In Victorian England, the independent and headstrong Bathsheba Everdene attracts three very different suitors: Gabriel Oak, a sheep farmer; Frank Troy, a reckless Sergeant; and William Boldwood, a prosperous and mature bachelor.”

The Thomas Hardy novel on which it’s based was a fairly early piece of feminist literature that examined the social and personal pressures put upon women to choose a suitor. Far too often, these sorts of adaptations turn a complex work of literature into a breathy, steamy potboiler. That sort of simplicity would be a first for Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, however. His last film, The Hunt, concerned the ruination of a teacher’s life after a rumor about his sexuality is started.

Vinterberg is not one to dumb material down. His films are stories that beautifully present the rough edges of society we pretend to ignore. While Far From the Madding Crowd looks like a prettier presentation of your typical period romance, the talent behind it – including lead actress Carey Mulligan – hints at something more complex. May 1.

19. SPRING

When you read H.P. Lovecraft, you’re meant to be horrified at the realization of ancient societies that worshiped dark, insane gods. But here’s the thing: any society that lasts for any real extent of time, and the people living in it are worried about picking up food for dinner, meeting someone special, and trying to remember to do the laundry on time.

So what happens when a man unwittingly starts a romance with a woman who’s half Italian femme fatale, half Lovecraftian beastie? Where does the horror end and just living out your life begin? Aren’t we being a bit judgmental if we assume someone’s a crazed psychopath just because she sprouts tentacles?

Spring has been described as a horror romance about an Italian town that’s perfectly comfortable with its alternative nature. Can a romance survive the judgments we make against that nature, however? April 17.

18. WHITE GOD

And here we go. How do you tell Europe a story of marginalized people treated like outcasts when certain European countries go so far as to legislate the clothing of certain religions and races of people (hi, France, Britain, Netherlands), when some countries wage violent political battle to kick those people out (hi, Sweden, Hungary, Turkey), and even when some countries enforce laws so differently for different races that the prisons are 80% minority-filled despite a civilian population that’s only 20-30% minority (hi, well, almost all of Europe). How do you tell a story about entire peoples kicked around and treated like mongrel dogs to a continent that doesn’t want to hear it?

Well, you can actually tell that story with mongrel dogs. The same way the original Planet of the Apes examined racism in a way that would never have made the big-screen in 1968 if it had actually been about Caucasians and African-Americans, a film like White God can face Europe and convince it to watch a movie about an ethnic revolt and, well, cheer for those rioting in the streets.

It’s important to note the obvious danger when a film does this. The key is in making it its own story, not a straight analogue. The goal after all is not to compare marginalized people to animals, but rather to compare the treatment of those marginalized people to the treatment of animals. It must be a judgment on the culture, not on the subject itself, or you start doing the very damage you’re speaking against. March 27.

17. JOY

There’s not much known about this film other than the talent behind it: Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in a David O. Russell film. He previously teamed them in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. And, oh by the way, the screenplay’s written by Annie Mumolo. You may know her better as the writer (with Kristen Wiig) of Bridesmaids.

The film follows a single mother in Long Island who starts her own business and makes it big. Beyond that, not much is known. The turnaround on the film is going to be very quick, so let’s hope it makes its intended release date of December 25.

16. CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

At some point, everyone’s going to get over themselves and recognize Kristen Stewart is a risk-taking actor with a rare nose for intriguing and challenging projects. Until then, we consider her here, in the words of Vanessa Tottle, “Our Patron Saint of Go F*ck Yourself.” (Asterisk added.)

Teaming her up with Juliette Binoche and Chloe Grace Moretz makes for the kind of film we almost never see – a serious drama centering around the relationship between three women, in this case taking place during the production of a film that challenges Binoche’s concept of how the people in her life fit into it.

I’ve been looking forward to this one for ages, as it’s meandered through the festivals and struggled to find an American distributor, despite Stewart having set a box office record for an actress her age just three short years ago. Shows you what happens when a man twice your age with a wife and kids takes advantage of you. You get blackballed from an industry, he gets a $200 million film. That’s why she’s our Patron Saint of, well, you know. No date set.

15. EX MACHINA

Alex Garland has written some of the most beautifully screwed up screenplays of the last two decades, many of which were immediately snapped up by director Danny Boyle (The Beach, 28 Days Later…, Sunshine). My favorite might be a non-Boyle project, Never Let Me Go.

This has also allowed Garland the opportunity to train under one of the most versatile and adaptive filmmakers in modern history, so when he makes his own directorial debut with Ex Machina, it’s worth noticing.

I also don’t pay much heed to studios, but at this point, I’ll watch anything that A24 decides to fund or acquire. Their nose for projects gave me two of my top 5 films of 2014, the Scottish horror Under the Skin and the Australian post-apocalypse tale The Rover, as well as a host of stellar comedies and psychological thrillers. Garland and A24? Two names I trust, with a story that looks pretty compelling. April 10.

14. THE REVENANT

After this year’s Birdman, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu pulls a complete 180 and makes a revenge Western. It will follow none other than Leondardo DiCaprio as protagonist Hugh Glass. Left for dead, he goes off in search of John Fitzgerald, played by…

…

…

Look, you guys, this isn’t funny anymore. Who is really playing John Fitzgerald? It can’t be Tom Hardy, not unless he found David Bowie’s cloning machine from The Prestige. Wait, what!?! Tom Hardy played the cloning machine in The Prestige? Oh for god’s sake…

So, in The Revenant, DiCaprio goes after Tom Hardy, and I really hope he gets him because this is getting ridiculous. How is Tom Hardy in all the films this year? He’s appeared three times in two films already on our list. That doesn’t even make sense. It’s like he’s a secret plan so that the Academy doesn’t even have to bother nominating 20 white actors in a year and just nominates 20 Tom Hardys. There’s no one that can stand against that, except…the Chosen One.

The one actor who’s always nominated but never wins…. Leo, this is your purpose, your calling, your reason for being! This is why you’ve suffered all those years, why you had to watch Matthew McConaughey get up there and say he’s most grateful to himself when he looks in the mirror. Go get Tom Hardy, Leo, and save the world for the rest of us. We’ll find out who wins – Tom Hardy or Leo, and therefore the world – in December.

(Above photo courtesy of Entertainment Weekly…obviously.)

13. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS

I’m just going to leave the trailer up there. You can tell me if you like it, and are therefore telling the truth, or if you don’t like it and are lying for some reason. Because I don’t know anyone who sees those two minutes and says they don’t want to see the full movie. February 13.

12. MCFARLAND, USA

This might seem like a funny one to have this high, but Niki Caro is a special director, able to capture the small-town dynamics of various cultures and make otherwise cliché stories feel fresh again. She’s best known for the dreamy New Zealand inspirational Whale Rider. Kevin Costner’s unique talent lies in capturing an audience’s goodwill the moment he steps onto the screen. That was misused in action films in 2014, but here he plays a P.E. Coach who starts an unlikely and underdog cross country racing program. I’ll look forward to seeing Costner in a more comfortable mode again, but I’ll most look forward to how Caro presents this town and its people. February 20.

11. CHAPPIE

The jury’s still out on director Neill Blomkamp. Excitement over his unexpected sci-fi success with District 9 was tempered by the beautifully designed but incredibly uneven Elysium. Chappie takes place in a near-future world where a decommissioned military robot is salvaged by a family who raise him like a toddler. When his former masters come to claim him, Chappie is forced to grow up through the rite of passage that is eight bazillion explosions. Still, this is the kind of story Blomkamp tells best, focusing on the personal inside of the epic. Hopefully, he can keep his eye on the smaller picture. March 6.

Allow me to also link my own thoughts on why the burgeoning slate of films about artificial intelligence give us characters who strive to be more human at a time when humans strive to be more vicious.

Keep an eye out for out Top 10 most anticipated movies of the year.

Read our picks for #40-31 here and #30-21 here.

Great Drama, No Action — “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay”

by Gabriel Valdez

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One is a solid entry in a quickly maturing series. Its only problem, if you choose to view it as one, is that it’s less exciting than its predecessors.

Chosen for a futuristic brand of gladiatorial combat in the first Hunger Games, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) was finally rescued from an oppressive military dictatorship at the end of Catching Fire. She now begins to take on the mantle of a revolutionary figurehead for the people of Panem in Mockingjay.

Viewers wanting more action may find Mockingjay too slow. There’s no arena sequence, which has made the last halves of its two predecessors straight-ahead action movies. While these were fun, they always felt just a little forced, as if they weren’t the part the directors and actors were most looking forward to filming.

In the first film, director Gary Ross was most interested in the “have-nots,” painting a poor and wretched society that evoked the Dust Bowl era photography of Dorothea Lange – grimy, desperate, yet determined.

For the second movie, replacement director Francis Lawrence examined the “haves,” expanding on the decadent culture of the capital. Katniss became an icon for resistance. Her fight against President Snow (Donald Sutherland) utilized tools of fashion, celebrity, and media manipulation. It was far more intriguing than any beatdown that happened in the arena.

Francis Lawrence returns for Mockingjay, which continues the theme of high-stakes propaganda. For every move – Katniss visits a field hospital, full of wounded rebels – there is a counter. Instead of targeting Katniss, Snow blows up the hospital. He communicates to Katniss that anything she touches is forfeit.

Katniss’ media campaign is focused on making the atrocities of the capital known, evoking fiery emotions that drive recruitment for the rebellion. Snow’s campaign is one of undermining Katniss and tearing at her psyche. For all the bombs, soldiers, and planes each side has, Snow understands the war not as one of weaponry but of public perception.

Some viewers will leave Mockingjay disappointed that not much happens. Others will leave Mockingjay excited at just how much takes place. Because the film is tighter and more character-focused, the plot isn’t driven by events. It’s driven by the breaking down and building up of different characters’ resolves. The tension lies in how much more each one can take. These aren’t characters reaching their breaking point; they’ve already set up residence there and peer over the edge from time to time.

That’s where Mockingjay is most compelling – Katniss is finally making decisions amongst equals like revolutionary President Coin (Julianne Moore) and propaganda expert Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Is it too much of a thinkpiece? Jennifer Lawrence, Moore, and Hoffman hold the film down so well that it’s a moot point. Here are three actors at the top of their game, playing characters who clash and use each other while coping with their own clear damages.

In some ways, I applaud the bravery behind Mockingjay. Studio Lionsgate wanted to split the last book of the trilogy into two movies – double the ticket money. The writers and director could have made up crowd-pleasing battles and its audience would’ve accepted it. Instead, they decided to create a more challenging movie that explores the nuance behind propaganda, the manipulation inherent to filmmaking, and the conflicting ideals behind revolutions.

If this franchise is basically Spartacus in slow-mo, we’re at the part where Spartacus is freed, taking a breather and taking stock of his situation. It’s after most of the action but before the big climax, where characters’ learn new roles in a rebellion, question what they’ve got left in the tank, and reassess their relationships. It’s not the Hunger Games entry that I think many expected, but it finds a lot to say on its own without feeling too much like set-up for the finale. Given the opportunity to tread water or take a risk, the creative talents behind Mockingjay took a risk. Is it completely successful? Viewers will be disagreeing until next year’s entry.

For someone who finds the political games in this post-apocalyptic world more fascinating than the action scenes, Mockingjay is a success. It isn’t big or flashy the way its predecessors are, but as a companion piece it makes complete sense. I suspect it will fit very well into the rhythm of the series once it’s completed. It just won’t live up to anyone’s expectations as an action movie. In everything else, it excels.

Does it Pass the Bechdel Test?

This section helps us discuss one aspect of movies that we’d like to see improved – the representation of women. Read why we’re including this section here.

1. Does The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One have more than one woman in it?

Yes. Katniss is played by Jennifer Lawrence. Her younger sister Prim (Willow Shields) features more prominently than in the past. It’s nice to finally see more of their relationship. Rebel leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) is a practical, no-nonsense leader.

Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) returns, continuing to support Katniss, although she has less screen-time here than in the past. Cressida (Natalie Dormer), a television director, is also introduced. Katniss’ mother (Paula Malcomson) and fellow warrior Johanna Mason (Jena Malone) also feature.

2. Do they talk to each other?

Yes.

3. About something other than a man?

Yes, but even when they do talk about a man – in a nice twist on the classical princess formula – it’s to discuss his rescue. Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is being used by President Snow as the capital’s figurehead, and Katniss is determined to save him. That said, these are leaders in a war, and they act like it.

Mockingjay is a phenomenal movie in terms of powerful female characters. Katniss herself is the kind of part historically relegated to men – women have rarely had this much on-screen agency as warriors and leaders. The real ground being broken here, however, continues to be a woman playing a soldier with PTSD. I can’t recall another in a big-budget film, can you?

It says a lot to watch a woman this strong and capable in battle. She takes and doles out physical damage. Yet it says even more to show a woman who possesses the strength to constantly sacrifice herself for others while knowing full well the toll it takes on her psyche. We’ve had women warriors before and we still need more of them, but we haven’t had women veterans featured on this scale. That’s an incredible step and there’s no better actress to take it than Jennifer Lawrence.

Alma Coin is a fantastic character. Moore plays her with a practical, scarred edge. Again, we’re presented with a female leader who isn’t just strong and decisive, but who still takes on the burden of leadership despite the heavy psychological toll war and loss has taken. Moore plays her close to the vest, polite but concise. You can’t tell if she’s a leader who doesn’t give away more than she has to, or if she herself has ulterior motives. Part of that is the franchise’s history of betrayal, part of that is an understated performance by Moore.

One of my favorite new characters of the year is Cressida, the director assigned to produce the recruitment ads starring Katniss. See, I’m a sucker for directors on film. If you’ve ever made film, you know there’s a certain feeling of invulnerability when you’re holding the camera. The shot takes precedence over everything else, including comfort and safety. Dormer communicates this attitude and much more in limited screen-time.

Cressida prioritizes getting a reaction on camera over her own safety or, say, Katniss’ psychological well-being. This is done subtly, and her crew – including a mute man who invokes one of the most powerful scenes on film this year – shows her great loyalty. Amid all these warriors, there’s one leader who throws herself into danger without a weapon. Her victory lies not in killing others but in capturing emotion, though that doesn’t mean she’s any less tactical in achieving it.

There are other important women, like Prim and Effie, but I focus on these three because Katniss, Coin, and Cressida present three very different forms of leadership. Women rarely get to portray these kinds of characters on film, let alone in the same film. The Hunger Games has always done well in this regard. Now, however, it’s lapping the field.

Trailers of the Week — Jennifer Lawrence Season

Let’s just dive straight in:

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 1

My worry for the Hunger Games series has been how it goes bigger, how it goes from a franchise about very orderly deathmatches to a franchise about chaotic, messy war. The series’ strength has never been its action. Its strength has been psychology. From the first moment of the first film, Hunger Games invoked the Depression-era photography of Dorothea Lange. The games were secondary, a function of presenting fashion and celebrity. They could just as easily have been a football game, or a celebrity feud on reality TV distracting us from our everyday struggle. That’s the whole point – deathmatches are just more cinematically compelling.

I remember walking out of the second Hunger Games and thinking, This is the franchise we need. This is my generation’s most complete, mass-market call for resistance. Not the kind of guns-out resistance in the movie, but a social and cultural resistance. Films like Hunger Games and this year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier make the reality of how our nation’s evolved toward oligarchy a little easier to comprehend for many. The broadest tools for social change can’t be the sharpest – they have to be accessible in order to reach a wide audience. These are the movies that most finely balance being a blockbuster with translating social commentary.

So I worry for Mockingjay Part 1 not because I have reason to, but because maintaining that complete social comment across multiple films is a truly staggering task. In going bigger, in becoming messier, will it lose that psychological edge, that critique that makes it compelling not just on a cinematic level, but on a social and political level? It has created an opportunity event franchises just aren’t allowed. I have no doubt this film will be good, maybe even great, but it can’t just be that. It needs to be socially crucial. It needs to build exponentially on the ideas of its predecessors, like the second entry did.

The subtitle on this blog is “Movies and how they change you.” There’s a real chance The Hunger Games can not just embody that, but that it can continue to redefine the scope and scale on which event films are able to take social stands.

SERENA

Mockingjay isn’t the only Jennifer Lawrence movie to trailer this week. Serena has been held back as Lawrence’s star continues to rise (and as the studio figures out how to sell it). It would seem to re-unite her with Bradley Cooper, but this was actually shot before American Hustle.

Serena follows timber barons George and Serena Pemberton during the Great Depression as they scheme their way to power. There will be tragedy, neat costumes, and acting your face off aplenty. The trailer’s ill-defined, but Lawrence and Cooper – aside from sounding like a law firm – are enough to make it must-watch. Danish director Susanne Bier is a staple in the Oscars’ Foreign Language category, and her In a Better World won the award in 2011.

I named this one of my top 10 most anticipated films at the beginning of the year, but I’d begun to think it had been pushed once more. The release date is still in question, but it looks like October 24. Frankly, whether the film is good, bad, or indifferent, Magnolia Pictures is doing an atrocious job of advertising what should be easy money. People will go watch Jennifer Lawrence read a phone book for two hours at this point, and she’d still do it well enough to win an Oscar for Best Documentary. Put some money into advertising and get it out there.

MR. TURNER

EFFIE GRAY

Originally, the title this week was going to be “British Painter Season,” but then Mockingjay hit and, well, that was that.

In truth, I held Mr. Turner off from last week so it wouldn’t get quite as buried. The visuals of Mr. Turner look particularly striking, and I enjoy that the film appears to be as focused on his watercolour landscapes and their impact as it does on J.M.W. Turner’s personality.

Effie Gray excites me a little less, if only because the trailer makes it unclear quite what’s happening. Is Dakota Fanning secretly the painter in question, or is she the wife of the painter, or some combination thereof? The film looks like it has potential, however, and at this point, you don’t overlook a film with Fanning’s involvement (and Emma Thompson’s, for that matter).

IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE

Revenge comedies are few and far between. In fact, when the Coen Brothers and Guy Ritchie aren’t applying their talents to one, all we’ve got left is Scandinavia.

Thank the gods for Stellan Skarsgard. Whether delivering the best one liners and running naked through Thor or charming and terrifying his way through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, he’s too overlooked for his dynamic and disarming performances.

In Order of Disappearance looks like a superb vehicle to showcase his talents, and I can’t wait to see it.

JOHN WICK

You can take Keanu Reeves’ dignity. You can take Keanu Reeves’ car. But you better not lay a finger on Keanu Reeves’ dog.

That’s a message I can get on board with, and that’s the theme to this wackadoodle-meets-Euroslick trailer for John Wick. Put Nic Cage in this, and it makes Worst Trailer of the Week. Put Keanu Reeves in it, and suddenly it’s stylish as hell. Such is the power of Keanu.

A host of unexpected actors and the sheer grace Keanu possesses in the choreography they drop at the end suddenly takes this from iffy into got-to-see-it territory.

THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN

I’m not much for slasher movies, unless you’re talking Italian giallo films from the 70s. The problem is that American slashers dropped all the psychology, opera, and art history from the genre and replaced it with torture, cheesy masks, and fear-mongering misogyny. That said, The Town That Dreaded Sundown looks like it has potential, with a small-town mystery at its center and some brilliant shots and color composition in the trailer. Then they drop in the guy with the cheesy mask and I lose all hope. Still, it’s one to keep an eye on just in case it delivers on those wonderful visuals.

Worst Trailer of the Week: MAPS TO THE STARS

This is one of my more anticipated movies this Autumn, but boy oh boy, is this an awful trailer. You’ve got to be careful cutting a David Cronenberg film for ads. His movies are composed of long stretches of quiet, of set-up, of reinforcing the mood, and sudden explosions of outright violence. That’s hard to define in a two-minute stretch, but my god, do they do a terrible job of it here. There’s a complete lack of dramatic timing in how it’s edited together.

Silent All These Years — Why Scarlett Johansson Needs to Play Hannibal Lecter

by Vanessa Tottle

Gabe asked me to write a second opinion on Under the Skin. Back in April. Here it is:

“One day, I’d like to see Scarlett Johansson play Hannibal Lecter.”

That’s as far as I got.

I couldn’t think of anything to say that Gabe hadn’t already, and then he rubbed it in by interviewing Michel Faber (the author) like some big show-off.

I recently came across my aborted article, and you know what? Days after the release of female celebrities’ naked photos across the internet, endearingly nicknamed “The Fappening” cause 4Chan and Reddit can go fuck themselves (I’m sure they already know how), I finally figured out why I want to see Scarlett Johansson play Hannibal Lecter.

Power.

Gabe’s been pushing for more women in protagonist roles, and he gets a little confused when something like Guardians of the Galaxy comes out. For all its awesomeness, it has a green-skinned Zoe Saldana kicking a few aliens before the guy from Parks and Rec has to save her twice. Congratulations, we got 20% of the protagonist share. That’s half what the movie gave to anthropomorphized wildlife found in your backyard at midnight.

There’s a common misconception when we talk about more movies with better parts for women. We’re not saying that this should be a requirement for EVERY SINGLE movie. Neither are we saying that there need be a quota or regulation placed on the entertainment industry. All we’re talking about is raised expectations and the changes a more aware audience can effect.

Lawrence of Arabia is implicitly about T.E. Lawrence’s homosexuality. It was made in 1962 for approximately a bazillion dollars, so it couldn’t really be about Lawrence’s sexuality in any explicit way. It had to be intimated to the audience. It achieves this in part through its all-male speaking cast.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is the best horror movie ever filmed and it doesn’t have any women in it. Since the horror in it is a fleshy Freudian conceit for men’s fear of possessing and being possessed through sex, full of snapping extendo-vagina monsters, phallic emasculations, and male pregnancy metaphors, it wouldn’t work as well if it wasn’t full of bearded, 80s uberdudes drinking, gambling, and watching porn. Besides, Mary Elizabeth Winstead came along in a prequel and proved a woman could blow shit up just as well as Kurt Russell.

The point is we aren’t saying that all movies lacking or minimizing women are terrible. We’re saying there are simply far too many of them. We are never saying that we want old ways of making movies to go away. We only want those old styles to be better balanced with new ways of writing, casting, and making movies that have thus far been resisted by a backwards entertainment industry.

I even like – hell, love – Guardians of the Galaxy. But there’s no denying they missed a big opportunity with Saldana’s character Gamora. While the men are away killing nameless henchmen by the thousands and getting a crack at the big bad, Gamora is cordoned into a one-on-one against the only other woman in a lead.

Others have written about needing more female leaders portrayed in movies, and I agree. But you know what else I want to see? I want to see women playing all those powerful character roles we reserve exclusively for men. Which brings me back to Scarlett Johansson and Hannibal Lecter. I want to be terrified by a woman in the same way movies tell me I should be terrified by a man. That’s the real power on-screen.

I want to see Cate Blanchett in Training Day telling Kerry Washington that King Kong ain’t got shit on her. I want the evil general in however many Avatar sequels they’re filming to be played by Sigourney Weaver (they’re bringing her back as a new character anyway, why not the bad guy). I’m not scared of a shouty, musclebound crew cut who looks like he soaked up too much California sun, but if Sigourney lowered her voice in anger, I wouldn’t be able to look elsewhere. I want the new Star Wars villain, the inheritor of Darth Vader himself, to be a woman. And you know who could put Daniel Craig’s James Bond in his place? A terrorist mastermind Helen Mirren.

The real staying power on screen belongs to the iconic villain. Do you see kids borrowing their parents’ bathrobes to dress up as Luke Skywalker every Halloween? No, you see them spending time and money buying and making costumes so they can be Darth Vader for a day. They understand the villain represents power, and icons of power last the test of time.

Marvel’s making a Black Widow movie with Johansson. That’s a great step, and I applaud them for having it scheduled to launch shortly after their 10th movie centered on a white guy named Chris. Way to get on that.

Now make a movie where a female villain is something other than a male villain’s henchman with daddy issues. You just got wallpaper performances out of Guy Pearce, Chris Eccleston, and Lee Pace, and they’re all great actors. Meanwhile, Karen Gillan killed it in Guardians despite limited screen time.

Change up the formula. Write more heroic women, but while you’re at it, write more powerful women who want to rule the galaxy, too. That’s why I want to see Scarlett Johansson as Hannibal Lecter one day.

“Can you hear them, Jesse Eisenberg? Can you hear the silence of the lambs?”

And Jennifer Lawrence can make you put the lotion in the basket while she dances in the skins of dead men.

How’s that for a Fappening?

The Profound Journey of “X-Men: Days of Future Past”

The X-Men are mutant superheroes who each boast different abilities. In the world of X-Men: Days of Future Past, mutants are discriminated against and hunted relentlessly by robots called Sentinels. It is in this future that the few remaining survivors invent a desperate method to send one of their own back through time to try and change history.

The X-Men were created in a 1963 comic as a reflection of Martin Luther King’s and Malcolm X’s struggle to end the segregation of African-Americans in the U.S. The wheelchair-bound Professor X was the MLK figure who favored peace and passive resistance, while Magneto was the Malcolm X analogue who believed equality would only be earned through more violent means.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, Robert Kennedy and King in 1968. We may look at civil rights now as a story of achievement removed from its images of suffering and struggle, we may be told by commentators with airtime to fill that it was a bloodless progression that ended racism in America, but such is the neglect of history that 50 years’ time can lend our worst moments.

Days of Future Past understands that cycles of violence are how history is defined and, as we become more efficient at killing each other, moving beyond this infinite downward spiral may be the only way we survive as a species. In the past Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent to change, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is imprisoned deep underneath the Pentagon, accused of the assassination of JFK. Wolverine’s mission is to stop sometimes-villain Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from a botched assassination attempt on a mutant hunter name Trask (Peter Dinklage), who invents the Sentinels. Even the climax involves the potential assassination of Richard Nixon, and the risk of an even worse future than the one from which Wolverine is sent.

It’s a complex plot handled deftly, based on one of the original comics and fusing the X-Men trilogy’s cast with the rebooted X-Men: First Class cast. Days of Future Past has a lot of story to tell, but it strikes a fine balance – its action scenes each twist the screws on the plot tighter, while its dialogue scenes subtly hint at characters growing into the decisions that will effect the plot later.

The past and future timelines also allow a style of simultaneous action that is often forgotten in today’s movies. In the service of realism, we usually see one action sequence at a time. This can be important in a movie like Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones leaps from truck to truck. All the tension is in the physical performance and choreography. On the other hand, consider the climax of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Three very different battles take place simultaneously: a ground war on Endor; a fleet battle in space; and an intimate duel between the hero and villain. The tension is in the hands of the editor. In Raiders, we have to believe Indiana Jones can do everything he’s doing, that every punch is connecting, so we never cut away. In Jedi, the outcome of every individual battle relies upon the next. Cutting away ratchets up the tension.

Days of Future Past uses the latter approach, taking advantage of its dual timelines beautifully. Because Wolverine’s consciousness travels through time, and not his entire body, in order for Wolverine to save the world in the past, his friends have to keep him alive in the future. In order for his friends to stay alive in the future, Wolverine has to change the past. From an action standpoint, it’s an emotionally charged choice – some characters die more than once and, for the first time in a long time, I saw a superhero movie in which I couldn’t be sure who would survive.

That timeline cycle is built from if-then relationships. If one situation worsens, so does the other, which worsens the former, and so on. From a conceptual standpoint, it’s an emotionally challenging choice. It confronts the viewer with yet another infinite downward spiral, a narrative one, and the only way to break it is to break the cycle of violence that started it. In the end, we’re not rooting for any hero to save the day. We’re rooting for humanity to be better than we have been, to improve and make a far better choice than we have before, to let the cycle of violence go.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is rated PG-13 for violence, brief nudity, and language.

“Frozen” and Creating a New Standard

This weekend, Frozen will overtake Iron Man 3 as the fifth highest-grossing movie ever made. It will join Avatar, Titanic, The Avengers, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 in the top 5. Each of these films has something in common – though they may be outnumbered by the males, each has a strong female lead that doesn’t need the man in order to justify her role in the film: Zoe Saldana in Avatar, Kate Winslet in Titanic, Scarlett Johansson in The Avengers and Emma Watson in Harry Potter.

Frozen is the first in which the female protagonists outnumber the male. If you look at the top 20 films, or top 50, or whatever number you’d like, you’ll see a high rate of movies that boast female leads – Keira Knightley in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Laura Dern in Jurassic Park, Natalie Portman in The Phantom Menace (it’s worth noting this is the highest grossing Star Wars prequel, and the only one in which Portman has narrative function instead of being treated like a fetish object or a McGuffin). For all its other problems, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland contains no male leads, instead bouncing back and forth between Mia Wasikowska and Helena Bonham Carter (Depp is supporting in this). It’s #16. The highest-grossing Dark Knight is the one that finally gives us a female superhero.

Even the highest grossing Indiana Jones was Raiders of the Lost Ark, the one in which the woman punched and kicked and drank and spit, not the one in which the women screamed helplessly or turned out to be traitorous. It took 27 years, the benefit of inflation, and Karen Allen reprising her Raiders role to finally set a new Indy box office record in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

We shouldn’t pretend this is anything new. Adjusted for inflation, the highest grossing movie of all-time is, by a very wide margin, Gone with the Wind (1939), which follows a female protagonist. The Sound of Music (1965) sits at #3. Female lead. Titanic (1997) and Doctor Zhivago (1965) are effectively split leads, one man, one woman. The Exorcist (1973) boasts two female leads and a male one that enters late in the game. Snow White (1937), female lead. Six of the movies in the top 10 boast a leading woman. Four of them follow a woman exclusively, with the men in supporting roles, while four films follow men exclusively (Star Wars, E.T., The Ten Commandments, & Jaws). This does not include the Judy Garland-led The Wizard of Oz, which was never much of a hit in theaters but has earned more in syndication (adjusted for inflation) than any other film.

If anything, I believe we were once better at creating blockbuster films that featured women in lead roles. From a purely box office perspective, it makes no sense whatsoever that women are so outnumbered when it comes to leading today’s big-budget movies.

Despite female-led movies being so heavily outnumbered by the male-led ones in 2013, these pictures held 3 of the top 6 box office spots: boasting the United States’ #1 overall earner The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and the worldwide overall earner, Frozen, as well as Gravity. Women owned live-action comedy – The Heat, American Hustle, We’re the Millers, and Identity Thief all featured (and advertised heavily on their) female protagonists. You have to plumb all the way down to the year’s #5 live-action comedy to find one led exclusively by men: Grown Ups 2. The year’s biggest surprise, as it always is, was a horror film led mostly by women: in this case, The Conjuring, which made $318 million worldwide on a $20 million budget, featured Vera Farmiga, Lili Taylor, and Patrick Wilson. It became the highest grossing period horror film ever made, surpassing Shutter Island.

In fact, you have to go all the way back to 2008 to find a year in which the highest-grossing film in the U.S. lacked a female lead – The Dark Knight. Before that, you have to go back to 2005 and Revenge of the Sith. Only two years in 10 bucked the stat, yet the ratio of female leads to male in film doesn’t reflect that success.

Look, Chris Hemsworth can’t launch anything outside of Thor – he earned Ron Howard one of his least successful films (using the United States’ second most popular sport) with Rush while his Red Dawn remake tanked. He might be making good movies, but Matt Damon has launched more flops in the last five years than hits. Jeremy Renner’s failed as a lead to the extent he’s had the Bourne and Mission: Impossible keys both taken away from him. Outside of playing Wolverine, Hugh Jackman has as many flops (Australia, Deception, The Fountain) as hits. Tom Cruise (Oblivion), Will Smith (After Earth), and Keanu Reeves (47 Ronin) can no longer reliably launch genre films on their faces alone. And let’s not even mention the failed experiment that was Taylor Kitsch (who I quite liked in John Carter, and scratched my head at in Battleship). I may critically champion many of the actors and movies just mentioned, but from a business perspective, the big-budget market is simply oversaturated with male leads.

Stop cramming those roles down our throats in the decades-long, failed search to come up with a new Arnold Schwarzenegger. Give us the actresses who have already proven themselves at the box office – not just Jennifer Lawrence, whose forward progress you couldn’t stop with an army of bulldozers, a Great Wall, and Godzilla, but also Rose Byrne, Alice Braga, Rooney Mara, Zoe Saldana, Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson, Dakota Fanning and our entire surging, underutilized generation of actresses. And if Mr. Universe Schwarzenegger can be turned into a star, then certainly former UFC fighter Gina Carano can.

It’s been pointed out to me that Hollywood is a business and, like any business, it’s going to ignore gender-bias and racism if it can make an extra dime by doing so. I would humbly ask in what country these folks have been observing business, but without getting into a political argument, the proof that Hollywood is catching up is just not there. Female-led films might be more prominent because we’re going to see them more and more, but in large part they are not greater in number – certainly not in event movies.

Let’s simplify the process wholesale and say your mega-budget film features a half-dozen representatives making decisions – two executive producers, your company’s financier, a co-financier from the company you’re splitting the budget with, the director, and a major star. One of your execs doesn’t like the idea of a minority woman in a lead. That’s out because you don’t want to get in a territorial battle you could lose. One of your execs thinks Kristen Stewart has too much baggage – she’s out. Your co-financier feels uncomfortable with an entirely white cast, and you can’t risk losing half the budget. The director really wants to work with Alice Braga, who he’s worked with before, and who is Latina. Losing him would mean finding a replacement director and possibly losing other stars. Your major star wants his role to be expanded. How do you solve this? Cast Alice Braga but demand the role is reduced, through a rewrite, shooting adjustments, or editing, into a supporting character. Give her less agency in the film in order to make everyone happy and keep them all on-board. Is it likely that all these things happen? No. Is it likely that – among multimillion dollar projects that have far more than half-a-dozen decision-makers who can each enforce having their way – that enough of these “concerns” are raised to result in your film featuring “safer,” more standardized characters and plotlines? Abso-fricking-lutely.

Big-budget Hollywood films have an incredible ability to take advantage of these standardizations when it comes to messaging, but they also drag their feet when it comes to changing the surface presentation through which their stories are told. As Geena Davis’s Katherine Huling so coldly makes clear to Lake Bell’s Carol in In a World…, that surface presentation very often supercedes a movie’s messaging, no matter how well-intentioned and intelligent it may be. What’s standard and safe in Hollywood’s presentation needs to change, and that requires voices to keep on insisting that it does.

Wednesday Collective — Wonder Woman, Liam’s Bond, Soderbergh’s Psycho, & Lupita’s Beauty

Wednesday Collective is a new series, so I’m still allowed to tweak the rules. This’ll be a weekly roundup of any article about movies that caught my eye. There’ll still be a section at the bottom dedicated to collecting reviews for this week’s home releases, but I’d rather devote the bulk of this series to discussion about storytelling on film:

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
On Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot, and the Nature of Muscles

This is from Chris Braak over at Threat Quality Press. It’s a few weeks old, but a very good read. When Gal Gadot was cast as Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder’s untitled Superman-starring Man of Steel follow-up, there was an internet-wide backlash against the choice. You see, she comes across as a bit petite. Fans had wanted everyone from Gina Torres (who, frankly, lacks the acting chops) to Lena Headey (one of the most underrated actors going).

Unfortunately, it’s the Internet and the tone of the argument quickly turned to replacing Fetishized Woman A with Fetishized Woman B. Instead of discussing casting and symbolism, we got commentary over which unrealistic ideal of a woman fans would like better. Braak re-frames the argument into something more useful, while not discounting the choice of Gadot:

“It is true that Wonder Woman does not actually NEED giant muscles…that it’s not required for whatever passes for realism in comic book movies that she be tall and broad-shouldered, she can have magic strength like Buffy or whatever, that’s fine. But here’s what I would like us to consider: muscles are not just a source of power for average human beings, muscles also represent power.” It’s a superb read.

12 Years a Slave Producer’s Links to Apartheid

Arnon Milchan is a producer on such important films as 12 Years a Slave, LA Confidential, and the harrowing Alvin and the Chipmunks trilogy. He revealed late last year that he had used his position in the film industry to visit foreign countries and illegally import nuclear-weapon technology to Israel. He’d often use director Sydney Pollack to do it. The most notable trade involved Milchan using his connections to promote apartheid (South Africa’s system for ghettoizing and segregating blacks) in exchange for uranium. The FBI was investigating before the Reagan administration told them to drop it. Under the Radar‘s Bryant Jordan has the most complete article wrapping it all up, but Harriet Sherwood’s Guardian write-up is also worth checking out.

Neeson. Liam Neeson.

The Hull Daily Mail has an intriguing interview between Liam Neeson and Keeley Bolger, in which he talks about turning down the James Bond role that eventually went to Pierce Brosnan because his late wife gave him an ultimatum.

Steven Soderbergh’s Psychos

The great director of Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, and Magic Mike enjoyed perhaps the most diverse career of any modern director. He retired last year, but he’s very slyly been doing a terrible job of it. Aside from helming Cinemax’s Clive Owen-starring hospital drama The Knick, he just released online his re-edited mash-up combining Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho with Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot, 1998 remake.

Lupita Nyong’o on What Makes Beauty

The speech Lupita Nyong’o gave upon accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was beautiful and inspiring, but the speech she gave to this year’s Black Women in Hollywood gathering was a remarkable commentary on the biases we still enact upon each other and how best to surpass them.

The 30-year Mystery of The Terminator‘s Score

This article from Slate gives some insight into how an accident helped create one of the most unique, underrated, and iconic scores in film history – the main theme to the original The Terminator.

ON DVD / BLU-RAY

12 YEARS A SLAVE

The Loquacionist wrote a stellar piece about confronting his own family’s slave-owning history as he watched 12 Years a Slave.

Film Threat gets angry that so few movies are made confronting the ugliest piece of foundation on which the United States was built.

Alessia Palanti, as always, portrays the emotion of a film while diving into the meaty theory behind it at Camera Obscura.

And my own response considers the ease with which cultures slip into performing atrocities and explains how the film emotionally broke me like very few others.

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

Bad*ss Digest raved about the film, stressing both its political and storytelling subersiveness.

Reel Antagonist thought the film strong, but that it lacked in rewatchability.

I thought it was a beautiful political statement, and that The Hunger Games is positioning itself as the science-fiction epic of my pissed off and discontent generation.

I also write about Jennifer Lawrence’s performance here.

OLDBOY

I still haven’t seen it, but Outlaw Vern has a humorous and entertaining write-up on Spike Lee’s remake of Chan Wook Park’s original masterpiece. He says he didn’t hate it or anything, but that they should’ve thrown caution to the wind, dumped Brolin, and gone full-on Nicolas Cage with it. That’s never a good sign.

A Whole Lotta Christian Bale: The Films of 2014, #10-1

10. The Missing Picture

March 19 — Rithy Panh tells his memoir of the Khmer Rouge massacres in 1970s Cambodia, using clay figures to fill in for the archival footage that’s missing from one of the most forgotten genocides in 20th century history. It’s an idea that sounds like a student art project gone wrong, but it’s one that in its simplicity becomes overwhelming even in a 2-minute trailer. The Missing Picture is currently up for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. You can watch that trailer here.

9. Gone Girl

October 3 — If Se7en, Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have proven anything, it’s that David Fincher is the greatest modern director of the movie mystery. Gillian Flynn, who wrote the bestselling novel, is handling the screenplay solo, and it’s rare for a first-time screenwriter to be given that kind of carte blanche for a major release. Rosamund Pike joins Ben Affleck, Tyler Perry, and Neil Patrick Harris in what has got to be the strangest cast Fincher’s ever lined up. This last gives me pause enough to not rank this higher, but Fincher’s track record is just too strong to keep it out of the top 10.

8. Noah

March 28 — Darren Aronofsky makes dark, disturbing films like Black Swan. His Requiem for a Dream, about the drug addictions of four New Yorkers, requires emotional recovery time after viewing. Noah is out of left field for him, though he says it’s been his dream project since youth. No one knows how accurate to Judeo-Christian interpretation his adaptation of the Biblical Flood will or won’t be. Previews make it look like he’s playing it straight. Some test screenings for religious groups resulted in criticism, some didn’t. It was enough to cause the studio and Aronofsky to fight publicly over final cut, which any Aronofsky fan could’ve predicted miles off. Let’s hope Aronofsky kept his vision intact. Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, and Emma Watson star. You can watch the trailer in all its madcap visual glory here.

7. Inherent Vice

No date set — There Will Be Blood was a statement film that immediately took its place as one of the most important movies in America’s cinematic history. Director P.T. Anderson’s Inherent Vice, based on the Thomas Pynchon novel and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Jena Malone, earns a place based on the fact that Anderson has yet to misfire. Phoenix is already one of our best actors. Malone is overdue for recognition. They’re joined by Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, and Reese Witherspoon.

6. Exodus

December 12 — Starring Christian Bale as Moses. If that’s not event viewing, I don’t know what is. The last time director Ridley Scott ventured back in time in the Middle East, it was for the Crusade-era epic Kingdom of Heaven. The theatrical release was a gutted mess that cut out entire protagonists, and it was only in the director’s cut that the film evolved from a middling action movie into a profound contemplation on faith, moral obligations, and one’s place in the world. That director’s cut is Scott’s best film by far, and most will never see it. It’s exciting that he’s finally returning to his favorite subject matter, and with Bale, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul, and Sigourney Weaver on board to boot.

5. The Wind Rises

February 21 — I hit on this in my Godzilla preview, but the most important filmmaking in the post-World War 2 era was done in Japan. It was a country possessed by regret and a national shame for blindly following its fascist leaders into war, and traumatized by the dropping of two atomic bombs. Hayao Miyazaki is the director responsible for Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. His animated worlds are evocative and emotional, but in his swan song, he trades in the fantasy genre to tell the story of an idealistic dreamer, a Japanese airplane designer, whose creations are used for war. The Wind Rises is currently up for an Oscar as Best Animated Film. Watch the trailer here.

4. Lawless & Knight of Cups

No date set — Terrence Malick is one of the most enigmatic directors in history. He made only three films in 30 years, each more lauded than the last, and now he’s made four films in the last four years. Both Lawless and Knight of Cups star Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, and Natalie Portman. Knight of Cups is about a man’s celebrity and excess in Hollywood. Lawless, which will likely be retitled, is about two intersecting love triangles in the Austin, TX music scene. It’s the higher profile of the two and also stars Angela Bettis, Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Holly Hunter, Val Kilmer, and Rooney Mara. These aren’t to be confused with Voyage of Time, which is Malick’s upcoming film about…the universe?…and was filmed in Kenya, and may not arrive this year. Heck, it’s Malick, we might not see any of these films until 2029, but chances are we’ll get the Bale pairing this year.

3. Serena

No date set — Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007. Her In a Better World won it in 2011. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper are both nominated in acting categories this year for American Hustle. It’s Lawrence’s third nomination. She won Best Actress last year.

In Serena, Lawrence is Serena Pemberton, a depression-era Lady MacBeth to Cooper’s timber baron George. Serena is the single role I’m most excited to witness in the coming year. Based on its pedigree, if a man had directed this, it’d be on everyone’s top 10 lists. As is, it’s virtually nonexistent.

2. The Raid 2

March 28 — The usual answer to, “What is the best action movie ever made?” is Die Hard. This is wrong. The correct answer is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well, it was. In 2011, The Raid: Redemption complicated that answer. It was an Indonesian film by a Welsh director about an ill-fated police raid, and it combined the best of martial arts, gangster, horror, and Western action movies. The action was brutal, fast, emotional, and intelligent, but the tension that gave it its context was unparalleled. It wasn’t just a superb action movie, it was a superb movie, period. The sequel looks every bit as artful and intense while broadening the scope of its story. Watch the trailer here.

1. Interstellar

November 7 — Little is known about director Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to The Dark Knight trilogy. It’s about space travel and the discovery of a wormhole. A mysterious, heartbreaking, and inspirational trailer is our only clue, yet it doesn’t give a shred of plot away. The cast is a you-pick-’em of top flight actors – Anne Hathaway, Matthew McConaughey, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, John Lithgow. Nolan’s last standalone film was Inception, and that was worth the wait. Interstellar is the movie event of the year. Watch the trailer here. It’s worth it.

Impossibly, Somehow: “American Hustle”

American Hustle exists. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? The film about con men in the 1970s is the funniest film I’ve seen all year, but many of its laughs are the kind that bug my conscience. Some even come through tears. There’s as much lust for life as in any film I’ve seen in recent memory. Its cast of characters is the most passive-aggressive since All About Eve, and that was made in 1950.

American Hustle is deeply American. Every character wants that next leg up. Every character thinks he or she’s the one to get it. Everyone has that extra drive and that bit of luck we’re all convinced we have in our very best moments. Every character lives in dread and survives through hope. Christian Bale plays con artist Irving Rosenfeld, potbellied, middle-aged, and sporting “a rather elaborate combover.” His partner in crime is Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who plays the part of English royalty as much to forget she’s a small-town girl from Albuquerque as to bamboozle her helpless marks. Irving and Sydney’s operation is light on its feet, until it’s busted by the FBI. Agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) isn’t interested in prosecuting them, however. He wants to use their talents to take down politicians and make a name for himself.

American Hustle loves its characters enough to put them through hell. Against Irving’s better instincts, he helps Richie create an irresistible “investment opportunity” – the rebuilding of Atlantic City. The plot is based on Abscam, an FBI sting operation that netted the conviction of one U.S. senator, six representatives, and a variety of other corrupt politicians. (Can we please launch Abscam 2?) Writer-director David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) isn’t interested in politics, however. He’s barely interested in the sting operation. He lets you know what you need to know when you need to know it.

American Hustle is instead obsessed with the con each character plays on him or herself in order to make it day-to-day. Characters trick themselves and each other so often that most cease to be happy without a steady diet of deception. Love triangles have nothing on the flow chart going on between Irving, Richie, Sydney, Sydney’s alter-ego Lady Edith Greensly, Irving’s wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), Rosalyn’s mob suitor Pete (Jack Huston), and Richie’s fiancee. Each character has a moment when they try to come clean to someone they trust, and each character has a moment when they are soundly rejected. These moments are one and the same.

American Hustle knows that in a world of con artists and men who only value their own renown, an honest man is doomed. The only one trying to do right by his fellow man is also the only character you’re certain will suffer in the end. Mayor Carmine Polito’s (Jeremy Renner) only interest is in securing funds to rebuild Atlantic City and put his constituency back to work. In him, Richie sees a big conviction and his ticket to the big leagues. Irving sees the betrayal of a kindred spirit, of the only man who cares at all to change the sort of conditions that made Irving what he is. Renner invests such earnestness and empathy in Polito that his unsuspecting role in the con becomes tragic – except for the parts where you’re laughing.

American Hustle proves Christian Bale is the most capable chameleon of an actor working today. Two weeks ago, I reviewed Out of the Furnace. A few nights ago, I re-watched Batman Begins on TV. Yesterday, I enjoyed American Hustle. Bale is the common thread: heartbreaking in one, iconic in the next, and – through a deeply affected performance – the most genuine thing on-screen in American Hustle. It’s a rare actor who can make a philandering con man on the downside of his career this endearing and earnest.

American Hustle is really the crowning achievement of its entire cast. Amy Adams mines a depth of pathos I had never even suspected. Her Sydney is so alluring and full of verve she’s contagious, but so out-of-control and vindictive it must be viral. Bradley Cooper has been working up to Richie DiMaso for a long time, and as an agent becoming a legend in his own head, he provides much of the film’s comedy. One scene, in which Sydney tries to reveal who she really is to Richie, reflects the whole film – hilarious at one instant, sexually charged in the next, and nearly ending on a violent note that would derail the entire plot. The sharp turns in mood and energy of it all would be over-the-top if it wasn’t so finely controlled by the director and his actors. Instead, these moments become so deeply felt that aggressive, out-of-control, and over-the-top become smooth, soft, and supple.

American Hustle is the announcement that Jennifer Lawrence is both the actress of the moment, and of her generation. As Irving’s wife, Rosalyn, she naturally enamors whomsoever crosses her path without the effort Sydney has to put into conning them. Lawrence commands the screen every second she’s on it.

American Hustle is the cinematic embodiment of jazz. It throws the hopes and dreams of four unstoppable objects together and basks in the human drama and paradoxical comedy that arises from it. It weaves four brilliant soloists together, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in conflict, and it demands everything these actors have, every shred of commitment and ounce of energy. These characters are each awful, and we should hate them, yet we feel sympathy. We root for them because we recognize their acute panic at being lost in life, controlled by others. We know that drowning feeling that you’re less and less who you thought you could be by the day. We root for them because they’re each so hopeful.

American Hustle is an impossibly brave film, constantly an inch away from being too ridiculous. It feels more real than real, supersaturated with feeling and color only in the way movies can be, yet too embarrassingly private in the way only life is. It’s charged, it’s classic, it’s a masterpiece and one big put-on all at once. The more absurd a moment, the more it matters. It knows what all the notes are but doesn’t look at the sheet music because it’ll play what it wants – it knows how the music should feel – and, somehow, that becomes the more perfect way to do it.

American Hustle, like its characters, is determined to make sure you know it exists. And boy oh boy, does it ever exist.

American Hustle exists. Somehow.

American Hustle is rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content, and brief violence.

Who Did the Golden Globes Forget?

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Golden Globes for which they vote have a very specific taste in film, and awards shows aren’t complete without oversights – there are only so many nominations to go around.

Awards ceremonies tend to ignore genre film far too much, only acknowledging it when it comes in foreign language or animated form. For every Pan’s Labyrinth we catch, there is a Moon we ignore. For every Spirited Away we rightly laud, we neglect something like The Fall.

Actors who have been nominated before gain a sort of tenure that can only be broken by the most dramatic, momentous, newsworthy roles. That means there’s a high bar for entry, but a comparatively lower bar for re-nomination.

The Golden Globes also lack technical categories like costume design and cinematography. Keeping all this in mind:

Who did the Golden Globes miss?

BEST MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA

Nominated: 12 Years a Slave, Captain Phillips, Gravity, Philomena, Rush

Forgotten: Prisoners

The biggest awards oversight of the year is also the best mystery of the year. Concerning the disappearance of two little girls, Prisoners is brimming with red herrings and great performances. Its left turns work because all the clues you need are there from the beginning.

It contains tremendous questions about faith and morality and pulls a unique trick at the end, not just putting its viewers in the position of judging whether one protagonist is redeemed or damned, but in making it clear that we’re not qualified to be his judges.

It contains stirring performances by Maria Bello, Paul Dano, Viola Davis, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard, Hugh Jackman, and Melissa Leo.

BEST ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA

Nominated: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine); Sandra Bullock (Gravity); Judi Dench (Philomena); Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks); Kate Winslet (Labor Day)

Forgotten: Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Actresses in action movies never get awards recognition. Sigourney Weaver’s acknowledgment for Aliens a full 27 years ago stands out as the lone exception. Jennifer Lawrence’s translation of Katniss Everdeen for the big screen realizes not just an action hero’s story but also that of a psychologically breaking soldier whose image is manipulated for publicity and who is both fearful of and deeply resigned to the inevitability of being sent back into battle. It’s a timely portrayal in a deceptively important film that few actors – male or female – could fuse into a single, living, breathing character.

BEST ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA

Nominated: Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave); Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom); Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips); Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club); Robert Redford (All is Lost)

Forgotten: Jake Gyllenhaal, Prisoners

Though Hugh Jackman has the showier role as a father searching for his missing daughter, Gyllenhaal provides the film’s moral anchor as Detective Loki. Combating the mystery in front of him as well as finding a kidnapped suspect and working his way around a police chief who speaks in deeply bureaucratic half-truths, Loki is a character realized as much in the steady performance of a grueling job as in his flaws and ever-present, nervous tics. He is the only patient man in a universe of dread. Confronting grieving parents, suspects, and deceptive bosses, what makes Loki special is the reserve Gyllenhaal gives him.

Loki is a character whose tendency to respond in measured doses feels so deeply ingrained that it doesn’t feel like you’re witnessing dramatic acting so much as habits practiced over a lifetime. That reserve, that measured reaction is constantly assaulted. Sometimes it holds and sometimes it breaks, but you can tell exactly where the line is every second Gyllenhaal is on-screen. It’s an understated performance that makes the film’s drama and mystery feel very real, and it’s the best work Gyllenhaal has done to date.

BEST MOTION PICTURE, MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Nominated: American Hustle, Her, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, The Wolf of Wall Street

Forgotten: Spring Breakers

It’s neither a musical nor a comedy, but that’s OK – neither are more than half the films the Globes nominated in this category. Spring Breakers would be a cutting satire if it undermined its subject matter of drunk, college kids at Spring Break and the culture of criminality that appeals to their rebellious side.

Instead, it belongs to a forgotten genre called absurdism. It seeks to empathize with characters that steal and terrorize, but not to justify their actions or give us tragic, movie villains who unsuspectingly travel along some downward spiral. As the blog Agents and Seers puts it, Spring Breakers presents in James Franco’s drug dealer, Alien, a character who embraces “enlightened false consciousness,” for whom “money, wealth, and excess is an end in itself rather than a means.”

Whether she succeeds or fails as a dramatic actress, Selena Gomez already has a truly important performance under her belt as Faith, the Alice down the rabbit hole, “an idealistically unaware character in an otherwise cynically aware culture of crime and materialism.”

Spring Breakers was written and directed by Harmony Korine, who wrote the screenplay for the similarly conscience-scathing, reality-breaking film about a boy spreading AIDS, Kids.

BEST ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE, MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Nominated: Amy Adams (American Hustle); Julie Delpy (Before Midnight); Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha); Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said); Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

Forgotten: Michelle Pfeiffer, The Family

Sometimes a film that has everything going for it just doesn’t work in the end, and no film this year exhibits this better than The Family. Just as stellar performances in genre films are overlooked, stellar performances in average films are easily forgotten. No matter how much the film’s blow-everything-up ending undermines the family dynamics that precede it, Pfeiffer’s work as Maggie Blake, a mob wife living in France under the witness protection program, makes her parts of the film glow.

She handles the comedy deftly, creates a believable and warm family dynamic with Robert de Niro, and – when the mobsters inevitably show up and her children go missing – she delivers one of the best scenes of the year. She makes a mediocre film worth seeing for her performance alone.

BEST ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE, MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Nominated: Christian Bale (American Hustle); Bruce Dern (Nebraska); Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street); Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis); Joaquin Phoenix (Her)

Forgotten: Johnny Depp, The Lone Ranger

I was ready to dislike Depp in this movie. I feared a Native American version of Stepin Fetchit, but The Lone Ranger is whole-heartedly on the Native American side of the argument. For the most part, Depp takes a back seat, subduing what could easily have been an over-the-top, mugging role while allowing Armie Hammer’s Lone Ranger to be the larger-than-life character. His performance here is no rehash of Captain Jack Sparrow, no matter how much the ads would like you to believe otherwise.

Depp channels Buster Keaton more than at any other point in his career by playing the physical comedy with stoic reservation, while allowing director Gore Verbinski to get away with playing fast and loose with monumental shifts in tone. There’s an audience resistance to Johnny Depp born out of the idea that he’s spent too long cashing in on his indie cred, but with The Lone Ranger, he’s taken a blockbuster film and infused it with that energy – both in his performance and in the film’s deeply bittersweet message about ethnic bloodshed being part of America’s military industrial DNA since the beginning.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE

Nominated: Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine); Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle); Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave); Julia Roberts (August: Osage County); June Squibb (Nebraska)

Forgotten: Andrea Riseborough, Oblivion

Oblivion, like Prisoners, is a complicated and overlooked gem of a film. It takes its cues from Golden Age science-fiction like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey all the way through to modern, anti-corporate parables such as Duncan Jones’s Moon.

Andrea Riseborough plays Victoria, who lives in the science-fiction equivalent of a white ivory tower in the clouds. She acts as the liaison between Tom Cruise’s drone repairman Jack and an orbiting base that helps transport refugees from a war-ravaged Earth to a colony on Saturn’s moon Titan.

Oblivion is a film that hides realities behind realities, and Victoria is the slippery glue that holds it all together. As each truth is peeled back to reveal something new, we’re never quite sure how much Victoria does or doesn’t know, whether she suspects and hides the truth from Jack or if she’s willfully in the dark. Oblivion demands a character who is controlling, quietly forceful, and constantly thinking, yet who is reliable, genuine, and caring, who is an awkward middle man between demanding boss and troublesome employee, who you trust and root for and don’t want to see hurt despite her perspective on reality being too slippery to even remotely pin down. We trust her even as we grow more and more suspicious of her.

It’s a thankless role in an underseen science-fiction masterpiece, and a role that you never seem to read the same way from viewing to viewing.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE

Nominated: Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips); Daniel Bruhl (Rush); Bradley Cooper (American Hustle); Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave); Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

Forgotten: James Franco, Spring Breakers

There are some actors, the Anthony Hopkins of the world, who can play any role they darn well please. There are others who only function within their own wheelhouse. Put James Franco in a Wizard of Oz film, for instance, and it’s just awkward. Ask him to play a degenerate, a rebel whose cause is himself, and you’ve got something special. In Alien, the drug dealer who takes four wayward college girls under his wing in Spring Breakers, Franco takes an enormous risk.

Alien is a successful and talented musician, but his day job’s just a hobby. Here is a villain who understands only ownership, who doesn’t bother to justify any awful thing he does but rather seeks the next plateau of filth. He is a modern, cynical, cultural predator – he could help himself, but why bother? He is the temptation of giving in to a talent for manipulation. He is every moral code consciously, systematically removed. He’s the Sir Edmund Hillary of movie gangsters. Why ruin others? Because they’re there.

Alien is a cultural anger at rules no one seems to follow and a cultural boredom for one’s own passions that seem to have no value. He is an evolution of movie villain, a wayward thing, seeking to make a mark – negative or positive has no value – and to own things, guns, people, souls, because ownership is our highest cultural prize. He is an American villain, through and through, and Franco realizes him in an authentic way no other actor could.

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

Nominated: Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity); Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips); Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave); Alexander Payne (Nebraska); David O. Russell (American Hustle)

Forgotten: Baz Luhrmann, The Great Gatsby

Ostentatious. Extravagant. Melodramatic. Audiences forget that this is exactly how the novel wanted it. The slow-burn plot of a New Money millionaire in 1920s New York trying to win over his soft-spoken, lost love from her Old Money husband is a one-of-a-kind film event only Baz Luhrmann could deliver.

Luhrmann’s unequaled talents for visual splendor and anachronistic flourishes hide a thematically deep film that not only captures the novel’s love story and social class evolution, but expounds at length on its oft-overlooked themes of ownership and the aching, philosophical emptiness that drives the addiction to possess.

Luhrmann understands what so many critics arguing about the novel’s metaphors for new-breed capitalism have not – that Nick Carraway’s purpose as narrator is to provide a specifically American breed of savior. He is not a morally powerful figure providing a better example. He is a powerless figure who observes his generation, incapable of being more than a visitor to this strange culture and helpless to change anything about its single-minded obsessions. Instead, he increasingly embraces the luxury of celebrity, absorbing the perspectives of the wealthy even if he’ll never have the means to realize them. He loses a part of his philosophical grip, a part of what centers him. His newly discovered addiction to the surface of things and his in-built need for ethical depth grow increasingly in conflict, and even his best attempts at sin eating for his friends are inconsequential to the monumental self-possession and indifference of the American wealthy. He is capable, at the end, only of having a chance to save himself from the American Dream.

Luhrmann’s film adaptation is saturated in the abundance and frivolity of its characters, housed squarely in their obsessions, and is as deeply melodramatic as you can get. By way of these seeming affectations, however, it translates as fully as is possible one of the most inaccessible and philosophically complex novels America has produced.

BEST SCREENPLAY – MOTION PICTURE

Nominated: Spike Jonze (Her); Bob Nelson (Nebraska); Jeff Pope & Steve Coogan (Philomena); John Ridley (12 Years a Slave); Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell (American Hustle)

Forgotten: Aaron Guzikowski, Prisoners

Like all good mysteries, Prisoners provides a solution that makes sense. What takes it from being a good film to a great one is that we’re left to write one protagonist’s ending. Before that, the film is intense. I crawled back in my seat. I chewed my nails off.

It’s the ending that made my jaw drop. I felt a chill up my spine when I realized what the film was really asking me. Prisoners is a film among films. It’s why we go into a dark theater for two hours and say, “Make me believe.”

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – MOTION PICTURE

Nominated: Alex Ebert (All is Lost); Alex Heffes (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom); Steven Price (Gravity); John Williams (The Book Thief); Hans Zimmer (12 Years a Slave)

Forgotten: M83, Oblivion

For his earlier Tron: Legacy, director Joseph Kosinski employed the French New Wave duo Daft Punk to create its soundtrack. The resulting film was a campy, off-kilter affair, but Daft Punk’s score was an overlooked achievement, bridging the synth-heavy, tonal landscapes that Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre invented in the 1970s to the aggressive, feedback-laden dubstep of today.

For Oblivion, Kosinski sought out French electronic band M83. While the result doesn’t stand out from the crowd as much as Daft Punk’s work did, it functions better within the overall scope of its film, providing a score epic and triumphal in its orchestral nature, yet evoking undercurrents of longing and quiet desperation through themes you could plug into an 80s fantasy movie. It’s a wonderful complement to the film that is my biggest surprise of the year, and ought to be remembered among similarly momentous science-fiction scores.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – MOTION PICTURE

Nominated: “Atlas” (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire); “Let it Go” (Frozen); “Ordinary Love” (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom); “Please Mr. Kennedy” (Inside Llewyn Davis); “Sweeter Than Fiction” (One Chance)

Forgotten: “I See Fire” by Ed Sheeran, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

A bittersweet monument to a stellar cliffhanger. Just listen to the link above.

*I’ve excluded the foreign language and animated film categories because I usually only get a chance to catch up on them in following years.