Nobody Walks (Ry Russo-Young, 2012)

A listless, meaningless diversion into a cloistered L.A. home where the disaffected engage in casual affairs, Nobody Walks seems to aim for Antonioni and instead feels like a Max Fischer play of one of the Italian's films. Russo-Young and co-writer Lena Dunham sidestep many of the usual pitfalls, not portraying Olivia Thirlby's waif as a slut nor Rosemarie DeWitt as avenging cuckquean, but they replace these worn depictions with all new reductive types and a laissez-faire approach to the narrative that leaves this 83-minute feature feeling twice as long. The actors acquit themselves nicely, but to no end.

My full review is up now at Spectrum Culture.

Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012)

Of the many pleasures to be found in Dredd, Pete Travis' lean, nasty bottle episode of a film, perhaps the greatest is the lack of cumbersome setup that so dreadfully weighs down many comic book films. The only backstory for the protagonist and the world he inhabits is delivered by the main character himself in a terse voiceover that condense the hour of setting and character establishment that has become de rigeur for franchise starters to a mere minute or two. The Earth is an irradiated wasteland, and the only inhabitable area in the remnants of the United States is a vast, concrete-walled region known as Mega City One. Keeping the 800 million boxed-in residents of this massive slum in order are a group of peacekeepers known as Judges, authorized to pass and execute judgment on the street. Oh, and one of these Judges is named Dredd.

And that's all she wrote. Cut from this sparest of setups straight into a fracas, Dredd (Karl Urban) chasing down a car full of drug addicts as they fire wildly at the Judge on their trail. Set aside but a few more minutes after this swift action sequence to lay out the film's plot: assigned to take a rookie made psychic by radiation exposure (Olivia Thirlby) on patrol, the two head to a towering slum block to investigate a gang message killing. What they find is a 200-story building entirely under the control of a savage gang leader, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) looking to protect her manufacturing plant for Mega City One's hottest new drug, Slo-Mo. Literally locking the building down, Ma-Ma forces Dredd and Anderson to fight scores of bad guys tasked with collecting their heads.

The Wackness

I've been holding off on seeing this film for sometime due to the extremely polarizing opinions on it. Some cited it as one of the best of the year, while others placed it on the list of the worst. I set the movie on the back-burner, until I had a conversation on Facebook about it with a friend. Here are some of the things she had to say about the film:

"I just watched the first half of the Wackness, it pretty much sucks."

"I don't even know if I can even finish the Wackness...so bad, i just want it to be over, and the guy at the Blockbuster counter was like OH IT IS SOO AMAZING. yeah right."

"I keep starting and stopping the Wackness, hoping it could possibly redeem itself, but i just dont think its possible....UGH. Why do movies have to suck so bad?"

"I finally finished the Wackness, and I still dont know why they made that shit movie, and why anyone would sign up to be in it...SUCKS."

She might as well have called it the best film ever, because she activated my schadenfreude alert, pulling me to the film like iron near a magnet. I rushed to Hastings the next day, rented it, and sat down expecting one of two things: 1) I'd love the film, leading to petty arguments with my friend that would almost certainly lead to hilarity or 2) I'd hate it just as much and we could high-five each other over pithy comments like some makeshift teenage Algonquin Round Table. Turns out, she was being kind.

The Wackness is one of the most turgid "hip" films I've ever sat through. Set in 1994, it's overriding message seems to be "REMEMBER HIP-HOP?!" in all-caps; indeed, as the characters walk through a sepia-toned Manhattan, writer-director (and I'm using both of those terms loosely) Jonathan Levine throws out all the hip-hop hits he can think of, from Raekwon to Notorious B.I.G., and every song ties into the action in moments of cheap irony and cheaper "insight."

Levine centers the film around Luke (Josh Peck), a rap-loving, pot-dealing teenager who just graduated high school and comes home to a mother and father who constantly squabble about money. The father's fallen on hard times at work, while the mom loafs at home, so Luke believes himself to be the breadwinner by selling marijuana. He gets his stuff from Percy, played by Method Man with a high-larious Jamaican accent, and sells his wares from a frozen ice stand that he carts around town. I'm not kidding, he has enough bags packed with marijuana to supply a Grateful Dead tour.

Every week he meets with a therapist, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley, chewing scenery seemingly for sustenance) and pays for his sessions with weed. Dr. Squires is most certainly the worst therapist in the history of psychoanalysis, but don't worry about that because he's cool. Luke asks for meds because he's feeling down yo, but Squires tells him he just needs to get laid. Just like any other psychiatrist. Squires has 99 problems, but it appears that a bitch is indeed one, as he spends the film pulling away from his wife Kristin (Famke Janssen).

Luke eventually falls for Squires' stepdaughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), the most popular girl in school, who sees something in Luke too. Maybe it's his geek charm, or his unwavering devotion to her. Or maybe it's the fact that he could fill an above ground pool with his pot supply. The point is that the two become a couple, and Squires, who doesn't even really care about his stepdaughter, disapproves, because of course he does.

Can someone explain to me why coming-of-age stories are always the same? If it's about a girl, she's the frumpy nerd who "matures" when she takes off her glasses and suddenly she's beautiful; if it's a boy, he has to get laid. Now, a lot of good films make it about something more than this, but The Wackness is not a good film. Luke and Stephanie do eventually shack up, but Luke learns nothing from the experience, chiefly because he looks to Squires for guidance.

And what a terrible role model Squires is. Apart from stooping to trading therapy for pot, he generally blames his lot in life on women. He disapproves of Stephanie dating Luke because he knows she'll be a heartbreaker like her mom. To recapture his youth, he follows Luke around and meets Union (Mary-Kate Olsen), a teenage hippie who knows the beats of the 60s but not the rhythm. The two end up having drunken sex in a phone booth, though this scene never gets any weight attached to it because the characters just sort of forget (though I defy the audience to purge the image of Sir Ben Kingsley groping the girl who used to be on Full House from your mind).

Stephanie does eventually break Luke's heart, but the characters are so poorly drawn it's hard to figure out who's to blame. On the one hand, Luke overreacts when she doesn't call and leaves her a harsh voicemail message; on the other, Stephanie has no character arc and Levin makes her out to be kind of a slut when she doesn't seem like one. I pitied Olivia Thirlby in this movie; she's one of the finest rising talents in Hollywood, but there's nothing she or anyone else can do with this character. She even has to expound upon that awful title: at one point she tells Luke "I look at the dopeness, but you just look at the wackness," and I buried my face into a pillow and screamed. Watch her in Juno and Snow Angels to see what a talent was wasted here.

It's not that I don't think films can center on the music; Cameron Crowe has done it three times. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (which he wrote but didn't direct) captured high school kids in the early 80s in that interim when classic rock had been killed by punk, only for that too to die, and the kids looked for something to latch onto that could be theirs. Singles showed Seattle on the eve of the grunge explosion, back when it was "their" music. His best, Almost Famous, is a snapshot of the moment when rock 'n roll fully tipped over from personal statement and rebellion into commercialized product. Crowe tied music in with the very beings of his characters, crafting touching elegies to periods that you wish you could go back and see. Sure, they were romanticized, but Crowe is so damn sincere that you believe him time after time.

The Wackness does not follow this pattern. Luke likes hip-hop chiefly because it's kind of cool, I guess. He knows a few lyrics and speaks like a wannabe, but I'm reminded of something one of the groupies said in Almost Famous: "They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts." The soundtrack has no resonance with the story, which is harsh and presented in sepia tones that only point out how boring this plodding waste of time is. Levine seems to have wanted to capture the hip-hop he loved as a kid, but ended up with sexist nonsense that boxes Luke into a mindset so thoroughly that calling this a coming-of age tale at all seems spurious. Apparently Levine loosely based the film on his own life. How can an autobiographical film not know its characters?

Juno

When I first saw Juno last January, I walked out of the theater knowing I'd seen a great movie, but I couldn't quite say why. I watched it again on DVD and felt the same way, still inexplicably in love with the film. Now, after a third time, I've truly sat down and concentrated, and I've at last come up with an answer that is so absurdly simple I should probably start using safety scissors because I can't trust myself anymore: Juno, to me, is a great movie because it makes me happy, 100%, smiling into the wind, bounce-in-your-step happy. It is so thoroughly deceptive in its depth that I realize know I wanted Diablo Cody to win an Oscar for her screenplay without even understanding why she so completely deserved it.

The film of course deals with the titular Juno, a 16-year old who seems to have spent all 16 of those years fashioning herself into an independent person. To all those who dismiss the film out of hand as Cody's attempt to "sound like a real teenager:" you don't get it. Juno speaks the way she does because she wants to be individualistic; it's her own personal ironic statement to the world. Yet these speech patterns only show her immaturity, so at the start of the film her dialogue overflows with the stuff. Over the course of the film, she slowly drops her speaking styles, and it's one of the many ways Cody shows her character growing up without once calling attention to itself.

Ellen Page plays Juno about as perfectly as a person could. She manages to act far beyond her years while playing someone younger than her, an uneasy balance that could have gone awry, but doesn't. That juxtaposition makes Juno such a singular and great character; she has the intelligence of someone far older, but lacks the actual wisdom needed to put it to good use. Page has established herself as an actress to watch, but she sets the bar so high with Juno I don't know if she'll ever top it.

Also turning in his best work is Michael Cera. It's easy to dismiss Bleeker as yet another awkward little geek à la all his other roles, but just watch him in his first real scene, when Juno tells him she's pregnant. He doesn't explode like Seth Rogen's character did in Knocked Up, nor does he break down. Hell, he doesn't even demand a paternity test. He knows the baby is his, and when you look into Cera's eyes you can practically feel his stomach jump. Then he accepts the news, and whatever decision Juno makes, and in an instant you know these two are a perfect couple; Bleeker doesn't hide behind stylized speeches and quirkiness, but he's every bit as strong, yet unsure, as Juno.

Juno makes an appointment to get an abortion, but before she can enter she runs into a classmate, Su-Chin, a lone protestor who spouts off some parroted talking points before catching Juno off guard with the claim that her unborn child "has fingernails." Juno enters to face a dismissive clerk and, as she fills out the forms, she notices all the scratching and tapping the other people in the room are doing with their fingernails and has an epiphany: she can't abort the baby, but she can give it to adoption. Some may read into this as a pro-life statement, but I see it as pro-choice; after all, one of the choices is to keep the baby, and this is Juno's decision.

Page and Cera alone are enough to support the film, but Cody and Reitman found an outstanding supporting cast who all bring their own originality to the part. Now, if Juno's speech didn't turn off haters, her parents' reaction to her pregnancy sealed the deal. Mac and Bren, Juno's father and stepmom, are played by J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, which alone makes them worth watching. But when they accept Juno's news with understandable shock, but without anger, it draws a very clear line in the sand. For me, it fits into Cody's depiction of maturity; Juno took the news with the fear befitting a child, but before the conversation evens ends they've decided to support their daughter.

The other supporting actors play as important a role as Juno's dad and stepmom. Juno searches through a local paper that has ads for couples looking to adopt, and she settles on Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), a yuppie couple who live in a suburban condo. Mac takes Juno to meet them, and there's a not-so-subtle yet never overstated feeling of the class gap between the two pairs. Vanessa is overjoyed that she will finally be a mother and treats Juno almost like the pregnant Virgin Mary. She wants nothing more than to be a mom, but cannot conceive one of her own; she says with infinite longing that Juno's her friends say Juno's in the toughest stage of the pregnancy and Juno, still acting childish (especially now that she's "solved the problem"), casually responds with "at least you don't have to carry this thing." Jennifer Garner deserved an award just for the flash of immeasurable pain on her face when she hears the line. The agreement is signed, and everything seems to have worked out.

However, Mark gives off a vibe from the start that he's not as thrilled to be a parent as his wife. Juno takes an immediate shine to Mark because he's a commercial composer who used to play in a rock band. There's a disturbing subtext to Mark, but really Bateman plays a role not dissimilar to Bill Murray's in Rushmore: like Herman Blume, Mark seems himself in the young protagonist, and the knowledge of how he turned out leads him to an existential crisis. When Juno finally wises up to how pathetic he really is, and it inspires her own maturation.

Vanessa and Mark form counterpoints for Juno's story and give the pregnancy an endpoint, but this is ultimately a story of a little girl growing up. At the start she masks her fear and adolescence behind her speech patterns and detached demeanor, but she lets out her true emotions in one brief moment early on when she admits "I don't really know who I am." In a bitter voice-over, she mentions her mother, who moved to Arizona after the divorce and sends her daughter a cactus every Valentine's Day. There's a lot of pain masked in Juno's sarcastic remarks, and her feelings of abandonment very likely led her to keep the child, even if she's giving it up for adoption.

As Mark and Vanessa's relationship hits a strain due to Mark's fear of growing up, so too does the relationship between Juno and Bleeker. I mentioned earlier than Cera played within his typecast but offered up something more, but that was only the beginning. At one stage Juno tells Bleeker that she's missing class for an ultrasound, and Bleeker begins to ask "Can I -" and catches himself, replacing it with "Should I come?" Bleeker, though afraid, handles the situation more maturely than anyone else in the film. Later, when Juno is at her peak of self-denial, calls her on her crap and, though he never explodes and never gets mean, the effect is absolutely devastating.

I feel perhaps I'm underselling the comedy of this film in favor of the brilliant drama, but then the drama is what sets it apart. However, it is, quite often, extremely funny. When Juno and Bleeker go to science class, their lab partners are also a couple, and they're in the midst of squabbling over the immaturity of the boy, who cheated on the girl after drinking a few comically weak alcoholic beverages. This scene is funny, but it also shows just how different Bleeker and Juno are, mainly thanks to Bleeker's tenderness. But my favorite gag was the running discussion about the term "sexually active" that continues to make me laugh.

Ultimately, the film is Cody's way of telling kids that they don't know everything. Most adults are quick to point it out, but they do so in a condescending manner, and usually to end an argument before they might actually have to think. But Cody is different; she never condescends because she respects the intelligence of teenagers, and she's never cruel in her lesson. Instead, she gently shows teens that they are only just beginning to truly live, and that life can be full of surprises. Juno, Bleeker, Vanessa and Mark may go through rough times, but we learn something about ourselves and about life by the end of it, and it makes me smile the more I think about it. Haters be damned: I wish there were more films as honest and heartwarming as this.

Snow Angels

A marching band practices their rendition of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," only to be harshly berated for their sloppy lines and playing. After a few moments, gunshots ring out in the distance. Snow Angels, David Gordon Green's fourth film, shows the writer-director still displaying his ability to condense American life into 2 hours.

He focuses on a small town, small enough where the stories all converge with one another like a Robert Altman film, though Green does not structure his film the way Altman set up his tapestries. Of all these characters, Green primarily focuses on two: Arthur (Michael Angarano), a teenager in the marching band, and Annie (Kate Beckinsale), who forms the closest thing to a center in the story. Even these two are closely connected: Annie used to babysit Arthur (and was his first crush), and now the two work together in a local diner.

If George Washington examined friendship in post-Industrial, post-racial Appalachia, Snow Angels is a brutal look into relationships in a small town, where at some point everybody ends up screwing everybody else. Seemingly everyone in the film is either divorced or headed towards one. Annie is estranged from her husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell), an unstable Born-Again recovering alcoholic who seems to be perfectly affable and normal around everyone except Annie. Meanwhile Annie sleeps with the husband of her co-worker (played by Amy Sedaris). To top it all off, Arthur's parents are going through a separation.

Into all this turmoil Arthur experience love for the first time. Not his crush on Annie, but his muted and charming romance with Lila (Olivia Thirlby), a quirky girl with a winning personality. In a film where everyone else's relationships crumble around him, Arthur finds the only glimmer of happiness to be had, made all the more touching because of Green's tenderness towards them that never dips into mawkishness.

Halfway through the film, the film takes a darker tone. Glenn discovers his wife's infidelity and returns to his violent, drunken ways. Shortly afterwards, Tara (Glenn and Annie's daughter) goes missing. Soon Green plunges the story into an entirely different direction, one akin to Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. For his part, Green handles the massive shift in direction as if nothing happened at all.

In the latter half Rockwell and Beckinsale really come alive, moving from broken, hollow people into characters vibrant in their rage and grief. The more Glenn sinks into alcoholism and religious fanaticism the more Annie grows to match him, and both actors bring their A-games. Rockwell in particular resonates; his violent reactions to the more horrifying events are moving, misguided and sinister as they may be.
Written and Directed by: David Gordon Green

At the end we finally discover the truth about those gunshots in the beginning, and to be honest it takes away a bit from the removed sensibility of the rest of the film. Really, the rest of the movie has been Green's baby, but here he must adhere to the book he adapted, and it just doesn't fit into his style. Yet Green pulls it back by ending on Arthur and Lila, who potentially have a future void of all the tragedies of the present, a future in which their love never dies. It's a bit sentimental, yes, but it works.

Though the two hemispheres of the story (Annie's and Arthur's) never overlap in more than superficial ways, together they form a haunting portrayal of community isolation, even in those small towns where everybody seems to know everybody. If its climax seems out of synch with the rest of the film, it's the result of the inevitable pull of the literary source on Green's separate and unique direction. That does not excuse the pieces not fitting, but neither does the film genuinely suffer for it. If nothing else, it ensures Green's place as perhaps the most humanist American director currently working, and I'll have my money in hand every time he releases a film.