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Last night I basically talked about how angry I was over the fact that the only movie I saw in 2011 that had been nominated for Best Picture by the Academy happened to be terrible. Tonight, I’m going to tell you about the three films I expected to get nominated, and declare them the collective winners of the first ever Stevie awards. That’s right, they all win. Well, then, I’ve shot the suspense for you already, haven’t I? Then I guess this will be like Jeopardy and I’ll have to give you the questions in response to the answers.

I’m going to start with the only film I actively looked forward to this summer, and that is Drive. My excitement over Drive was mainly piqued by the premise: Ryan Gosling plays a Man With No Name who works as a stunt driver in Hollywood by day, but is a getaway driver at night. He becomes involved in the lives of a family living down the hall from him, and soon finds himself in big trouble with some nasty people. This all seems like a perfect recipe for a Fast and the Furious kind of romp with all sorts of car chases and one-liners. In fact, it was destined to be such a film, but after an $80 million project with Hugh Jackman attached fell through, Gosling would become involved and was asked to pick the director. After what will likely be remembered as a legendary Hollywood “first date” with Danish upstart Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive had a new direction as a tense, noir-inspired crime drama.

Distracted driving: driving while looking into Ryan Gosling's dreamy eyes

This new take on the tone of the story would produce one of the most refreshing Hollywood pictures in recent memory. Gosling evokes the cool of Steve McQueen throughout most of the picture. His character is able to find a real purpose in protecting the adorable Carey Mulligan and her little boy, and he doesn’t have to say much in order to get his point across. The cast is filled out by the likes of the great Brian Cranston, an hilarious Ron Perlman, the voluptuous Christina Hendricks, and a surprisingly intimidating Albert Brooks, who I felt was ROBBED when he wasn’t included among the nominees for Best Supporting Actor. I have always loved Brooks and wasn’t expecting his turn as a remorseless gangster.

One big element to Drive for me is its handling of its subject matter. Refn is a master of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it school of showing violence and bloodshed onscreen. People in this film get stabbed, slashed, shot, and stomped, and while it’s never pretty, it is masterfully executed and only shown for a split-second. If you’ve seen his previous work, especially Valhalla Rising and to a lesser extent the outstanding Bronson, you know what I’m talking about. And oh yeah, there’s a couple of car chases. Very, very good car chases.

On top of all of that, Drive is also a film that takes place in its own little world – a Los Angeles that isn’t quite the cleaner, friendlier city it is today, but not the street-gang warzone you might expect, either. To me, it’s the kind of world the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise has been creating for years. It’s a world you know doesn’t exist, but it damn well could if it only wanted to. Not to mention one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in a long time, which only adds further personality to an already stellar picture. Definitely not to be missed.

I couldn't find a single production still that could say what I wanted, so have this instead

Now, here’s something that I hate to admit as a movie enthusiast: I don’t like Swedish films. I enjoyed Let the Right One In immensely, but from there, it’s like trying to watch Russian films. No matter how beautiful they might be, I just can’t stay awake. Ingmar Bergman puts me to sleep better than episodes of Modern Marvels on the History Channel. I couldn’t even make it through the original version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I tried watching over a year ago and fell asleep a half-hour in. I intended on revisiting, but kept putting it off until the inevitable American version surfaced. But this was more than just a Hollywood adaptation as far as I was concerned.

David Fincher is one of my favorite filmmakers. I have seen almost every one of his movies and I was very encouraged by The Social Network last year. He managed to step his game up considerably with that picture and ended up bringing his downer style to what so many people just assumed would just be “Facebook: The Movie.” After the considerable acclaim for the movies based on Stieg Larsson’s hugely popular mystery series, it was obvious that Sony Pictures had to do the right thing and get Fincher on board. What we got was “the feel-bad movie of the year.”

Fincher went back to Social Network‘s well and cast Rooney Mara (who played a brief but pivotal role in TSN) as the titular Lisbeth Salander and asked Trent “Nine Inch Nails” Reznor to score the film. Both decisions were good ones. Mara is convincing as the detached and disturbed Lisbeth Salander, hacker and private investigator. The big debate over whether her portrayal of the character is better than the original by Noomi Rapace, but from what I’ve seen of Mara and Rapace’s other work, Mara showed more range. Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, the disgraced magazine editor whom Salander assists in solving a decades-old disappearance of a young girl in northern Sweden.

The plot is almost by-the-numbers mystery with a mostly British supporting cast (including Christopher Plummer, not Max von Sydow as I had originally expected) speaking English with British accents in Sweden, but none of that really matters. It’s also scary, shocking, and ugly, but still so damn good that I can’t give you details if you don’t know the story. After seeing this, you will know without a doubt why the original novel’s title literally translates to Men Who Hate Women. But it’s Fincher’s show. He made a huge splash with Se7en all those years ago and Dragon Tattoo is a return to that same territory. I certainly hope that if and when Sony asks for The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nestthat they pay Fincher however much he wants to stay attached.

Gary Oldman. That is all.

The third and final film I fully expected to get a best picture nod was Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which does win the exclusive Stevie award for Most British Film. Gary Oldman heads a cast that also includes Colin Firth, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Toby Jones, Tom Hardy, and the new Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch. Wow, that’s a lot of British people. But what’s this, Let the Right One In‘s Tomas Alfredson is the director… well, even with this Swede in the driver’s seat, I think it remains pretty damn British. In fact, that’s one reason I was very excited about this espionage thriller.

Well, “thriller” isn’t the right word. As intriguing as every character is, as mysterious as every clue might be, your heart never gets racing. Probably that Swedish director’s fault, but that’s fine. The slow pace lets you fully appreciate Gary Oldman’s incredibly understated performance as George Smiley, a retired member of British Intelligence. Smiley is a man who has devoted his whole life to two things: his estranged wife and his job. Upon retirement he can’t help but want to get back at it when a roguish young agent, played by a wonderfully hammy Hardy, shows up at his home asking for help tying up some loose ends to the very case that led to his dismissal. And so begins a complex Cold War mystery that demands your attention and your respect.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Tinker Tailor until it was over. It’s a movie that holds the cards close to its chest until the very end, but when it laid them down, I had to smile and say that I was thoroughly satisfied. I can say that I figured out who the spy was before he was revealed, although mostly through the process of elimination. I will admit that I found myself lost at a couple of points in the “who’s that guy, why is he doing that” way, but not nearly as lost as some people I’ve spoken with, who can’t seem to tell what a flashback is, among other things.

If you’re a fan of any of the fine gentlemen I listed in the first paragraph (even the Swede), an Anglophile in general, love 1970′s style, or want a clever Cold War spy chase, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy will deliver. And if the film’s final shot doesn’t make you grin ear to ear, then you are probably a pretty crummy person who wasn’t paying attention.

2011 was a terrible year for film. And I’m not just saying so because there weren’t that many typical “Oscar movies” released this year, I mean it on all fronts. Sequels, prequels, adaptations, and reboots dominated the box office, and in most cases they weren’t very good ones, either. So creativity was almost non-existent. I saw only a couple of summer blockbuster-type flicks and was underwhelmed.  Even the final push for Oscar season was lacking. Still, I thought I had at least covered a good deal of the best the year had to offer. Then the nominations came out last week. (Yes, I realize that I’m just getting around to this NOW.  I tweeted about it then.  Everything is going far too quickly on the internet for a blogger like myself, the lazy kind.)

Let’s roll out the ten films the Academy chose for Best Picture:

The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight In Paris 
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Oh boy.

I only saw ONE of these movies, and I hated it with all of my heart and soul. That picture was The Tree of Life. This was Terrence Malick’s return, a “deeply personal film,” or as I like to call it, “offensively pretentious bullshit.” I would have hated this flick as it was, but after having been working myself up about it for the previous six months, the disappointment made it even more hard to watch. The trailer was mysterious and enticing. It was a series of beautifully composed shots, interspersed with shots of planets colliding and stuff like that. “Cool,” I thought, “some sort of over-arching story about the origins of life, perhaps?”

WRONG. VERY VERY WRONG, STEPHEN. The movie was a two hour version of the trailer. There was hardly any narrative or actual plot to speak of. It consisted of Sean Penn going to work, looking out a window, and having a flashback of his whole childhood. His entire childhood consists of his father, Brad Pitt, yelling at him to mow the lawn. The kid playing Sean Penn acts like an annoying little shit and mumbles all of his lines.

"Oh no, I'm in a terrible movie, aren't I?"

Also, there is an interlude WHERE HE THINKS ABOUT DINOSAURS FOR A HALF HOUR. And not cool dinosaurs, either, boring ones.

Then Sean Penn imagines seeing his whole family on a beach like they’re in heaven or something, and he leaves work at the end of the day with a look on his face that says, “DUDE I GET IT NOW.” So it’s a sequel to Fast Times that shows that Spicoli grew up and got a job, even though it seems that all he does at this job is just stare off into space and think about what a shitty kid he was. I waited through the whole movie hoping for a good payoff, but I should have known better. The only good thing I can say about Tree of Life is that it actually came across as if you were watching a stream of memories, and a lot of that has to be attributed to Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography and the half-dozen people who edited it.  Amazingly enough, this was the intent of the film.

Nine other films and I didn’t see a single one.  The Artist looks cute, because it is a modern silent film that’s gotten plenty of buzz. The Descendants is not only a George Clooney vehicle, but also the latest from Alexander Payne, who has had a fantastic pedigree to this point. Extremely Loud is exploitative of 9/11 victims, their families, and of autism in general. It only got nominated because Tom Hanks is in it. Don’t take it from me, take it from all the critics who have panned it. Especially my beloved New York Post. The Help will hopefully get Viola Davis the Oscar she should have won for Doubt a couple of  years ago and will ensure that the lovely Emma Stone is at the ceremony. Hugo has gotten spectacular reviews from my friends, and is apparently the best use of 3D since it was brought in as simply a gimmick. Apparently, Martin Scorcese has managed to harness it to create a beautiful film. Midnight in Paris is my boy Woody Allen’s latest joint, so I don’t see why I wouldn’t want to see this in the first place. Moneyball is apparently the good Brad Pitt movie that came out this year, even if it did somehow cause Jonah Hill to get nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Maybe he and the furiously obnoxious Melissa McCarthy can both win Oscars and make me swear off of the film industry forever. Still, it’s about sabermetrics, a part of baseball that I have yet to learn about, so I still want to see it. And then there’s War Horse, which was nominated because of Steven Spielberg. I love Steven, but it seems like a lazy nomination to me.

Also, they nominated the latest Transformers movie for Best Visual Effects. This makes Optimus Prime a three-time Oscar nominee.

Guess what, kids? This is only PART ONE of a TWO PART blog post. Part Two will be up tomorrow, when I tell you about the award-worthy movies that I actually saw in 2011 (okay, so I saw two of them a couple of weeks ago), and finally launch my own movie awards, THE STEVIES. See you then.

As time goes on, the more I realize that Batman might be my favorite superhero.

That said, the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises has arrived and it’s got me very excited to see the conclusion to this interpretation of the story, one that hasn’t quite followed convention and has created its own unique world for its characters.

Like any good limited run of a comic series, you get the sense that anything can happen – there are no guarantees in Christopher Nolan’s vision of Gotham City.  Major characters can die in these films, as opposed to decades-long survival in comics.  Look no further than Harvey Dent, who bit it almost immediately after becoming Two-Face.  It keeps you guessing.  Even though TDKR looks to potentially follow the “Knightfall” storyline with Bane, we’ll also see Selina Kyle for the first time in this series, along with what I think will be a very intriguing tie-in to the Occupy movement.

Meanwhile, Sony Pictures thinks they need to reboot Spider-Man already with a guy who made a hipster rom-com at the helm and Warner Bros. is trying again with another Superman flick.  Superman I’m still on the fence about, but you’ll learn of my heartbreak/nerd rage over a new Spidey soon enough.

That's it, Bruce. Enjoy yourself once in a while.

July 20th can’t come soon enough.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Wes Anderson’s films.  I’ve talked about most of them upon their releases on NP1, and I tended to go on and on about Rushmore years back.  Very recently, things have gone rather well for my favorite living auteur.  His 1996 debut got the Criterion treatment last fall, and his first animated feature proved to have just as much going for it as the rest of his work.

Let’s start with the new DVD for Bottle Rocket.  The closest the original DVD release could come to “special features” was the fact that one side of the disc was in widescreen and the other was fullscreen.  His next three films would all be handled by Criterion, which says a lot about what they think of his work.  Almost as soon as Rushmore was re-released, starting the partnership with Criterion, fans were calling for a new version of Bottle Rocket.  Slowly but surely, a two-disc set was compiled and released.  I remember reading an interview with Wes in which he said that they didn’t want to put anything out until they had “everything.”  The fruit of their labor is a lovingly crafted set, complete with interviews, a documentary, deleted scenes, the original black and white short film, and plenty more.  I have watched most of this stuff, as well as the gorgeous new transfer, which puts the old DVD to shame.

The Wilson Boys get their start

The best thing about watching this movie again is discovering the fact that the Wes Anderson style has been almost unchanged from the beginning.  He’s just gotten better and better at doing what he does.  There’s a prototypical feel to Bottle Rocket the whole way through, in which you see all of the Anderson trademarks at work, but in a subdued manner.  Framing, costuming, music selection, and that same dry sense of humor are all accounted for, but not quite as fleshed out as his later films.  This doesn’t make it a bad movie, of course.  Although the film meanders through genres from ‘crime movie’ to ‘romantic road movie’  to ‘heist movie,’ there are plenty of things worth keeping an eye out for along the way.  Owen Wilson’s character Dignan is one such reason to watch.  Fast-talking and easily distracted, this ‘criminal mastermind’ just wants to carry out a life of crime with his friend Anthony (played by brother Luke) and join James Caan’s gang of landscapers/thieves.  Just about every line out of his mouth is comedy gold.

So let’s fast forward about fifteen years or so, and we get to Anderson’s latest, an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox.  I remember first hearing about the project and not knowing exactly what to make of it.  Was this going to be a kids’ movie or something?  Did that mean that Wes would have to compromise his style in order to make this film?  Was it, in fact, just some sort of cash grab?

I wasn’t really scared of that possibility.  In fact, I was sort of optimistic.  I was a fan of Dahl’s writing not only in grade school (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, etc.), but it stayed with me to high school and college when I discovered his twisted sense of humor in his short stories.  Sure enough, when the trailer first debuted, I knew Wes had another winner on his hands.  I just didn’t know how big a winner.

Here, put these bandit hats on.

It makes sense for this movie to be a kind of heist movie, like Bottle Rocket.  Mr. Fox is a reformed chicken-thief who moves into a new neighborhood, only to find that across the valley are the three farms owned by Boggis, Bunce, and Bean.  He decides to do one last big job on the sly with help from his opossum friend, Kiley, son Ash, and nephew Kristofferson.  It also makes sense that George “Danny Ocean” Clooney gets to play the titular character.

I have to say that I was shocked to find that this was, quite possibly, Anderson’s best film to date.  I’m not even sure where to begin.  For one, it’s light.  Most of Anderson’s films deal with issues like death and dysfunctional families.  If you saw The Darjeeling Limited, you got that in spades.  No such distractions from the comedy this time around.  Second, it’s a movie that kids and adults will both appreciate.  The kids will love the cute characters and the story, but the grown-ups are going to love all that and more.  There’s jokes about real estate and credit cards, and they make sense, even when delivered by anthropomorphic animals.  They’re also rather modest.  Anderson’s propensity to use profanity in his movies makes the cut, but instead of what you’d expect, they just use the word “cuss” in its place.  This makes for some of the best lines in the film (“Are you cussing with me?”).  And the little dream world that it all takes place in is detailed and charming in a way that only Wes could create.  The animals all have different jobs in their community, and they even play their own sports, such as the smartly conceived game of “Whack-Bat,” which I now want to learn and play on weekends.

Also, Ash (on the left in the above picture there) reminds me of my cat, Peanut.

Most importantly, though, is the fact that this is an animated movie without computers.  Whatever happened to cell animation or stop-motion?  The latter is the medium used here, and it gives this movie a whole lot of extra heart.  Now, I really have no problem with Pixar.  I think that they’ve put out some very good movies since Toy Story first debuted.  I still love The Incredibles.  Dreamworks, not so much.  But it just seems to me that the concept of “animated films” has become dominated by CGI, and that the old-school approach is still worth investing in.  This movie is a prime example of that.

Hot Box!

Right now is a good time to be Jeff Bridges.  I mean, it’s always good to be Jeff Bridges, but this week is probably as good as it gets.  For starters, he won an Oscar on Sunday for a movie that I didn’t even hear of.  I guess he played an alcoholic, and the Academy goes nuts for that sort of thing.  I’m wondering if this character enjoyed White Russians, because he looked enough like The Dude.

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Yesterday, the next part in the greatest week in Jeff Bridges history was revealed… the trailer for Tron Legacy hit the Internet.  Now, just let me start by saying that I’m not one of these people with a strong personal attachment to the original Tron.  The reason for this is that I had never seen it until about two or three months ago… but when I did, I could see why so many socially awkward people my age love it.  It was pretty neat, a lot of fun to watch, and funny, too.  It was one of those movies that Disney did a great job with in the late 70′s/early 80′s… and they seem to have lost their touch when it comes to that sort of thing.  I’m pretty optimistic, though…  it looks slick, the designs are sweet, Olivia “13 from House” Wilde is hot… well, just take a look for yourself.

Oh, hell yes.  Too far away.  I’m going to have to freeze myself until it’s time.

And, oh yeah, Jeff’s got a great website.  Handmade.  Literally.

I’ve had February 2nd marked on my calendar for a while now, and for a multitude of reasons.  It is, of course, Groundhog Day, one of my very favorite holidays.  Punxatawney Phil did indeed confirm that we’d have another six weeks of winter, but I really didn’t need him to tell me that.  Tonight is the debut of the final season of LOST, which I’ve been counting down to since last May.  But the thing I’m most excited about… the Oscar nominations were announced this morning.

I was more excited this year than I usually am because this year the Academy decided to up the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten.  Part of me assumes this is because there was nerd rage when The Dark Knight got snubbed last year.  It seems to me that us geeks will be pleased, and I’ll tell you why.  The noms for Best Picture are:

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
A Serious Man
Precious
Up
Up In the Air

I only saw four of those (Avatar, D9, The Hurt Locker, and Basterds), and really only wanted to see one other (the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man).  I didn’t hear about An Education at all.

Evicting some fookin' prawns

You already know my feelings on Avatar, so let’s get to the other pictures I saw this year, starting with the geek-vindicating District 9.  In many ways, this flick is like the anti-Avatar.  Whereas James Cameron had access to zillions of dollars, South African/Canadian director Neill Blomkamp scored $30 million from Peter Jackson and was left alone by studios to make a feature-length version of his spectacular short, Alive In Joburg. What you get is a film about alien-human relations that tackles some of the same issues, but does so in a half-documentary, half-action thriller.  It’s smart, it’s funny, it looks great, and although far-fetched, it’s much more terrestrial than Avatar.  The film is quite deserving of its R-rating, with plenty of profanity and incredibly over-the-top violence.  The final act is on par with Robocop as far as ludicrous amounts of bloodshed goes, and dare I say, just as much fun.  I’d buy that for a dollar!

I was most excited to see this as one of the Best Picture nominees because, as good as I thought it was, I didn’t expect to see it get picked out as one of the year’s best.  Part of that might have to do with the fact that it also made over $200 million worldwide with its modest budget, but maybe I’m just being cynical.

Hans Landa - Tarantino's most sinister character yet

Meanwhile, where Avatar was the ultimate pet project of Cameron’s career, Quentin Tarantino finally released his own long-in-production opus.  Inglorious Basterds is another film geek’s dream come true; QT’s vision of World War II as a Spaghetti Western, with all of the trappings you should expect from the original Video Store Director.  I’ve seen (and for the most point loved) his films up until this point, and I can safely say that this is his best.  Not as in “best yet,” either.  If you’re here for a serious account of WWII, then you’re sadly mistaken.  QT essentially uses the war as a backdrop, as a way to tell a new kind of story.  It’s rather difficult to really describe Basterds without recounting his whole career, so if you’re not a fan, it’s not for you.

If you are a fan, though, then you’re in for plenty of great Tarantino Brand dialogue, as well as some great characters, such as Brad Pitt’s Aldo “The Apache” Raine, Eli Roth’s Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz, and Melanie Laurent’s vengeful Shoshanna Dreyfus.  But without a doubt, the film’s best performance comes from Best Supporting Actor nominee Christoph Waltz, playing SS Colonel Hans Landa, known as “The Jew Hunter.”  Waltz plays the villain with true relish, making him at once engaging and repulsive.  Landa’s sinister nature goes beyond Nazism and into the realm of inhumanity.  Whereas some men wore the Nazi armband because they felt they had no choice, Landa is the kind of man who wore it because it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Seeing the competition, Waltz should have no problem winning.

Tearing a car apart has never been so exciting

When it comes down to it, though, I would vote for The Hurt Locker for Best Picture if I had the chance.  Not to mention Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow and Best Actor for Jeremy Renner (above).  Set in Iraq in 2004, we follow an Explosive Ordinance Division unit through the final month of their tour.  Their new team leader, Sgt. William James (Renner) is kind of like Mel Gibson in Leathal Weapon: brilliant, yet slightly unhinged.  Throwing protocol out the window, James would rather defuse a roadside bomb by hand than send in a remote-controlled robot that could spare his life and those of his squadmates.  Not to mention bystanders who like to hang out and watch the events unfold in the scorching Iraqi sun… and might be holding onto the detonator, too.  The film’s tagline says it all: “You don’t have to be a hero to do this job.  But it helps.”

What makes The Hurt Locker great is the suspense.  Think of your favorite bomb-defusing scene of all time.  Remember how exciting it was?  The suspense, the sense of doubt that the hero can render the device neutral in time, sweat rolling down his determined brow…  Now multiply that feeling about a hundred times and repeat it four or five times.  Now imagine a hero who’s genuinely likable, even though he’s a conventional anti-hero.  Just when you think that he’s a total jerk to his squadmates, he turns around and proves himself a true leader when the chips are down.  But The Hurt Locker doesn’t just deal with the heroics.  When Sgt. James returns home, he has trouble adjusting to civilian life.  Will he stay home after risking his life countless times in a hellish environment… or will he go back to the one thing he knows he’s good at?

If Bigelow wins for Best Director, it would be sweet: she was married to James Cameron from ’89 to ’91.  I’m unsure of who the winner will be, to be honest.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Avatar win, simply because of the fact that it’s topped Titanic as the all-time highest grossing film (although ticket prices were higher for 3D showings, etc).  Then again, Titanic wasn’t up against nine other films.  We’ll have to see come March 7th.

I love bad movies.  In order to enjoy a good movie, you have to know how to enjoy a bad one.  In fact, I think that any film appreciation class you take in college should not focus so much on Eisenstein and Welles as they should on Wood and Corman.  It doesn’t hurt to have had Mystery Science Theater 3000 on television when you’re a teenager, either.  But tonight, on the eve of my 27th birthday, I do believe that I have now seen the best bad movie ever.

Thrill at the empty stare of Tommy Wiseau!

If you know a thing or two about bad movies and the Internet, then you may have heard about The Room.  If you haven’t, then it honors me to inform you.  Long story short, the film was released in Los Angeles in 2003 and quickly became one of those LA inside jokes that fascinate me.  I just don’t understand what makes Los Angelenos tick.  Anyway, it was written, produced, directed, and starred in by a strange, foreign man named Tommy Wiseau.  Wiseau is most likely French, but like all great eccentrics, his true origin is unknown.  And that’s just the beginning.  There are plenty of mysteries to be found in The Room.

The story is like something Tennessee Williams would have written in junior high.  Wiseau plays Johnny, a San Francisco resident who seemingly has it all: a fiance, some kind of a bank job, a parade of friends who may or may not have names, an apartment with a rooftop to hang out on, and a lot of hair.  Things seem to be going very well for Johnny, until one day his fiance, Lisa, decides she no longer loves him and decides to start an affair with his best friend, Mark.  All of this while lying to everyone she knows, saying that Johnny hit her.  Mark seems to constantly want to call off the affair, but he is written badly enough that he goes ahead with it anyway.  The story essentially follows Johnny’s downward spiral as Lisa’s antics continue.

This of course, is only the main storyline, and is really the only one that is followed through to its completion.  Several subplots are created and then never revisited, such as Johnny’s “adopted” “son” Denny, who lives in the building and owes a drug dealer some money.  After an encounter on the roof with this dealer, we never hear about it again.  Or Lisa’s mother’s breast cancer.  And in a later house party scene, we are left scratching our heads as to why an as-yet-unseen (and unnamed) character should have the moral compass to tell Lisa to come clean to Johnny about her infidelities.

The best part of it is, The Room takes itself entirely seriously about 90% of the time.  Wiseau has gone on to say that the film was always intended to be a “black comedy” as it took on cult status as a midnight favorite in LA and New York.  The cast and crew said otherwise, but you have to wonder if indeed, Wiseau was pulling a fast one on everyone involved.  There are moments in which the film switches gear from super-serious to improvised hilarity in seconds flat.  Watch it and you’ll probably agree.  Sometimes true genius can be unassuming.

So why do I love The Room so much?  There’s plenty of reasons.  For one, it suffers from an identity crisis: is it a melodrama or a so-called comedy?  Or maybe it’s a San Francisco travelogue, thanks to all of the lingering shots of the skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Another key to success is quotability.  Any movie that has a line like “You can keep your stupid comments in your pocket,” or an impassioned “YOU’RE TEARING ME APART” is a surefire classic.  And don’t forget to watch it with someone you love, because you’re in for not one, not two, but FOUR of the creepiest, most awkward, and unsexiest love scenes ever committed to film (or HD video, whichever Wiseau felt better about).

If midnight showings of The Room do not make their way to Boston, I’m going to have to raise the funds to bring it to Worcester myself.  I have to see this with a roomful of people.  You probably should, too.

I know that it was only a few days ago that I listed James Cameron as a finalist for the Golden Troll Award, but the jury was still out.  Well, I’ve seen Avatar now, and I have to admit that it’s something special.  I’m not saying that it’s the best movie of the year, and I’m not saying that it does anything that we haven’t seen before in science fiction.  What I am going to say is that Avatar is a film that will probably have a very big impact on special effects, just as Cameron’s films usually are.

This poster is way cooler than the other one.

The Terminator was a landmark in makeup effects and also in minatures, just like Aliens.  The Abyss was one of the very first movies to feature CGI, and that technique was taken much further in Terminator 2 (effects that still look great to this day).  Titanic made big-budget effects movies legitimate when it won 237 Oscars (except Kate Winslet).  The impact that Avatar will have won’t be felt for a while, but in a few years we’re sure to see new strides taken in effects, and I’m very excited to see what’s up next on the big screen.

The story isn’t anything new.  If you’ve read and seen plenty of sci-fi, then you’ve gone down this road before.  In fact, my favorite Ain’t It Cool writer, Massawyrm, drew the comparison to Dune, and it is pretty much note for note the way the story goes.  You’ve got a far off planet being mined for a super-rare resource, a hero who comes from off-planet and becomes the savior of the indigenous people, and a climactic battle in which the natives ride on huge animals to fight the aggressors.  Good stuff in my book.

The point of it is the execution.  For one, I saw it in 3D, and I was both impressed and annoyed.  As neat as it was to see things as if they were right in front of me (the movie was shot on special stereoscopic cameras), wearing those glasses over my own glasses felt awkward at times, and I think it messed with how I saw some of the effects.  Call me old fashioned, but I like when my movies stay on the wall.  But everything just looked so cool that after a while you get used to it and I’m sure that when I get it on DVD, I’ll feel underwhelmed by how “flat” everything looks.

As for all of the performance-capture that we heard about, it was probably the one thing that thoroughly exceeded my expectations.  The performances of Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver as their Na’vi avatars were great, but dare I say, Zoe “New Uhura” Saldana was outstanding as Neytiri.  She was funny, exciting, and heartbreaking to watch throughout the picture.  Kudos go both to her and the effects masters at Weta Digital for bringing that performance to life.  My hunger for cool-looking sci-fi design was also sated.  Great vehicles, weapons, and computers were all on display, and as usual in a Cameron movie, everything looks like it would work if you got your hands on it.

I could go on, but in all honesty, I’d just be going on about the same things you’ve read in other reviews by more competent people who saw it before me.  Just go check it out, in 3D if you can.  It’s three hours long, but Jim did his very best to make sure that not a second drags on.  I shouldn’t have doubted him after all.