Ten to See

In Theaters
Searching For Sugar Man - Malik Bendjelloul's music documentary is one of the year's most buzzed-about nonfiction films, and for good reason.  Bendjelloul sets out to investigate the enigmatic 1970s folk singer Rodriguez, a Bob Dylan-esque troubadour who, despite his great sound and deep lyrics, never managed to catch on with American audiences.  Known for playing with his back to the crowd, and the center of multiple suicide urban legends, Rodriguez is a sort of mythological figure who came and went without making a mark.

That is, except in South Africa, where his songs served as anthems to a generation growing up amongst apartheid.  Though Rodriguez sold hundreds of thousands of records overseas, he never received a penny, and his legions of fans were left wondering what happened to the mysterious man who scored their formative years.

The documentary is tightly edited, playing like a sort of mystery thriller, and the lively cast of characters are wonderful narrators to a story that - spoiler alert - has a very happy ending.  Plus, the music is incredible.  Though Rodriguez didn't register in his heyday, hopefully this film will help the extremely talented artist find the following he deserves.

Liberal Arts - Josh Radnor of How I Met Your Mother fame made his writing and directing debut a couple years ago with the pleasant happythankyoumoreplease, a Woody Allen-esque yarn weaving together multiple narratives set in New York City.  With Liberal Arts, Radnor shows tremendous maturation as a filmmaker, focusing the story on a single main through-line while also building a rich cast of supporting characters.

Radnor also comes more into his own as a leading man.  In both HIMYM and happy..., Radnor is likable and funny, but here, his Jesse is more grounded.  Yes, he's still an echo of Radnor's real-life persona, but, in some of the film's best moments, Radnor criticizes and parodies himself, calling attention to the uber enthusiasm and pseudo-intellectualism that tend to define his characters, and himself.

Liberal Arts, about a man returning to his alma mater for his favorite professor's retirement dinner, is at its best when Elizabeth Olsen is onscreen.  Olsen plays Zibby, a student who falls for Jesse, and the chemistry she achieves with Radnor is fantastic.  Olsen is charming, smart, and vulnerable, and following on the heels of Martha Marcy May Marlene, she remains one of the most exciting young actresses working today.

A great script, excellent cast (Zac Efron and Richard Jenkins are other stand-outs, as a stoner hippie and the retiring professor, respectively), and surer direction than last time around, Liberal Arts marks Radnor as a rising filmmaker to watch.  I can't wait to see what he does next.

Argo - Ben Affleck has successfully proven himself an able director with Gone Baby Gone and The Town, but with Argo, he launches to a new level of directorial greatness, and an Oscar nomination is all but guaranteed for his incredible work.

Set during the Iran hostage crisis, Argo tells the true story of a CIA initiative to rescue six American hostages from the Canadian ambassador's house in Tehran, where they've taken hostage.  Affleck plays Tony Mendez, who comes up with a wild plan: he and the hostages will pose as a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a science-fiction film with a Middle Eastern flair.  Of all the bad ideas the CIA has, it's certainly the best.

Argo works on every level.  The cast is fantastic, especially the Hollywood side of the operation, played by a hilarious John Goodman and Alan Arkin.  The film is perfectly paced, never forcing the suspense but achieving it naturally through great writing and editing, and by letting the story unfold as it needs to.  There's no rush to the big finish, no artificial action - this is just an amazing story being told incredibly well.  It's an example of consummate filmmaking, and rightly considered one of the frontrunners for Best Picture.

Keep the Lights On - Ira Sachs' deeply personal examination of a breaking relationship is a hard one to find, but if it's playing in a theater near you, it's worth catching.  Sachs crafted the story of Keep the Lights On largely out of his own experience - he's a director who believes that, as a filmmaker, he must put part of himself into every film he makes.  The more he puts in, the better - the more effective - the film will be.

That strategy pays off in Keep the Lights On, which is intense, even brutal, in its storytelling.  Thure Lindhardt plays Erik, a documentary filmmaker who spends his nights calling a sex chat line, spouting off his physical characteristics and sexual preferences mechanically.  He beds man after man, until he stumbles upon boyishly handsome Paul (Zachary Booth), a drug addict to whom Erik becomes addicted.

Sachs crafts his elliptical film on the format of a diary; the film covers a decade, but years slip by without any representation on screen.  Instead, we see highlights and low points of the relationship, as Erik and Paul break up, make up, make love, and lose love.  It's a sometimes jarring roller coaster ride, but one that is impossible to look away from, thanks in large part to the great performances (especially Lindhardt) and how raw and honest the story-telling is.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Steven Chbosky serves as writer and director on the adaptation of his beloved novel, and as one might expect, the result is a faithful, satisfying transition to the big screen.  Though there's a bit of forced romance (white heterosexuality for the win), the film is a moving, funny examination of how scary growing up can be, especially during high school.

Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson) plays Charlie, an introverted freshman who sometimes "gets bad" and lacks friends, other than the anonymous penpal he writes to throughout the film, providing bouts of narration.  Ezra Miller (We Need to Talk About Kevin) and Emma Watson (Harry Potter) play half-siblings Patrick and Sam, who take Charlie under their wings and help him navigate the tricky social game that is high school, largely by taking him out of the game and initiating him into their supportive, eclectic friend group.  The trio impresses, with Miller stealing the show with his flamboyant but grounded turn.

The film finds the right mix of nostalgia for simpler school days and horror at how so many of those days unfolded.  Drugs, sex, and The Rocky Horror Show all come into play, often making things more complicated for Charlie, but also making things that much more interesting.

Frankenweenie -  Tim Burton's black-and-white stop-motion take on his live-action short Frankenweenie may not be the true return to form that I'd hoped for, but it's still much better, and much more Burton-esque, than his last two candy-colored drags, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows.

The film pays homage to the bygone days of the Universal monster movies, and while some of the nods are clever, the intertextuality isn't as cleverly employed as in ParaNorman, which had some of the same goals as Frankenweenie but achieved them through more daring, effective, and enjoyable means.

Frankenweenie's story loses steam long before the film ends, but it is largely saved by how gorgeous the animation is.  More than any other Burton film, this one achieves the feeling of the director's iconic style coming to life.  It's like his sketches have crawled off the page and taken on a third dimension.  The character designs are wonderfully caricatured, especially the wide-eyed Weird Girl, whose cat makes prophecies in the litter box.

I hope that Frankenweenie is a sign of things to come for Burton.  It's fun, creepy, and, even as an adaptation, feels more original than most of what Burton's done in the past decade.  It's a good first step back toward artistic relevance.

Pitch Perfect - Glee meets Bring It On in this sleeper hit.  Anna Kendrick stars as an edgy music mixologist who gets wrangled into joining an all-girls a cappella group that's been doing the same old song and dance for many, many years.  Of course, Kendrick's character helps guide the group into modern music, with fun mixes and funky beats that would feel very much at home on Fox's hit show.

The music is great and performed with energy and musicality.  Kendrick is a strong lead, playing against type, and Rebel Wilson of Bridesmaids fame is a riot as the self-monikered Fat Amy.  During performances and between, she nails every comedic moment she's given.

The year's big musical, Les Miserables, is yet to come, but in the meantime, this fun little gem is your best bet for a musical movie outing.

The Master - Paul Thomas Anderson follows up his incredible There Will Be Blood with The Master, one of the year's toughest nuts to crack, and my favorite movie of the year.  Joaquin Phoenix stars as Freddie, an alcoholic drifter and World War II veteran who stumbles upon a new religious movement headed by charismatic leader Lancaster Dodd, played by the inimitable Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Freddie becomes an inspiration, muse, and lab rat for Dodd as he works on his second book about his practices and beliefs.

The film is a gorgeous work of art.  The attention to period detail is stunning, showing through in the set decoration and costumes.  Mihai Malaimare Jr.'s cinematography is full of interesting framing and beautiful tracking shots, and Johnny Greenwood's score is as memorable and stirring as his work on There Will Be Blood.

Anderson's screenplay delves into these characters without offering up any easy characterizations or explanations.  They are wild men chasing their desires with little care to what others think.  Freddie and Dodd are each parasites in their own way, feeding on each other to find what they think they need, or at least what they crave.  When Phoenix and Hoffman share the screen, the movie is at its finest; here are two supremely talented actors working with incredible material and given free rein to passionately explore and explode on screen.  This is especially true in Phoenix's case; he gives Freddie a physical energy that speaks volumes about his mental state.  Freddie is animalistic, untameable, violent.

The Master is not an easy pill to swallow, but so it often goes with great works of art.  Paul Thomas Anderson continues to prove himself one of the most visionary and original auteurs in Hollywood.

At Home

A Cat in Paris - This Oscar-nominated animated tale follows a little girl whose cat moonlights at the assistant to a cat burglar (clever, no?).  Their adventures also involve the search for the girl's father's murderer, and everything comes together rather neatly, and satisfyingly.  The film is beautifully animated (especially when the lights go out, which is the most visually striking sequence in the film), and the story clips along at a nice pace.  In a year that has had quite a few disappointing animated flicks (The Lorax, Chico & Rita, Hotel Transylvania), A Cat in Paris is one of the standouts.

Prometheus - Prometheus was one of the most talked- and complained-about movies of the summer.  Character motivations, the logic between how different alien species were born and bred, and the movie's somewhat tenuous connections to the Alien franchise left fans puzzled, angry, and vocal.  For me, the film works well as a stand-alone sci-fi film, and pretty well as a prequel to Ridley Scott's classic sci-fi horror film.  Sure, there are some major issues with the plot, but this is still a beautifully made movie, with impressive special effects, strong performances (especially from Michael Fassbender as the requisite android), and some of the worst old-man makeup this side of J. Edgar.  If you can look past the issues, there's a lot to admire in Prometheus, and if you can't, it's not your fault.  Hopefully, the inevitable sequels will iron out some of these issues.