For the past several months, banners have hung in movie palaces and city walls across the country advertising the new Evil Dead as the “Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience”.

Aren’t these guys adorable?

If there’s one thing that the horror genre instructs us as filmgoers, it’s to put full faith in the concept of diminishing returns. If an exceptionally bold, original idea happens to emerge in a film, sequels and remakes will dilute the initial appeal until it no longer exists — witness the hallucinatory brilliance of the first Nightmare on Elm Street being utterly wiped out by eight sequels and a remake, or the delirious, shocking savagery of Texas Chainsaw Massacre being consigned to a similar fate, due to the industry’s inability to just let sleeping dogs lie.

Two significant exceptions exist to this rule — Italian shockmaster Dario Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy (irrelevant), and Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead trilogy (highly relevant). Few cinematic rides offer as much senseless gore, pitch-black comedy and pure scrappy charm as Evil Dead‘s installments smashed back-to-back, and they’re among my very favorite films for it. So as Raimi (who’s moved on with Oz and the Spider-Man trilogy) and original star Bruce Campbell (who’s moved on to cult stardom) gave this reboot their unrestrained blessing, die-hards like myself braced for greatness on the lowest scale possible.

That scale is not met.

Evil Dead suffers from an identity crisis so profound it literally undoes almost everything the film gets right, which to its credit is a fair amount. For starters, it’s an utter wet-dream for gorehounds, as it puts five young cabin-dwellers through some of the most traumatic, painful experiences in recent cinema history. First-time director Fede Alvarez conjures an atmosphere of genuine discomfort and tension, and I concede that a couple strong scenes had me clenching both the seats and hands around me. Box cutters, tree branches and chainsaws are used to a very effective degree. And the premise of the film lends itself well to unpredictability: over one night, a demonic force moves through a group of friends, occupying their bodies one at a time and conjuring horrific violence. In this way, Evil Dead plays with audience loyalties cleverly, as every character, no matter how ‘good’, manages to be the villain at some point in the film.

But the ground on which the film is founded, especially its relationship with the 1981 original, genuinely dampers most of this good stuff. All of the significant elements from the original Evil Dead are at play — the cabin, demonic force, weapons, the five-protagonist structure, and even entire camera-moves are all lifted beat-for-beat. This would seem to classify the film as a ‘remake’, yet the film wildly deviates at points — adapting a deadly-serious tone throughout, switching the gender of the main character, and in the film’s biggest missed opportunity, giving them a legitimate reason to prowl around in an abandoned cabin: the lead, Mia, needs to kick heroin.

The agonizing, hallucinatory nature of drug withdrawal lends itself so well to a great horror movie, I can’t believe it hasn’t been significantly done before. Yet, Alvarez has no interest in prowling that territory with Evil Dead. The one idea that could have made the movie great is wasted as an excuse to simply get five people in a room, as Mia’s addiction is totally forgotten at around the 20 minute mark once the movie discovers it can make its characters bleed. (And oh, how they bleed!)

The makers seem to think that great remakes must essentially re-enact the events of an entire film, while wildly flipping the script at random points just to claim its own singular identity. It’s a cute idea, but the result is something that likely won’t satisfy the core fan-base for which the film was made. This means that all the ways in which it grovels for the love of its original fanbase end up working against it, serving as reminders that while the outer elements remain, the goofy, bat-shit spirit of the original films is nowhere to be found. This puts Evil Dead in a funny place, as it becomes a rare film where your experience with it is actually hurt by how much you love the elements and materials that inspired it. Re-read that sentence and contemplate how shitty that is. D+

America elected a black president, the world economy shit the bed, over 45 large-scale armed conflicts went down, jeans got tighter, morals got looser, New York City saw its dual monuments burn to the ground, global connectivity skyrocketed, Converse came back, New Balance went, soccer never caught on, the price of college doubled, Michael Jackson went in, out, in, out, and finally in public favor (at the cost of his life), and the availability of information exploded.

And the funny thing? After all this, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park STILL look good.

Perhaps a more essential question is whether the actual storytelling of America’s one-time “Biggest Movie Ever” holds up. In short, no doubt. But given that the return of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 dinosaur flick has been touted as a mega-million/IMAX/3-D/whatever-the-hell-else spectacle, it certainly doesn’t hurt to know that all of the generally mindless, sometimes soulful scares are still as raw and as visceral as one remembers them. The film is presented with no edits, CGI addendums or extra footage, leaving the end product to stand simply for itself.

With 20 years (or 16 in this reviewer’s case) of hindsight, Jurassic Park serves as a total anomaly in the history of blockbuster filmmaking on one very simple basis: the spectacle serves the storytelling, not vice-versa. The impact of this film on the usage of CGI has been well-documented (in short: afterwards it flooded the market), but seeing Park on a massive screen was surprising in the sense that one realizes just how rarely Spielberg caves into special effects. The dinosaurs here are largely animatronic, giving every roar and every step a sense of physical dimension that many films simply don’t do. Spielberg’s outlandish set-pieces remain remarkably effective, especially the long-awaited reveal of the T-rex at the hour mark. It’s worth noting, for an artist widely criticized for perceived overt sentimentality, just how often he dangles children’s lives about in this film. He makes them writhe, climb, fall, bleed and scream, and while I certainly recognize that in a sense he’s using them, he still does it rather well.

And perhaps it’s because this aspect was criticized upon initial release, but the human dimensions of Jurassic Park go largely underrated. Where the heroes of today’s blockbusters are all too content to play it cool as absolute chaos rages around them, screenwriter David Koepp wisely allows them the space to express genuine awe at what they see. The performance of Jeff Goldblum remains sharp and rambling, while Sam Neill’s arc from withdrawn fossil expert to warm, genuine hero is still convincingly pulled off, cliches and all. Seeing Wayne Knight, the cruel fat guy from Seinfeld,  getting eaten alive by dinosaurs remains insanely satisfying. It’s also a neat gimmick to see Samuel L. Jackson performing, the year before his Pulp Fiction Jheri curls lifted him to cult stardom.

For reasons fairly self-evident, this is a landmark film. History has taught us (or at least, taught me) to be utterly grateful for films such as this, where the highest available standard of technology is employed not for the sake of itself, but for the sake of genuine artistic fulfillment. In this case, what exactly is being fulfilled? If a detractor were to say, ‘little more than a warning not to tamper too much with nature’, I couldn’t fault them. But even still, with Jurassic Park we witness Steven Spielberg at a peak of confidence and assurance as both a storyteller and technological innovator. As history taught us, he was only just getting warmed up this year, dropping Schindler’s List a mere six months after its June ’93 release, but Spielberg managed to stretch cinema’s boundaries with Jurassic Park. It wouldn’t be the first time, it wouldn’t be the last, but it just might be the most fun of them all. A

[Note: The actual 3D aspect of this film's release did exactly what it should in situations such as this: enhance the depth of field and immersivity of the experience to the extent that it eventually disappears. The technology is not a gimmick, but a tool, and while this re-release was no doubt financially motivated I sincerely believe it was done for reasons of integrity as well. It is a success.]

Dead Man Down opens with the sort of sordidly-delivered monologue that immediately calls to mind mob films of days past: from the languid David Mamet quotables of The Untouchables to the ‘I believe in America’ monologue that opened Coppola’s Godfather saga, and more recently, evoking Danish Drive auteur Nicolas Winding Refn’s opener to his superb Pusher trilogy’s middle installment. Delivered by Dominic Cooper, it’s a sweeping little piece that ties together discussion of family, duty, and responsibility. Dead Man Down is thus immediately set up for failure, by elbowing its way in with films whose depth (in Godfather’s case) or operatic escapism (Untouchables) it simply cannot compete with. 

Set in an anonymously dreary city, Dead Man Down has a fairly promising, pulpy premise: Colin Farrell’s Victor is a high-level mob enforcer with a massive secret: he intends to sabotage his organization and murder his boss, as revenge for the death of his family at their hands several years prior. Noomi Rapace’s Beatrice was a model until a drunken driver left her scarred and disfigured. The two strike up a friendship, seeing each other as an opportunity to solve their problems — Beatrice wants Victor to kill the man that ruined her career, and Victor wants Beatrice silent regarding his wrongdoings.

Director Niels Arden Oplev, making his American debut following his Swedish-language Girl with the Dragon Tattoo iteration, has established himself as a filmmaker unafraid to probe into gloomier territory than others. This is admirable. However, Oplev has also demonstrated a dreary visual style to match, coming off less as ‘realistic’ or ‘rugged’  and more..I dunno..ugly. This makes Dead Man Down a fairly grueling experience from the get-go, casting an aura of grime and gruel to Dead Man Down that moves past stylization into utter shit. Within the thematic context of the film, it doesn’t seem to make much sense either; while violence and dread certainly permeate these events, Oplev builds to a genuinely optimistic climax that not only invalidates many of the film’s prior trepidatious messages about revenge, but the entire style under which the film was composed and conceived. The gloomy overcasts and concerned looks lose their meaning, the film’s final message becomes incoherent and the whole exercise is rendered pretty pointless.

The cast is littered with respectable names that make fairly inexplicable appearances — Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham gets a thankless three-minute cameo as a mentor to Victor, Terrence Howard’s villainous intensity is compromised by the biteless dialogue he’s given, and legendary European actress Isabelle Huppert is left to stand around in a kitchen and make food for our protagonists. The leads themselves are fairly blank slates, attempting to emulate the stoic reflection of a European noir protagonist (Ryan Gosling’s title character of Drive seems to have kickstarted this revivalism) but without the emotional complexity or cool to execute it. They ponder. They stare. They shoot. But they don’t leave an impression. Much like the film they’re left with. D+

Director Jon M. Chu is something of a 34-year old wunderkind, rising quickly through the ranks of USC’s film program, picking up countless awards along the way and landing some fairly plum film opportunities. What does his resume include? Well, Step Up 2, Step Up 3D, and, hem, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. But to discard his works on the generally corny, corporate nature of their origins is also to ignore one of the great propulsive talents of escapist cinema today. Perhaps its his origins as a dancer and the fact that three of his four films to date have depicted this topic, but the guy has an immaculate sense of how to convey in-camera geography and, very simply, how to make an image *move*. His fluid style as a director has gone a long way to make his products stand out in my eyes.

So, in a weird way, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is the culmination of all that he’s worked towards so far. Working with considerably bigger toys and considerably bigger stars than his past works, Chu still manages to telegraph everything that works about him as a filmmaker and everyone that works about the “GI Joe” brand, silly though it may be. I’m shocked, guys. G.I. Joe: Retaliation is kinda awesome.

There is, as always, the bare-bones plot on-paper that manages to seem much more convoluted on-screen: there’s a big, bad, evil organization named Cobra that wants big, bad, evil world domination and stuff. Their first step in achieving this goal? Kidnap the president and post an impostor in his place. Their second step? Annihilate as many G.I. Joes as possible, seeing as they’re the most powerful commandos on American soil. But in doing this, they don’t quite manage to take out all of them — leaving alive a small squad led by the hulking Roadblock (played by America’s favorite hulk, Dwayne Johnson), the silent samurai Snake Eyes, and the aptly named Joe (Bruce Willis in his ninth screen appearance in nine months). Their goals: revenge and exposure.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation doesn’t want to be the biggest, loudest action film of them all. Rather, it serves to provide an unusually varied sandbox for a lot of different concepts to fuse together: a sequence where The Rock wields a chain-gun may only be five minutes from an extended samurai duel or a hi-tech prison breakout. One-note the action is not, with Chu putting distinctive touches on every sequence. No doubt the most impressive is a set-piece, completely dialogue-free for about eight minutes, in which two samurais break into a mountain-side compound, fight their way through, and make off with a key villain while rappelling alongside the mountain — engaging in sword and gunfights with their pursuers. It’s a rare moment where special-effects and 3D technology are employed to create something that has genuinely never been seen before.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation has been the subject of unusually heightened scrutiny due to Paramount’s decision to push its release from June 2012 to late this March — with some speculating that it was in order to nab more scenes with the massively famous co-star Channing Tatum (false, he’s killed off 20 minutes in), and others bemoaning that it was for a hack-job 3D conversion (false, the 3D is pretty superb). The film, however, betrays no gaping signs of outer interference or strife, as it clips along at a fairly solid rate.

The script by Zombieland scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick doesn’t do much for the film, however. With that film they demonstrated a canny ear for snarky tone and subversion of typical genre-film structure, two things that aren’t given a whole lot of attention within the earnest, straightforward parameters that “G.I. Joe” represents as a brand. Some massive logistical gaps prevent the script from the structural air-tightness of their first work, as does the fact that, generally speaking, they aren’t writing lines for very smart characters.

The cast puts in predictably earnest efforts — Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson seems to get impossibly bigger with age as he refines his movie-star charm, Bruce Willis can still growl a one-liner or two, Friday Night Lights actress Adrianne Palicki plays a refreshingly headstrong eye-candy type, and Channing Tatum’s famously brief role is as charming as one could hope.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation is no doubt the kind of cynically motivated, brand-oriented filmmaking that I despise as a trend. But, for whatever reason, it really clicks together just this once. The set-pieces are bold, the internal logic isn’t too ridiculous, and a genuine passion for the source material is evident with every explosion, every sword clank, and every god-awful catchphrase. B

[Afterword, 4/7/2013: One of the definite peaks of running this site and contributing to newspapers is the occasional attention it receives from higher figures in the film industry. As it happens, one of these recent figures turned out to be the director of this film himself, Jon M. Chu! He put the word out to his 552,000+ Twitter followers, something for which I'm very grateful and very pumped. Just thought I'd share.]

I’m not writing much lately. I know that.

I can attribute it to any number of factors: the growing pressures and responsibilities in my personal and academic life, the time I give over to athletics, pure laziness, et cetera. But why accept personal responsibility when I can pin it on an outside factor? The slate of films offered up in recent months seem less like genuine artistic expression than they do an extended conspiracy to kill my love for cinema. It has been a long winter. A crippling winter.

Spring is here.

My tastes have never overlapped much with that of shock artist/director Harmony Korine, whose body of work runs the gamut from his debut script, a film about an AIDS-addled sex-addict teenage skateboarder, to his recent film entitled, simply, Trash Humpers. I understand more the value of having artists like him around than the value of what they actually produce. So to see Korine make such a large leap to the mainstream with his new film, Spring Breakers, should come as more of a surprise. See, at first glance, Spring Breakers seems a product primed to satisfy the basest and crudest of audiences — advertised as a candy-colored fest of bikinis, hedonism, violence and pulsating music with the added hook of several Disney/soap-opera idols (Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson) gone “bad”. In essence: four fairly innocent teenage girls go down to Florida for spring break and gradually lose that innocence. It was not marketed incorrectly.

What shocks most about Spring Breakers is just how much of this content Korine offers up to his audience, to the extent that scenes and lines literally begin to add up and repeat themselves. At first glance, it seems a move of laziness and faux artistry. To take this stance, however, is to ignore just what a dreamlike state Spring Breakers conjures for much of its run-time: a hypnotic blur of provocative images, bright colors, bashing sounds. It is by leaps and bounds one of the most experimental films to meet the projectors of major cineplexes in quite some time, creating remarkably avant-garde aesthetic choices out of seemingly the most accessible subject matter there is: a spring break gone wrong (and as such, very very right). Korine is often content to dial back straightforward plot mechanics and momentum in favor of montage, emphasizing mood and music in curious, often inventive places.

But back to those girls. The three previously-mentioned teen idols, plus director Harmony’s wife, the pink-haired Rachel Korine, serve as the audience stand-ins to introduce us to a world of rampant partying and minimal connection. Their work, both as eye-candy and actresses, is pretty fantastic, giving credence to even the most outrageous lines the film conjures up (“Suck that gun, Alien!”, “All this money makes me wet”, “Wake up little bitch, it’s spring break!”, etc). The actor that absolutely slaughters his role, however, elevating Spring Breakers to a new level of lurid looniness: James Franco. Seeing his work in more big-budget projects of late (read: the limp Oz reboot from a few weeks back) makes one forget just how capable Franco is of immersing himself in a role, and he does so wildly here: playing a gun-toting, gold-toothed, corn-rowed rapper named Alien. He plays the role with complete earnestness, conjuring countless catch-phrases and unforgettably goofy neuroses in the process. Alien bails the four girls out of prison when their drug possession lands them in trouble, taking them under his wing.

Curiously, of the several dozen peers of mine that caught the flick over the last few weekends, I’m the only one that liked it in any fashion. Their reasons included the perceived lack of plot, lack of message, the improbable ending, the trashy behavior of the protagonists, etc. When one begins to interpret Spring Breakers as a deeply moral film, however, mysteries begin to reveal themselves: the grating, repetitive party sequences seem less like “entertainment” than they do angry, abrasive criticism. The film is holding up a mirror to the outlandish, bratty behavior of my generation, triggering a complex reaction in me. Sure, I enjoyed the shit out of this movie on an entertainment level. But what does that say about me? Questions like this triggered a discomforting reflection on my own actions and cultural attitudes — and knowing that it was no accident is what convinces me of the greatness of this film.

For the score, Cliff Martinez (of Drive) teams up with brash dubstep musician Skrillex to hammer out compositions that, when need be, either shake the theater with noise or subtly pulse with tension. Funnily enough, it’s the music of Britney Spears that gives Spring Breakers a sequence for the ages: the girls and James Franco’s rapper sit down at a sunset-side piano and give a rendition of the ballad “Everytime”, which is intercut with footage of the characters gleefully shooting and killing rival thugs. It manages to navigate between finely-tuned entertainment, spiteful irony, parading obnoxiousness and bittersweet beauty. Drugged-out college students will hold hands and sing along to it at midnight screenings in 30 years. And honestly, given where I am as a person and given where I interpret the state of cinema to be in 2013, that’s a compliment of the highest order. A-

“Directed by Steven Soderbergh”.

Any semi-regular readers of mine know that I have a particular soft spot for films that conclude on this title-card, and alas, if he is to be believed, the new psychological thriller Side Effects is gonna be the last time we’ll see this flash across theater-screens. The most prolific American director since Howard Hawks, with 26 films under his belt in 23 years, is stepping away from cinema in favor of painting, Broadway, and simply, life. He cannot be blamed, and nor can I for my sadness on the matter.

Side Effects is no grand departure from his past work. It is no bold statement. But in its modest scope and delivery, perhaps it’s the most appropriate farewell we could hope for: not reflecting on its own place in its master’s career, but in simply demonstrating much of what makes him an astonishing artist. Which, in this case, are his talents for pure escapist craft. The very indefinable nature of Side Effects is precisely what makes it so interesting, as are its flirtations with many genres and influences.

To reveal the primary influence on Side Effects is to ruin its surprise. In short: Rooney Mara plays a young woman, seemingly elated by her husband’s (Channing Tatum) release from prison for insider trading. But even the brief excitement of his presence can’t mask an overwhelming sense of depression, and she soon makes an attempt on her own life. Two psychiatrists enter the picture (Jude Law & Catherine Zeta-Jones), with conflicting intentions and moral shades. To reveal more is to rob the twisty pleasures of Scott Z. Burns’ script, where motivations, exposition, and even main characters seem to be constantly shifting.

It’s all too easy to appreciate the effortless mastery of which Soderbergh demonstrates over his form: the precise framing and camera movements, muted lighting, subdued use of music, protracted cuts. It’s a style that, if audiences have grown accustomed to it, it’s only because he rarely calls attention to the very nature of the artifice he creates. Thomas Newman provides an exceptional score, one that provides a propulsive thrust to the gradually escalating insanity of Side Effects‘ proceedings.

Rooney Mara’s performance is unquestionably one of the film’s high points. Jumping quickly from stale cash-grabs such as the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot to the utterly incendiary titular role of David Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mara’s versatility and professionalism has ensured a quick rise through Hollywood’s ranks. Her work here is utterly shattering, peeling away new depths as a character seemingly with each new scene. Side Effects plays it a little fast-and-loose with character motivations in the early scenes — meaning that while we accept their actions at face value, Soderbergh always seems to be hinting at ulterior motives and alternate interpretations. The cool thing? None of them prove to be correct. What begins as tongue-in-cheek pharmaceutical satire eventually evolves into a courtroom-psychosexual-procedural hybrid. This is a film with many restrained pleasures, but perhaps what I most appreciated about Side Effects is its wild, go-for-broke unpredictability. B+

To tell the story of my early (or rather, even earlier) years with film is to tell the story of how I’d stay up for hours marathoning Arnold Schwarzenegger films. In a time where I was only beginning to take the form seriously, it ironically took the offbeat presence of a stone-faced, oddly-voiced Austrian ex-bodybuilder to really cement the potential of movies to me.

To tell the story of my recent years with film is to tell the story of sifting through dozens of films from a recent so-called “Korean New Wave”, in which directors from South Korea have demonstrated an intense burst of creativity and vitality, churning out amazing work like The Host, Oldboy, Mother, A Bittersweet Life, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Perhaps my favorite of the bunch? Kim Ji-Woon, an astonishingly versatile upstart who navigates through dissonant genres (western, haunted-house, gangster, revenge) with ease, seemingly topping himself with set-pieces and thematic heft each time.

These two figures have converged. Schwarzenegger and Ji-Woon, in his English-language directing debut, collaborate on the new action picture The Last Stand, a prospect that would have one foaming at the mouth with excitement. Not necessarily because I expect innovative, boundary-pushing work from the duo — but because of both Ji-Woon’s ability to reshape familiar material and Schwarzenegger’s well-known ability to charmingly deliver exactly that. The Last Stand, no doubt, is all the charm and hard-nosed masculinity we’ve come to expect from Schwarzenegger’s shtick, and the man affably transitions back to the screen, despite his decade-long venture into politics following Terminator 3. This said, it’s the way in which the material is shaped that ultimately disappoints, with a structure so formulaic and pandering that the vast majority of the film’s pleasures feel forced. At best.

Schwarzenegger is Ray Owens, the sheriff of a quiet Arizona town whose LAPD/narcotics background means he’s considerably well-versed in combat, weaponry and the like. So when he receives a call from the FBI that a notorious drug lord is barreling towards his town in 220-mph vehicles with a mini-army of henchmen, he decides to take decisive action, alongside a small roster of deputies, charmingly played by Luis Guzman, Johnny Knoxville of Jackass, and Jaimie Alexander.

The final act of The Last Stand is loaded with technically efficient, fairly exciting set pieces — a cat-and-mouse car chase through a corn maze, bare-knuckle fistfights, Gatling-gun warfare in the middle of a small town. It’s not original stuff but it’s satisfyingly presented. Schwarzenegger fires off some ingenious one-liners, and remains a pretty intimidating physical presence as far as 65-year-olds go. This said, one must truck through the disastrous first hour of the film to get there, in which we spend more time with Forest Whitaker’s bafflingly incompetent FBI agent character, as he tracks the drug lord Cortez and surmises where he’ll end up. The problem is that this film uses a massive amount of our time to convey what we learned in the first 30 seconds of the trailer — and not in a terribly interesting, dynamic way either.

Screenwriter Andrew Knauer simply emphasizes the wrong strengths here, cluttering up what should be a perfectly satisfying, simple actioner. For a film whose premise hinges so heavily on the return of one of our all-time-great action stars, we spend an insane amount of time with bland, nameless cop characters as they dispassionately deliver exposition. With this, The Last Stand betrays its cultural identity as less of a mindless 1980′s throwback and more of an exposition-heavy, neatly-structured contemporary thriller. In other words? It’s bland as hell. Given his Expendables cameos coupled with this, Arnold is certainly back. But it remains to be seen whether that’s worth noting. C-

In light of James Holmes walking into a Colorado movie theater on July 20, 2012, murdering 12 people, injuring 58 others, and shattering perhaps all pre-conceptions of cinema as an institution of strict escapism, some changes had to be made. Naturally.

The Aurora incident this past summer stands as a deeply complex intersection of many societal ills: loose gun legislation (good thing that hasn’t popped up since!), how exactly to address million our citizens battling mental health issues and the nominal percentage of these who act out violently, and perhaps the role that movie violence plays in our lives. Prior to this, I’d been fairly unwavering in my assumptions that pop culture and violent incidents were standalone entities. But when a man walks into a theater screening a deeply pessimistic, near-militant blockbuster (“The Dark Knight Rises”), with his physical appearance specifically modeled after famous cinematic psychopath The Joker, it’s not terribly difficult to discern the roots of the problem. And here comes “Gangster Squad”.

Originally pencilled in for a September 2012 release, “Gangster Squad” was constructed with the sort of pedigree most films dream of. Consider the speed with which Warner Bros. rushed first-time writer Will Beall’s script into production: assigning young “Zombieland” auteur Ruben Fleischer to the material, and signing a cast consisting of Oscar winners, magazine-covering stars and off-beat character actors. By most accounts, it was set to smash the fall box office, hopefully imprinting popular culture with some interesting material in the process. But in the crazed aftermath of Mr. Holmes’s final visit to Century 16 Theaters, a prominent movie trailer for “Gangster Squad” was now considered to be in fairly horrid taste, specifically a shot in which villains open fire on a Los Angeles movie theater.

Warner Bros., the mother studio of both “Dark Knight” & “Squad”, took immediate action — postponing the film’s release by five months and rounding up the cast to reshoot the entire sequence in question. What they fail to realize is that, regardless of where the offending sequence takes place, be it inside the walls of a cinema or in the sprawl of its Chinatown replacement, “Gangster Squad” remains an unbelievably animalistic piece of filmmaking. The film depicts a problem, in one violent gangster’s grasp on post-WWII Los Angeles, and then offers a solution that’s every ounce as savage and fetishistic — a small police squad being given free reign to murder, sneak around, and generally play cowboy in their efforts to bring down Sean Penn’s Mickey Cohen.

Taking a glimpse at the non-Penn cast members prancing around these sets — Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte, Michael Pena, Robert Patrick, and a little-known, young duo by the names of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone — one gets giddy at the possibilities of chemistry and interactions between them. Few are fulfilled. Chalk it up to Will Beall’s script, which diminishes even the most intriguing possibilities (Brolin’s absolute kick-ass cop, Gosling’s slightly effeminate brute) into two-note cliches. Even Stone, one of the most promising, successful actresses working today, is little more than a pair of long legs and ruby-colored lips with the dialogue she’s given. Mind you, these people give effective interpretations of their material — it’s just that their material is garbage. Michael Pena’s one-note part feels particularly underwhelming in the wake of his soulful, tragic work as an officer of the law in last year’s “End of Watch”.

As well, Sean Penn, an artist whose work I admire both in front of and behind the camera, delivers what may be his first actively bad performance in a 30-year career. Hilariously incorporating many unnecessary tics into his performance — a goofy prosthetic nose, hyper-exaggerated East-coast gangsta accent, a recurring tendency to set annoying employees on fire — Penn’s work is a terse summation of what exactly can happen when Method-acting goes very, very wrong.

Setting aside the various moral dilemmas posed by “Gangster Squad”, when one looks at it as a pure piece of pulp entertainment, the thing doesn’t even hold up. Director Ruben Fleischer, who demonstrated a keen eye for flashy kinetics in 2009′s “Zombieland” and an above-average understanding of character dynamics in 2011′s below-average “30 Minutes or Less”, appeared a promising choice to helm this action-oriented period drama. This said, assuming one can ignore the context in which they’re presented, the action in this thing remains totally devoid of excitement. Fleischer displays none of his twisted creativity from earlier work in staging set-pieces, resorting to a three-move playbook: car chase, shootout, chase on foot. He executes these actions like an over-eager eight-year old randomly mashing buttons on a video-game controller, with little care being taken to whether the moves are effective, well-sequenced, or well, even cool. They aren’t. His over-lit, ultra-processed, slo-mo friendly visual palette resembles Zack Snyder-lite (not a favorable comparison), and randomized attempts at distinctive camera-moves (a tracking shot following Gosling’s character into a nightclub feels expected and obvious).

Whether or not one has their thinking-cap on while watching “Gangster Squad”, the results are deeply disappointing either way. Intellectually, it’s the sort of glorified “violence solves everything” manifesto that annoying watch-dog groups capitalize on when criticizing Hollywood. Viscerally, it’s bland, obvious, and oh-so-self-serious. Less capable films, uglier films, and more offensive films will no doubt emerge in 2013 than “Gangster Squad”. But, given the blunt-nosed, unapologetic mediocrity on display here, I doubt I’ll carry as strong a grudge against them. D- (I opted not to give it an F, in light of the generous opportunity to stare at Ryan Gosling & Emma Stone for two hours.)

It’s been said that films are the sum of both their own parts and the discussion that those parts provoke. “Zero Dark Thirty” provides a stark counterexample to this concept, as its release has been swallowed near-whole by idiotic, pedantic discussion on torture, its implications, and the implications of the way it’s shown in the film. (See! It’s even leaked to the first paragraph of my review!) My statement on the topic is brief and simple: when making a film about the efforts to find Osama bin Laden, seeing as the real-world efforts included “enhanced interrogation techniques”, to ignore these interactions and the impact that they made on this manhunt would be ludicrous and irresponsible. This is, of course, to say nothing of the fact that the film’s overall thesis is that the efforts to find one man may have not have been the sacrifices and inhumanity displayed along the path. Simply put: this movie shows torture. But to depict an activity is not to endorse it, and  if the thematic bent of the film is any indication, flattery is far from what Kathryn Bigelow aimed to show to these techniques.

Phew.

Yeah, “Zero Dark Thirty” is about finding that one guy. How’d you guess? Continuing the cineplex’s recent trend of lengthy opuses, it’s near three hours, and admittedly betrays its length a bit more readily than others, although in showing the weariness and repetitiveness of the mission at hand, perhaps such was the point. It’s every ounce as visceral and up-close as director Kathryn Bigelow’s last collaboration with writer Mark Boal, 2009′s explosive Best Picture winner “The Hurt Locker”, yet expands its scope from a handful of bombs to a handful of the most dangerous men in the world. Bigelow’s rough, naturalistic aesthetics prove to be a good match for the material once again, showing yet another left-turn for a director whose career began with shlocky vampire films and Keanu Reeves surfer pictures. (No hate though, “Point Break” fans. I am one of your ranks. I’m simply highlighting the massive, well, break from the front of her career to what we see now.)

We witness this protracted search through the eyes of young CIA operative Maya. The year is 2003 and she’s been sent abroad for her tough-nosed reputation. The film follows her for the following eight years, as she faces dead-end after dead-end, sees her friends murdered, sees her superiors pass up clues. It spoils nothing, however, to state that things “turn around” for our protagonist — anyone within range of a phone, laptop, or piece of paper in the last two years knows damn well that Maya succeeds. Yet, all the same, her path to get there remains gripping and assured, culminating in the 35-minute raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound that’s an utter marvel of filmmaking. It hits, all too well, the sweet spot of crisp cuts, clear geography, and propulsive purpose indicative of true, great action filmmaking.

Bigelow has assembled a superb supporting cast. Jason Clarke’s torture specialist provides a gravelly dramatic grounding in the film’s opening moments, Mark Strong and James Gandolfini are solid as Maya’s CIA superiors, wonderful filmmaker Mark Duplass stretches his strengths to acting, and Jennifer Ehle is perhaps the closest thing to a touching, tragic figure in the film — that is, besides Maya herself. Played by Jessica Chastain, a woman whose last two years have produced an astounding run of performances, Maya is a woman of intense privacy and guardedness, whose emotional depths we only fully recognize in the film’s haunting final shot. It doesn’t make for an accessible character, but it surely produces a memorable one.

Thus far, I’ve described “Zero Dark Thirty” as a great procedural. It is. It is deeply satisfying in paying off pleasures we expect, in fulfilling conventions that we already have a feel for. But it is a film built on a fundamentally distant concept — not only focusing on efforts to kill a man, but on the dehumanizing, grating effects it has on the soul. In essence: “Zero Dark Thirty” is a creation for me to admire, not adore. Because these qualities are by design, however, it is of no fault to the filmmakers — rather, to my ability to be moved by something so clinical. Perhaps this makes “Zero Dark Thirty” the most evocative piece of war-on-terror filmmaking yet — simply put, it replicates the mechanism and madness of the last decade better than any other. B+

“Django Unchained”, guided by the voice of filmmaking virtuoso Quentin Tarantino, is utterly incendiary filmmaking: holding a mirror up to the abhorrent sins of our country, while serving as ever-satisfying, ridiculously bloody genre fare. Tarantino pulled off this trick fairly recently — twice in fact, with 2009′s “Inglourious Basterds” targeting both Nazi sympathies and the uber-macho Allied culture that took it down, and 2007′s “Death Proof” subtly inverting the tropes of horror filmmaking to, ultimately, empower women.

What’s “Django”‘s target? Well, slavery — and not the sort of whitewashed, filtered depiction of it that you’d see in, say, a “Gone With The Wind”. This is brutal, bloody, and profane as hell, and while some parties may choose to view this as exploitative (Hey there Spike Lee! How ya doin’, pal?), it simply serves to elevate the villainy Tarantino’s characters must overcome. Speaking of which…

The film opens in 1858, as a group of slaves walk shackled across the country. Here we meet Jamie Foxx’s Django, who in a burst of unexpected gunfire, is freed from capacity by German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz. Django and Schultz come to an agreement: if Django works with Schultz, killing wanted convicts all through the winter, then Schultz will assist Django in freeing his long-lost wife from a notorious slave plantation, crudely dubbed “Candie-Land” for the surname of its charismatic young owner, Calvin Candie.

I’ve recently developed a theory that I’ve only begun to test, yet it’s this: a truly great film can be played with either no audio or no video, and remain just as riveting. With regards to “Django”, it goes without saying that the soundtrack to this would be a wonderful listen. Tarantino’s dialogue is the same sort of profane poetry that moviegoers have been eating up for 20 years. Yet his recent work has forced me to realize what a developed, mature stylist he’s become, and “Django” is yet another visual triumph for the man. He meets a perfect intersection of paying tribute to his pulpy influences (the ’60′s work of spaghetti-western directors Leone & Corbucci serves as a spiritual predecessor here), yet all the while, composes utterly gorgeous, standalone cinematography. His frequent collaborator, Robert Richardson, just fresh off his Cinematography Oscar for last year’s “Hugo”, turns in work here whose strength cannot be overstated.

Recently rocked with the death of long-time editor Sally Menke, Tarantino’s turned to the talents of Fred Raskin to slice up his work here. The shocking thing? At 2 hours 45 minutes, the film still flies by. This film is in firm command of the audience’s emotions and attention, and so it never feels like it’s asking too much to devote, say, an hour to setting up Django & King’s friendship; nor is it awkward when the film’s second act slows down squarely, taking place only on one fateful night at “Candie-Land”.

This surely stems from the masterful writing and craft on display in the film, but also, there’s far more primal, base reasons: the action here, man. Tarantino knows how to wow with his staging and sequencing, and towards the climax of the film, there is one particular shoot-out which I now firmly believe to be one of the most inventive and satisfying in all of cinema. “Django”, naturally, has come under criticism for the savagery its characters endure. Yet, as always, Tarantino refrains from simplistic exploitation, knowing when to use violence as a tool to either satisfy the audience or deeply, deeply shock it. And believe me, shock “Django” does.

Perhaps its biggest jar comes on a cultural level, not a visceral one: seeing America’s golden-boy-movie-star Leonardo DiCaprio in a vile role of villainy and depravity. His character, the aforementioned Calvin Candie, is a hot-tempered, narcissist brat whose soul has surely eroded alongside his teeth. He’s also one of the juiciest, most verbose roles in the film, with impassioned speeches on “Negroes’ skulls” and subtly incestuous undertones shocking us at every turn. Second in command to DiCaprio is Samuel L. Jackson, who may well walk away with the damn movie as Stephen, Candie’s lead house-slave. To spoil the motives and mechanisms of Stephen is to spoil a great deal (and great joy) of “Django”.

Littered in various roles across the film — Don Johnson, Bruce Dern, Robert Carradine, even Jonah Hill in a hysterical cameo as a bumbling Ku Klux Klan member. Kerry Washington’s supporting role as Django’s wife is deeply human if fairly limited, and Django himself — Jamie Foxx — pulls off a mixture of stoic confidence and seething anger that much mirrors the film itself, giving us a movie hero for the ages. Finally, Christoph Waltz slaughters his role as Dr. King, offering the same hyper-articulate shtick from his Nazi commandant in “Inglourious Basterds”, with one major difference — this time, he plays a deeply lovable man, albeit also a mass-murderer, in his own way.

At the tail-end of 2012, a movie-going year littered with disappointments for this reviewer, it was the highest of joys to receive literally everything I’ve been missing, with “Django Unchained”. This is a film where meticulous craft meets impassioned social commentary, creating a work that, while outrageously violent, remains deeply humanistic in its values. Does it say anything new about slavery, race relations, and the role of the black man, whether in antebellum South or contemporary society? In short: no. But one glimpse at the last month’s news headlines assures me that it’s inspiring these sorts of conversations in a way that no work of art seems to have done in years. Certainly no work of Hollywood, and certainly no work of Spike Lee. ”Django Unchained” is, very simply, the kind of film that makes me overjoyed to be alive. A