Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, in one of the more suggestive marketing materials for "THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO".

Cold and chilly like its Swedish setting, David Fincher’s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” opens with an opening-credit sequence for the ages. Figures rise, fall and converge, but covered in tattoo ink and with Karen O’s ambient “Immigrant Song” remake blasting in the background. It promises a wild time to be had — and judging from the marketing materials, you’d think “Dragon Tattoo” would be one of the more subversive studio-backed films in years.

Not the case.

“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is a film bearing the David Fincher stamp of technical mastery, with Jeff Cronenweth’s bleak cinematography as excellent as usual, Angus Hall and Kirk Baxter in the cutting room, and the Reznor/Ross duo providing a strong ambient score once again.

Their work is all up to par compared to their work last year — 2010’s best film “The Social Network”, but what makes it so much less effective this time around is the lack of an emotional center. “Dragon Tattoo” is a film whose every frame was clearly labored over and given the utmost of attention, but it came at the expense of a meaningful plot. It’s all a beautifully crafted toy that, when wound up, does almost nothing.

It’s certainly not for lack of effort on the actors’ part. In fact, the principal leads, Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, both deliver absolutely superb work here. Craig, who’s been on something of a poor streak lately, gives a performance of both fierce intellect and icy cool. He is Mikael Blomkvist, a magazine publisher whose reporting on a corporate head just cost him his life savings. He is contacted by Henrik Vanger, a wealthy old man whose beloved niece’s disappearance has haunted him for 30 years.

Vanger wants Blomkvist to give all the evidence another look and see if there are any other angles to the story he might have missed. This is where Mara enters the picture, as Lisbeth Salander.

Much has been made of Salander’s character, both on-screen and in the best-selling novels from which the film is based. She’s an oddly pierced, bisexual prodigy whose main talent is kicking ass and hacking computers. Mara is an absolute force to be reckoned with in the role — just the right amounts of sex appeal, dramatic intensity, and hardened exterior. If Mara is on the screen, “Tattoo” approaches the heights it could have hit.

The actual murder mystery aspect of the film does work rather well, it’s just that there’s far too much of the thing. Of “Dragon Tattoo”s 160-minute run-time, at least 100 minutes are devoted to the mystery which, while important, are not the real story of the film. What “Dragon Tattoo” is really about is the odd connection that Blomkvist and Salander develop, and while solidly realized I think the filmmakers mistakenly decided to stave off most of that dynamic for possible sequels (there are after all, two more books in the series to be adapted)

Had screenwriter Steve Zaillian (whose past work includes “Moneyball” and “Schindler’s List”) paid as much attention to character development as procedural detail, it could have been a masterpiece. “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is a perfectly solid murder mystery, which i heartbreaking considering it could have been solidly perfect. David Fincher’s obsessive attention to detail, has, for the first time, left his end product feeling a little empty. B-

The makeshift family -- Mary, Gary, and his muppet brother Walter.

In May 2011, I was strolling down State Street to grab a burrito and noticed something about someone in front of me. The guy, who was in the upper-range of six feet, seemed strikingly familiar. Doing an awkward jog ahead to see what was up, I realized — it was Jason Segel! Known to most as a cast member of “How I Met Your Mother”, he stood out to me particularly because of his full-frontal nudity in the first 2 minutes of the uproarious “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”. Funny thing is, he was a disheveled guy with a dangling cigarette and a sort of ambiguous pout. My request to snap a picture with the guy was met with incoherent grunting, followed with a sigh and a snap.

I say this not to brag about my celebrity-spotting escapades, but to highlight just how good his performance is in “The Muppets”. There is no moment of the film where he doesn’t have a slap-happy presence, where he doesn’t infuse it all with this massive sense of joy and uplift. Contrasting that with the melancholy presence I encountered in May, quite the performance.

“The Muppets” is the best kind of thing — a labor of love, from top to bottom. Written by Segel in reverence to his childhood favorite, the ragtag puppet team that is The Muppets, the whole film serves as a tribute to the Muppets culture, while also serving as a satisfying installment in it.

I cannot say that I am the most well-versed observer of The Muppets’ past work, which only makes me appreciate how well-crafted and stand-alone this thing is. This film makes me feel nostalgia for a past that I never experienced, a yearning for memories I never made.

The plot is short and sweet — Jason Segel as Gary, who is very plainly human, and Walter, who is very plainly Muppet, are brothers. (It’s never explained, and doesn’t need to be) Walter, however, has never felt like he’s fit in — save for when he’d put on recordings of “The Muppet Show” and dream of putting on a show with fellow, ehm, puppets. When he, Gary, and his girlfriend Mary visit Los Angeles to tour the Muppet studio, they find its fallen into desolation and is due to be demolished and drilled for oil unless $10 million can be raised. The three round up the whole gang and decide to throw a musical/telethon to raise the needed money.

Director James Bobin, in his feature-film debut, admittedly took some missteps in the editing room. He makes quite a few little mistakes — awkward cuts, mismatched eye-lines and positions, but nothing to truly sink the film. What nearly does is the second act of the film — Bobin sets up a killer momentum for the film with the first 30 minutes, but has a hard time juggling all the characters and events. From my understanding, there were some fairly extensive re-shoots on the film, which gives it an awkward, almost limping pace. Most of these worries are offset by the killer finale though, in which all the film’s greatest qualities come together.

“The Muppets” is proof that even the simplest story can be elevated to loads of fun, provided that you make the small moments count. And “Muppets” pulls out all the stops — spontaneous, effortlessly catchy musical numbers, rapid-fire cameos from massive celebrities, snappy dialogue, et cetera. The script by Segel and Stoller is good, but the musical numbers, written by ”Flight of the Concords” vet Bret McKenzie are excellent. In fact, it’s perhaps the film’s greatest credit — a few choice numbers have been in heavy-rotation on my iPod for weeks now. They’re nostalgiac and old-timey, but also perfectly catchy tunes on their own. The cast, human and puppet, carry them effortlessly.

“The Muppets” taps into an old-school pizzazz - the idea that if you have a smile on your face and don’t treat your audience like idiots, they’ll have a good time. And we sure do. B

I wasn't lying. Look at his face.

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) looks on at her clueless ex-beau, Buddy Slade, in "Young Adult".

Being a high-school student, it’s not uncommon to look around sometimes and contemplate where everyone’s gonna end up in 20 years. Not just geographically speaking, but emotionally as well. Jason Reitman’s new film “Young Adult” stares dead-on into the eyes of former-prom queen, present-author Mavis Gary. Her works are throwaway “young-adult” literature: shallow, self-obsessed tracts about popularity and glamour that funnily enough, perfectly reflect Gary’s self-image. She’s a 2011 woman whose head remains in 1991, still manipulating and twisting people for her own ends just like old times — and a divorced alcoholic.

Her migration from Minneapolis to small-town Mercury, Minnesota is part of a quest to get old high-school-flame Buddy Slade back. The fact that he’s now married, a father, and well, boring, doesn’t halt Gary for a minute, and this self-deluded quest is the basis for the film.

Charlize Theron as Mavis is the front-and-center focus, and Theron does not disappoint. She delivers “Juno” scribe Diablo Cody’s dialogue with an acrid tongue and self-important poise. But the majority of her heavy-work is actually what comes in-between the quips — the dishelved “morning-after” segments that follow her night-time rampages through bars and hearts, the little grimaces and lip-bites that reveal her near-monstrous nature, and the little pauses and sighs that reveal the real pain that beats at her center. Theron is exceptional because she layers the subtle with the theatrical — and unlike many of her peers, she knows when to equip the two. She’s not a character, but a force.

Serving as an unlikely friend to Mavis through her tenure in Mercury is Matt. Matt is an overweight sadsack whose notable high-school accomplishment was when jocks permanently crippled him because of his supposed homosexuality, and he’s longed after Mavis for 20 years. When the two occupy the screen together, “Young Adult” finds its true voice of reason and reality. Patton Oswalt’s take on Matt is a pitch-perfect side-turn, proving his dramatic chops to be as fine-tuned as his hysterical stand-up-comedy. A scene in which the two greet each other free of any clothing is poignant, awkward and heartbreaking all rolled into one.

The real star here is Diablo Cody’s script — not just as an individual work, but as a logical progression in maturity and depth. Cody’s actual dialogue takes upon a more sober, mature matter than her “Juno” and “Jennifer’s Body” scripts, but she retains the tart, sassy attitude and subtext that made those films stand out.

“Young Adult” is a curious affair, a film whose subtle but sharp humor comes from watching a woman humiliate herself and annihilate all relationships in her wake. It’s also a curiosity in Jason Reitman’s filmography — certainly less immediate and striking than his last film “Up in the Air”, and perhaps a minor disappointment given that was one of the great films of the past decade. Both films are about people and the folly of their personal philosophies. “Young Adult” is so damn interesting because Mavis Gary never realizes it. It’s a terrible flaw that makes for a damn good film. B+

Dedicated to Chris Narine.

Jeremy Renner and Tom Cruise, whose star-power looms as high as the featured Burj Dubai in "MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL".

When all is said and done, a good movie year has about a dozen sequences that forever burn themselves into my memory; images that are so striking and so compelling that I carry them with me wherever I go, whatever I do. “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” may have the creme-de-la-creme of 2011 — arguably the world’s greatest movie star climbing the exterior of the world’s tallest building. No stunt doubles, no wires, no worries. It’s the centerpiece of a film whose action is continually one-upping itself — and a masterwork in craftsmanship, imagination, and sheer brio.

Tom Cruise, in his fourth outing as superspy Ethan Hunt, is out to clear his name in a bombing of the Kremlin. To do this, he traverses the world — stopping in Mumbai, Dubai, Moscow and Budapest, frantically trying to clear his name and prevent nuclear annihilation. Kudos to Swedish import Michael Nyquist for his physically able yet quietly menacing turn as the dude attempting to do wrong with his Russian nuclear launch codes.

But more than past installments, “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” is less about Tom Cruise parading about and doing cool stuff; there’s a really strong emphasis on team dynamics here. Joining Cruise’s globe-trotting: Simon Pegg returning as the hilariously geeky analyst, Paula Patton as an agent still hurting from the killing of her boyfriend/co-agent, and Jeremy Renner, playing a mysterious-type with a secret or two. Although my reductive descriptions give them a one-note impression, they are all given a good deal to work with; both in terms of fleshing out intriguing people and absolutely tearing shit up on their escapades.

The fact that the movie frequently approaches cartoonish territory is of no surprise. After all, director Brad Bird is an industry legend for his perfect trio of animated films: “The Iron Giant”, “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille”. In those films, he communicated a perfect balance of humor, warmth, characterization, and invention. But most importantly, he developed an impeccable sense of visual storytelling, fluidly manipulating environments and characters better than most live-action directors. “Ghost Protocol” represents a seamless transition into live-action for Bird, displaying both his technical mastery and absolute joyousness as a filmmaker.

Bird also make the excellent decision to shoot the film’s major set pieces with IMAX cameras. True enough, I drove an hour out to the only 70mm IMAX theater in Michigan that was showing it, and the result was an impossibly massive experience on every level. IMAX cameras pick up every frame with such precision and detail, and the fact that “Ghost Protocol” generally shies away from computer-generated effects only adds to the immersion and, well, realism.

Perhaps American cinematography’s greatest treasure, Robert Elswit, is behind the camerawork in this film. It’s his direct visual signature that contributes to much of “Ghost Protocol”s creativity  and rhythm, forming a congruous duo with Bird’s style. Composer Michael Giacchano’s brassy, bombastic score is a good undercurrent for the proceedings.

The action in this film is too grand and too bold to condense into things so impotent and powerless as sentences. Psh. The thought. To “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”, gravity, physics, logic and reasoning are but child’s play; too meager and too meaningless to be worthy of attention. Be it a marathon sprint in the midst of a sandstorm, a prison outbreak, or 300-foot falls with the only saving mechanism being the seatbelt of a car, it doesn’t matter.  Who needs reality when you’ve got Tom Cruise? A

[Another thing of strong note -- if you drive out to Dearborn's Henry Ford Museum to see this, as I did, you see the first 6 minutes of the forthcoming "Dark Knight Rises". I consider this THE filmmaking event to miss next year, and this epic opening sequence is well worth the drive....several drives, actually.]

The four gods of "CARNAGE" meet to discuss the matter of their son's brawl.

To see Roman Polanski’s “Carnage” is to watch a biting deconstruction of societal norms, manners, and fake gestures to others for the purpose of “pleasing” them. I am a high school student, therefore I identify with these themes more than most others. You feel me?

“Carnage” sports four wonderfully talented actors — John C. Reilly and Jodie Foster, & Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet playing respective married couples. The four, cooped up in a Brooklyn apartment, are there to resolve a dispute regarding their young sons, one of which took a weapon to the other’s face. “Carnage”, at a mercifully short yet just right 79-minute length, is simply a chronicle of their initially cordial but progressively aggressive conversation  (+5 consonance points!) – which begins with smiles and drinks yet turns into total insanity.

Although Roman Polanski’s films have been leaning a bit towards the large-scale recently, one only need look at his 1960s’ output to see that this man tells tightly-focused, one-location stories exceptionally well. Be it a yacht in “Knife in the Water” or an apartment in “Repulsion”, he paints his environments dynamically but claustrophobically — never dull, but always on-edge.

And these four actors — what magic they make together. I can’t think of any other people who could out-perform this cast, so distinct are their personalities yet priceless their interactions. It makes my heart warm that Christoph Waltz has still got it, given that his largely uninspired post-”Inglourious Basterds” work. John C. Reilly embodies the lovable-dunce-of-a-father archetype exceptionally well.

The women in this film, however, give “Carnage” its heart, soul and chaos. Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet begin the film on flip-sides of the coin, one much more sympathetic than the other. But as the film progresses, all their little niceties and mannerisms crumble away, revealing what’s really at their soul. It ain’t pretty. “Carnage” isa work razor-sharp in observation and humor, although it’s hard not to wonder if it’s an after-thought for its legendary participants. B+

The young protagonists, played by Asa Butterfield and Chloe Moretz, meet atop a train station in "HUGO".

The opening shot of Martin Scorsese’s latest film tracks across Golden Age Paris; swooping and snooping around with a childlike sense of wonder and speed. It tracks through the sky, admiring the various landmarks, and then speeds through the train station, narrowly avoiding people and then closing in on the eyes of a young boy. This boy is Hugo. This movie is “Hugo”. They are both very special.

Hugo is someone without a home — parents killed, orphanages too cruel to care for, no apparent friends. He lives behind the walls of the aforementioned train station, using his father’s expertise with clockwork to help keep the station’s mechanics working. To get by he often lifts food from the various vendors — making him a top enemy for the station’s bumbling inspector, played by Sacha Baren Cohen (or, as you may know him, “Bruno” and “Borat”).

All that seems to keep him going is a mechanical man his father left behind, or, “automaton”. It carries a secret message, one that’s only unlocked by a heart-shaped key he can’t seem to find. But when Hugo is caught stealing from an elusive toy vendor (played by Ben Kingsley, in top, grizzled form) and befriends his quirky granddaughter, Isabelle, Hugo begins a path to realizing what the machine means, what his father wanted him to know, and ultimately, if he can find a family or not.

The promotional materials for “Hugo” have done it no justice, nor, admittedly, has my plot summary. I concede some of my experience with “Hugo” was tainted, given that walking in the theater, some vital plot-points had been ruined. I advise you do the opposite and keep as much of this film as fresh as you can make it.

A tremendous cast has been gathered here. Scorsese wisely chooses his supporting actors — Jude Law, Michael Stuhlberg and Sacha Baron Cohen first come to mind. I even think I spotted Johnny Depp briefly, as a French guitarist. Ben Kingsley’s role is one that’s given much more attention than one would expect, and I firmly believe he deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work. The work of the young actors is something to be marveled as well. Chloe Moretz, fresh off excellent work in “Kick-Ass” and “Let Me In”, plays a Hermione-type with grace and excitement. But Asa Butterfield, a youth totally off my radar, makes Hugo a sympathetic character with depth, wisdom, and more than a bit of mischief. There is no frame of this film where his presence isn’t felt, where his energy isn’t conveyed.

This film’s tremendous sense of scope and depth, only heightened by the 3D camerawork, totally envelops you in a world faithful to reality, yet whimsical in appearance. I’ve said this a time or two while reviewing films — but “Hugo” is easily the best use of 3D that I’ve ever seen. So often, filmmakers use 3-D to make the obvious even moreso — a prime example is this summer’s “Transformers 3″, in which director Michael Bay took it upon himself to literally demolish Chicago and throw it all in your face. Scorsese uses it to let little nuances pop out, things one wouldn’t notice — snow falling on a winter night, dust floating in a run-down apartment, burnt remains of paper flying through the air.

But the visual attention to minute detail doesn’t mean “Hugo” doesn’t have spectacle — au contraire, actually. This film has train crashes, foot chases, and explosions to spare, and they all look spectacular. It makes the mundane magical and the large-scale out-of-this world. A great shot where a threatening character’s face slowly comes towards the audience proves too, that 3-D can enhance character-driven interactions.

Scorsese uses the frame-work of a “children’s fantasy” (his first outing in both genres) to craft a film that looks to the past while using the technology of the future. It’s a balance that could have veered too much into kitsch or sentimentality, which are funny concerns given that this film’s director has delivered us such disturbed fare as “Taxi Driver”, “Raging Bull” and “Cape Fear”. But if there’s one thing I can take away from “Hugo”, it’s that one of the greatest filmmakers to walk the planet still has new things to explore, new tricks to show us. How exciting is that? A

Lucy, right, tries hopelessly to ease her sister Martha back into society.

More often than not, when films have a non-linear structure, it’s to confuse us on a narrative level. Take for instance Christopher Nolan “Memento”, a murder-mystery-in-reverse that by starting at the end and working backwards to the beginning, revealed that many of our assumptions about the events were false. “Martha Marcy May Marlene”, on the other hand, has an emotional motivation for doing this.

The film’s protagonist, Martha, is picked up by her sister Lucy after a frantic phone-booth call. Martha seemingly vanished off the face of the earth for two years, with no contact to any outside relatives. What Lucy and her husband Ted don’t know is that Martha joined a rustic cult, developed a relationship with its charismatic leader Patrick, and began a slow but sure mental descent.

Director Sean Durkin makes the interesting decision of cutting between Martha’s time with the cult, and her first two weeks attempting to regroup with society. Dramatically, it works incredibly well in its favor, as the tension in both plot-lines gradually escalates as the film moves along. But eventually Durkin begins to blur the lines between what is past, what is present, and what may even be a hallucination. He creates a constant sense of unease and distrust in our surroundings, one not unlike Martha’s plight.

“Martha Marcy May Marlene” is a film one can approach from almost any angle and walk away impressed. It’s as confident and assured a directorial debut since Steve McQueen’s 2008 “Hunger”, and contains one of the most impressive performances of the year in Elizabeth Olsen’s Martha. The youngest sister of the Olsen family (yeah, the Mary-Kate and Ashley one), she conveys exceptionally well a confused array of emotions that could come off as erratic or bizarre under the portrayal of a different actress. Instead, in her hands, she is a character to be emphasized with, to be understood, and ultimately to be feared for.

The opposing force to our protagonist is portrayed no less masterfully. John Hawkes, whose streak of roles in “Deadwood”, “Winter’s Bone” and “Eastbound and Down” have garnered him a strong reputation, proves furthermore his status as an underrated talent. He accomplishes the unthinkable — he makes the concept of joining a cult mildly empathetic. He’s an intense presence, but never a despicable one — a fearsome one, but never monstrous. It’s a thin line to walk, but given his past work, his success is unsurprising.

Following “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is an entirely subjective experience — what exactly the last 15 minutes are, and what they mean will garner entirely different reactions. I like that. It forces the viewer to reflect and interpret, to be an active creative force in the film. A strong parallel I find to this film is Roman Polanski’s 1965 “Repulsion”. It told the story of a woman who gradually goes insane as walls crack around her, hands reach in, bath-tubs overflow. What I find most devastating about “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is that all of these things happen, but you have to read them in Elizabeth Olsen’s eyes — so delicate, so devastating, so dangerous. A-

Clooney's fractured family in the superb "Descendants".

One of the great dilemmas, I find, in composing film reviews, is exactly how large of a part I, the reviewer, should play in the text. Am I to objectively review it, coolly and at a distance, as a supposed professional should do? Or, since cinema is a personal art medium, meant to provoke a reaction, should I make each and every film a personalized, individual experience, and every review a narrative reflective of that?

Being the fairly passionate individual that I am, I naturally lean towards the second option. The fact that I bring it up in this review is indicative of that. And another strong argument for this argument is my reaction to Alexander Payne’s new work “The Descendants”.

I am a Hawaiian. My white father (a “haole”, as natives call it) married my Pearl City-native mother 23 years ago, and have made it a point to get us out to that state as much as they possibly can. The result is my fairly deep knowledge of Hawaiian culture, and if not knowledge then a sentimental passion. All the memories I hold there and will continue to make there carried over into my viewing of “The Descendants”, set on the Hawaiian islands. That alone would have made it an emotional trip for me, but the fact that the film itself is a raw, messy, unfiltered mess of emotions turned something poignant into something transformative. This is an amazing work.

“The Descendants” continues George Clooney’s untouchable run as the premier, capital-M movie star of this generation. He plays Matt King, a man whose family is forced to sell a fairly unique generational heir-loom — 250,000 acres of premium Ka’aui real estate. All the while, he’s juggling trying to keep his troubled daughters’ heads above water as his wife lay in a coma that, his doctors say, she probably won’t ever wake up from. When his elder daughter, Alex, casually drops the revelation that prior to the coma she was cheating for quite some time, things really spiral out of control.

In a world soaked with animated films, sequels, films based on toys and films made to sell toys, experiences like “The Descendants” are hard to come by. It’s a film without much flash or pizzazz to its direction, simply a faith that we, the audience, can connect with and be moved by the characters’ experiences. It works. Writer-director Alexander Payne has been biding his time since 2004′s “Sideways”, and working with such emotional material as this, I can see why.

“The Descendants”, like all of Payne’s work, strikes an uncanny balance between the humorous and the heartbreaking. It’d be a crime to undersell just how funny Clooney, his daughters, and Alex’s imbecile boyfriend Sid are together. But at the same time, a lot of the humor stems from the imperfections and flaws these characters carry with them, giving every laugh a wounded resonance, bordering on discomfort.

It almost seems redundant at this point to praise Clooney — I feel like every year he drops a performance or two labelled as Oscar-worthy, (“Up in the Air”, “Michael Clayton”, this year’s own “Ides of March”) but it’s only because he’s willing to dig deeper and take on greater challenges than any of his contemporaries. This may be the first film I’ve seen where the guy actually begins to show his age — Clooney de-glamourized, if you will.

But where “The Descendants” really surprised me were the performances of his family. Clooney’s younger daughter, Scottie, serves as both the film’s comic relief and sense of purity. It seems everyone in this film is damaged but her, although her profanity-laden one-liners certainly suggest otherwise. The pothead tag-along in the family, Alex’s boyfriend Sid, is hysterical. Scenes where he interacts with his elders are among the funniest of the year. But this being an Alexander Payne film, he too gets an exchange later in the film that strips us of our assumptions of his character.

But what may be the finest performance of the film is Shailene Woodley as Matt’s hard-partying daughter, Alex herself. She takes what could have been a whiny, one-note character and infuses her with life — yes, sarcasm and sass, but also warmth and humor, grace and intelligence. One scene where she learns her mother’s condition and screams furiously underwater in a pool is unforgettable.

And Hawaii in this film — I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect representation. It’s set more in the suburbs of the islands rather than the postcard-esque vistas, and is a superb, but most importantly accurate realization of an amazing place. Simply put, ”The Descendants” is one of the most unique, touching American films released in the time since I began reviewing. Through the eyes of one of the most glamorous men on the planet, it faces some very ugly truths dead in the eye — truths about dysfunction, jealousy, family, and how the three will always to some extent be intertwined. A

The unofficial, unfortunate faces of popular American cinema in "BREAKING DAWN: PART I".

At the end of “Breaking Dawn: Part I”, I leaned over to my mother and said, “Please, for the love of God, get me out of here before someone spots me.”

I said this not out of some misguided fear for my masculine image, nor social status, or whatever you opt to read into that. But rather, it was my actual pride as a consumer and appreciator of the arts that I wanted to flee that theater. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part I” is among the most laughable products of entertainment I’ve ever witnessed, comparable to a 5-year old’s stick-figure-dinosaur in its simplicity and ineptitude. Sorry, parents. And sorry to the moviegoers whose $139 million this past weekend further fueled one of the greater follies on American pop culture of the last decade.

Why so harsh, Ryan?

Considering I actually gave the last installment, the surprisingly competent “Eclipse”, a B, why such a drastic U-turn? Simply put, it’s because “Breaking Dawn” is so bad, the ineptitude is not only contained to it, but actually spreads to the first three films in the Twilight canon, two of which were fairly watchable exercises. Yes, friends, “Breaking Dawn” actually retroactively ruins other movies. To critique the acting in this film would be redundant — not when I’ve written reviews of what’s essentially an identical performance for this film’s three predecessors. The leads Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner all seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel and totally phone it in here. I can’t blame them, nor can I say I don’t resent how such little work can still yield so much attention. Stewart is the best of the trio, conveying a feeling that must be difficult as an actor — literally being broken from the inside out, aided by extremely impressive visual-effects work.

This doesn’t answer my question I guess – why so harsh, Ryan?

To answer this question, I direct your attention to the recent conclusion of the “Harry Potter” franchise. “Deathly Hallows”, when put together, comprises a 5-hour epic with massive ambition and scope — but there isn’t a minute in either halves that isn’t dedicated to fleshing out the characters or propelling the story forward. The decision to make it into two films was a prudent one for the story being told. Compare this to “Breaking Dawn”. There’s literally stretches of this film dedicated to glances, ponderous beats, slow-motion shots of garbage cans closing, prolonged sequences of chess-playing. The whole thing is — and this is a word I strive as a critic to avoid — boring.

In “Breaking Dawn: Part I”, vampire Edward and human Bella marry, embark on a honeymoon, have sex, realize that for whatever reason they didn’t employ protection, and face the consequences of a multi-species beast growing in Bella’s stomach. Also, there’s a clan of angry, poorly animated werewolves. How they stretched these events out to 108 minutes still amazes me.

The grand flaw that’s always left “Twilight” behind in one way or another behind rival franchises is its dependency on character-driven moments — be it one-liners, glances, reveals, etc, when the franchise did such a poor job of building their personalities & foundations to begin with. Think about it — “Harry Potter” often achieved absolute hilarity (and at times, heartbreak) because over time you’d become so familiar and responsive to the characters. “Twilight” stumbled with this development right out of the gate, so the moments where it tries to play off our fondness for the characters fails. And that’s really all that “Breaking Dawn: Part I” is — a film built on moments playing off a relationship with the audience that doesn’t exist. D

William Shakespeare, figure of adoration, and as "ANONYMOUS" asserts, a total fraud.

We’ve all had that one kid in some class or another who thought that by using large words and elongating their sentences as long as possible, that they were smarter than all the other kids. Now imagine that kid getting to make his own movie about one of the most universally adored artists ever to walk the planet. You now understand my annoyance with Roland Emmerich’s “Anonymous”.

Emmerich is a bit of a symbol of everything I hate about Hollywood. The maker of “Godzilla”, “The Day After Tomorrow”, and “2012″, he’s an unrelenting purveyor of destruction, death and noise; with obscenely high box-office receipts to boot. So his suitability for “Anonymous”‘ subject matter is certainly up for debate — a tangled web of political intrigue, relationships, creative disputes and family feuds. It’s all centered around the Earl of Oxford, who to shift public opinion, decides to release several plays to make a large splash. Hiding a tremendous talent for writing, he uses a middle-man as a public facade. This fraud’s name? William Shakespeare.

If there is one major achievement to the credit of “Anonymous”, it’s the dynamic digital re-creation of 16th-century-era England. Done with the seamless blending of practical stages and digital effects, it’s as vivid and textured as any digitally-created landscape. The fact that it was done on the film’s reputed $30 million budget makes it all the more impressive.

Rhys Ifans is the Earl of Oxford and lead character — and he’s something of a blank slate throughout the film — never really readable for the first two-thirds of the film, which make his sudden outbursts of emotion in the latter 40 minutes all the more baffling. He’s servicable. Further roles include Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth I, never escaping the shadow of her peers’ Cate Blanchett & Judi Dench’s wonderful work as the same character. David Thewlis is charming and persuasive as William Cecil, the Queen’s advisor.

“Band of Brothers” scribe John Orloff is credited as the scribe. Never in this film are the believable, richly human interactions of that miniseries displayed. ”Anonymous” has faced a lot of venom from historians disputing the film’s veracity, which makes me wonder — will anyone actually take this film as fact? Doubtful. Rather, what I think should be analyzed is how such a potentially intriguing concept was conveyed in such a dry, listless fashion. Perhaps the greatest fault I can find against “Anonymous” is that — at face value — it’s a film about relationships, about how different groups and alliances tangle. But in all his career, one thing Emmerich has never done is convincingly develop a genuine, authentic character. Without this very basic skill, character-driven films fall apart. “Anonymous” is dead on arrival. D+