"Pandora's Box" (1928)

I've never seen a performer like Louise Brooks. Sure, I've witnessed stars with some of her qualities (the rapturous sexuality, the stunning allure, the devil may care attitude, the almost borderline self-awareness that she's got the audience wrapped around her finger), but never to this degree and combination. Brooks was a silent film star but she'd fit right at home in a modern film. Everyone in Pandora's Box is unmemorable, playing the close to cliche schtick, except for Brooks, who is unforgettable. In G.W. Pabst's film, as Lulu, she found material extraordinarily well suited for her talents. She's a seductress, a sex idol, a con, a drifter, and, though the film doesn't says it, probably a prostitute. But there's no moralizing or denigrating here. The film is fascinated by the raging blackhole that is Lulu. She destroys everything in her path, and then is so charming and indifferent and totally in control that we and the characters forgive her. And Brooks is simply a force of nature. She's such a distinctive presence that everything else just fades away. The film creates a space for her to simply be, and Brooks relishes in the opportunity -- and we relish in watching her have at it.

Grade: ★★★★

"Inside Llewyn Davis" (2013)

Inside Llewyn Davis feels like it's designed to get an initial reception to another earlier musical: Nashville. There will be voices who say Inside Llewyn Davis is mean-spirited and unsympathetic, and that it's not entirely accurate about the time and place it's depicting. Firstly, the Coen Brother's are sympathetic. They've simply set their focuses on a character, failing folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), who is highly unlikable. Secondly, the Coen's eschew period accuracy for emotional and tonal accuracy. The 1960's Greenich Village folk scene is textured so it feels right rather than looks right. For their latest film, the Coen Brothers look back to O' Brother Where Art Though?, borrowing its folk music flavorings and Odyssey-inspired storytelling, but stripping away the humorous romp nature. Inside Llewyn Davis is a film spiked with bitterness around every corner. Llewyn is living from gig to gig, and crashing on the couch of whoever he hasn't currently pissed off. And he tends to do a lot of pissing people off. Llewyn is somewhat of an ass, and a whole lot of a narcissist. He's failed to make a name for himself, and he keeps fighting for artistic integrity over commercial success. He's had children by two woman, both of whom want nothing to do with the guy. He can't even strike up a proper friendship with a cat, two of which he loses on separate occasions. But lingering over all of this is the fact that Llewyn's singing partner Mike Trimlin recently committed suicide. From what we pick up about his musical better half, Mike was the kind of individual who, in a more conventional Hollywood film, would make for a better leading man. Mike was a happy, go-getting, far less curmudgeonly dude, and Llewyn is an incomplete person without him. Lllewyn was always a dick, but circumstances have served to heighten his unpleasantness. Like many Coen films, Llewn Davis often plays like one big cosmic joke is being performed at Llewyn's expense. Llewyn can't catch a break: He's essentially homeless (and in the dead of winter, without a winter coat), he's never going to make it big in the music industry, and the woman he (possibly) loves, Jean (Carey Mulligan), despises him, is married and wants to terminate her pregnancy (of what is likely his child). Actually, this isn't completely true: Llewyn is given many, many chances to save himself and his career but he denies them on principles of integrity and honor -- in that sense, there will never truly be a break for him. Yet there's also the film's excellent music. Llewyn at one point attempts to win over a successful music producer so that he might be his manager, and after hearing him play a song, the man replies, "You just don't connect". It's a savage irony. Llewyn absolutely connects: he connects with us. When Llewyn sings, we forget he's an ass; in those moments, he is only human. When he's singing, he exposes his bleeding heart. Like Nashville, the songs Llewyn sings are about himself -- it's the only form of communication where he makes sense and doesn't piss off someone.

★★★

"Wadjda" (2013)

Regardless of its quality, we'd be talking about Wadjda: the first film produced in Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for its total lack of infrastructure to support a film industry, and not only that but it was secretively written and directed by a woman, Haifaa Al-Mansour, making it all the more remarkable for a country that's deeply restrictive of women's rights. So thankfully, not only is it a remarkable film but also a remarkably good one as well. The film's plot is deceptively simple: a young girl Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) wants to buy a bike and she tries to find ways to buy that bike. In its charming, neo-realist simplicity is a disarmingly sweet and poignant tale of a young tomboyish girl who doesn't measure up to society's expectations of what a woman should be. This is a pleasingly feminist film that quietly draws into question the double standards and sexism of Saudi Arabian society. Wadjda's father is a deadbeat who's rarely around, and he seems to be haughtily displeased of having a daughter ("Give me a son," he yells at his wife, who is incapable of pleasing him). Wadjda goes to school and her teachers and principal reprimand her for simply being the funny, free spirited, highly individualistic person she is. Everyone gets angry for her desire for a bike, even her mother. They tell her that girls just don't ride bikes. It's something for boys. Wadjda is hindered by being different, but even more simply by virtue of being born a female. It frustrates us, but it annoys us because it is honest and accurate. The gender expectations are specific to Saudi and Islamic society, and they are never one-sided. Some of the film's finest moments understand how gender policing is frequently most harshly performed by members of the same gender. Women get upset with Wadjda, and we wonder, sometimes even see it in their body language, if they once had similar aspirations to Wadjda. They may have and gave them up due to society's expectations. But for now Wadjda doesn't quite fully comprehend the cultural norms she's been born into. All she wants is a bike, and for no greater reason than because she is young and riding a bike seems like it's fun. She's determined, and her determination makes us hopeful.

Grade: ★★★★

"Short Term 12" (2013)

I've long contended that Brie Larson is one of the best actresses of her generation. She's simply been stuck in thankless or underwritten roles (Her best written role was likely in the uneven cult tv gem United States of Tara). Writer-director Destin Daniel Creton has finally given Larson a role worthy of her considerable abilities in Short Term 12 in Grace, a worker at a foster care facility. It's a very internalized role where Larson has to convey tons of information through subtle gestures that show how intuitive and caring Grace is behind her chilly outward appearances, and the way Larson can give a look solely with her eyes and understandably bring across the mixture of emotions brewing underneath is exceptional. Grace herself was a former member of the foster care system and so she takes her job more personal than most, seeing in the kids a lot of herself. While Grace's careful facade breaks down in the face of work circumstances that bear far too much resemblance to her own troubled history, her situation is complicated further by news of a pregnancy. Knowing the life she came from -- slowly revealed over the course of the film -- she wonders if she'll be as bad for her soon to be born child as her own terrible parents were, while missing the massive irony: she helps the foster kids come to open up and break free like no one else can. It's the sort of story ripe for cliches and unearned sentimentality, but Creton creates a fully inhabited world that true to the realities and rhythms of this situation and environment. This isn't a film tugging on our heart strings for the sake of it, but because these are the types of tragic things that happen in this sort of place. Creton depicts Short Term 12 as one big ad-hoc family, but also understands that it's also more often like a war zone, where a battle is just waiting to arise at any given moment. He's ably helped by great actors, particularly Larson but really everyone who rounds out the cast. The story works well because the kids actually seem like kids, are complex and engaging, and are played by promising young actors. The foster kids never really leave the foster system, Grace has simply embraced this in the most direct way possible, for better and for worse.

Grade: ★★★★

"Don Jon" (2013)

There are interesting ideas about romance, commitment, and the state of modern dating and masculinity in Don Jon, but the film consistently plays its hand too neatly. The film has ambitions that far exceed its grasp: It attempts to subvert the rom com structure by putting a male protagonist into the central role and point of view, making his romantic interest more complicated than we might expect, and adding an extra twist of addiction. Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who also wrote and directed), nicknamed "Don" by his friends for his extensive sexual conquests, finds himself at an impasse between his sexual encounters and the porn he avidly watches. The latter has become more satisfying and arousing than the women he's bedding. When he meets the gorgeous but hard to please Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johannson), it throws him for a loop: here is a woman he finally can't get so easily. Jon desperately pursues her, but when he does finally have sex, after dating her for months, meeting her friends and introducing her to his heartedly-approving family, he takes no pleasure from it. He says he's in love but he's still more in love with his porn, which becomes problematic when Barbara catches him looking at it. Though there's often enough interesting things being said in Don Jon, it all feels so self-evident, and not particularly memorably told, that it's hard to really become invested in the film. That is at least until the film's pronouncements take an unexpected turn at film's end that, while interesting, never fully aligns with the previous storytelling. As a directorial debut for Gordon-Levitt, it shows he's willing to take risks and can create something sturdy: sometimes that's all you can ask for.

Grade: ★★ 

"American Hustle" (2013)

Everyday we tell ourselves and eachother lies, little white lies that help us get by day to day. Most of the time we're aware were conning ourselves and one another. But often enough, the lies become weirdly comforting to the point where we accept the lies as if they were truth. American Hustle is about con-men but it's even more largely about how people con one another in their relationships. Loosely based on the infamous late 1970's/early 1980's Abscam FBI investigation, the film tells the story of Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale, sporting an absurd comb-over -- merely one more self-deceiving con) and his mistress and partner in crime Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who are brought up on criminal charges for fraud by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Richie tells them that if they help the bureau catch a couple criminals, they'll be let off the hook, but the case quickly blows up out of proportion, encompassing the Camden mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), mobsters, and members of congress. As the FBI cons frauds, and the cons con the FBI, and everyone cons everyone else on more personal and deluded levels, the conning becomes increasingly elaborate dupes towards everyone and themselves to the point where fact and fiction become hard to separate. The most interesting of these personal self-scams involves Irving's ditzy wife Rosalyn (a scene stealing Jennifer Lawrence), who is well aware of Irving's indiscretions, but also desperately, destructively desires his attention. American Hustle feels like a poor man's Goodfellas, borrowing heavily off the stylistic tendencies of that film but often failing to weigh them with the conviction or subtext to really make the whole affair feel like more than a flashy, fizzy trifle. American Hustle, though it does it snappily and humorously, underlines its themes a bit bluntly and this leads to a sense of the film believing it's more clever than it actually is, but perhaps that's the greatest con of all: it's a sugary film but all that sugar is empty calories. Still, all that sugar can still give you a nice high every now and again.

Grade: ★★★

"Raze" (2014)

There's a reason action films are typically seen as a supremely masculine genre. Rarely has there been an action film that put its female character front and center, placing them as the kickass fighters that define the genre. Minus Katniss Everdeen and Resident Evil's Alice, it's a testosterone heavy playground out there. So to see women fighting and fighting with skill and ability is something of a pleasure. Raze is far from a perfect film, but it shows strong, resilient women fighting and proving themselves -- and that at least deserves some praise. Not only that but the fight scenes, though not always well shot, at least never objectify or sexualize, instead, emphasizing physicality and brutality -- a rarity amongst female fighters in film (look no further than the many superhero films to see how action filled films do a huge disservice to their females in combat). Much of the fighting is brutal. It's a violence that understands that the body can only take so much damage before it succumbs to stress. If the blood shed here feels excessive or needless, it also feels true to the films unflinching approach to its fight scenes. The plot is barebones to the point where the bones have been whittled down close to fracturing. It's a meager exploitation premise: fifty women were abducted and are now forced to fight, one-on-one, to the death, lest their captors kill their families -- who they see filmed on hidden cameras in their underground prison cells connected to the tight-quartered ring they must fight in. If they refuse to fight, their family members will be killed, and if they lose, they will also be killed. We see this situation through the eyes of six woman, primarily through the hardened but barely contained Sabrina (stunt woman Zoe Bell). The plot is really just an excuse for the action, and while it often becomes bracingly bleak, it's still all so raw that, at times, it transcends its ugliness.

Grade: ★★