The Black Keys: El Camino (Release Date: 12-6-2011)

        Of all of the indie-ish up-and-comers attacking today's mainstream music scene, The Black Keys are perhaps the group that has garnered the largest fan base. Sure, the likes of Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver, or Arcade Fire might be on as many or more ipods nationwide, but none of those acts can be played at parties, on long drives, during homework sessions, and amidst sultry times behind locked doors with equal aplomb. Some of this boils down to their less serious-minded outlook, but I would like to venture an additional reason of my own. More so than just about any musician working today, you know EXACTLY what you're getting when you put on a Black Keys album, and this complete and total lack of surprises allows one to tune out and tune back in as they please. Have you ever tried focusing on something else while listening to Arcade Fire's My Body is a Cage, or Bon Iver's Perth? Doesn't work too well, does it? Ever try having a conversation to The Black Key's last album, Brothers? The 15-track, hour-long affair is over before you know it. For a band that trades in grimy sexiness, The Black Key's sure do go down easily.

        There's a sense that they know this in El Camino's lead-off track and first single, Lonely Boy. The song is much more immediate than we're used to from the duo, faster off the blocks, and featuring a goofy, peppy guitar hook where grittier, more southern-leaning axe-playing usually takes place. The tune is a joyous shuffle, even if a listen or two is required to warm up to it. The chorus even has another unexpected trick waiting for us: as Guitarist/Frontman Dan Auerbach wails the line, "I've got a love that keeps me waiting. I'm a lonely boy," a choir of background singers joins in to help his proclamation hit that much harder. Follow-up Dead and Gone does nothing to take down the MPH, Drummer Patrick Carney pounding away to open the tune, Auerbach holding longer, bluesier notes than we knew he could handle. More pounding, more clapping, more mini-guitar solos, more background singers, and El Camino is steadily on track.

        But that's really just the thing, isn't it? The Black Keys are always firmly on track, one of the most consistent radio acts in years. El Camino certainly has some new tricks up its sleeve: Auerbach seems ten-fold more willing to mess with tuning and effects on his guitar, and Carney takes center stage far more frequently, his merciless pounding serving as the driving force behind Money Maker, Hell of a Season, and Nova Baby. And while this sense of experimentation is commendable, its, 'blast of fresh air,' runs out quickly when the band becomes too comfortable with using their new-found bells and whistles on every single track. Seriously, the background singers are present for just about every single song, and the mindless pounding that both band members take part in becomes a tad neanderthalic, if still worthy of a steady head-bob. While a noticeable departure from much of what they've done before, El Camino still falls in line with the band's other efforts in terms of the sort of lull of similarity that it slips into about midway through. If it's not painfully obvious by now, I've never been a huge fan of the band, but I certainly wouldn't call myself a detractor, either. I'm certain that the next party that I attend will feature at least one tune off of this disc, and I will be grateful for it, and nod my head along with everyone else. I just probably won't be listening to it on my own, trying to pick apart its eccentricities and minor details. That kind of fetishism is better reserved for bands who are harder to hold a conversation to.

Grade: B-

The Descendants (Limited Release Date: 11-16-2011)

Alright (*Cracks Knuckles*), time for a take-down:

        As long as I can remember being non-sensically interested in the Oscar race, there's been one movie invited into each Best Picture hunt that I simply couldn't stand. Last year, it was The Kids Are Alright, the year before, The Blind Side. It's odd that, even when the number of nominated films was raised from 5 to 10, my number of detested flicks remained a meager singular. Most of the time, a vast majority of the time, in fact, I find most of Oscar's nods to be reasonable, but there is simply no way that you will ever be able to sway my stance on the likes of The Reader (2008), Babel (2006), or Million Dollar Baby (2004) (Crash is pretty bad too, but at least it had the common sense to be entertaining). Almost every other movie that was up for the big one during that time period gets a sturdy thumbs-up from me... but there's always one. This year, it's The Descendants.

        Writer/Director Alexander Payne's first feature since Sideways stars George Clooney as Matt King, a 50-something Land Baron who works as a lawyer on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. King's life is presently in a state of extreme crisis: He's in charge of finding a buyer for the massive amounts of land that has been passed down to his family through their royal ancestors, and his wife has just suffered a boating accident that's left her in a coma. That leaves him in charge of his two girls, the young and surly Scottie (Amara Miller), and her older, rebellious sister Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), his relationships with both being strained at best. To make matters worse, Alexandra reveals to Matt that his wife had been cheating on him at the time of her accident, just as the three are about to embark on a trip to report the news of her ailing health to everyone she knew.

        Praise where praise is due: Both Clooney and Woodley are fantastic in this movie. Who knew Gorgeous George would be so believable as a khaki-wearing, sloppy-haircut-sporting everyman? His character flips between moments of clownish social clumsiness, and piercing, tangible hurt. Woodley, whose part is written to color between the lines, makes something out of her standard teenage angst-athon, her arch and emotions never less than believable, her father-daughter chemistry with Clooney completely undeniable. Alright, there you go, Descendants, I gave you you're praise. Now, on to the main attraction:

        The Descendants is a movie that is designed to coax emotion out of its viewers, and while it certainly has a few successful moments in this regard, almost all of them are cheap, and unearned. Clooney's King is supposed to have three major concerns in the movie: The health of his wife, the love of his daughters, and the land that he must sell. The movie fails in all three regards. Payne completely forgets to explain what there is to like about his spouse, placing emphasis on her infidelity and the rough patch of marriage that immediately proceeded her indiscretion, failing to describe her actual personality in any way, save one scene where corny faux-hawaiin music all but drowns out King's complimentary musings. Having any sort of sense of what they were like together in their good times kind of seems like a must to make this story and its structure work. The bond between Clooney and Woodley is well-developed, but he never has a single moment of genuine connection with his younger daughter, a character who was seemingly invented only to flip off other minor characters as a means for comic relief. Finally, the issue with the land is such an after-thought through-out the film, that the moments near the end where it reminds you to care about the sub-plot are almost laughable. And what happens when he is finally about to make a statement on the land that might be of interest? Yep, you guessed it; more corny hawaiian music drowning out a scene that might have required some real writing.

        You might think that the reason for these short-comings is a simple issue of biting off more than you can chew, but you'd be wrong. The Descendants has all kinds of time on its hands, an exhaustive two hours, in fact, but it prefers to spend its minutes dolling out endless establishing shots of Hawaiian landscapes, at least ten we're-going-from-this-place-to-this-place montages, and one person after another being as horrible as humanly possible to poor Matt King. I understand that his constant trials are supposed to further endear us to him, but when so many scenes are constructed with the sole purpose of throwing your mostly-kind-hearted protagonist to the damn wolves, it starts to feel like a frustrated, mean-spirited exercise. As if King's trials weren't enough, Payne distributes a parade of Oscar-friendly problems to minor characters to make sure that as many tissues meet their end as possible. Didn't think you'd care about King's tough-as-nails father-in-law? Well, how about when we bring in the fact that his wife has Alzheimer's? Thought Alexandra's dumb-ass tag-a-long boyfriend was just here for comic relief, did you? WRONG! He has a dead parent, too! Now you have to care about him and take him seriously! No one here besides King is actually developed; We simply learn one or two details about each of them that are meant to define them as a character from that point forth.

        I've always been up and down on Payne, only that my ups are absurdly high, and my downs are perilously low. Both Election and Sideways strike me as some of the best dramadies of the last many years, but About Schmidt lost me with its slow-motion pacing. The Descendants has the same problem in terms of keeping its heart-rate up, but its issues run far deeper than that. I honestly view it as offensive; Offensive in the way that it uses real-world problems and ailments in shallow, under-developed ways in order to extract emotions that it hasn't earned, and offensive in the way that it expects its audience to fall for such a transparent hoax. I'm sorry to go all, "fire and brimstone," but it seems like I might be the only one out there who feels this way about this movie, so I'm going to shout it. The simple inclusion of sickness and familial trauma does not make a good movie. You have to actually do things with those elements, expand on them, explain them, justify them, go deeper with them, rather than spending two straight hours bending my arm backwards until tears fall out as I look at some lovely scenery. Any lousy story-teller can make memory loss and comas emotionally effecting; they're charged subjects that will always get a knee-jerk reaction. Playing them as your trump card and expecting to win Oscars for it is just plain manipulative and wrong. Clooney and Woodley are good enough to bump this thing up a letter grade: Without their terrific efforts, this one might have been the very first F in the history of Hype Starts Here. Instead, it's in the hunt to be the movie of the year. Go figure.


Grade: D-

My Week with Marilyn (Limited Release Date: 11-23-2011)

        One of the oldest, most trusted cliches in all of Oscar-dom goes a little something like this: Portray a real-life icon, and you might just be headed up to the podium. In the last decade alone, this game plan has worked out for Cate Blanchett (The Aviator), Jamie Foxx (Ray), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), and Reece Witherspoon (Walk the Line), and has lead countless others to a nomination. This year has already produced one attempt to snag a statue by stepping in for a legend of the past, and will also see a cinematic Freud and Margaret Thatcher before 2011 has come to a close. Today, we address possibly the most blatant Oscar-bait to come our way this season, the Marilyn Monroe/Lawrence Olivier saga, My Week with Marilyn.


        Despite the presence of these two towering figures, it's actually a young man named Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) who serves as the film's protagonist. Wanting nothing more than to break into the world of film, Colin travels over to Britain, where he is hired on as a third assistant in the production of Olivier's newest film. Soon, the star of the picture, the glamourous Marilyn Monroe herself (Michelle Williams), arrives on set, but her various antics and unsightly methods drive Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) up the wall. Feeling ostracized by the demanding film crew, Marilyn takes solace in young Colin, the two forming a sexually-charged bond despite everyone near them urging Clark to keep his distance.


        There are only two real reasons for this film to exist, so I'd might as well address them first. Both Williams and Branagh are good in their roles, and that's right around where my praise for them has to end. Sure, Williams has Monroe's bodily movements and whispery voice down pat, and Branagh has fun with Olivier's signature, half-tempo over-enunciation, but you never once forget that you're watching performances, neither actor ever disappearing into their role. Williams is particularly reminiscent of Cate Blanchett's aforementioned performance as Katherine Hepburn; a mesmerizing impression, but a skin-deep incarnation, no less. 


        There are plenty of reasons not to like Marilyn. Besides the two fairly underwhelming performances discussed above, the film's lead character is neither interesting nor particularly likable, and the movie's depiction of other icons of the time are continuously mishandled, as is the ending. However, like standing in Monroe's presence during another of her pill-fueled self-pity-parties, there's something about this film that draws you in and stirs interest even when you know it's all fraudulent. Perhaps its the production value, which includes great locations, lovely lensing, and brisk and zippy editing. But more than that, the movie's greatest success is in giving you a sense of what it might have been like to fall in love with such a larger-than-life person, even if it's only a vague sense. It's a small accomplishment in the middle of a considerable mess, but it deserves to be noticed.


Grade: C-

The Muppets (Release Date: 11-23-2011)

        In the year 2011, the world has forgotten about the Muppets. Kermit the Frog roams aimlessly around the halls of his giant mansion, Fozzie Bear serves as the highlight of an underwhelming Muppets cover-band, and Miss Piggy works as an editor for a plus-size fashion magazine. This isn't how they always planned it, but decreased demand for the felt friends has resulted in the essential breaking up of the band. But there's at least one man (or a muppet?) who isn't ready to let them go: The two-feet-tall, bespectacled Walter. Walter tags along with his brother Gary (Jason Segal) on his ten-year anniversary celebration with his bow, Mary (Amy Adams), the three venturing to Muppets Studios, only to find the place in ruin. Having long idolized the manic puppets, Walter convinces Kermit to round up the gang for one last variety show, an attempt to raise ten million dollars before evil oil baron Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) tears the place down for good.

        There aren't many opportunities to say this in the world of film criticism, so I'd might as well just go with it: This is a Puppet Passion Project if ever there was one. Segal, who has been working on the project for years now, does everything from writing and starring, to operating muppets in select scenes. His genuine, unabashed enthusiasm, along with the unbridled zest of just about everyone else in the project, make The Muppets an almost impossible movie to dislike. Sure, if singing, dancing, wise-cracking puppets isn't really your thing, the flick might have a hard time winning you over, but if you're a sucker for shameless glee the way that I (and the rest of the world... I hope) am, there's not really any going wrong with this one.

        All the flesh-covered performers do their job, Segal's part crammed near the beginning, Adams given sacred little screen-time to work with, and a cascade of cameos hitting almost each and every single time (Sorry, Selena Gomez... what are you doing here?). But the humans aren't the point. The flesh and blood of the picture is handled by beings without flesh or blood, a slew of clever cracks, wonderful and hilarious musical numbers, and palpable nostalgia leading the way. Not that it's had the most competition for this mantle, but the Muppets is, without any form of doubt, the best American movie musical since Sweeney Todd, its songs becoming earworms on initial impact. There's not much reviewing that really needs to be done here. If you like your movies silly and fun, and don't might them being completely trivial and having a slightly saggy mid-section, then you kind of just need to buy a ticket to this one. It's glaringly obvious, from first frame to last, that everyone on screen is having a blast. The feeling is infectious.

Grade: A-

Hugo (Release Date: 11-23-2011)

        There's a big, fat oxymoron seated right at the center of film criticism, tucked away in plain sight for everyone to see. On one hand, those seeking to publicly evaluate movies are expected to be guinea pigs, toiling through whatever the world of celluloid throws at them, and reporting the results to all who want to listen. In this sense, it is a critic's primary job to speculate what his or her readers might enjoy, and subsequently present findings and hypotheses. And yet, anyone who's judging movies for the right reason will tell you that they are driven by a personal love for the flicks. Thus we arrive at that juicy contradiction: That critics see movies and enjoy movies for themselves, and then must report back on their qualities while primarily concerned with the pleasures and preferences of others. My brain has been racked with this conundrum for the last several days, and it all started when I walked out of Martin Scorsese's latest, Hugo.

        Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is a young boy living alone inside the inner-workings of a giant clock in a 1930's Parisian train station. He keeps the time-keeper ticking, and steals little bits of food or various other supplies in order to stay alive. But thievery doesn't always treat young Hugo well, as he is caught a Toy Vendor working in the station (Ben Kingsley) and forced to fork over his most prized possession; A notebook filled with drawings and diagrams whose meaning Hugo refuses to explain. To get it back, Cabret enlists the help of a young girl living under the vendor's care (Chloë Grace Moretz), who's been itching for an adventure for quite some time now. The two look to unlock a mystery from the past, all while avoiding the attention of the cruel, kid-hunting Station Inspector (Sasha Baron Cohen).

        Hugo has been oft sighted as representing a couple of firsts in legendary Scorsese's career; His first kid's movie, and his first 3-D presentation. Only one of these is true. Under Marty's watch, Hugo is absolutely nothing short of a 3-D wonderland, endless corridors, falling ash, and clamoring crowds all brought vividly, almost tangibly to life. In this sense, the movie puts on a true clinic, showing how to do 3-D right both in terms of immersion and promotion of a narrative. You really feel like you're along with Hugo on his many misadventures, and the feeling of being so completely enveloped in a film is magical. Simply put, it's one of, if not the greatest 3-D presentation I've ever seen. Calling it a kid's movie, on the other hand, is a pretty big stretch. It's not wrong in the sense of profanity; the film's PG rating is exactly what it deserves, but it is a tad long (just over two hours), filled almost entirely with talk, and, near the end, takes on a cause that I'm sure every little tot finds near and dear to their heart: Film Preservation.

        And so, we arrive back at my first paragraph. I've studied movies for a decent amount of my life, not as long as many, to be sure, but enough to have fallen in love with them the way that all film-lovers do. When Hugo decides to take a trip down the road of film history, I was all for it, but I'm not so sure how much casual movie-goers will enjoy this movie's second half. That's why, for today anyways, I am giving you my grade for me, not you. It's because I really, really like this movie, and even if I think you might not, I just can't lie to myself. In terms of both visual and story content, Hugo recalls a great many  monuments in the on-going saga of celluloid, movies like The 400 Blows, Amacord, Sullivan's Travels and The Bicycle Thief. Despite all of its allusions, it never loses its sense of self, unlike earlier 2011 reference-athons like Rango and Drive. Hugo is a beautiful film, visual stunning, and emotionally true, made by a master of the medium who has always made it his task to honor those who came before him. There's a not-terrible chance that it might bore you to bits, but for me, and the multitudes of people across the world with a deep passion for the moving image, its quite a thing to behold.

Grade: A-

Happy Feet Two (Release Date: 11-18-2011)

        There are a lot of different things that a flick could do to prompt its audience to ask, 'what is this movie about?' It could be a languid, slow-moving indie, along the lines of Sophia Coppola or Gus Van Sant, or a piece dealing in psychedelics and symbolism, in the vein of David Lynch or Terrance Malick. Then again, it could just be Happy Feet Two, the sequel to 2006's Best Animated Feature Oscar-winner Happy Feet. I've spent a decent amount of brain power over the last few days trying to land on a sufficient plot summary for what the singing, dancing penguins have cooked up this time around, but brevity of explanation still alludes me. We'll give this a try:

        Mumble (Elijah Wood) and Gloria (Pop singer P!nk, taking over for the late Brittany Murphy) are pretty much right where we left them, dancing and singing along with the thousands of Emperor Penguins whom they call neighbors. They've even got a little one named Erik (Ava Acres) who, like baby Mumble in the previous film, struggles to fit in with the group. Fearing permanent ostracization, Erik and a couple of friends leave the pack, their misadventures leading them to Sven (Hank Azaria), a puffin posing as a penguin who uses fancy speech and the power of flight to both inspire and seduce. Mumble manages to track them down, but while away on his quest, he whole heard of Emperors becomes trapped by the movement of giant slabs of ice, global warming the clear culprit. Oh, and there's a subplot involving a pair of rebellious krill (Brad Pitt and Matt Damon), who may or may not have anything to do with the rest of the movie.

        Trust me, there are more subplots to be discovered, ranging from human intervention, to promise-breaking Elephant Seals, to the schism between omnivores and herbivores (The Brad Pitt Krill is obsessed with moving up the food chain, declaring at one point that, 'the next thing I eat will have a face). And yet, all the wile, the singing and dancing numbers somehow manage to make their way into this over-stuffed plot. Trust me, I would rather have a movie work overtime to earn my adoration than simply cash in on simple gags attached to a simple story, but Director George Miller and the screenwriting team of four simply don't have what it takes to tie this thing together. It's a film that's equal parts about gyrating aquatic birds, and the need to find one's self within the establish parameters of society, with a hefty helping of environmental PSA dispersal (though, to be fair, a far more subtle helping than in the first entry.

        Happy Feet Two isn't a bad movie by any means, but it stacks the chips against itself from the beginning by trying to be a transcendent, important, massive family entertainment, and falling woefully short. Still, the tale is intriguing (if often in spite of itself), and the animation is nothing short of stunning. The scenes with the krill, especially, mine the odd beauty of the arctic seas for all that they're worth, and several actions sequences play particularly well. Oh, and there's a whole lot of cuteness to go around, too, many a mushy, 'ahhh,' escaping from your mouth before you even know what's happening. Happy Feet Two may fall short of its lofty expectations for itself, but that doesn't make it a bad watch. Like the scene in which that same Brad Pitt Krill decides to chow down on a Leopard Seal, it just bites off way, way more than it could ever hope to chew.

Grade: B-

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (Release Date: 11-18-2011)

        The original Twilight movie, released back in 2008, remains the best film in the series... or, perhaps the worst, depending on how you see it. The exact same could be said of Eclipse (Sorry, New Moon. No one loves you). The third entry in the franchise is easily the most sure in its craft, Director David Slade handling the ever-silly story with a largely straight-face, staging sequences of action and dialogue that finally, for once, prompted genuine, non-mocking interest rather than stifled laughter. Catherine Hardwicke's 2008 original, on the other hand, is all about stifled laughter, complete with hilariously bad special effects, cheese-ball dialogue and performances, and a mind-numbingly simplistic view of both High School life and young romance. All of these things make it the worst in the lineage, but the goofy, dunder-headed mirth that one feels while watching it is without match. If you plan on putting any level of stock my opinion of the newest vampire romance, Breaking Dawn Part 1, it is important that you first understand my warped standard for the series: This is a moronic story, worthy of gleeful mockery, and by that standard, the worst entries in the saga are far and away the most enjoyable.

        Breaking Dawn Part 1 opens with the preparation for a wedding, star-crossed lovers Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) making sheepish, amorous eyes at each other as Jacob (Taylor Lautner) continues to pout furiously in the rain. Their matrimony occurs in a wooded area, cloaked in cascading white foliage (awww!), and when it's over, Bella is whisked away on a honeymoon that turns out to be just as wrought with sexual tension as the rest of their courtship. Crazy things go down, a plethora of native Americans tackily transform into werewolves, and Bella sighs a lot. This is Twilight.

        When Bill Condon first signed on for this climactic double-feature, I wondered if the director of such, 'actual movies,' as Gods and Monsters, Kinsey, and Dreamgirls was brought in to finally take this story into more intellectual, adult territory. Thank god this is not the case. Condon's directorial stamp is almost no where to be found: The only way that anyone would think this chapter had a different helmer than the rest is if they were told. The performances remain wildly over-the-top, and completely unbelievable, a true accomplishment in ineptitude considering that Stewart and Pattinson are real-life lovers.

        The penultimate Twilight entry is receiving some of the worst reviews of the series, and it's not hard to see why. The movie is lengthy, slow-moving, and completely fails to justify splitting the last book in two; Not only is Part 1 punishingly uneventful, but it also leaves one with the impression that there's even less ground to cover in the upcoming climax. And all of this, yes, all of this, is why the first half of Breaking Dawn stands as my second favorite Twilight flick. It might be the very worst of the sequels, but it's also the guiltiest pleasure, and the funniest unintentional comedy, both of which are paramount to my enjoyment of these things. We're talking about a yarn that is essentially trivial and hollow here, so the more trivial and hollow, the better. Breaking Dawn Part 1 is a pretty lousy movie, and that's just why I loved it.

Grade (By, 'Real,' Movie Standards): D+
Grade (By, 'I know Twilight is the bane of man, but I just can't help myself,' Standards): B+