The Help: Civil Rights Isn't Only About the Grand Gestures

My problem with the trailers for The Help this summer was that it made the movie seem peppy and silly, a kind of "oh look at the squabbling white and black ladies, aren't you glad we're past all that now?" aesthetic that seemed at odds with the subject matter. Now that I've watched the movie, I can say I was completely misled.

I read Kathryn Stockett's novel several months ago and quite liked it, even though it seemed a bit trite towards the end. The story follows Miss Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, a white girl from 1960s Jackson, Mississippi who has wide-eyed aspirations to be a journalist. She is nothing like her friends who just went to college to find a husband and never bothered to graduate once they achieved this goal. Skeeter hits upon the idea to collect stories from the "help," the black women who form such an integral part of the white households in Jackson and are yet treated as complete non-entities. Emma Stone plays Skeeter Phelan with aplomb, portraying her as a naive girl willing to see the best in everyone and driven by her love for her own maid who raised her as a young girl and gave her self-confidence when her own mother always seemed to criticize. Skeeter befriends two maids, Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) who give her the stories that becomes the backbone of her book.

What begins as innocent story-telling quickly burgeons into a revealing look at racial tensions at the heart of Jackson. Things come to a head when Skeeter's old friend, Hilly Holbrook, decides to launch the "Home Help Sanitation Initiative," a move for every household to have separate restrooms for black servants, since "they carry different diseases than us." Holbrook is played by Bryce Dallas-Howard who does an impeccable job portraying a racist masquerading as a good Christian and who sets your teeth on edge with every word. Eager to get back at Miss Hilly, Minny and Aibileen help Skeeter recruit more black maids to secretly share their stories and the project quickly grows. One of the sweetest moments of the film (and of the book) involve some maids who tell stories of genuine friendship with their employers, people who treated them well and never made them feel inferior. We see this kind of relationship through Minny's dealings with her new employer, Miss Celia Foote, who is as much of an outcast as Minny because Hilly and her bridge buddies have deemed her to be too "white trash" to be worthy of their company. Celia Foote is played by Jessica Chastain who brings to life this over the top but kind at heart character who just wants to make new friends outside of her home town of Sugar Ditch and thinks nothing of treating her maid like her best friend.

However, the true star of this film is Viola Davis, who plays Aibileen with a quiet dignity and sorrow that tugs at your heartstrings from the very first scene. She left school at 14 to be a maid and this is the only life she has known. She raises these white children like they were her own and no mother could be more loving than Aibileen when she sits down with three-year old Mae Mobley and solemnly tells her, "You is kind. You is smart. You is important." In one scene Aibileen argues that she and Minny can't get in trouble because what they're doing is not civil rights, they're just telling stories. Well it turns out that the smallest act of bravery can help change things, and it is precisely Aibileen's humility and inability to realize what a great thing she is doing that make her such a marvelous character.

Much talk has been made of how simplistic The Help is and how it doesn't do justice to its characters. I heartily disagree. Perhaps some reviewers were thrown by the fact that the black characters were better realized than the white ones - after all Hollywood is infamous for rendering its black characters as mere caricatures while giving all the depth to the white actors. But this film is no Gone with the Wind and rests squarely on the shoulders of Davis and Spencer's powerhouse performances.

Ultimately the movie ends on a bittersweet note. Things might be tied up somewhat neatly, but anyone who knows anything about the Civil Rights era can imagine that the story still has miles to go after the end. The book and the movie might try to pretend that everything will be OK, but you can draw your own conclusions about what will happen next. Just focus on the story itself and you will find a tale that is alternately funny, sad, dark, and hopeful. Just like life itself.

Octavia Spencer & Viola Davis, the true heart of The Help. I demand Best Supporting Actress nominations for at least one of them, if not both.

The Tree of Life: What's the Point of it All?

Every year I am faced with a slew of award-winning movies to wade through. I might not like all of them, but I can generally appreciate why other people did. Oscar favorites by and large tend to be depressing or "highly meaningful," which is the fancy way of saying depressing, so they aren't the easiest bunch of films to watch. Regardless, they usually have compelling stories, great acting, snappy dialogue, something. Which brings me to The Tree of Life. A movie that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, it was lauded by critics, but I kept putting off watching it until now. And I sincerely wish I had just put it off forever.

I do not get this movie. At all. Or at least, I get it, and I do not understand why other people seem to think it is fantastic. Ostensibly a movie that attempts to portray life, the universe, and everything in its 2-hour running time, it certainly accomplishes that goal, but to what end? The infamous 20-minute montage at the beginning of the movie, the one that portrays the origins of the universe from the Big Bang and evolves along with single-celled organisms and wandering dinosaurs, was every bit as weird as I imagined it would be. But by the time I was finished with the movie, I think I would have preferred it if that montage was expanded to include the entire film, because watching dinosaurs run around in that beautiful landscape would have been far more interesting.

The characters at the heart of this tale are the O'Brien family. Mother and Father are Jessica Chastain and Brad Pitt, who do everything they're supposed to, which is not a whole lot. Pitt's role seems to mainly be that of a strict disciplinarian, who makes mealtimes awfully awkward and then shows his affection for his three sons by alternately teaching them to fight and then preaching to them about the virtues of Toscanini. Do you know a man like this? Because I certainly don't. Chastain is the typical ethereal 50's housewife, kind, pretty, and loving. But there never seems to be much dialogue in this movie. Instead we must be content to gaze at long scenes scored with mournful arias interspersed with breathy phrases from the characters as they contemplate life and say deeply meaningful things like "Where were you?" and ruminate on God, morality, and their mortality. It's enough to set your teeth on edge.

I can't deny the beauty of this film and its production value. As far as I know it's a perfectly accurate depiction of 1950s small town America, filled with wide open spaces, trees, rivers, and birds aplenty, and lots of religious contemplation. The aforementioned 20-minute montage was spectacular, though the dinosaurs were a little too anthropomorphized for my liking. However, the rest of this film is just an angsty mess, trying so hard to be a masterpiece. Critics adore it and this is why I am probably not made of the right stuff to be a critic. I found nothing compelling, not a single second that redeemed the two hours and eighteen minutes I had to slog through.

This is only Terrence Malick's fifth film in four decades so it got a great deal of attention. Malick studied and taught philosophy before turning to directing, which seems very apt for such a weird and rambling movie. I haven't seen his previous work and maybe those films are worth it. But if The Tree of Life is an example of the kind of movies he prefers to make, I will be perfectly happy if it takes him another decade to release another one.

The Tree of Life in Bahrain, where I grew up. This image speaks more to me than anything in the movie.
Maybe I would have appreciated it more if I grew up in 50's Texas? 

Sherlock Holmes 2: Here We Go Again

One of my friends really loves the Sherlock Holmes movies. So I watched the first one, and now the second one, simply to see if I could derive the same level of enjoyment that my friend seems to get out of it. Sadly, I seem to be missing something.

I have always loved Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and maybe that's the trouble. I expect entirely too much from my Sherlock and the scripts for these movies simply can't deliver. The second one picks up right where the first one left off, with Watson about to be married and a short cameo from Rachel McAdams playing Irene Adler, Holmes' obligatory love interest. This time of course, the stakes are even higher because the villain of the piece is none other than Professor James Moriarty, Holmes' arch nemesis and the greatest criminal mastermind of the age. There are bombs going off all across Europe and Holmes suspects Moriarty (played with devlish enthusiasm by Mad Men's Jared Harris who seems well-suited to the part of evil genius). Once Watson and his wife Mary become targets, adventure and intrigue follow, with endless action set-pieces over the backdrop of sooty and dark Europe.

The actors are all great (though I still maintain I'd rather have an English actor playing Holmes, even if Downey Jr. has a creditable RP accent) and they do the best they've got with the material. Noomi Rapace (star of the Swedish version of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies) plays a gypsy and is the one lady amidst the macho posturing, and Stephen Fry pulls off a brilliant appearance as Mycroft Holmes. Like I tweeted when I saw the movie, the film would have been greatly improved if there were more scenes of Fry swanning about in his birthday suit.

Ultimately my problem with these movies has always been the emphasis on gritty action. Everything comes down to a boxing match, everyone gets down and dirty, and the actual deductive reasoning (which is what Holmes is supposed to be famous for) always seems like a boring afterthought. While Jude Law plays Watson with restraint, Downey Jr. has to be alternately campy, macho, and a buffoon, not qualities you necessarily want in your Sherlock. This is what you get when your director is Guy Ritchie, who seems keen to run this franchise on the same principles as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. These movies are fine but not excellent, and all of the plot points are a mix of things you've seen countless times before in other films. Even Moriarty's grand plot is one of those typically James Bond-ish schemes that won't surprise anyone.

If you're looking for a good adaptation of the classic Sherlock Holmes story, these movies aren't meant for you. Instead, I would suggest Sherlock, the BBC TV series co-created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, which stars the ineffably marvelous Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson. Strangely enough, while this series is a modern re-imagining of the classic tale and has its fair share of action sequences and showdowns, it feels far truer to the story than the movies, which are set in Victorian times and claim to be very authentic in their rendering of the world.

Towards the end of the film when Holmes and Moriarty are engaged in hand-to-hand combat, Moriarty makes the following observation about Holmes' boxing style: "Competent but predictable." My sentiments exactly.

The Adventures of Tintin: A Modern Rendering of the Classic Comic

I remember watching the animated Adventures of Tintin series on TV when I was younger, but I never really read the comics. Then a few years ago, I found myself waiting for a friend in a Borders bookstore. With plenty of time to kill, I wandered into the children's section. Wedged on a low shelf where no one would ever think to look for them were a few copies of The Adventures of Tintin. Greeting them like a long lost friend, I spent the next hour huddled on the floor dodging crawling children as I delved into The Blue Lotus, flashes of which I remembered from the TV series I watched all those years ago. And with that, my love for Tintin was reborn.

I was incredibly excited to hear about the Steven Spielberg-Peter Jackson collaboration to bring Tintin on to the big screen. So I spent Christmas morning with my favorite Belgian reporter and his faithful canine companion Snowy, and boy do they look good. The film is an absolute triumph of motion-capture film-making. Some people might argue that if you're going to make actors go to all the trouble of being on set and acting for motion capture anyway, they might as well as make a live-action film. Well that is just ridiculous. The Tintin comics are pieces of art and the only way to adequately capture their beauty on screen is through the lavish freedom that motion capture and digital animation can give you. The world that Spielberg, Jackson, and the geniuses at Weta Digital have managed to create feels like real life and fantasy all rolled into one and that alone is worth the price of admission.

In fact, I must unfortunately admit that the look of the film is probably the only reason to see this movie in a theater. Although I thoroughly enjoyed it at the beginning, towards the end there were entirely too many chase sequences and action scenes and it was all starting to wear a bit thin. I'm glad I saw it in regular 3D instead of springing for IMAX because I can assure you that you'll have a roaring headache by the end if you're not much of an IMAX person. While the first half of the film is enjoyable as you meet the familiar (or unfamiliar if you never read the books) cast of characters, the plot seems to be struggling by the end, and you reach the discovery of the sought after treasure with a quiet sigh of relief. The actors are top notch and capture the essence of their comicbook counterparts perfectly, but the script could have done with a polish. The extraordinary Steven Moffat wrote the first draft of the script, but couldn't finish it due to subsequent commitments to Doctor Who. I believe the movie might be a somewhat different beast had he been able to work the script from start to finish, and I must say I laud Spielberg and Jackson for wooing him over to be their writer in the first place.

The final product is therefore somewhat hit and miss. Fans of the comics will delight in seeing their beloved Tintin captured so brilliantly on the screen, but fans might also object to the somewhat loud nature of the film and lack of subtleties or sufficient intrigue. Newbies (especially children) will delight in this new world and be able to follow the story along with ease, but again, the story might not sustain them through the entire thing. I must confess, I haven't read the books that this particular movie was based on, so I can't speak to how faithful an adaptation it is. I'm just hoping for a Blue Lotus sequel, because that is one hell of a terrifying and satisfying story.

I still wholly recommend this film, especially if you really love Tintin, of if you just love films and the huge strides in animation and motion-capture that we get to see from year to year. But if you're somewhere in the middle, this movie might be just what you need to spur you on to discover the stunning artistry of Herge and the series of Tintin comic books that brought this entire franchise into being.

Exporting Raymond: Making a Sitcom is Grueling Work, Especially in Russia

Exporting Raymond is the 2010 documentary written and directed by Phil Rosenthal, the man who created the long-running and award-winning sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond. The movie follows Rosenthal as he journeys to Moscow and embarks on an aggravating quest to adapt his hit TV show for Russian audiences. This is a recipe for comedy on an international scale and is well worth your time if you have ever wondered what Hollywood is like in Russia.

Rosenthal is initially very excited about this project. Even the suggestion that he get K&R insurance (Kidnapping & Ransom) can't put him off going to Russia. Once he arrives however, he quickly learns just how differently things work in this new environment. Greeted at the airport by a surly chauffeur/bodyguard named Eldar, he is whisked away to his hotel and the next morning makes his way to the studio with cheerful translator, Marina, in tow. The studio looks like an abandoned factory building and at one point Rosenthal stands in a silent hallway and declares, "You can hear the cancer." He soon finds his first nemesis in the costume designer, Elena Starodubtseva, who abhors the idea of dressing Debra as a frumpy housewife and is pushing for having some high fashion on the show. As Rosenthal ineffectually tries to explain that Everybody Loves Raymond (or as it's going to be known in Russia, Everybody Loves Kostya) has to be relatable, she just shakes her head and maintains that it all looks too old-fashioned.

After the costume battle comes casting and at first, none of the actors seem to fit the bill. But once they find the perfect old man to play Frank, the others slot into place. Rosenthal is particularly enthused about Yevgeny Miller, an actor who is perfect for the lead role of Kostya, but this is when he hits his next hurdle. Turns out Russian network executives are just as ridiculous as American ones, and when the exec is told how much everyone wants Miller for the role, he promptly exercises his power and vetoes the actor. So much for that.

Possibly the most aggravating issue is that of the script. The pilot is deemed too strange for Russians - after all, there's no "fruit of the month club" in Russia, so that plot point is inexplicably changed to the "water of the week club." That isn't working (surprise, surprise) so they decide to film a different episode, and once again there are squabbles about translations and difficulties with wrangling writers who all work multiple jobs and seem to show up every day thoroughly unprepared. Eventually, the Russian exec who greenlighted the project is promoted. As a result, the project is temporarily shelved as some showrunner shuffling takes place and Rosenthal returns home.

Six months later, the project is back on, with a new executive who seems much more in tune with American sitcoms and Rosenthal makes the return trip to Russia with more hope. He is greeted with a big hug at the airport by none other than Eldar, his old chauffer/bodyguard, who is the only man Rosenthal seems to have made a real connection with on his previous trip. After all, this is a man who joined the military at 17 but professes a secret love for shells and a wish that he had become a biologist instead of a soldier. Rosenthal almost looks like he would rather make a sitcom about how Everybody Loves Eldar.

Unfortunately, the rest of the trip does not go smoothly. The script has been changed yet again, they still can't get Miller to be their lead, and the new guy they've found is just doing it all wrong. Rosenthal comes off as an incredibly neurotic man, who knows exactly how this should work, but just can't get the Russians to see it. At one point, he has pestered everyone with so many notes that the director takes to just ignoring him completely. But somehow, everything comes together, the pilot is shot, and Rosenthal is flying back home to await the fate of the show.

This is one of those gleefully funny, this-could-only-happen-in-real-life documentaries. Rosenthal's experience is peppered by numerous meltdowns, breakdowns in communication, and culture shocks, but ultimately it all has a happy ending. The lesson is this - good comedy is really hard to pull off, and when you have to do it in another language, it becomes almost impossible. But with time and good grace, all these barriers can be overcome and before you know it, everybody really does love Kostya.

The Snowman: A Worthy Cure For Your Scandinavian Crime Cravings

I don't know what the deal is with Scandinavian mystery writers. Maybe when you live in such cold climates subsisting on open sandwiches, coffee, and massive amounts of liquor, your imagination gets particularly dark and twisty. At any rate, thank goodness for that because they end up writing some of the most taut and terrifying mystery novels. Ever since I finished reading Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy two years ago (and you can expect a full review of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo when I finally see it), I haven't found a mystery writer who could invoke as much page-turning terror. Thankfully, I have now found Norway's Jo Nesbo, a mystery writer par excellence.

Caveat: I have only read one of Nesbo's books so far, so this post is largely about how fantastic The Snowman is. But I'm all set to check out the rest of his books from the library and will let you know if the rest of the series is just as excellent. The flawed protagonist at the center of The Snowman is Harry Hole (a name that occasioned laughter from my friend Christina - can someone please confirm if Hole is a common Swedish surname that's pronounced differently?) Hole is an alcoholic loner detective who is nonetheless allowed to serve on the Norwegian police force because of his brilliant deductive talents. He is responsible for catching a serial killer in Australia and this novel follows his quest to nab Norway's first serial killer, who goes by the moniker of The Snowman. His modus operandi is to kill women (who all seem to have children and unhappy marriages) and then build a snowman in their backyard. Sometimes he builds a snowman that contains a body part of the victim he has just carved up. If this doesn't already illustrate the creepy possibilities of the story, you have no imagination.

The Snowman is an elegant novel and unbeknownst to you, Nesbo gives you all the clues you need to solve this case. But like any good mystery, you won't realize that until the very end, when you are dragged into the most horrifying showdown you could expect between hunter and the hunted. The best part is that there are multiple denouements, multiple mistaken arrests, and just when you think you are safe, there's another twist to get your heart rate up again. I've had friends who complained about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and how they couldn't get into it because of all the exposition in the opening pages. Well, The Snowman plunges right in for the kill, with a first chapter that is wonderfully invoked at the end of the novel and reveals how we got from the beginning of this story to the epic finale.

For anyone who was wishing that Stieg Larsson was still around to give us a glimpse into Scandivanian culture and crime, Jo Nesbo is your answer. There are nine books so far in the Harry Hole series, so you can treat yourself to a nice long fix of Norwegian darkness and depravity. Just don't write me to complain when you freak out the next time you see a snowman. 

Mad Men: A Period Piece with Modern Flair

AMC's Mad Men is a vastly acclaimed show, garnering numerous Emmys, Golden Globes, and accolades across the board. So you don't need me to tell you that it's good. Nonetheless, after spending the past two months making my way through four seasons and 52 episodes, I feel compelled to outline why exactly you should watch this show if you haven't done so already.

A common complaint from many people who have tried to watch Mad Men is that it is not easy to get started. This the very reason I never watched it until now. By the time the show started racking up awards and I felt like I ought to give it a try, too many episodes had passed. I tried to watch the Season 3 premiere in August 2009, but with absolutely no back story or idea of who these characters were, I found it less than compelling. So my first piece of advice is this: watch it from the beginning. This is emphatically NOT a show that you can just get into midway. Well, you could try, but you won't enjoy it or understand it half as much as you would if you had seen every episode.

I  organized my viewing of the show by watching one episode a day at the gym. This is a strategy I highly recommend, because this is a show that demands your attention. The episodes always seem to start a little slow, especially at the beginning of a season, because this is a series that relies very much on establishing a mood and tone rather than being exclusively plot-driven. So it is easy to stop paying attention during a slow bit, only to discover that you have managed to miss some crucial piece of information that will resurface with dramatic consequences later on. But if you go with the flow and allow yourself to be immersed in this 60's world of advertising, booze, cigarettes, and other assorted vices, you'll find yourself fully enveloped in the show's charm.

Speaking of charm, almost everyone knows about Don Draper, the show's antihero protagonist who ought to be reprehensible but somehow just becomes the guy you root for. Every time he does something awful, he does something spectacularly kind that makes him hard to hate. The glimpses into his past life help you make excuses for his current behavior, and there's always someone else who behaves a little worse than him and helps him escape the blame. It is little wonder than Jon Hamm keeps winning Best Actor awards for this performance because he has taken what should be an unlikable character and made him thoroughly sympathetic. Every time you see Don's eyes go dark as he realizes the mess he had made of his life, you can't help but wish he could find a way to be happy, and you insist that he deserves happiness regardless of the things he's done.

Apart from Don, the show is chock-full of other brilliant characters. There are no one-note performances; every character has a complicated background, complex motivations, and myriad facets to their personalities that always keep you guessing. From its slow start the show has rapidly accumulated a series of shocking plot twists and secrets that threaten to help or harm various people and the complex interplay between these characters and their dueling ambitions is what makes this show one of the most riveting dramas on TV. The show is also great for any one who likes to get a little education with their TV watching since there is plenty of social commentary and discussions of the events that formed this period of American history. Racism, feminism, Communism, Hollywood, space, Kennedy, the list goes on. These topics are all woven into the fabric of the show and the writers artfully provide social discourse while refraining from sounding preachy.

A final word on the production value. The show has earned multiple awards just for costume design and you can find plenty of articles that discuss the showrunners' obsession with detail. They ensure that the TV shows they have running in the background or the products they discuss or the music they feature are all historically accurate. Your belief in this world they have created is sustained for the full 50 minutes of each episode and it is with a start that you return to the 21st century when the show ends.

If you've been putting off watching Mad Men, don't put it off any longer. The show has been on an extra-long hiatus due to contract negotiations, so you have ample time to get caught up on all four seasons and greet the Season 5 premiere (whenever that is) as a fully informed audience member. At least, that's what I'll be doing. 

Hugo: Finally, Something Worth Watching in 3D

There are many reasons to drop whatever you're doing right now and go watch Hugo. It's a Martin Scorsese movie. It's surprisingly rated PG so you can take little kids if you need to keep them occupied for a few hours. The lead actor, Asa Butterfield, is sublime, as are Chloe Grace Moretz, Ben Kingley, and the host of other familiar faces who play small but delightfully vibrant roles that round out the movie. But perhaps the most compelling reason of all is that it is in 3D and for once, that's a vital reason to watch it on the big screen.

Perhaps no one should be surprised that it took a director of Martin Scorsese's caliber to re-emphasize the role that 3D can play in enhancing a film. Rather than going for cheap and tawdry effects, he uses 3D to beautify the world of 1931 Paris. Avatar was similar in its use of special effects to immerse you into a fantastical world, but unlike that movie, Hugo is so much more than a visual spectacle. Even if it wasn't in 3D it would be a perfectly wonderful story about an orphan boy who fixes clocks in a Paris railway station and lives between the station walls, trying to evade capture by the bumbling Inspector Gustav (Sacha Baron Cohen in an unexpectedly marvelous role). He steals delicious-looking croissants from a station bakery every morning and steals spare parts from a toy store run by Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley who delivers an expectedly wonderful performance) to fix the automaton that he and his father were working on before his father's untimely death in a museum fire. He is vastly lonely, terrified of being sent to an orphanage, and is consumed by his need to fix this automaton that he thinks will be able to deliver a message to him from his father.

The story moves slowly at first but soon picks up pace, weaving in all these disparate strands to create one perfect tale. When Georges Méliès catches Hugo stealing from him, he sets off a chain of events that lead to Hugo conspiring with Georges' goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz in a much more subdued and enchanting guise) to discover the story of Méliès' hidden past. What follows is a loving ode to the art of filmmaking (Méliès is a brilliant but thwarted filmmaker) and the importance of preserving movies to serve as a record of our collective history. Much has already been made about how this is "a movie about movies." At one point Hugo talks about how his father described watching a movie for the first time - "I could watch what I dream in the day." And that is precisely what it feels like to watch Hugo. Unlike animated films that try to look realistic, this film emphatically feels like a live-action movie trying to appear ethereal and otherwordly, and that's where the 3D really helps. Unlike other 3D movies, this one isn't dark with muted colors and awkward effects. Everything seems somehow brighter and more vibrant. After watching this movie and Midnight in Paris earlier this year, I have never been more enchanted with the City of Light. 

This isn't just a movie about movies, however. It is a movie for people who love books, people who love clocks, people who love France, people who love falling in love. It is a movie for anyone who loved anything and just needed to make that passion their purpose in life. The little subplots with various characters trying to fall in love at the railway station are delightful and nuanced. There's a subplot with a librarian (played by an actor that you can't fail to recognize) who indulges Isabelle's love for literature and using improbably long words. All of these stories help to create a perfectly realized world and they help ensure that the charm of this movie never wears thin.

In an interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, Scorsese said he was in a car with his daughter one day and she suddenly turned to him and said, "Why don't you find out what people like and then make a film?" Frankly, if Scorsese continues to take his daughter's advice, I'm going to be spending a lot more time in the theater. 

Outnumbered: Kids Really Do Say the Darnedest Things

As a lover of Britcoms, I was delighted to discover Outnumbered earlier this year. A single-camera comedy that follows the fortunes of Pete and Sue Brockman and their three children, it could so easily be just another family sitcom. Instead, it's the performances of the three kids that elevate this show to a comic masterpiece.

Jake is the oldest son (age 15) and is a moody teenager. Definitely the most stable child of the trio, he nonetheless is constantly getting into arguments with his sarcastic father and has to deal with his family serving as a never-ending source of embarrassment. Ben, the 11-year old, is a hyperactive liar, fond of running around, pretending to shoot things, yelling out wildly inappropriate observations, and generally driving his parents to distraction. The youngest child, Karen, is a precocious 9-year old, fond of arguing her dizzyingly nonsensical points and constantly perplexing her parents with her weird view of the world that is largely informed by watching too much reality TV.

The thing that makes these kids so amazing is that the show's writers don't always provide them with set dialogue to memorize. Instead, the children are given free reign to improvise a lot of dialogue and come up with typical observations that only a child could dream up. As the kids grab hold of a topic and go to town, you can watch Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner (the actors who play their parents) struggling to react sensibly to their comments and not devolve into helpless giggles. Pete and Sue are themselves the source of constant hilarity, overwhelmed by their kids, their jobs, and the societal pressure to be seen as acceptable parents. They are doing the best they can, but when faced with the onslaught of Jake, Ben, and Karen, it's little wonder that they are outnumbered.

I just started watching the third season and found myself bursting into laughter as the family went on one of their hapless family outings through London. At one point Ben insists he has seen Barack Obama, prompting the following exchange:
Pete: "No, Ben, Barack Obama does not drive the Number 42 bus!"
Ben: "He's the leader of the free world, he can do whatever he wants!"
Later, Karen is upset with her father for shouting at her when she ran away for a bit. In typical Karen fashion, she plays the wounded martyr, declaring, "I'm still seven, I'm still learning, but you should have learned to control your temper because you're...whatever age you are!" At another point she is discussing democracy with her father and proceeds to outline a view of how elections are run that coincides more with the X Factor voting process than the actual workings of a democracy. After declaring that children ought to be allowed to vote because their brains are "big and juicy" as opposed to the "small shriveled up brains" of older people, Pete resignedly asks her who she would elect as Prime Minister. Without hesitation she declares, "Simon Cowell."

These are very British people but this is a universally hilarious family, guaranteed to make you laugh. As the winter TV hiatus is upon us, you could do worse than to find episodes of Outnumbered online and give it a try. Once you've seen these kids in action, you'll wonder why child stars are forced to stick to the script so often when they can clearly come up with much better material on their own. As an example, I'll leave you with this clip of Karen and Ben discussing the Queen and how she is so much more boring than the Queens who came before her:

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: One Man's Ode to Africa

Alexander McCall Smith was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Although he moved to Scotland to study law, he clearly never forgot his African roots, returning for a short spell in the 1980s to co-found and teach at the University of Botswana. A prolific writer, he is most famous for The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, which he first published in 1999 and continues to add to on an annual basis.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is set in Botswana and tells the tale of Precious Ramotswe. A "traditionally built" woman with plenty of wisdom and good cheer despite some terrible past sorrows, she decides to open a detective agency in Botswana and become the country's first female private investigator. With no formal training and relying on whatever advice she can gather from the book, The Principles of Private Detection by Clovis Anderson, she is nonetheless remarkably confident in her ability to ferret out the truth and solve the problems of the myriad people who arrive at her doorstep seeking her counsel. She hires Grace Makutsi, a smart but downtrodden young woman from the Botswana Secretarial College as her secretary, and together they set out to find wrongdoers of every description.

The first few books are more heavy on the mysteries, but as the series progresses, it is evident that the books are more concerned with the main characters who just incidentally solve some mysteries along the way. Both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi develop a strong bond of friendship, believing in each other when the people around them are prone to laugh at the idea of a female-run detective agency. Over several cups of bush tea, they support each other through the good times and bad and develop a strong sense of their own self-worth and ability. These are not radical women; Mma Ramotswe is an ardent supporter of the old Botswana morality and values that so few young people around her seem to uphold but she endeavors to lead by example rather than preaching to deaf ears. Yet in her own way, she is a little subversive, demanding to be given her full and equal due as a woman, and fervently believing that she can do her job just as well (if not better) than any man. From the tentative beginnings of the agency to its current incarnation as a full-fledged and successful business, Mma Ramotswe never loses faith and it is easy to see why so many people seek out her kind and expert guidance.

The truly important character in this series, however, is Africa itself. McCall Smith may not live in Africa anymore, but his deep and abiding love for the country imbues every page, from the lush descriptions of Botswana in the rainy season, to the portrayals of its hardworking and admirable people. The books are written in a simple and direct language, so characteristic of the very people they are about, and every chapter contains a mix of gentle humor, deeply African insights, and a passion for life that never ceases despite the occasional tragedy. The BBC and HBO teamed up a few years ago to make a seven-episode TV series starring Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose, and I heartily recommend it as a wonderful accompaniment to the books or stand-alone entertainment.

I've read seven books in the series so far and each book is a small marvel. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but they offer a collection of simple and heartfelt musings on life, replete with joys and sorrows that can always be contemplated over a cup of freshly-brewed bush tea. 

Stefon: Don't Ever Let Him Take You To a Club

Saturday Night Live is an institution and like anything on NBC, it is constantly under fire. It has become a punching bag for critics everywhere who alternately complain that the show isn't funny enough, the sketches are too weird, the hosts aren't being used to their full advantage, etc. Every episode seems to divide the audience, with half thinking it was a great hour and a half of television and the rest dismissing it as junk. But as far as I'm concerned, as long as Bill Hader stays on a cast member, I will keep tuning in week after week. Just in the hope that this might be the week that his character Stefon appears on Weekend Update.

Stefon is a weird and wacky character, well-suited to join the pantheon of equally bizarre characters that have appeared on SNL over its 37-year run. His official title is City Correspondent for New York City and he gets called out by Seth Meyers whenever the holidays are coming up and Seth wants to give tourists advice on family-friendly locations to visit around the city. You think he would have learned by now that Stefon is not the man to provide this advice.

A nervous and extremely twitchy gay man who cannot stop touching his face, Stefon will unerringly begin his bit with the word's, "New York's hottest club is..." and launch into a description of the most absurd and disturbing location imaginable. Seth will interrupt with pleas for more family-friendly fare, to which Stefon will nod wisely, say he understands now what Seth is asking for, and then proceed with his next recommendation, which invariably is, "New York's hottest club is..." These clubs are populated with characters like "Furkels" (Fat Urkels), screaming babies in Mozart wigs, sherpas, hobos, kite enthusiasts, and a never-ending supply of midgets.

What makes me love Stefon so much is the fact that Bill Hader seems utterly incapable of going through a Stefon routine without starting to laugh. This partly stems from the fact that the club descriptions are constantly being revised and updated over the course of the week and even during dress rehearsal, so often Hader is reading off descriptions that he is seeing for the very first time during the live show. Who wouldn't crack up if they had to describe what a human bathmat was? (If you're wondering, it's that thing when midgets have dreadlocks and they lay face down on the floor.) Below is a video from a hilarious interview Hader did on Letterman where he described how he created this character with SNL writer John Mulaney and it amuses me greatly that Hader can't even talk about this character without giggling:

Last Saturday night, Stefon kept me in stitches and reminded me just what it is I love about SNL. Say what you want about the show, but it's this kind of absurdist over-the-top humor that makes for great television when you're looking for some cheer on a Saturday night. You can watch the segment on Hulu and trust me, you won't be able to resist a smile. 

Grimm: There's a Reason It's on Friday Night

NBC's Grimm premiered last month and I tried my best to give it a shot. Last week there was an extra episode on Thursday night, possibly because they needed something to fill the slot of the cancelled Prime Suspect, or maybe because no one was watching Grimm on Friday nights. Unfortunately this abundance of Grimm didn't work out as NBC had planned. Rather than get me sucked into the show once and for all, I found myself wondering why on earth I was still watching it.

The pilot episode was not terrible. And that was probably the reason why I persisted in my attempts to enjoy the show. It has a very basic plot wrapped in a convoluted premise. Essentially it's a police procedural but with supernatural elements thrown in. The main character is Nick Burkhardt, a Homicide detective who learns that he is descended from a long line of "Grimms," people who are destined to rid the world of supernatural creatures disguised as regular humans who wreak havoc across the world. These creatures were the source material for the Grimm Brothers fairy tales so we get wolf-like creatures hunting women in red  à la Red Riding Hood, while some bear-like creatures sacrifice intruders they find in their home à la Goldilocks. All these creatures have weird Grimm names that have been passed down through the centuries and in the pilot, Nick finds a reformed wolf-man-thing who becomes his advisor in all matters Grimm-related.

Unlike Once Upon a Time (the other fairy tale show that debuted this year), Grimm is just not whimsical or intriguing enough. It really is a very basic crime drama and somehow the inclusion of fairy tale creatures makes it even more boring. These creatures don't have very complicated motives for the crimes they commit; they're usually just looking to kill things. So the show doesn't even have a good mystery component - it's just a question of figuring out which of the creatures that Nick found over the course of the episode is the one who lost his/her control and committed a crime.

Like I said, the pilot was mildly promising, but the show has gone steadily downhill from there. Rather than spend time developing Nick's character and delving into his newly-discovered family history, the show has just become formulaic and dull, with vast stretches of pointless scenes and irrelevant discussion that serve as filler until Nick can finally breathe a sigh of relief and say, "The pig did it!" The great thing about Once Upon A Time is that it explores the past and the present simultaneously and relies heavily on character development. But Grimm has completely foregone its characters for the sake of plodding crime solving that lacks any kind of spark whatsoever.

Grimm will be the first casualty of my 2011-2012 TV line-up. Those of you who decide to stick with it can let me know if I gave up too soon, but I highly doubt it. The show is likely on the verge of cancellation, but sometimes networks (especially NBC) can tolerate anything in that Friday time slot. Because really, who's watching anyway? 

Dead Island: The Trailer That Made Gamers Cry

It is Friday so I felt like writing up a more whimsical post. Ergo, today's post concerns the trailer for the zombie video game, Dead Island. The video is below:

I discovered this trailer in February when it started making the rounds on Twitter. I almost didn't click on the link because who sees the words, "trailer for zombie video game" and thinks that is worth their while? (Well some people do, just not me.) But after multiple people on my Twitter feed had posted links to this trailer with comments like "This is amazing," "Masterpiece!" etc., I thought I might it was worth a shot. And over the next week I watched this trailer more than a dozen times.

First off, the music. The piano and violin score composed by Giles Lamb is just beautiful and tugs at your heartstrings in a weird way that you would never expect while watching zombies feasting on humans. The game's Facebook page had the music available for download at one point and now you can buy it off iTunes if you so desire. I love listening to it, because it is a great stand-alone piece without the gory visuals.

Secondly, the visuals. That first shot of the girl's eye is shockingly realistic and it takes a few seconds to realize that you're not watching a live-action scene. Sure things get progressively game-like and bloody from that opening scene, but it still looks pretty stunning for a video game and shows you that the world of gaming has come a long way from playing Asteroids on an Atari. 

Finally, the story. You'd have to have a heart of stone to not get swept away by the devastating story that this trailer tells in a few short minutes. Presented in reverse chronological order (which drew instant comparisons to the marvelous Coldplay video for The Scientist) you get progressively more horrified as you discover who exactly the dead girl at the beginning of the trailer is. The story is heartbreaking, and in fact, upon the trailer's release, there were several articles written by people who succumbed to tears upon watching it. So much depends on the way the story is presented. On the one hand it could be an action-adventure tale to tell about a family that goes on vacation only to become infected by the zombie plague that is ravaging the island's inhabitants. But when you add that image of a little girl struggling to get to her parents who are willing to do anything to save her, suddenly you forget all the horror elements and just connect on an emotional level.

The Dead Island trailer caused a big stir (and some controversies) when it surfaced and I loved it just as passionately as all the other people who wrote about it. However, unlike the gamers who said that this trailer made them eager to play the game, I didn't really care. I've never been much of a gamer, and am certainly not interested in a zombie slasher RPG. What I loved about this trailer was its supreme artistry on every level. Yes it was a brilliant marketing ploy, but when advertising is this good, it's true art. And if more video games start emulating the Dead Island example, we can look forward to a slew of trailers that will merit Best Animated Short Film nominations at the Oscars. 

Castle: Solid Entertainment With a Sizzling Lead Couple

There's nothing revolutionary about the ABC show Castle. A fairly standard police procedural, its twist is that it involves bestselling mystery author Richard Castle who decides to follow NYPD homicide detective Kate Beckett in order to get inspiration for his new mystery series. Beckett is Castle's muse for the character of Nikki Heat and the show has actually spawned some real-life bestsellers of its own with some ghostwritten novels that serve as a good publicity stunt. Well, considering that the last book debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, I imagine these books are actually entertaining on their own merits.

What makes Castle stand out are the performances of the two lead actors. Richard Castle is played by the effortlessly charming Nathan Fillion (he of Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along blog fame) who imbues the character with just the right amount of whip-smart intelligence and playboy charisma. As the series has progressed, his feelings for Beckett have overtaken the playboy side of things, and he is now a dutiful partner just waiting for the right time to openly declare his love when Beckett is conscious (yeah, he already told her he loved her, but she was too busy being shot at the time). Kate Beckett is played by Stana Katic, a goddess of a lady who seems way too attractive to be a detective, but this is TV after all. However, she refuses to trade on her looks and has created a strong, powerful female character who runs the show. Castle is very much at her beck and call and although he will usually come up with some writerly insight that solves the case they're working on, Beckett is the one who puts the investigation together and actually gets things done.

The will-they-won't-they storyline is one that is familiar to any regular TV viewer. From Ross & Rachel to Jim & Pam, TV is littered with examples of two lead characters who spend agonizing years denying their feelings for each other, only to finally get together much to the audience's relief. Castle and Beckett are a prime example of this. The show is in its fourth season and both characters have realized how they feel about the other at different points in the series. Of course, every time one of them realized how they felt, the other was in a relationship, because timing is always the enemy of any TV couple. Last season, Castle finally openly professed his love for Becket in the season finale, but as I mentioned before, she had just been shot and when she woke up, she didn't seem to remember anything that had happened. I say "didn't seem to" because we learn that she in fact remembers what Castle said, but doesn't want to let on. I think that's either because she isn't ready for this relationship or because she doesn't want to hold him to something he said in a situation fraught with tension.

Of course, the real reason for her reticence is that the show's writers want to keep the couple apart for as long as possible, because we all know that TV shows fizzle once the sexual tension is gone. However, I am ready to challenge that antiquated notion. Yes, you lose some of the excitement when the characters no longer have to tiptoe around their feelings and construct elaborate ruses to hide their emotions. But lately, characters have been getting together on long-running TV shows with not awful results. Jim & Pam on The Office are a prime example of a TV couple that finally got together, got married, and are now having their second child. Many might argue that their relationship got dull once they got together, but I think that was just because the show itself went through a fallow period, which had nothing to do with Jim & Pam. The current season has been filled with romantic moments, classic conversations and pranks, and a reminder that just because they got married, it doesn't mean they still aren't as wildly in love as they were in Season 4. Parks & Recreation is another great example of a show that is highlighting how amazing a TV couple can be when they get together. Granted Ben & Leslie just made their relationship official, but I have no doubts that the show's writers will keep their storylines just as fresh and fun and dewy-eyed as ever.

I understand things are different in the case of Castle. It's a police procedural after all and has to follow a standard formula of solving a crime in 44 minutes with only a few moments to spare for continuing character arcs. The writers have done a fantastic job so far of exploring new ways to throw Castle & Beckett together in heightened situations that further their romantic tension without letting them get together. Monday night's episode was a perfect example where the two of them woke up in a basement after being drugged and handcuffed together by the criminals they were pursuing. They spent the next 44 minutes hilariously trying to find their rhythm while cuffed together, engaging in some impressive acrobatics as they attempted to escape. Both Fillion and Katic are masters at witty banter and their mutual give and take always makes every episode sizzle. You can watch the episode on Hulu if you're curious, it's a good way to get sucked into the show. The nice thing about procedurals is that you don't need a lot of back story to understand what's going on. You could easily just watch this episode and then continue to watch Castle every week without missing a beat. But if you're a purist, you can treat yourself to three solid seasons of worthy entertainment.

My only plea to the writers is this: Please just let Castle and Beckett get together already. It's been four seasons, you owe it to them and you owe it to your viewers. Neither of them is in a relationship at the moment, both are in love with each other, and the stars are all aligned. If I know anything about TV, you will probably have them get together in the season finale, and I'm OK with waiting for that. But if the show returns in September with the news that something has happened yet again to pull them apart, I will be furious. Because you have shown yourself capable of writing some spectacular television and there is absolutely no reason why Castle and Beckett cannot continue to investigate crime scenes and catch murderers without also being happily in love. 

50/50: The Perfect Combination of Cancer, Comedy, and Compassion

When Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were on the talk show interview circuit to discuss 50/50, they tried very hard to sell people on the idea that this is a funny movie about cancer. Most people didn't buy it, because how could cancer ever be funny? But as someone with a dark and twisty sense of humor, I completely understood what they meant.

There are two ways to react to bad news: either you're a person who wants lots of tea, sympathy, and meaningful discussions about life whilst being surrounded by highly optimistic and spiritual people, or you're a person who wants friends who will initially sympathize and then get to work making all sorts of jokes about your situation and reduce it to a mockable event of negligible importance. That latter category is exactly what Will Reiser experienced when he was diagnosed with cancer in his twenties. With wisecracking buddy Seth Rogen by his side, he got through the ordeal. I heard him discussing in an interview how he watched movies about people with cancer and they were always extremely dark and depressing. This felt so different from his actual experience that it prompted his need to write the screenplay that became 50/50.

The movie is funny and sentimental without being maudlin, and with the deeply personal story behind its inception, it's little wonder that Will Reiser has already won some awards from critics for Best Original Screenplay. He fully deserves an Oscar nomination next year because he set out to make a movie about the funny side of cancer and he did so with tremendous results.This is thanks in large part to the phenomenal work of Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays Adam, the one diagnosed with cancer, and Seth Rogen who plays his best friend Kyle.

Adam is a clean-living neat freak, so he is all the more stunned to find that he has cancer in spite of living a blameless life free of cigarettes, booze, and drugs. His artist girlfriend Rachel (Bryce Dallas Howard) insists that she will stay by his side throughout the ordeal, but she quickly becomes a disappointment, insisting that she can't enter the hospital and wait with him while he gets chemo because she doesn't want to mix the positive and negative - "it's an energy thing" - and constantly forgets to pick him up after treatments. But Kyle is steadfastly by his side through all of this. Initially distraught upon hearing the news, Kyle quickly decides to look on the bright side of things. Upon learning that Adam has a 50/50 shot of survival, he breathes a sigh of relief and says, "If you were a casino game, you'd have the best odds!" He's so certain that Adam has nothing to worry about that he sets about taking full advantage of the situation. Armed with medical marijuana and using the cancer story to prey on sympathetic girls in bars, the duo try to make the best of an awful situation, choosing to laugh in the face of the very real danger that Adam is in.

To get an idea of how Adam is actually feeling during this process, we get to see several sessions with him and his therapist, Dr. McKay (Anna Kendrick at her nervous best). She is still a trainee psychologist and Adam is only her third patient. Kendrick does a great job playing a woman who is vastly unsure of what she's doing but also determined not to fail because her patients depend on her. Her exchanges with Adam are refreshingly honest, and while I don't think I would want a therapist like her if I had cancer, it certainly works in this movie. The supporting cast is rounded out with Angelica Huston, who does a brilliant job of playing Adam's worry-wart mother who pesters him with her solicitude but who is also his rock when the going gets rough.

This film isn't a barrel of laughs by any means. Try as he might, at some point Adam has to acknowledge the fact that he is in fact very sick, and the screenplay adeptly handles the transition as he goes from cracking jokes about cancer to expressing his agonizing frustration at the hand that he's been dealt. Gordon-Levitt is completely immersed in this character, and Rogen is wonderful at portraying Kyle's truly sincere attempts to cheer up his friend and make his life as normal as possible. There's also a great moment when Adam realizes that even though he is the one with cancer, he still has to care about how his mother is dealing with the fallout from his illness. Just because you're sick, you don't get a free pass to behave however you want. This is emphasized multiple times as Adam is forced to be the one comforting people who hear his news instead of the other way around.

50/50 is filled with unnerving laughs and is an intimate portrayal of one man's way of approaching his possible demise. It is poignant and heartfelt and it makes you grateful for the friends in your life who encourage you not to take everything so damn seriously. 

Martha Marcy May Marlene: Don't Thrillers Have Endings Anymore?

Martha Marcy May Marlene heralds the debut of Elizabeth Olsen, i.e. the younger sibling of the infamous Olsen twins. It won Sundance's U.S. Directing Award for director Sean Durkin and has garnered widespread critical acclaim since its release. I finally saw it this weekend and it managed to both intrigue and disappoint me.

The story follows Martha (Olsen), a girl who has escaped from a horrific cult in the Catskill Mountains and finds solace in her sister Lucy's vacation home in Connecticut. Lucy (Sarah Paulson, who delivers a very nuanced and sympathetic performance) and her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy in a very intriguing and different role from what I've usually seen him in) try their best to take care of Martha, even though she won't tell them about where's she been for the past two years. She tells Lucy she broke up with her boyfriend and needs a place to stay now, but throughout the movie we get treated to flashbacks that reveal how she ended up in the cult and the various events that led to her eventual desire to escape it.

The cult leader, Patrick, is played by John Hawkes who can go from charming and paternal to spectacularly menacing and dangerous in an instant. He finds vulnerable women who are estranged from their families and convinces them that this cult is the family they never had, a place where they can finally belong. Of course, once they agree to join, they are promptly drugged and submitted to initiation by rape, after which they become part of the "family" and lead submissive roles. The women can only eat after the men are done and wear whatever frumpy dresses will fit them off a rack in the room. Everyone sleeps on mattresses in the floor and once in a while if supplies are running low, they go out and steal things from the homes of rich families. Patrick takes a shine to Martha and christens her Marcy May, which becomes her identity as she is brainwashed into believing that she is part of a nurturing environment instead of of a horrifically disturbing one.

What's interesting about the way this story is told is that the scenes constantly flit back and forth between Martha adjusting to life with her sister and her life in the cult. We get no back story as to why exactly Martha ran away from her family two years ago but we see Lucy struggling to take care of her younger sister and understand what may have happened to her in that intervening time. Ted is trying to be supportive, but he cannot stand Martha's erratic behavior and thinks his wife is fighting a losing battle. Hugh Dancy and John Hawkes look alike enough that it makes the storytelling oddly eerie, almost as if Martha has escaped Patrick only to find herself faced with an another man who will treat her unfairly. This sense of escaping one life only to be trapped in another came to me more forcefully near the end of the movie when Martha has a panic attack and Ted brings over some anxiety meds to calm her down. Just as the women of the cult are roofied before they are initiated into the cult, this dose of Valium felt like Martha's initiation into the real world.

Martha herself is completely unreadable, with a blank face that only hints at depths of bewildered hurt as she slowly tries to come to turns with everything she has seen and experienced. And that's really the reason you should see this movie. Elizabeth Olsen deserves all the kudos she has been receiving for this performance and she makes this film feel urgent and riveting. I was only planning on watching half the movie before bed, but I couldn't stop myself from watching the whole thing to see what would happen to Martha and whether she would finally tell someone about her years as Marcy May. This movie is classified as a "psychological thriller" and it fits that genre perfectly. We start to piece together why Martha behaves the way she does, why she is so paranoid that the cult members are following her, and what exactly was the turning point that led her to flee. All these revelations build up slowly and tantalizingly, and Olsen keeps your attention focused on her and the need to know just what happens at the end. And that's where the movie disappoints.

Like so many independent films, the movie ends on a completely unresolved note. You can draw your own conclusions as to what happens next, but I don't want to. I know in my discussion of Like Crazy I said I enjoyed ambiguous endings, but I should add a caveat that I enjoy such endings only for certain genres. Movies about love can end vaguely because no one ever knows how a relationship will turn out in the long run. But I need some sort of resolution in a thriller. I need to know if Patrick finds Martha again or whether she finally gets the help she needs. I do not need any more suspense, because the entire film has kept me in suspense, and ending on that note is a complete let-down. Hitchcock films are great thrillers because they build up tension and keep you on the edge of your seat for the entirety of the film, but at the end, there is an actual end. You know what happens to all the characters, you know who gets killed and who survives. And you can exit the movie theater feeling fulfilled.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a suspenseful character study, and again, I cannot praise Olsen's performance enough. I just wish the movie invested more time in completing its story than subscribing to the idea that an independent movie cannot have a straightforward ending.

Bend It Like Beckham: Remember When Two British Girls Took Over Football?

I took a break from Oscar movies to watch Bend It Like Beckham, a movie I haven't seen since 2004 when I watched it outside on Severance Green with my first-year classmates at Wellesley Orientation. Watching this movie brought a wave of nostalgia flooding back and not just because Keira Knightley, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers are ridiculously baby-faced in this film.

If you haven't seen this movie (Really? Go see it now!) here are some plot points. Set in England, it's the story of Jesminder "Jess" Bhamra (Parminder Nagra from ER), a Sikh girl who loves to play football (or soccer if you're American). Playing in the park with her guy friends, she is spotted by Juliette "Jules" Paxton (Keira Knightley before she was famous) who encourages her to join the Hounslow Harriers, the girls football team that she plays for. The team coach is Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, also before he was famous, and sporting a very Irish accent) who is thrilled to see Jess's skills on the football field, and may have some deeper feelings for her off the field.

The dilemmas in this film arise from a clash of cultures, but also from the dismissive attitude towards the idea of girls playing football. Naturally Jess's strict Sikh parents want her to learn to cook a "full Indian meal" and find a nice Indian husband instead of wasting her time with football, while Jules faces her own arguments with her mother who wishes her daughter was more girly and less into sports. In many ways the movie portrays both the white girl and the brown girl as having very similar problems, and even though they come from vastly different cultures, perhaps they're not so different as their families think. They both even fall for the same guy, which as you can imagine is a source of some conflict.

The movie joyfully romps through its cast of characters and their various hang-ups and insecurities and it ends on a high note, signalling a victory for cultural awareness, familial acceptance, and feminism. What thrilled me most about the movie though is how wonderfully it passes the Bechdel Test and proves that a movie with two female leads can certainly be as entertaining (if not more) as one with a plethora of males and the occasional female who wants a date. Jess and Jules are passionate about football and when they are with their teammates, they can rejoice in that passion without having to face the onslaught of family members telling them it is more "normal" for girls their age to look pretty and find a man.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention the brilliant soundtrack of this movie. It features some Bollywood hits I love, as well as several Western songs from the early 2000s that transported me to my days listening to the UK Top 40. There are some of Mel C's solo songs (that's Sporty Spice, appropriately enough) that I had completely forgotten about, and when Texas's Inner Smile comes on, I dare you not to feel thoroughly uplifted. Of course there's the famous scene in the final game when Jess has to take a penalty kick while she imagines her female relatives blocking the goal; there is nothing more perfect than the soaring declaration of "Vincero!" from the aria Nessun Dorma as she dispels her doubts and kicks that ball right into the goal.

Bend It Like Beckham is a true celebration of girls who can and will do anything to achieve their dreams, dreams that don't involve men or dressing up. Funnily enough, the original script meant for Jess and Jules to end up together, but that was re-written since the director thought it would be too offensive to conservative Asians. However, the movie does have a subplot tackling homophobia and does so in a characteristically effervescent non-preachy style. The tone of this film is so light and joyful that you forget how many life lessons it actually has to impart and perhaps that's its greatest achievement.

If all you want is a good sports movie that will make you laugh, this is the movie for you. But don't blame me if it sneakily ends up teaching you a thing or two about how kick-ass girls can be. 

Like Crazy: The Tortuous Path of Young Love

The release of the National Board of Review (NBR) 2011 movie awards signals that it's that time of year again - Oscar predictions, politics, and buzz have started up at last. I've seen a few of the NBR-winning movies (J. Edgar, Cedar Rapids, Win Win, Drive, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, The Ides of March) but am woefully behind on the others, so it's time to kick my year-end movie-watching up to high gear. The nice thing about the NBR is that they pick so many movies. There is a best film (this year, Martin Scorsese's Hugo won that honor), but there are 10 other Top Film picks, and a separate Top 10 Independent Films. In addition to regular acting categories, there are Breakthrough Performance awards and a Spotlight award (that went to Michael Fassbender, to my eternal joy), so I have an array of films to pick and choose from. To kick things off, I decided to finally watch Like Crazy, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year, and winner of the NBR's Breakthrough Performance Award for lead actress Felicity Jones.

When we first saw this theatrical trailer for the movie, my friend Lucy and I scoffed. The trailer seemed to cover the entire film's story in two minutes, leaving us with no reason to actually watch it. While I was impressed with the cast (Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones have done some great work in the few movies or TV series I've seen them in) and the added prestige of winning the Grand Jury Prize, this seemed like a strangely predictable movie that had suffered from overzealous trailer marketing. Man was I wrong.

Most of the the events that take place in the trailer finish within the first 20 minutes or so of the film. And for the remaining 70 minutes, I was spellbound as I watched these two people rebuild and destroy their relationship multiple times, caught in a vicious cycle of horrendous timing and the whims of the visa-issuing bureaucrats at Homeland Security. The story goes like this: Jacob and Anna meet in college and fall in love. Anna is British and upon graduation has to leave the country. Unwilling to leave Jacob, she decides to stay for the summer on her expired student visa. She has to go to England in September for a wedding and when she returns a week later on a tourist visa, she is deported back to England without even a chance to see Jacob at the airport. And thus begins the long and painful journey of these two estranged people as they face multiple hurdles, go to extraordinary lengths to preserve their relationship, try to forget each other, and then come running back. Love is very much a destructive force that keeps these characters stuck in the past and dealing with all the "what ifs?" of their situation, instead of moving forward with their lives. And while you never know what new twist is going to take place in their relationship, the very ending of the film is ambiguous and leaves you with more questions than answers. These kind of endings always delight me because they can provoke so much fervent discussion among friends. So if nothing else, I urge you to see this film and then do battle with me in the comments about what you think happens after the end.

The movie is shot beautifully, capturing every naked emotion on the actors' faces as well as the gorgeous locations in both LA and London. Some moments on the handheld camera are a little shaky and may induce Blair Witch-style headaches, but for the most part the cinematography is intimate and throws you right into this world. The actors were just given an outline of the scenes and told to improvise their lines, which lends a searing sense of authenticity to these characters. There are long pauses as they search for what to say and banter that seems to genuinely delight or amuse them. There are also several silent montages where the two of them are shown together over a series of frames and and then suddenly there's only one person staring longingly at the empty space where the other was a few days ago.

The whole film is colored by an aching sense of the passage of time and it is disconcerting to see how much changes in a few short years. But it is even more disconcerting to contemplate how much more could have changed (for the better? for the worse?) if these two weren't so devastatingly in love. 

Hexic: The End of a Soul-Sucking Quest

I have been playing Hexic since the age of 15. That's 9 solid years of off-and-on enthusiasm for this devious game that has always bested me. But no more. Last night at 10:59 p.m. I created a cluster of 3 black pearls and officially WON a game of Hexic. This is such an insignificant achievement in the grander scheme of things, but considering that it has taken me 9 years, I simply had to blog about it.

Hexic is a spectacularly straigthforward game, very like Bejeweled. All you have to do is rotate the colored hexagon pieces on your screen so that you make clusters of three like-colored pieces and they are replaced by new pieces. However, the added layer of game play comes from the fact that if you can arrange six hexagons of the same color around one piece, that center hexagon will turn into a "starflower." But it doesn't stop there. If you can successfully make six starflowers and then arrange them in that same pattern around one hexagon, you will create a "black pearl." And unlike other games like Bejeweled that just go on forever until you either run out of time or can no longer make a valid combination, Hexic actually has an endgame. If you make a cluster of 3 black pearls (or for the more ambitious, an arrangement of six pearls), you win. The game just ends. And that ending is what I have been seeking for so long.

Now I am 100% certain that there are plenty of Hexic players (possibly some among you who are reading this post) who are mocking me right now for taking so long to do this. I'm sure a basic understanding of spatial reasoning and judicious hexagon-wrangling would help anyone achieve this goal in no time at all. But somehow that has always eluded me. I have always been on the verge of winning when suddenly an unfortunate move will make my starflowers pieces combine with each other and disappear, leaving me with the arduous task of making more starflowers in a futile attempt to get to that damn black pearl. Or a bomb will appear and no matter what I can do, I simply can't get it close enough to two other like-colored pieces before it explodes and destroys my game. But yesterday was finally my day. I was making starflowers left and right, they all went exactly where I needed them to go, the black pearls were created with surprising ease, and when I made the third pearl, it was exactly next to the other two so that I didn't even have to do any work to create a cluster of pearls. It was perfect.

There are many web games out there that people love, which are vastly more complex or interesting. But just as people used to (and still do) laud Tetris as a marvel in the field of computer games, Hexic is easily my pick for a simple and utterly conniving game that can take up hours, days, weeks (and in my case, years) of your life. Now that I have finally defeated it, I don't know if I will ever really play it with as much enthusiasm. But I do know that when I play it again, I won't scream in frustration if a bomb explodes before I've made a third black pearl.