Review: The Men Who Stare At Goats

It was disappointing to see this movie so close to Paranormal Activity, as they're both equally forgettable. This is more of a Rush Hour 2- "I can barely remember what happened in that movie!"- kind of forgettable than a Men in Black 2- "Wish I had a neuralizer to wipe my mind!" kind of forgettable but that's forgettable nonetheless. Why am I comparing this movie to two of the most all-time mediocre sequels? Because The Men Who Stare at Goats is basically a sequel to all of your favorite movies. It features so many redundant situations, conversations and experiences that you'll feel like you're watching a mixtape of better movies. Does that make it bad? Not necessarily. But when you exit the theater after seeing this picture I guarantee the only thing you'll be thinking about is something else.

The basic premise of Goats is that Ewan MacGregor is an American journalist (already shaky casting here) trying to prove himself as a man of worth. While doing puff pieces on the supernatural he stumbles across evidence of a secret government organization that attempted to use psychic abilities for warfare purposes. Ewan meets George Clooney, a quirky former-member of the psychic warfare platoon and they head into the heart of Iraq for a moderately enjoyable flashback-filled road trip. As mentioned above, there's nothing insulting or patronizing about the premise alone. It's frankly kind of amazing since a majority of the movie is based off of true events. That proves to be the movie's greatest comedic asset, as well as its downfall. Everything in the movie is so logically explained that even its broadest comedic strokes seem plausible. And with the film's basis firmly set in reality, it's hard to imagine any sort of escalation plot-wise that could result in someone actually using psychic powers to down a foe, at least not without some practical explanation too. And that's the problem. With a cast this impressive it's a shame that we never get to see the psychic squad working together to take down a common foe. Even if the movie ditched its supposed basis in reality for a trip to Tropic Thunder-land, it would have been a welcome surprise to see someone do something fun or unpredictable during the course of the story. Instead we watch grown men behave like children for 90 minutes with no other conclusion to be drawn than "Gee, that looks fun."

Is it really so surprising to see George Clooney as a quirky soldier on a seemingly impossible mission? If that sounds like a cross between his roles in O Brother Where Art Thou and Three Kings (or even laugh-out-loud comedy riot Syriana!) that's because it is. You'll be seeing a lot of that trademark Clooney charm but nothing new. As for Ewan, he's so busy keeping his accent in check he barely has time to develop a character. Most disturbingly, the nickname for the psychic platoon is the "Jedi" so expect a lot of uncomfortable moments where people stare directly into MacGregor's eyes and say, "You're a Jedi!" Yeah, because that was so entertaining the last three times he did it. Yeesh. If only the pointless redundancy ended there! Get ready for Kevin Spacey's breakthrough performance as a snarky and self-serving villain, not to mention Jeff Bridges' unprecedented work as a free-spirited stoner. This is only time you'll hear me say this, but I would have rather been watching K-PAX. Honest to God, K-PAX.

It's not that Goats is entirely poorly cast. Any director should be commended for wrangling together this much talent in a passably entertaining film. The problem is that we've seen all these choices play out before in much better movies. The Men Who Stare at Goats is so shamelessly derivative of popular films from the past two decades that it fails to distance itself enough to make itself distinct. Watching Jeff Bridges' LSD-fueled rants about psychic energy just made me want to watch Big Lebowski. Watching Ewan MacGregor generically deliver line after line in a phony American accent just made me want to watch Trainspotting or any other movie where he didn't suck so much. And if you're looking for a movie devoid of female eye candy, this is the one to see. Aside from a few brief shots of the redhead from Lost, there are no female characters in this picture. Whoops.

I hate the fact that it's so damn easy to rag on Goats, because at the end of the day it is hardly a terrible movie. It's fun and light and the kind of movie I could easily recommend to somebody's mentally enfeebled grandparents. But the reason it's so much fun to mock is that Men Who Stare at Goats just barely misses the mark. It's like the one note in a symphony played a half-step off-pitch that spoils everything. It's not that the movie is a travesty. It's that the movie isn't a travesty. The movie isn't anything. The only commendation I can share is for the director. The movie is competently shot and edited (which is definitely more of a challenge than most people give it credit) and it was never distractingly bad visually. But that's a microcosm of the whole enterprise: Passable entertainment, complete with competent camerawork and decent performances. Rarely have I seen a movie so inoffensive yet so ultimately unlikable. In a day and age where movies cost upwards of ten dollars, this is one you can surely skip. Instead, I recommend taking a second look at your DVD collection. Chances are you've not only seen The Men Who Stare at Goats before, you've also seen it done well.

Grade: C

Review: Paranormal Activity

It's taken me a long time to write about this movie, mostly because it's hard to think of what to say. If you're a fan of horror films and enjoy the enterprise of being scared you'll most likely enjoy yourself for a majority of Paranormal Activity. If you're skeptical about the premise (and believe me, I don't blame you) then the movie probably won't work for you on a fundamental level. There are barely any special effects to speak of, so you're not going to be wowed by the technical brilliance of this film at any point. The acting ranges from passable improvisation to occasional charm. But is the movie genuinely scary? That's for the audience to decide.

I'm a big advocate for seeing horror films in the theater. While Paranormal could work equally well on DVD in the comfort of your own home (possibly better, as the movie definitely plays up the fear of being home alone) I think there's something to be said for the communal aspect of being scared. There's something deeply human and communal about a good fright, in the same way that it's oddly reassuring to hear the screams of the people ahead of you in a haunted house. Even if the worst is around the corner, you know you're not the only one experiencing it. Call it Schadenfreude or safety in numbers, but it's fun to know you're not alone in feeling scared.

I lucked out because my theater was ready to be frightened. Even though there were relatively few people in the audience, that didn't stop a nervous energy from creeping over all of us. My favorite moment of the movie was when a teenage girl shouted, "Oh damn!" at a particularly nerve-wracking moment. Everyone in the theater erupted in laughter, not at the inarticulate nature of the comment, but because we were all sitting there thinking the same thing. And it felt good to laugh, to be bonding with the other people in the audience on some human level. We paid to see a work of fiction. We sat in the theater like we've done countless times before. But rather than whispering quietly to the person next to us, we were unanimously joined in the gasps, shrieks, and yes, even the yawns of this picture. And regardless of the narrative quality of the film as a whole, the ability to elicit an emotional response from a group of people and unite them is something that should be greatly credited to this film, no matter what you think of it.

As for the story itself, it's pretty straight-forward Amityville­-style stuff. An unmarried couple moves in together. They hear creepy noises. They get a camera to document it. Spooky stuff happens. Then spookier stuff happens, and so on. I would call this the haunted house soul-sister to 2003's Open Water, as both movies focus on a couple experiencing unpleasant things as captured on handicam. Unlike that movie, the characters in Paranormal are actually likable, which is a plus, but that doesn't stop Paranormal from feeling painfully long and pointlessly dull at points even at a brisk 86 minutes.

I'll admit that when I got back from the theater, I was relatively spooked by every normal house noise I heard, under the assumption that some post-movie ghost had followed me home Haunted Mansion-style. Like most ghosts, the feeling quickly evaporated. As far as lasting scares go I'd still place Orphan higher on the mantle than Paranormal. Sure, that movie was cheesy but it was three times more disturbing than Paranormal Activity ever even attempts to be. For most, this movie has the lasting value of a Communion wafer. You forget about it as soon as you leave the building. After the sixteenth time the couple went to bed and set up the camera to spot anything weird, the nuance of the trope was gone. By the time visibly horrifying things actually do happen in the movie (note: three minutes from the end) the result is less satisfying than it should be. It's the equivalent of seeing the alien at the end of Signs. Sure, it's nice to know what the creature looks like, but when we see it in broad daylight it kind of robs it of its natural power, like seeing a sleeping lion at the zoo. The ending of Paranormal is one of the biggest problems with the picture because there is no pay-off. Nothing that happens in those final moments is half as scary as the tension that preceded it, so you're left wondering if any of it mattered at all. (Hint: It didn't.) As you walk out of the theater, I challenge you to have a thought other than "that was kind of scary" or "that was kind of boring." Much like the spirits in the movie, Paranormal Activity is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (Apologies to both Shakespeare and Faulkner on this one.)

Grade: C+

Review: Inglorious Basterds

My friend Jim Rodman said this of Inglorious Basterds, "After seeing so many Tarantino movies that were a nine or a ten, it's kind of strange to see one that's an eight." I don't rank my movies numerically, but I certainly understand this sentiment. Inglorious Basterds seems massively unfinished, over-edited and convoluted even at a screenplay level. Its marketing is misleading and its climax is visceral yet hollow. In spite of these things, this is a Quentin Tarantino movie for God's sakes. It still has great dialogue, unbelievable cinematography and impeccable casting. The only problem is that QT's trademark tropes are as necessary as they are impractical at this point. It seems that throughout Inglorious Basterds Tarantino is stretching to say he can do more than the trademark pulp and violence for which he's known. The opening scenes are shot like a beautiful late sixties war picture down to the brilliant framing and camera movement. The slow extrapolation of details and increasingly menacing dialogue give the scenes a Hitchcock-like sense of calculated tension.

Later there are scenes in a theater lobby that look like the set was constructed for a high school production of Pygmalion. In fact a majority of the indoor and city scenes in Basterds look cheap and staged, more of an allusion to Grindhouse than classic war cinema. Especially because of this film's trademark gory massacre of a conclusion and its cerebrally cathartic yet misleading selling point - that American Jews are going to slaughter Nazis by the barrelful while making their way to Hitler - the film shares more in common with Kill Bill, Vol. 1 in premise than any of Tarantino's other movies. Yet Basterds contains the plodding longwinded pace of Tarantino's bank robbery opus Reservoir Dogs right down to the painfully long dialog-based scenes about actions that could have easily been filmed. Pair this with Tarantino's schizophrenic inability to keep his protagonists separate yet relevant to one another and you have what should for all intents and purposes be a stinker.

But Tarantino can't make a stinker. He's just too good. Even his ham-handed and clumsy efforts are made mystical by his awesome natural talent. In spite of the confusing narrative jumps, and awkward storytelling decisions the movie is a lot of fun. The performances are incredibly solid and the characters are all vaguely interesting, although I will complain that unlike most Tarantino films where vivid quotable personalities reign supreme, none of the characters in Basterds are onscreen long enough to be considered even remotely classic. Even the Bear Jew (Eli Roth's monstrous Basterd known for smashing Nazi skulls with a bat) is only around long enough to earn his name and say a few quips in the second half. When we see the Basterds onscreen there appear to be about fifteen of them, but we barely meet four. For a movie called Inglorious Basterds there sure weren't many Inglorious Basterds in it.

That's not to say that the other plotline - the one that starts the movie, about a Nazi raid on a family that smuggled themselves under their neighbors' floorboards - is disinteresting in any way. The problem with it is that like the majority of Basterds, this plotline doesn't go anywhere. At about thirty minutes into the movie it seems fairly clear what's supposed to happen according to conventional storytelling. The Basterds want to kill as many Nazis as possible and the little girl who survived the Nazi raid on her family is going to help them. Instead of fulfilling this simple request while providing trademark blood and gore along the way, Basterds jumps around to arbitrary scenes of Mike Myers as a British Captain, a meandering and ultimately meaningless card game scene, and the introduction of another third act female protagonist whose inclusion neither heightens the plot or validates itself, especially when the Jewish theater owner Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) fails to meet with or interact with any of the Basterds during the movie.

I was really hoping for a stellar central performance to rollick Basterds or at least for more of the Basterds themselves to be likable and interesting. In the same way that Kill Bill, Vol. 1 was an unstoppable amalgamation of pulp tropes into a thoroughly enjoyable masterpiece, Basterds is more like a Quentin Tarantino mix-tape that you can listen to in the car when you don't have time to turn on Bravo and see them playing Pulp Fiction for the eighty-seventh time (even so, I'd sit down and watch it). If you want a hit of QT without slogging through the seventies, you can watch Inglorious Basterds and see the same exact tone play across World War II. Hey, aren't those different decades with incredibly different feels? Yeah, they are. Whoops.

I'm not one to criticize Tarantino for taking risky storytelling decisions, but just because something is ballsy doesn't mean it's good. And that's the case with a majority of Basterds. Sure, it gets by on the charm of its actors and dialog, but ultimately what does it mean? Why did Tarantino decide to tell the story of Jewish Americans slaughtering Germans during World War II? With all of his little nods to the differences in language and culture throughout this movie, you'd think that he'd come to a bigger conclusion about the war, Jewish-German politics, or frankly anything. Having read the script before seeing this movie, I knew that it would be slightly disjointed and I was initially okay with that, assuming that like most Tarantino movies the ride itself would be too enjoyable to ignore. Basterds paces its ride in a weird way, and aside from a few dozen odd laughs, I was never sure if I should take it seriously or not.

I can't say I disliked Inglorious Basterds. I'm just disappointed with it. After years of hype and planning, Tarantino stood to deliver something different than he'd ever given to the public before, and in a way he succeeded. Unlike his more polished fair, and even the equally sluggish sequel to Kill Bill, Basterds is an unfinished and deeply flawed work that fails to equal the heights of its predecessors, while subtly suggesting that Tarantino is capable of more than we'd ever imagined cinematographically. The new tricks that he's trying (when he actually decides to try them) usually result in beautiful and captivating filmmaking decisions. Unfortunately so much of Inglorious Basterds looks like old hat that the entire second half of the movie looks worse than the warehouse in Reservoir Dogs. In spite of all of this the movie is surprisingly fun. The dialogue is well written and generally better than any you'll hear this year. This is why it's hard to hate Tarantino. Even when he disappoints, he wows.

Grade: B

Review: Zombieland

I know I'm really late with this one, but here goes. Zombieland is practically the American version of Britain's Shaun of the Dead in that it features a cast of comedic characters in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. The key difference between the films is that Sean was a by-the-numbers zombie movie parody and Zombieland is a bit more free form. There are fewer nods to the style and formula of zombie movies, fewer allusions to horror movie history. In the absence of tradition the filmmakers chose to go the less obvious route: packing the movie to the brim with class act comedy.

Zombieland centers around Jesse Eisenberg's character Columbus wandering around a post-apocalyptic America. He runs into Woody Harrelson (Tallahassee) and they team up. They run into Emma Stone and Abagail Breslin, Wichita and Little Rock respectively. They team up. They crack jokes. Occasionally they fight zombies. There's a really choice cameo. They fight some more zombies. That's it.

Zombieland is like a really strong episode of the new NBC comedy Community. It sacrifices storytelling for jokes time and time again. This is usually a bad tactic, but in both cases the results are strong because the quality of the jokes is so high. Zombieland is unreasonably funny. Smart, tongue-in-cheek and vaguely serious all at the same time. There are certain choices that director Ruben Fleischer makes (like Columbus's zombie survival rules appearing visually onscreen) that give the movie a real flair, and if it wasn't for the ludicrously silly moments of the movie- the quest for Twinkies for God's sakes- this could have been a hipper more stylized version of the same basic concept. In a way the sloppy execution of certain aspects of the storytelling really make Zombieland more endearing. If Sean of the Dead was about aping Romero's zombie classics, Zombieland seems more concerned with mimicking Roger Corman.

And what's the deal with Jesse Eisenberg anyway? Can he only star in movies with the word Land in the title? How did he fall into the Jason Schwartzman nerdy but charming guy leading man role so easily? In any case he's great in this movie, as usual. People tend to give him shit because he always plays characters who are very similar to one another, but I don't think those people understand how you get cast in movies. You get cast in movies by being able to deliver something people like. If it worked the first time, the entire Hollywood system is programmed to believe that you the viewer will like it a second time, as soon as they can rehire the crew and slap a '2' on the poster. That means that once you make bank on a gimmick, you'd better stick with it for as long as the public will allow. Unless of course you're serious about your craft and actually give a damn about acting. (I'm looking at you, Daniel Day Lewis.)

Everybody's playing their schtick to its apex in this picture. Woody Harrelson is kind of dumb and kind of badass. Emma Stone is kind of tough and kind of hot. Abagail Breslin is both little and a girl, thus fulfilling the full extent of her contractual agreement. The only problem with the picture is that it's ultimately unfulfilling on a basic level, like a dinner based entirely of cotton candy. It's probably the ultimate distraction movie. It's undeniably violent and remarkably hilarious. It's rarely scary and mostly light. Afterward there isn't the slightest chance you'll be left with something lasting to really say about the picture besides, "You won't believe the cameo!" (Spoiler: Pot kills!) The entire movie can be summed up in the same sentence as National Lampoon's Vacation: "An unconventional family sets forth on a cross-country journey and hits many speed bumps along the way." There's even a Wally World at the end! (P.S. I'm not sure why anyone would think a Demon Drop / Power Tower ride would be a solid escape plan.)

I can't really discuss my problems with this movie without giving too much away, but the truth is that if you're looking for a good funny Halloween movie, this is the film for you. You'll laugh consistently throughout and live vicariously through the characters as they whack zombies and wreak property damage on the ruins of America. Again, I can't say much for the story, but I think my partial bias toward Sean of the Dead disables me from appreciating the movie as a fully original concept. Both films are great in their own rights, and quite different when it comes down to it. It feels weird saying this four reviews in a row, but I definitely recommend you check this movie out. Could this be the start of an incredible fall film and television line-up? My sources say, damn I hope so.

Grade: B+

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

After hearing some of the backlash against Where the Wild Things Are I've decided to try to remain impartial. I understand the complaints that the movie is too dark and didn't contain the sense of childlike whimsy that the original picture book depicted. I fully acknowledge that the movie is dark and emotional and certainly not a comedy for children in the vein of Cars or Rush Hour. Frankly, that's why I like it.

This film has Maurice Sendak's seal of approval. It isn't childlike or whimsical, granted. It is harsh and real. It is deep and guttural. When the wild things roar you want to roar with them. And there's nothing make believe about this movie. Everything that happens is very real. The wild things aren't cartoons or stereotypes or rasta-ized to appeal to marketing numbskulls like their CGI predecessors, Jar Jar Binks and Matthew McConaughey, no. They are real people. Almost disturbingly real and astonishingly innocent. The wild things behave as though they were a colony of orphans left abandoned on the island, more Lord of the Flies than Peter Pan. Without any rules or social conventions, the wild things exist in a world where destroying your friend's home isn't immoral. It's simply something to do.

Not only are the wild things desperate, they're also out of ideas. When a strange child dressed as a wolf plummets into their lives they're basically at the end of their ropes. Both socially and literally speaking the village is falling apart around them, and when Max (the aptly named actor Max Records) appears to them from nowhere, it's easy to see why they mistake him for a savior. Still their society is in such upheaval that the wild things aren't sure whether to hug Max or eat him. As the story unfolds, Max is forced to learn what it means to be a savior to a group of individuals and how difficult it is to be a parent figure to anyone.

I'm an unabashed fan of Spike Jonze. Adaptation is one of my all time favorite movies. Having said that, this might be Jonze's masterpiece. I don't know how much closer he could come to making a perfect film. Technically speaking it's as if he captured the visual brilliance of Science of Sleep and attached a story to it that was actually likable. The wild things are a work of visual brilliance, and the voice work aside, it's no shock that early set reports suggested that the process was problematic. The wild things are that brilliant blending of animation and tactile practical effects that really allow me to lose myself in a story. I don't care whether or not they're really real. To me the wild things are as real as you can possibly get on film.

As for the voice work itself Catherine O'Hara and James Gandolfini give some of their finest performances in this movie. It's one of those rare instances, like Albert Brooks' performance in Finding Nemo, where the voice work rivals some of the actors' best live action work. James Gandolfini is alternatively adorable and terrifying. That's a delicate tightrope to catwalk and he does it flawlessly. Catherine O'Hara has a troubled and snarky character to perform, which she does with incredible aplomb. Some have told me they were distracted by the voice of KW (Lauren Ambrose from Six Feet Under), but I never saw enough of that show to really make a mental record of the actress's vocal patterns. She played the character well and had an honest charm that made her wild thing seem feminine in spite of its big hairy beard. Now that's acting!

But back to the darkness, yes, there is plenty of it. What could have easily been a happy sunshine Disney romp is actually a childhood drama if anything. Max is a terror around the house, torturing the dog, biting family members and playing pranks on his sister. When the wild things ask him to be their king, they really should have asked for a background check. Max hooks the wild things on some grift about killing Vikings and the poor rubes actually buy it. While being king seems fun to Max at first it turns out to be a lot of work, and he finds out that when the monsters asked him to keep their sadness away, they weren't kidding. The wild things are lonely, unappreciated and jealous. They seek approval from a higher authority. While Max has spent his entire childhood taking his family for granted, here is a group of creatures that seek nothing more than the comfort of knowing someone bigger cares for them.

I don't want to spoil any more of the story for you, but just know that Where the Wild Things Are is an experience. It might not be quite what you expected, but I ask that you keep an open mind to the experience at hand. The beautiful sorrowful honesty contained in this picture is enough to remind any child at heart what it was really like to be a kid, without all the sugar coating. And look around you in the theater. The kids like it. (Remember, this is the Harry Potter generation. These kids eat death for breakfast.)

Grade: A+

Review: A Serious Man

Review: A Serious Man

A Serious Man is an uncompromising tale, densely packed with nuance and detail as well as the trademark charm synonymous with the name Coen. Absent from the film are the lackluster and arbitrary storytelling decisions found in recent Coen Brothers fare like Intolerable Cruelty and Burn After Reading. Instead the Coens keep the relatively small story of a nebbish yet well-meaning family man piping with entertainment by forgoing cheap and easy laughs for the sake of real human pathos.

Primarily A Serious Man tells the story of Larry Gopnik, a mild-mannered physics professor (played aptly by relative newcomer Michael Stuhlbarg) whose life takes an unforeseen nosedive when his wife's fidelity comes into question. It also tells the story of Larry's son Danny who is perched on becoming a man at his upcoming Bar Mitzvah ceremony. This is the only movie I've ever seen where I felt a distinct disadvantage for being gentile, as my mostly Orthodox neighbors in Los Angeles laughed at jokes I couldn't possibly comprehend, delivered wholly in Hebrew. I wouldn't bring it up except for the fact that A Serious Man is by its very nature a story about Jewish storytelling and the tales the Jewish people pass down through the generations to bring them solace or hope. My extensive grade school bible-beating and that one Hebrew Narrative class I took at Northwestern (thank you, Professor Ben Solomon) helped me a little, but the majority of this film deals with a narrative tradition so intrinsically Jewish it made me feel more than a little out of the loop when it came to deciphering it. Thankfully, I'm always up for a challenge when it comes to complex storytelling, so I saw no reason why I couldn't go a little Gorillas in the Mist on it for you.

When I say that A Serious Man is uncompromising, I mean that it doesn't hold your hand at any point while watching it, and it certainly doesn't spoon-feed you an ending. I, for one, am a huge fan of this tactic. In an age where technological monstrosities like Transformers 2 literally ravage our eye sockets for three hours while begging to labeled as "entertainment," it was nice to see some competent filmmakers turn back to oral tradition, the method of verbally passing stories down from one generation to the next, as the basis for their narrative structure. A Serious Man opens with a seemingly unrelated ghost story immersed in Jewish culture. Never do we return to this prologue or acknowledge its existence in a literal way. It merely sets the tone and gives us a sense that yes, there were people living their lives with their own customs and cultures before our protagonists ever existed. How could an unrelated prologue serve as a strong narrative device, especially one strong enough to open a film?

Protip: It's not really unrelated. Throughout Larry Gopnik's trials and tribulations it seems that only one thing is certain: Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Bad things happen to Larry at an exponential rate, and as he turns to his rabbinical leaders for guidance, their inexperience and impersonal methods fail to comfort him. None of the rabbis offer a concrete method for hope. They only remind him that his people have suffered before, and the implication is that suffering needlessly is a part of being Jewish. A sensible and good-intentioned man, Larry is pushed to the brink of breaking his code of morality by the film's conclusion. The question is, will he be rewarded or punished further for his actions?

Without spoiling anything, I'll admit that I was startled when the credits started to roll, only because I expected there to be another half-hour of movie left. As I exited the theater, I realized the Coen Brothers had crafted what might be their most perfect film, a tightly contained universe bound in the tradition and oppression of their ancestors, deftly compressed into a microcosm of Jewish suffering through the seemingly mundane life of a single unlucky man. Everything you need to get out of A Serious Man is right in front of your eyes, but because it isn't handed to you it might be a little harder to spot. The moral ambiguity of The Man Who Wasn't There abounds, but unlike that dark and plodding tale, this film has a richer history than the Coen's oft-visited pulp noir genre of storytelling. Not that noir hasn't served the Coen's well in the past (see: Barton Fink, The Big Lebowksi, all the rest of them for cryin' out loud) but sometimes the well runs dry when you're pirating motifs from a relatively recently birthed genre (as old as film itself perhaps? Call my bluff on this one, please), and smartly enough the Coens went back to their personal history for guidance.

I recommend this movie so highly that I almost say you should skip Where the Wild Things Are this weekend to catch A Serious Man while it's still in theaters. However, both films are incredibly strong (for different reasons, more on WtWTA to come) and if you're looking for a brilliant, sincere and adult drama with many comedic moments you'll have no trouble finding yourself satisfied at the movies this weekend.

Grade: A+

Review: The Informant!

Talk about a step in the right direction for Stephen Soderbergh! After a half decade of commercial wankfests (see any movie with Ocean in the title) and self-indulgent spankfests (how is Sasha Grey doing by the way?) Stephen Soderbergh finally decided to make a movie that was both commercial AND had a point. The result? The Informant! is a smart mix of clever screenwriting, solid performances and enough comedian cameos to keep your peepers percolating until the credits roll.

Matt Damon stars as corn-loving businessman Mark Whitaker. Mark decides to become an informant for the FBI because he suspects members of his own company are up to foul play. As the story unravels, Mark's reliability as an informant comes into question as his Midwestern charm butts heads with his new life as a secret agent.

I have a special bias toward comedy in most if not all cases. So I immediately fault the movie for not taking advantage of its capable cast of comedians. However, the performances are believable and the entire film takes place in a sepia-toned late 80's/early 90's wonderland. Basically everything this movie does is pure class from beginning to end. (Apparently some of George Clooney's smugness must have rubbed off on Soderbergh? It's an epidemic!) And it's hard to fault a film with such a subliminal advertising campaign. The poster is yet another in the line of movie posters to steal the 40 Year Old Virgin's single color backdrop and innocently goofy central character. Take a gander:

Pretty much the same exact poster, right? But it's not the only culprit.


A little more forgivable because it's still Apatow. But how about this?

Anna Faris once gave me a junior mint. True Story.

The reason The Informant's poster stands above the sea of cheap money-loving imitators is its boldfaced optimism. Check out that tagline: "Unbelievable." No attributed publication, no indication that it's a line of dialogue. That is a direct endorsement from Stephen Soderbergh himself that this movie rocked his shit. As if that wasn't enough, Soderbergh slaps on an exclamation point to the title's backside, so the movie can literally shout about how much it loves itself. Even Matt Damon seems thrilled that his story of lies and intrigue is so mind-blowing. You don't see that kind of gung-ho endorsement on the cover of Bubble, do you? Nowhere on the cover of The Good German do you see the words "psychotropic". It's as if every person who sees the movie sees something so life altering, they never go back to the same way they used to think about Matt Damon with a moustache. Clearly Peter Moore ran the marketing campaign for this movie, because every indication states that The Informant! will be ten times more vivid than a lucid dream.

And you know what? The movie is really, really good. I honestly wouldn't call it unbelievable, but any movie that's going to change my belief structure better have a forty-minute Bill Maher monologue at the end of it (just kidding). I don't want to spoil for you the many twists and turns of the plot, but I will tell you that the fact that the movie was inspired by a true story makes it all the more incredible. No, maybe incredible isn't the right word for it. Unmistakable..? Incorrigible? If only there was some soothing orange poster to give me the perfect word for this film! Urgh! This is so frustrating! Damn you brain! Why must you think for yourself?!

Grade: B+