“I don’t sit in while you’re running it down.  I don’t carry a gun.  I drive.”

The H-Bomb:  A movie stunt driver/mechanic (Ryan Gosling) moonlights as a getaway driver for various underworld characters as they do their various underworld things (usually robberies).  He gives them exactly five minutes to do whatever they’re there to do, and if they’re even one second late, he’ll take off and leave them on their own.  We never learn much about this driver, not even his actual name, just that he’s very good at what he does, and he’s a strict believer in minding his own business.  He’s a loner by choice and only speaks when he has something to say, which isn’t very often, and the closest thing he has to a friend is his boss, garage owner Shannon (Bryan Cranston).

Shannon has a lofty plan of putting the driver on the racing circuit, where he believes, not unreasonably, that his driver will excel.  He goes to his old gangster friend, Bernie (Albert Brooks), to borrow four hundred grand for a stock car, and after Bernie gets a gander of what the driver can do on the racetrack, he agrees.  It seems that things are looking up for Shannon and the Driver, but then something happens… the Driver meets a girl (Carey Mulligan).

Her name is Irene, she lives on the same floor of his apartment building, and she’s taking care of her young son on her own while her husband is in prison.  They don‘t exchange many words, but there clearly is a connection between them, and as the Driver spends more time with Irene, he even becomes a kind of surrogate father to her son.  This makes things a little awkward at first when Irene’s husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is released from prison.

But before Standard gets the chance to really grill the Driver about the affair he may or may not have had with his wife, his old prison buddies, who he owes protection money to, come calling, wanting him to hold up a pawn shop.  As a favor, the Driver agrees to sit behind the wheel of the getaway car.  It looks like a typical in and out job that he’s done a hundred times before, and nothing could go wrong…  famous last words.

Unfortunately for the Driver, nothing goes according to plan, and the fallout could have very violent repercussions for not only him, but for Irene, her son, and Shannon, as well.

I don’t think I’m overstating a thing when I say that “Drive” is quite possibly the best film of 2011 that you haven’t seen.  I myself was a little hesitant to sit down and watch it, because after all the positive buzz I’ve heard about it on the Internet, I was afraid that it might have been over-hyped for me.  I was dead fucking wrong.  It absolutely, for me, lived up to the hype, and now I couldn’t be more happy to join the chorus in singing its praises.

Based on the novel by James Sallis, “Drive” is a tense, slow burner where the dialogue is sparse and the violence is fast and brutal.  I’m talking point blank shotgun blast to the side of the head, fork jammed in the eyeball kind of brutality.  It’s a hard R-rated movie with a stiff dick and a hefty set of testies, with real brains and a sense of artistry behind it, the likes of which we don’t see nearly enough of these days.

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (“Bronson”, another bad ass motherfucker of a flick I highly recommend) does an excellent job creating the bleak, unforgiving world these people inhabit.  It’s a world where the shit is stacked so high that no one can stay completely above it, no matter how hard they try.  Refn gives the film a stark, modern Noir visual style, especially during the nighttime driving scenes, which is complemented perfectly by Cliff Martinez’s evocative score and his use of 80’s pop tracks at the beginning and end of the film.  It has the look and feel of a Michael Mann film, except on a significantly lower budget.

Refn also manages to pull some tremendous performances out of his top notch cast.  This isn’t really an Oscar movie, but the Academy shall forever live in shame for not recognizing Gosling’s turn for the award caliber performance that it is.  What he does in “Drive” is the epitome of an actor doing a whole lot with very little.  As stated, he has precious few lines in the movie, but he has a face that says so much that he really doesn’t need much dialogue.  His relationship with Mulligan’s Irene has the richest chemistry of any I’ve seen in recent memory, and it’s one that’s built mainly on silent gazes.  You can tell from his face whether or not he likes someone, and he does it in a way that is totally natural.  Gosling is the poo, shame on you, Academy!  Shame on you!

Also, shame on you for overlooking Albert Brooks’ terrific work in this.  Bernie the gangster is the kind of character you would never even think to cast Brooks as, but he’s brilliant. The guy plays a bad ass… and he’s completely, one hundred percent believable.  When he jams a knife into some poor schmuck’s throat, you will believe that he is the last person on the planet you would ever want to fuck with.

Bryan Cranston is also great as the gimp-legged Shannon, who provides a few laughs throughout.  Even when he’s bragging about how he shamelessly takes advantage of the Driver, he’s still likeable.  Ron Perlman gets a little hammy as Nino, a trash talkin’ Jewish gangster and Bernie’s partner in crime, but it’s still good to see him in there.

Now if all that isn’t enough to make you want to see “Drive”, then you obviously haven’t been paying any fucking attention.  This is one instance where the hype got it right.  It is one amazing, wild ass ride of a motion picture running on all cylinders.  It may sound like a B-movie from the plot description, but the A-list talent both in front of and behind the camera help raise it to a whole new level of awesome.  Don’t let this one leave you in the dust, check it out today!

Just let this sleeping dog lie.

The H-Bomb: Young, dull newlyweds David (James Marsden) and Amy (Kate Bosworth) move from L.A. to the small southern town where Amy grew up. David is a screenwriter, and he hopes that the peace and quiet of their isolated farm house will be the perfect place to work on his script. Unfortunately for him, the local hillbillies they hired to fix up the barn roof have other ideas. It’s bad enough that David is an outsider and a city boy with a condescending, intellectual air to him, but the fact that he hired Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard), Amy’s old high school beau, to work on the roof only makes matters worse. See, Charlie still has an eye for Amy, and he doesn’t much care for her running off and marrying this nerdy little Joe Hollywood douche bag, so… I think you can guess where this is going.

Charlie and his buddies’ taunts start out as minor annoyances; showing up to work at the crack of dawn with their shit-kicker music blasting, walking into David’s house uninvited and just helping themselves to whatever’s in his fridge, cutting out at midday to go hunting, so on and so forth. Being that David is a product of the Left Coast and a very principled pacifist (so he tells us), he is willing to turn the other cheek and try not to let it get to him.

But Charlie’s antics soon escalate and become more hostile and dangerous; David is run off the road by their truck, pet cats turn up dead (why does that sound familiar), and eventually a vicious assault takes place. If David and Amy had even an iota of common sense, they would just cut their losses and leave, but David isn’t about to be driven out of his home, and he now has a lot of manning up to do before the inevitable violent showdown.

You’d think after the dismal failure that was the “The Getaway” remake, that Hollywood would know better than to redo Sam Peckinpah, the guns n’ booze auteur who had an arresting, kick-to-the-dick style that no one could ever replicate, but that didn’t stop them from trying. This time, they tried doing it with “Straw Dogs”, his 1971 film about a non-violent man pushed to the breaking point. It was mucho controversial when released, but it’s kind of tame by today’s standards.

For this remake, the setting has been changed from rural England to the rural U.S., and the main character’s profession has been switched, inconsequentially, from mathematician to screenwriter, but everything else follows the plot of the original to the letter. The result is a banal, quasi-boring film which adds nothing new to the story thematically, and ultimately has no reason whatsoever to exist. The graphic violence of the Peckinpah film is retained, including the infamous use of a bear trap, but the potency is gone.

Writer/Director Rod Lurie (“The Contender”, a putrid film) also didn’t do himself any favors by making all the small town folk a bunch of tobaccy chewin’, beer swilling, narrow minded primates who enjoy bullying and tormenting outsiders when they’re not too busy fucking their own relatives. It’s the kind of lame, clichéd small town stereotype that could only have been written by some snotty writer who has never actually been to a small town in his life.

I also love how Lurie has his protagonists say and do the most stupid, illogical things imaginable simply because the plot needs them to, like having the atheist David wax philosophical about religion with Charlie by calling God a “bully,” or having him say shit like, “I’m a writer, that means I work for a living” to a blue collar guy who actually does work for a living. Jesus, a fucking first grader would know better.

But the real kicker, the one that truly insults the intelligence, is what Lurie has Amy do after she catches Charlie and his slobbering goons eyeballing her; she opens her bedroom window and strips naked in front of them. Seriously, is this chick retarded?! What was she thinking? Can she even think? Does she even have a brain? Apparently, Lurie forgot to give her one.

Lurie also forgot to fix the one aspect of the 1971 film that, at least I think, doesn’t work, the reason for the final confrontation. It doesn’t come about from the simmering hatred that builds between David and Charlie, but from a subplot about the town retard who likes to touch children. It bothered me in the Peckinpah version, and it only added to my list of reasons to dislike the Lurie version.

Moving on to the performances, it’s a mixed bag. Marsden and Bosworth are reunited from “Superman Returns” and display the exact same lack of chemistry that they had in that film. They are both big zeros, and it should be noted that James Marsden is no Dustin Hoffman. Skarsgard (son of Stellan) is actually quite menacing and subtle as Charlie. His performance is one of the movie’s few virtues, and for a Swede, he made a pretty convincing redneck. James Woods is fun to watch as the alcoholic ex-high school football coach who also makes trouble for David and Amy. The only problem I had with him was that I didn’t believe for a second that he could actually intimidate an entire barroom full of good ol’ boys the way he does here.

(H-Man Parenthetical: I just remembered that Woods was also in “The Getaway” remake, as well. Weird.)

After all is said and done, this new “Straw Dogs” isn’t a terrible movie, it’s just a terribly pointless one. There’s nothing in here that Peckinpah didn’t already do better in his original film some forty years ago, and there is just no reason for this watered down, dumbed down version to have been made at all. If you must see “Straw Dogs”, do yourself a huge favor and watch the original, and give this future piece of K-Mart bargain bin fodder a pass.

High on fun, low on believability.

The H-Bomb:  A mysterious man (Sam Worthington) checks into a Manhattan hotel alone.  He treats himself to an extravagant meal, then wipes the room clean of all fingerprints and climbs out the window and onto the ledge.  It’s not long before he’s spotted by some do-gooder on the street far down below, and a crowd gathers to see if he’ll jump.  Some even cheer for him to jump!  Soon the police and the media both show up, and the whole thing turns into a big fiasco.

Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks), a police psychiatrist with a drinking problem and a sad back story, is called to the scene to try and talk the man down off the ledge, and in their back and forths she gets the feeling that he’s not really suicidal, and that there is something else going on.  Of course, we the audience, through some rather clumsy flashbacks, already know more about this man than Lydia.  We know that his name is Nick Cassidy, that he is an ex-cop who went to prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit, and that he’s an escaped fugitive trying to clear his name.

But what does all that have to do with Nick dangling off the ledge in full view of hundreds of people?  Well, maybe it’s to keep people’s eyes off of what his brother, Joey (Jamie Bell) and Joey’s girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) are doing across the street, in the diamond vaults of slimy, big shot Wall Street broker David Englander (Ed Harris).  Normally, I’d be reluctant to give that much away, but the trailer already did it for me, so I figure, the hell with it.

In fact, for the audience to enjoy “Man on a Ledge”, they’ll have to say the hell with it, too, because that is exactly the kind of movie it is.  The kind of highly contrived, ridiculously illogical thriller that Hollywood cranks out every so often.  The kind where if you scrutinize the plot, the characters, or anything that’s happening, you’ll just end up frustrating yourself, but, if you can just kick back and go with it, you’ll find it fairly enjoyable.

Basically, “Man on a Ledge” is a popcorn movie, one that wouldn’t cut the muster in the summer, hence it’s being released in January, when movie theaters resemble post-apocalyptic wastelands, but essentially it is 90 some odd minutes of pure, dumb brain candy.  Those looking for a tense, single location thriller like “Phone Booth” may be disappointed, as this actually is an overly plotted heist movie in the “Inside Man” vein, only about a thousand times more improbable, and not nearly as memorable.  It’s entertaining, but you’ll be straining to remember anything that happens in it the day after you see it.

As far as performances go, this really, truly is not a performance movie, but everyone on hand does their best. Worthington is an actor who has never interested me at all.  Frankly, I find him about as exciting as a piece of plain toast and as charismatic as a bullfrog, but here, he’s actually all right.  He hasn’t converted me into a born again Worthington fan or anything, but on this occasion, he managed to make me root for him… even though the Hasselhoff hair he sports doesn’t do him any favors.  Banks, as the alcoholic police shrink, does okay, as well, but like Worthington, I find her kind of bland.

Fortunately, the solid supporting cast does help spice up the mix.  Bell is funny as Joey, Nick’s well meaning but clumsy brother, Anthony Mackie is smooth as Nick’s best friend and a fellow cop who’s a little too interested in his predicament, and Harris hams it up nicely as the stereotypical smug, cigar sucking, fat cat bad guy.  Fans of William Sadler will be pleased to see him in a smallish role as a helpful Bellhop, it’s just too bad he looks as though he aged twenty years in the past ten. I was disappointed to see Ed Burns relegated to the throwaway role of some generic detective who spends the whole movie on the sidelines.  This guy used to be a full fledged movie star.  He helped save Private Ryan, for Christ sake!  What happened?

Of everyone in the cast, the one true standout is Genesis Rodriguez.  Never heard of her before?  Don’t worry, neither have I, but I have a hunch we all will in the near future.  Her turn as Joey’s girlfriend/amateur cat burglar is sassy, sexy, and almost steals the show.  The moment where she strips down in her bra and panties to slip into her skintight catsuit is perhaps the most hysterically gratuitous thing I have ever seen in any movie, but in a movie this hokey, it’s allowed.

And hokeyness is the order of the day with this one.  There are some intensely suspenseful moments (the bit with the news chopper is great), some nifty action towards the end, and even some laugh out loud moments throughout (the old Hippie in the crowd shouting about Attica is priceless).  It all leads to a climax that is both howlingly absurd and a little under-whelming, but if you keep your expectations modest and your brain turned off, there is fun to be had… provided you have absolutely nothing better to do.

A whole lot of nothing!

The H-Bomb:   Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is an A-list movie star living the Hollywood Bad Boy life; boozing, partying, women, so on and so forth.  Basically, all the drinking, all the drugging, all the screwing are supposed too compensate for the fact that, despite being filthy rich and successful, his life is pretty damn boring (just so you know, the word “boring” and its various synonyms are going to appear frequently in this review).  It’s all Johnny’s way of filling the utter emptiness of his existence.  That’s not to say his life isn’t without its little pleasures; he’s treated to a show by a couple of pole dancing stripper twins, which he falls asleep during, he’s receiving obscene text messages from an unknown sender, he’s asked stupid questions by idiot journalists with strange accents in a press conference, and he gives absolutely worthless advice to aspiring actors.

If I had his life, I’d probably bomb myself into a perpetual stupor, as well.  Oh, but there is a bright spot through Johnny’s chemically induced haze: his lovely little daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning), who is dropped on his doorstep at the famed Chateau Marmont hotel one day out of the blue.  The mother explains to him that she has to go off to parts unknown for reasons unknown, and she charges Johnny with the crucial task of getting Cleo to summer camp by a certain date.  Failure to do so could bring about catastrophic consequences that could unravel the space-time continuum and destroy existence as we know it!  Actually, none of that would happen (God forbid that would make this movie interesting, if illogical), but she does have to get to camp by a certain date.

So, stuck with the kid for a few weeks, Johnny hauls her around on all his various exploits of nothingness.  To Italy, to Vegas, and all over L.A.  We sense that he doesn’t really know his daughter, and that this is the first time he’s spending any real time with her.  So, we get treated to the pleasure of seeing them bond by doing a whole lot of nothing together… like eat ice cream in bed while watching “Friends”, or playing “Guitar Hero”, or sunbathing, amongst many, many other edge-of-your-seat activities.  And it’s during all these thrilling non-adventures that they bond in a significant way… I guess, and Johnny learns a valuable life lesson about . . . something . . . or . . . nothing.  I’m leaning towards the latter.

I really would love to discuss more of the plot, except there isn’t any more to discuss.  Sofia Coppola’s fourth film, “Somewhere”, is the latest addition to that ever growing sub-genre of indie film, the “Nothing Happens” genre.  Standing alongside such gems as “The Brown Bunny” and that Jim Jarmusch snoozer “The Limits of Control”, “Somewhere” continues in that same stylistic vein of long, static shots with seemingly endless scenes of characters doing little-to-nothing in them.  And I am speaking very literally, folks.  Every single scene in the film either has Johnny and Cleo doing nothing, or doing something so fucking mundane that it’s really not worth mentioning or watching . . . for that matter.

At the least “The Brown Bunny” rewarded us at the end with Chloe Sevigny sucking off Vincent Gallo.  With “Somewhere”, we don’t get anything even remotely that interesting or memorable.  The only scene that I would qualify as notable, and I am reaching here, is the one involving Johnny and a naked male masseuse.  The only reason I remembered that was because it’s the one quasi-entertaining scene in the entire film.  That aside, Princess Coppola’s newest opus is one in which nothing happens, then more nothing happens, then even more nothing happens, and then, mercifully, after 90-plus minutes, it ends.  This kind of minimalist style can work sometimes, “Elephant” and “Blow Up” spring to mind, but in an instance like this, where there is no compelling story, no emotion, and no drama of any kind, then it just makes for one excruciatingly DULL movie.  It was duller than a butter knife in Al Gore’s drawers.

[Swift thought: while editing this paragraph, "The Simpsons- The D'oh-cial Network" JUST burned on Princess Coppola for making movies where nothing happens!]

I’ve been writing for iRATEfilms since mid-2009, and in that time, I have sat through some genuine shitbags, but I have to say, with all sincerity, this is the worst movie I have ever reviewed for this site.  I shit thee not, dear readers, I would not say it if I didn’t mean it, it is the absolute WORST, period.  I loathed it.  Despised it.  If the DVD weren’t a rental copy, I would smash it to pieces and fucking burn it!  Holy Hell, when crap like “My Soul to Take” and the pisss poor “Hisss” look good by comparison, something is really, truly wrong.  At least those movies tried to tell stories.  They failed miserably, but they at least tried to have actual characters taking part in an actual plot, with an actual beginning, middle, and end.  “Somewhere” doesn’t even attempt any of that.  It is cinematic vapor.  It’s like an entire movie made up of outtakes . . . outtakes that go on for eternity and aren’t even remotely amusing.  And that it was brought to me by an Academy Award Winning Filmmaker makes it all the more infuriating.  Jennifer Chambers Lynch, you are off the hook, there is a new nepotistic Daddy’s Girl director at the top of my shit list now.

Some of the apologists for this empty void of nada masquerading as a movie will argue that it’s a thoughtful (sigh), existential (eye roll) tone poem (face palm) about the life of a man burned out by the meaninglessness of his fast n’ hard lifestyle, and that it’s his relationship with his daughter that brings him true happiness and redemption.  Okay, that’s all well and good, except it’s presented in such a way that it isn’t at all touching or moving.  For Christ’s sake, the movie doesn’t move!  Maybe if Princess Coppola actually bothered to write a script, instead of just turning the camera on and telling the actors to do whatever, she possibly might have had something.  Sadly, she went the lazy route instead.  “But it won Best Picture at the Venice Film Festival!”  Well, to that I have two questions, what the hell movie did they watch, and haven’t the learned to stop sampling the water whilst on those over-priced gondolas?  Did Daddy Coppola have Nitrous Oxide leaked into the theater during that screening?

The damnable thing of it is, I am a fan of Princess Coppola as a director.  “The Virgin Suicides” was near brilliant, and “Lost in Translation” was one of the best films of the last decade (though I must confess, “Marie Antoinette” looked so fucking awful from the trailers I never bothered with it).  So, as a fan of hers, I wanted to see “Somewhere” and I went in expecting to like it, but . . . as I think I clearly stated, I didn’t!  She took the understated style and tone she established with “Lost in Translation” and amplified it to a point where it rendered the movie inert, lifeless, and… did I mention boring, already?

It is a stupefyingly pretentious, astonishingly over-indulgent waste of time.  In fact, it’s worse, it’s a waste of a waste of time, made by one of the most spoiled brats in all of Hollywood, and Daddy Coppola should give that brat a good spanking, send her to her room, and not let her out until she remembers how to make a good movie again.  “Somewhere” is a film that goes absolutely nowhere, and it would be smart of you to go nowhere near it!

“Everyone has lost something in the war.”

The H-Bomb:  Like many in my generation, I have grown up with the movies of Steven Spielberg.  Be it Indiana Jones or “Jurassic Park”, “E.T.” or “Jaws”, the man has an ability to create pure magic on film in a way that really no one else can.  Or at least he did.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t think this past decade has been Spielberg at his best.  “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” had interesting aspects, but didn’t really work as a whole.  Ditto for “Minority Report”.  “Catch Me If You Can” went in one ear and out the other.  “The Terminal” I would argue is a genuinely bad movie, as is his remake of “War of the Worlds”.  And don’t even get me started on “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Expletive Deleted”.  For me, the only good film he’s made in the last ten years was “Munich”, which I do feel is a terrific movie that didn’t get anywhere near the recognition it deserved.  But that one aside, I can easily live without anything else he’s done.  Not to mention the man seems to have forgotten how to end a movie, filling them full of false endings and making them run at least a half hour longer than they should.

For all intents and purposes, it looked to me like the bearded one had lost his touch.  That’s why I was so pleasantly surprised by “War Horse”, a film that is harrowing and moving, and sees Spielberg back in fine form.  Based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo,  it tells the story of a down on his luck farmer (Peter Mullan, “Session 9″) who purchases a horse to work in his field just as the first World War is about to begin.  His wife (Emily Watson), thinks that the animal is useless and wants to get rid of it, but his son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine, excellent) immediately takes a liking to the gorgeous young horse and names it Joey.  When it looks as though the horse can’t be trained, Albert prevents his father from giving Joey a buckshot shampoo and sets about training the horse himself, and then defies the odds by doing exactly that.  But before long a storm rolls in and destroys the crops.  Completely broke, and with no way to pay the rent, the farmer is forced to sell Joey to a young British Army Officer, who intends to ride him into battle.

After Albert’s tearful pleas for him not to take the horse, the officer gives him his word that if he can, he will return Joey to him after the war.  But World War I was a particularly messy war in which nothing went according to plan, and over the course of four years, Joey finds himself being shuffled between many different owners and masters, on both sides of the conflict.  Each owner is very different from the last, but they all share one thing in common, they are all able to recognize that this is a very special horse that they have in their care.  Once he is old enough, Albert joins the army and goes off to fight, in hopes that he will be reunited with Joey.

“War Horse” is, a few minor flaws aside, an absolute triumph for Spielberg.  It has all the elements from Spielberg’s best films; it’s touching, if a tad sentimental, emotional, and rousing.  Fantastically crafted with stunning cinematography, it, much like “Saving Private Ryan” did, captures the visual beauty of everything, even something as ugly as war.  It’s theme of Albert’s unbreakable bond with Joey is one that will surely resonate with anyone who has ever owned and cherished a pet.  If there’s one thing Spielberg does better than anyone else, it’s being able to strike an emotional chord in the audience, and that’s very much evident here.

As the title clearly indicates, this is about a horse that goes off to war, so it’s easy to surmise that the horse is placed in jeopardy on a number of occasions.  The most grueling of which being when Joey gets himself “tangled” in the middle of no man’s land.  The sequence is difficult to watch, but plays out in a way that is rewarding and very “Spielbergian.”  It tugs on the heart strings, perhaps a little too deliberately, and if you’re one who is inclined to shed tears, then I recommend bringing tissues.  For the record, I’m not and I didn’t.  Cynics may condemn Spielberg for being emotionally manipulative, but frankly, who gives a rat’s rectum what they think?  For me, it worked, as I’m sure it will for most.

As for complaints, I would say there are times, mainly with character actions and the way certain events unfold, where the story stretched credulity almost too far.  It was never so unbelievable that it was absurd, but it did have me thinking, “Come on, would that really happen?”  Also, there were some interesting characters that I would have liked to have spent a little more time with, like the two German brothers who desert the army, as well as Joey’s German handler on the battlefield.  These were people I felt were a little short changed.  But the film’s biggest flaw, the one that most of Spielberg’s modern film’s suffer from, is that it’s too damn long.  It’s not that it had a series of false endings, but that the first act on the farm, which is kind of dreary, really should have been shortened.

But, these problems are miniscule, as “War Horse” is overall one terrific motion picture.  Joey’s journey is long and trying, but it’s one that is very much worth riding along on.  It’s not the best film I’ve seen this year, but it’s most definitely up there, and it has left me convinced that Spielberg has not lost his touch, after all.

“Out with the old, in with the new.”

The H-Bomb:  George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a 1920’s movie star who is on top of the world.  Each film is a bigger hit than the last, he lives in a beautiful mansion with a cold, money grubbing wife (Penelope Ann Miller), and he’s a darling of the press and public alike.  Life couldn’t get any better for George… and it doesn’t. 

One day, George’s producer Al Zimmer (John Goodman) tells him about a big change that’s coming to cinema: the addition of sound.  George blows the notion of this new kind of picture off completely, thinking that it’s just a passing gimmick and believing that his audience will always be there for him. 

But George soon finds out the hard way just how wrong he is.  “Talkies” are not just a fad, they are here to stay.  It’s no longer just about faces, but about “Words! Words! Words!” as Norma Desmond would contemptuously say.  The truth finally sinks in for George when his latest film opens against a sound picture and flops.  To make matters worse, the star of that talkie is Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), an actress he more or less discovered, who’s star has been on the rise while his has been on the decline.

Now George finds himself completely unemployable in a business that he once had at his beck and call, unable to even pay his loyal chauffeur, Clifton (James Cromwell).  Will he ever find a way to reclaim his former glory?  And what about Peppy, the newly minted start for whom he once had feelings?

An appreciation for silent films and the early age of cinema seems to be a recurring theme as of late.  It certainly was in Martin Scorsese’s fantastic “Hugo”, and it is yet again in writer/director Michel Hazanavcius’s “The Artist”.  However, “The Artist” isn’t merely an homage to silent films… it is a silent film.  A silent film shot in black and white to look like it came straight from that era, with the dialogue being shown on titles against a black screen, but most of the information and emotions being conveyed through exaggerated facial expressions and gestures. 

It’s a silent film about the end of the silent films, when the advent of sound, coupled with the Great Depression, made them obsolete.  But it wasn’t just the technique that went obsolete, many of the actors did, as well, once actually delivering dialogue (and ideally doing it well) became a factor.  George’s story could be the story of any actor who couldn’t adapt to the new ways.  In fact, the theme of adapting to a constantly changing world is a universal one, that could be applied to people from all walks of life, especially in this day and age.

But what makes “The Artist” so good isn’t simply that it has a theme that rings true, it’s also that it’s a love story.  One with many facets, not only about romance, but also about loyalty and second chances.  All that, combined with the cinematic form and technique, along with some knockout performances, make “The Artist” an absolute delight to watch. 

Dujardin and Bejo, with their classic looks and expressive faces, truly look like two actors who stepped right out of the period.  Their chemistry is terrific, as you can almost see the sparks between them, despite the fact that they have no dialogue.  Goodman is terrific, and provides some of the funnier moments as the stereotypical, cigar chomping studio honcho.  Cromwell does great with what little he is given to do, and I loved Miller as the bitchy wife.  Oh, and the dog… the dog is brilliant!  See the film and you’ll see why.

On the downside, the film does have the slight scent of prestigious Oscar Bait to it… a scent that usually makes me gag.  When I sense a film is bucking for an Oscar, it just pisses me off.  However, I had such a good time with “The Artist” that I can’t begrudge it that.  Film aficionados will absolutely treasure it, and general audiences who are willing to give it a shot will enjoy it, too, I think. 

But how many will, since it is a black and white silent film, and that undoubtedly will put off a good number of average moviegoers, who sadly would rather see what Asshead Kutcher is doing this “New Year‘s Eve“.  And that really is a shame, because “The Artist” is an immensely entertaining little yarn, with heart and smarts, that is far more worthy of people’s time and dime than most of the junk floating around out there.  It’s slowly trickling into theaters around the country this awards season, and if it comes to one near you, definitely take a chance on it.

The feel bad movie of Christmas.

The H-Bomb:  Remakes are considered by many to be an ongoing epidemic plaguing Hollywood.  Everyone bitches about them, they’re often sited as proof of how creatively bankrupt the movie industry has become, and overall they’re viewed as nothing more than cynical cash-ins.  Normally, I myself share these sentiments, viewing remakes as pointless, unoriginal, and undeserving of my time or money.  But in the case of David Fincher’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, I can and must make an exception, because it is one remake that not only matches the original, but actually surpasses it.

Of course, this isn’t exactly a remake of the 2009 Swedish film, so much as it’s a new adaptation of the Stieg Larsson novel, which is the first entry in what’s known as the “Millennium Trilogy”.   The action is still set in Sweden, though everyone speaks English this time, and the plot is pretty much the same;  Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is a journalist who steps down from his magazine after being convicted of libel.  Soon after, he’s summoned out to an island owned by the rich and powerful Vanger family, where he is hired by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, who vanished 40 years ago, and who he believes was murdered by someone in the family.

The Vanger clan is a peculiar one, in which everyone lives in close proximity to each other, yet they never speak.  As Blomkvist conducts his investigation, he comes to find that some of the family members are more cooperative than others, and everyone seems to have something to hide.  Eventually, he finds himself in need of a research assistant, and turns to Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a punk computer hacker with a look and disposition that is somewhat unconventional, to put it mildly.  She’s a girl with a painful past, a frosty demeanor, and her own unique way of dealing with people who cross her, be it a purse snatcher in the subway or her lecherous social guardian.

Reluctantly, Lisbeth agrees to help Blomkvist with the investigation, and as they dig deeper into the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance, they find evidence that she might have been the victim of a serial killer.  Soon, they realize that their lives are in danger, as someone in the Vanger family does not want them to discover the truth about Harriet.  All the while, an unlikely attraction between Blomkvist and Lisbeth starts to develop.

While I did like the Swedish film of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, I didn’t entirely love it.  I felt it had too many issues to make it a great film; the pacing was off, it was difficult to keep track of all the characters, it was too long, and I just didn’t feel as drawn into the story as I felt I should have been.  This new version rectifies most of these problems.  Right away, from an exhilarating, James Bond-style opening credits sequence, this thing just grabbed me tightly by the nuts and didn’t let go until its final, melancholy moment.  I can’t attest to whether this is more faithful to the novel, as I haven’t read it, but I can say, with certainty, that this new film is the version that I responded to more.  Throw bricks at me if you must, but I just flat out liked this one better.  And no, it has nothing to do with not having to read subtitles (though that certainly didn’t hurt).

Director Fincher and screenwriter Steve Zaillian not only fixed the first film’s imperfections, but actually improved on what that one got right.  The mystery is completely captivating, methodically building tension with Trent Reznor’s and Atticus Ross’ offbeat music score helping to create a feeling of unease throughout.  It moves at a deliberate pace, without ever becoming dull, and makes for a perfect companion piece to Fincher’s under-rated “Zodiac”, which this is, to me, reminiscent of, except with a lot more attitude.  As the two leads, Craig and Mara play off each other well, each giving it as good as they take it, and their chemistry is terrific.  Their rather chilly romance is perfectly believable, despite the age difference, which is brought up.

The film also doesn’t shy away from some of the uglier aspects of its Swedish counterpart, most notably the relationship between Lisbeth and her guardian.  I won’t say exactly what goes down, but things do get nasty, and it is just as potent in this version as it was in the original.  The guy sitting right next to me in the theater became visibly uncomfortable during these scenes, averting his eyes, squirming in his seat, and afterwards saying out loud, “This is too graphic for me.”  It does indeed get pretty rough, and if you’re of the squeamish variety, you may just want to avoid this altogether.  You may also want to pass on this if you’re a cat person, since something very bad happens to a certain feline at one point.

Much like Fincher’s previous film, “The Social Network”, this is very much an actor’s piece, and this time, he has brought some top level talent to the table.  As Blomkvist, Craig gives what I would say is his best performance outside of Bond.  I think he’s a tremendous improvement over the original Blomkvist, Michael Nyqvist.  Don’t get me wrong, Nyqvist was good, but Craig is sympathetic and charismatic in a way that he wasn’t.  Plummer, the veteran that he is, brings real gravitas to the role of the ailing Vanger patriarch.  He perfectly conveys the sadness of a man whose great wealth has brought him very little happiness and who has been tormented over the years by not knowing the fate of his beloved niece.  Stellan Skarsgard is just creepy as Martin Vanger, Henrik’s nephew.  Even when he’s being nice, he’s still just creepy, and that’s why I fucking love him.

Of the entire cast, the one I initially had doubts about, the one potential weak link, was the girl with the dragon tattoo herself, Rooney Mara.  It’s not just that Noomi Rapace, the original Lisbeth, seemed irreplaceable, it’s also that Mara seemed unlikely to be able to fill her Ass Kicker boots.  She was good in her bit in “The Social Network”, but if she had been anymore lifeless in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” re-dud, she would have been playing a corpse.  But, my concerns were misplaced, as she turned out to be every bit as amazing as Rapace ever was.  She’s tough, brilliant, sexy, and disturbed.  Her Lisbeth seemed to me to have a bit more warmth than Rapace’s, and by a bit, I mean a bit, as  the character still is emotionally cold and distant. At one point she dons a t-shirt that reads “Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck.”  Truly a chick after my own heart.  Mara has made the role of Lisbeth Salander entirely her own, and I do see some award nominations in her near future.

I would say she steals the film, except that the rest of the film is almost just as good.  Fincher, one of the best directors working today, has crafted a near masterpiece, marred only by over-length (the one flaw of the original they didn’t fix).  People who haven’t read the book or seen the Swedish film may get a little lost in spots, and the Lisbeth/guardian subplot may seem extraneous to those not familiar with the entire “Millennium Trilogy”.  I am a little nervous that they spent $100 million to make this thing, as this isn’t exactly a film that’s going to appeal to everyone, and if it fails to make its money back, it could prevent the rest of the trilogy from being made into films.  And that would be too bad, as “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a dark, gripping mystery that is, while tough to take at times, intelligently written and flawlessly acted.  Take it from the H, the feel bad movie of Christmas is one you do not want to miss!

“Words get us nowhere.  It’s time for action.”

The H-Bomb:  Is that right, Carlos?  Time for action?  That’s why your life story offers so many words and so little action?  Oh, but I’m jumping ahead of myself, aren’t I?  “Carlos” tells the true story of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, or, as the world would come to know him, Carlos the Jackal (though he’s never actually called the Jackal in the film).

Kicking off with a disclaimer saying that it should be regarded as “historical fiction”, the film covers Carlos’ entire career as a political terrorist for the Palestinian cause, from his early days fighting for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Red Army Faction in Europe, to his rise to fame/infamy, to later in his life, when he’s living in hiding and struggling, in vain, to stay relevant.

Of all the killings, bombings, and kidnappings that he orchestrated, the most notable, and the one that the film spends a great deal of time on, is when Carlos and his crew take hostages at the OPEC headquarters in 1975, though the real mission is to assassinate a certain official.  It all goes pretty wrong, leaving three dead, but Carlos, through careful maneuvering, is able to elude capture.

That single episode shows entirely who Carlos the Jackal was.  They could’ve made the movie solely about that incident, and they would have had a pretty taut thriller.  A kind of “Dog Day Afternoon” on a global political scale.  But instead they just made it one part in the larger story of Carlos.  They went for a full blown epic, one that was set in many countries and spoken in just as many languages.  They went for huge, and huge is what they got.  Too huge, as the end result is bloated, drawn out, and, at times, a tad flat.

“Carlos”, directed by Olivier Assayas, exists in two forms: as a nearly six hour long, three part mini-series, and as a two hour long theatrical film.  I watched the mini-series, and it’s worth mentioning that it should be viewed as a mini-series, meaning it should be taken in one segment at a time.  By trying to watch the whole thing in one shebang, you would only be dooming yourself to hate it.

The film that “Carlos” immediately reminded me of was Steven Soderbergh’s two-parter “Che”, not just in its sheer length, but in it’s style (documentary style), and it’s tone (understated).  There is also, of course, the connection of the subject matter, since Che and Carlos both considered themselves “revolutionaries.”  In fact, portraits of Che Guevera hang on the walls of the many safe houses and flats that Carlos stays in throughout the film.  Like “Che”, I found “Carlos” interesting to a point, but also tedious in spots and overall just lacking any true insight into who its protagonist was.

That is my real problem, I didn’t feel like I knew any more about Carlos the Jackal after the film than before it.  As played by Edgar Ramirez, Carlos was a calculating, strategic thinker who was perhaps a glory hound,  but sincerely committed to his cause.  But why?  Why did a Venezuelan care so much about Palestine,  so much as to dedicate his entire life as a terrorist to it?  Why was violence the only solution for him?  We never get answers to any of these questions.

Instead, we only see his actions.  Carlos shooting people.  Carlos tossing bombs into storefronts.  And Carlos talking.  Oh, we get a lot of him talking.  Talk, talk, talk.  Of his grandiose ideas.  Of how deeply committed he is to the cause.  Of how he dreams of uniting revolutionaries to the world over.  We get to hear over and over again about his philosophies, but not about what drove him.

And he talks about these ideas of his with so, so many people.  “Carlos” is a film with a cast of millions.  There are so many players, in fact, that when they come on screen, we’re shown little subtitles to tell us who the hell they are.  It’s all for naught, as trying to keep all these people straight is utterly futile.  And that new characters keep on being introduced, right up until the very end, really doesn’t help matters either.

As a polemic, director Assayas keeps it objective and doesn’t judge Carlos.  He’s neither a good guy or a bad guy.  Neither romanticized nor demonized.  Instead, his words and actions are depicted in a clinical, matter-of-fact fashion, leaving it up to us to decide whether he was a terrorist or a freedom fighter.  I lean towards terrorist, myself, but that’s just me.  He certainly was cold blooded, with zero remorse.  I did laugh out loud when he claims to have “a great respect for human life,” though I don’t think I was supposed to.

“Carlos” does benefit significantly from a powerful performance by Ramirez.  He really put all of himself into the role, and is indeed terrific.  He pulls a De Niro in “Raging Bull” in how his figure morphs over time.  The youthful Carlos dons many looks and disguises as he bounces around Europe and the Middle East, while the older incarnation, who was a drinker, is puffier and sports the requisite beer belly.  The film’s faults aside, he is riveting to watch, and manages to hold the film together when nothing else does.

Overall, “Carlos” is not a bad film, as the subject matter is inherently interesting and it was never really boring, per se, just monotonous and long winded in places.  I would expect a biopic that’s six hours long to have a fully developed lead character.  But the Carlos we get here is underwritten, and, as a result, the entire film, while striving for greatness and importance (much like Carlos himself), is under-whelming.

His father’s son.

The H-Bomb:  It’s the late 1980′s, and Iraqi Soldier Latif Yahia (Dominic Cooper) has been summoned to Uday Hussein’s office for a mysterious assignment.  They went to school together way back in the day, but he has no idea what Uday could want with him now, except that he does bear an uncanny resemblance to the Iraqi leader’s son.  Aside from the fact that Latif is three centimeters shorter, his eyes are a little different, and that “his cock is too big,” he is a virtual dead ringer.  So, Uday makes Latif an offer he can’t refuse, to become his double.  And it literally is an offer Latif cannot refuse, since Uday will have him imprisoned and his family killed if he refuses.

Latif himself will have to disappear completely.  He’ll never be allowed to see or speak to his family again.  That kind of stinks, but, there are perks to the job; he’ll be living in Uday’s palaces, wearing his designer suits, his Rolex watches, driving his sports cars…  everything, except fucking his women.  That is the one thing Uday is not willing to share with him.  Although, Uday’s favorite play thing, Sarrab (Ludivine Sagnier), does take a liking to Latif, and comes onto him accordingly.

Uday treats him like a brother, and takes him practically everywhere he goes.  It’s during these wildly decadent excursions to nightclubs and private parties that Latif gets to see the very ugly side of Baghdad’s most spoiled brat; the drinking, the drugs, the raping, and the spontaneous killing of anyone who crosses him.  Latif’s new job becomes even less appealing when its real purpose surfaces, to act as a decoy for would be assassins.

Latif decides that he’s had enough of the insanity that this psycho Uday calls a life and starts to think about his escape.  But that could be tricky, since Uday has told him “You’re mine now…  and I’ll never let you go.”  And he means it, too.  Sucks to be Latif.

Saddam Hussein was a fucking monster.  No sane person is going to deny that.  But as bad as he was, his eldest son, Uday, was even worse.  He’d pick up a 14 year-old schoolgirl, drug her up, and screw her.  He’d rape a woman during her wedding reception, then laugh as she commits suicide by jumping off the balcony.  He’d carve someone up with a knife then shoot them in the face, just for the fuck of it.  And he would do it all while sitting in his lavish, gold crusted office, snorting absurd amounts of cocaine, just like a Middle Eastern Tony Montana, only more manic and less quotable.

That, ultimately, is what “The Devil’s Double” is.  Not a political drama, or a docu-drama, but a gangster film.  One that is highly stylized, larger than life, and, by director Lee Tamahori’s admission, plays fast and loose with the facts.  Much of the specific incidents depicted are made up, but the essence of the kind of cretin that was Uday Hussein is conveyed quite accurately.  He was a gangster who didn’t have to worry about the law, because he was the law.  “God gives me nothing.  If I see something I want, I just take it” was his motto, and that is what he did, pretty much with complete impunity,  the occasional scolding from daddy aside.  The film makes no bones about it, Uday was slime.

The main reason to see “The Devil’s Double”, and it very much makes it worth seeing, is the tremendous dual performance from Dominic Cooper.  This is an instance where I forgot I was watching the same actor play both roles.  Between the slight differences in appearance, and their different voices (that’s two accents he employed), I just accepted that I was watching two different people.  His Uday is a lunatic man-child who is always jacked up, wired, and ready to blow at any moment, while his Latif is a calm, sane, decent man just trying to cope with the madness around him.

Another thing to consider is that Cooper also has the task of playing Latif playing Uday, which we get to see him practice in the mirror, in an amusing bit.  This was a very demanding task, the kind that any real actor dreams of undertaking, and Cooper delivers.  It is a truly great pair of performances, and I know I say this a lot, but it’s a pair of performances that is very much deserving of award recognition (which it shamefully probably won’t get).

Director Tamahori, who nearly sunk the James Bond franchise with the abysmal “Die Another Day”, wholly redeems himself here.  He fills the picture with stylish, vibrant visuals and keeps it moving at a brisk, energetic pace, giving the film the look and feel of a Scorsese mob flick.  He also doesn’t shy away from the utter brutality of the story, making the violence visceral, bloody, and never letting us forget what a sadistic fuck Uday was.  I haven’t seen Tamahori’s much lauded debut, “Once Were Warriors”, but of the films of his I have seen, this is easily the most impressive.

In fact, I would consider this a great film, if it wasn’t for one little thing that kept nagging me throughout; the way Latif acts towards Uday.  Throughout the whole film, Latif doesn’t even attempt to mask his contempt for Uday, often talking back to him, insulting him, and even in one instance, slugging him.  I find it highly unlikely that Uday would have put up with this.  Yeah, Latif was the best double he could find. Yeah, he wanted to embrace him like a brother, but he was a Kurd, for Christ’s sake!  Not to mention, Uday was the kind of guy who would kill people for looking at him the wrong way, so would he really have tolerated this kind of crap from Latif?  I think not.

That one hang up of mine aside, I would say that “The Devil’s Double” is one solid picture.  It’s certainly far more entertaining than I would expect a movie about Saddam’s number one son to be, and a lot funnier, as Uday is often made to look like a clownish buffoon.  I must confess that I’m not sure what exactly the point, or the moral, was supposed to be, other than it’s just a damn interesting story.  It shouldn’t be taken as a history lesson or a biography, since again, many, many liberties were taken, but sure does make for one fascinating watch.

“The secret is always in the clockwork.”

The H-Bomb:  After his father’s untimely death, 12 year-old Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is taken in by his uncle (Ray Winstone), who maintains the clocks at a train station in post-World War I Paris.  The uncle is a notorious drunk and disappears before long, leaving Hugo alone to take care of the clocks himself.  Although, Hugo is not entirely alone, as he has a child-sized mechanical automaton that his father found to keep him company.  It appears as though the automaton was designed to write, but since its heart shaped key is missing, Hugo has never been able to turn it on.

Since Hugo lives and works behind the walls of the station, nobody actually knows that he’s the one running the clocks, so he is forced to steal food from the station vendors in order to survive.  He has also been taking mechanical toys from a toy booth and using their parts to try and repair the automaton.  One day, he is caught by the owner of the toy booth, Georges (Ben Kingsley).  When Georges makes Hugo turn out his pockets, he finds a notebook with schematic drawings of the automaton inside it.  He confiscates the notebook and tells Hugo that he’s going to burn it, but not simply out of punishment, as the drawings of the automaton seem to actually mean something to Georges.

Shortly after, Hugo follows Georges home and meets his goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz).  They become fast friends and she agrees to help him get the notebook back.  In doing so, they learn something incredible about Georges.  Something about his past…  before he was a toy booth vendor.  And that’s about all I can say about the plot, since discovering the story with our young heroes is the best way to experience it.

“Hugo” is a Martin Scorsese picture.  But, it is a different kind of Martin Scorsese picture.  There’s no Joe Pesci popping some guy’s eye out with a vice, no Mohawked Robert DeNiro blowing a dude’s hand to pieces with a .44 Magnum.  This is a Martin Scorsese family picture.  I had no idea such a thing existed, but alas, here it is, and it is an absolute fucking masterpiece.  Sorry for dropping the F-bomb in a family film review, but it’s the only way to get my feelings fully across– this review’s for the parents, anyway, not the kiddies.

Normally, I hate family films.  I truly despise them.  They bore me with their blandness and insult me with their stupidity.  But this is one family film that is neither bland nor stupid.  Instead, it’s gorgeous, thematically rich, and just absolutely fantastic in every way imaginable.  As we come to find, it’s a movie about movies, Scorsese’s love letter to the films of the past, and he made it using all the technology of today to deliver an experience that’s both moving and wholly cinematic.  He’s considered one of the greatest directors to have ever lived for a reason, and here, he pulls out all the stops.

As one character puts it, movies are the place where dreams are made, and with a heightened visual style that’s reminiscent of Tim Burton, except with more heart and charm, Scorsese turns all of Paris into a giant dream place. The 3D visuals really pop off the screen and hit like a rocket to the eye socket.  The dazzling opening shot, starting on the cityscape of Paris and going into the grimy bowels of the train station, is a stunning blend of CG and live action melded together seamlessly.  Scorsese shows us the Lumiere Brothers’ “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat”, the film that made the audience think the train was going to come off the screen and run them over (those poor, dumb primates), and then later on puts his own incredible twist on it.

Scorsese has never made a 3D movie before, but you sure could’ve fooled me, because he uses it in a way that’s not distracting, or a gimmick, but in a way that really immerses us in the story and makes us feel like we’re right there with the characters.  The actors really shine in their close ups, and there were so many times when I felt like I could’ve reached out and touched them.

Speaking of the actors, they are yet another major reason this film works as well as it does.  The entire cast is on top of their game and they each play their roles, large and small, to perfection.  Butterfield, who looked to me like a child version of Cillian Murphy, I’ve never seen before, but he sure made me into a fan with his performance here.  He’s equal parts mischievous, vulnerable, and endearing.  Carrying a film of this size is a lot to ask of a child actor, but he makes it look so damn easy.  He’s matched by Moretz, who is absolutely kick-ass as the girl who holds the key to one of the film’s main secrets.  She’s got a big career ahead of her, no doubt about it.

Among the veterans in the cast, Kingsley is first rate as the proud-yet-heartbroken Georges.  He has the look of a man with a painful past, who has given up on dreaming, and I see some award nods in his future.  Winstone, unfortunately, is in and out of the picture before you really get a chance to notice him, which is too bad, since his colorful lush of a character had potential.  Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays the train station cop with a mean Doberman, a gimp leg, and a child-sized jail cell, provides the expected comic relief with his bumbling antics.  I expected to truly dislike him, but honestly, I didn’t.  He manages to be funny without being too over-the-top or out of place.

In fact, I can’t think of anything to really gripe about.  I could whine about the length, as it does go over two hours, but it doesn’t feel too long.  The 3D glasses did give me a bit of a headache, but that’s my problem.  All things considered, “Hugo” is wonderful on every level; the terrific script, the superb performances, the amazing cinematography (by the great Robert Richardson), and, of course, Scorsese’s masterful direction.  I would rate this up there alongside “Goodfellas” and “Raging Bull” as being one of his finest.

It’s a film for young and old, and everyone in between.  For film buffs, especially those with an affinity for the dawn of cinema, “Hugo” will be a huge treat.  Never mind the lame vampire soap operas, the dancing penguins, the talking animal puppets (as much as I love them), and all that other nonsense, “Hugo” is true cinematic magic and pretty much perfect.  It’s certainly my favorite film of the year, I even put it over “Super 8″.  If you only get out to see one film this Holiday Season, do make it this one.