As we do each year at this time, Christmas presents under the tree, turkey and all the fixin’s at the ready for Christmas Day, the pantry filled with Christmas goodies and the table laden with chocolates, heading into Boxing Week — the one busiest week at the cinema out of the 52 — we take a bit of time out to present capsule reviews of a handful of the films currently screening at your local multiplex. This Christmas weekend, Part 1 …
The Artist (Grade: A): If you’re going to see one picture this holiday season make it The Artist, the odds-on favourite for a Best Picture Oscar. An absolute delight of a film to catch on screen at the multiplex, this silent film take on A Star is Born is everything you’ve read and heard about …
- The 14 critics at Gurus O’ Gold have weighed in, as have most of the critics organizations, and The Artist is the consensus 2011 best picture favourite. Yes, it’s counterintuitive that a French black-and-white silent film that pays homage to the movies of the 1920s should emerge as the frontrunner for Oscar. Nothing that is written here will convince you to see The Artist if you’ve set your mind against it. But if you choose not to see The Artist you’ll miss one of the most delightfully engaging and charming, funny and poignant films to make it to the big screen this year. Peter Bradshaw, at The Guardian, is rapturous about The Artist, as is Ty Burr at the Boston Globe. As we wrote above, if you’re going to see one film this holiday season, make it The Artist. You won’t be sorry you did. A guaranteed good time!
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Grade: A-): The most propulsive film you’ll see this holiday season, director David Fincher’s re-interpretation of Stieg Larsson’s best-seller emerges as one of the most riveting pieces of cinema available to you this holiday season. From Jeff Cronenweth’s dark-hued cinematography to Fincher’s brilliant editing, from outstanding lead performances by Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara (who is everything and more that is good and great you’ve heard about her, even if Fincher does tend to fetishize her), this is a rip-roaring thriller of the first order, a technically brilliant film (acting and production values are terrific across the board), a film that grabs you by the lapels from the moment the opening credits start to roll. The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo is the thinking person’s feminist entertainment this holiday season. An absolute must-see.
My Week With Marilyn (Grade: B+): If there was one movie that could be guaranteed a good time for absolutely anyone who loves cinema, any one of you who consider yourself to be a romantic, and who has maintained a child-like wonder at the events of your life — despite dealing with the travails of life which burden us all from time to time — My Week With Marilyn is the movie for you. Touching, thrilling, exhilarating, crackling with wit (and pathos), captivating, revelatory and fun, My Week With Marilyn is this year’s must-see Christmas confection that the whole family can enjoy.
Hugo (Grade: B+): You’ve not seen 3D at the movies until you’ve seen Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Paying homage to cinematic history, the award-winning film director’s latest tour-de-force cinematic wonderment offers a magical, intricate adaptation of Brian Selnick’s best-selling children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret — about an orphan boy in 1930s Paris who lives in the train station, adjusting clocks, following the death of his father — and emerges all at once as a dazzling, visually exquisite, rapturously beautiful, touching epic. Here’s another holiday film for the whole family!
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Grade: B+): Director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) does a bang up job of bringing John Le Carré’s acclaimed 1978 cold war spy thriller to the big screen. And Gary Oldman, as the film’s central character, George Smiley, gives such a reined in, tamped down performance as to be barely recognizable. Make no mistake, Tinker is no James Bond or Mission Impossible knockoff. This is authentic, deliberate, beautifully crafted labyrinthine film fare, and if you’re the patient, thoughtful type, one of the standout entertainments of this holiday season.
Shame (Grade: B+): The latest from director Steve McQueen (Hunger) will be the toughest sit at the cinema this holiday season should you choose to take in a screening of this hard-eyed and ferocious case study on sexual addiction. Replete with graphic nudity, sexual aberration, with nary a hint as to what motivates the lead characters (naked, standout performances by both Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, as brother and sister), Shame offers a riveting piece of cinema. Easily one of the best films of the year.
J. Edgar (Grade: B): Despite awarding Clint Eastwood’s latest film only a ‘B’ as a letter grade, we are nonetheless wholeheartedly recommending J. Edgar as more than worthy Christmas movie fare, as an admirable and wholly entertaining take on the public and private life of one of the most powerful and detestable figures of the 20th century. Leonardo DiCaprio’s rich, ambitious performance as the conflicted FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, Dustin Lance Black’s thoughtful, provocative script, along with Eastwood’s always reliable direction, make for a sprawling, darkly fascinating, intriguing and captivating biopic, easily worthy of your time and money.
And now for the rest, the films we were not particularly taken with, and therefore are not recommending, despite plaudits galore from a broad cross-section of the critics’ fraternity.
The Descendants (Grade: B): Alexander Payne’s film picked up the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Best Picture award, has earned plaudits elsewhere and is a shoo-in for a Best Picture Oscar nod. But we’re flummoxed as to why. We’re not saying The Descendants isn’t watchable; it is. Or that the performances are not first-rate; they are. But this is passive, beleaguered, clumsy filmmaking. Not unpleasant, but hardly ground-breaking film fare.
The Adventures of Tintin (Grade: B-): There’s always got to be one film each Christmas that fails at the domestic box office. This Steven Spielberg animated film is this year’s failure but not quite, given its $239 million haul overseas. TinTin didn’t work for us because of the second-rate 3D, a story that employs a drunken sailor as comedic relief, and because we felt a laziness in Spielberg’s approach to the material. You’ve got limited dollars. Better to spend your hard-earned money on more worthwhile film fare.
Young Adult (Grade: B): Migawd is the Charlize Theron character in Young Adult an unpleasant piece of work, an ugly mean-spirited train wreck who foists herself into our consciousness, when we’d have been better off not knowing her at all. Although director Jason Reitman manages technically sound filmmaking (although we didn’t particularly care for Diablo Cody’s too pat screenplay), this is wholly unnecessary, pointless and nasty film fare. And the studio is releasing this film at Christmas? Ah, no. Uh-huh.
