Blue Valentine
Directed by: Derek Cianfrance
Written by: Derek Cianfrance, Cami Delavigne & Joey Curtis
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka

There’s not a whole lot happening with the relationship film. From annual Jennifer Aniston comedies to requisite art house dramas, there hasn’t been a real innovation in far too long. Blue Valentine takes a crack at it, employing a unique combination of techniques and a back and forth bittersweet narrative, but it still falls squarely into the latter camp.

Tremendous credit is owed first and foremost to its cast. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams play characters at the beginning and end of a relationship, and the difference couldn’t be more stark. The pair is essentially pulling double duty, and the juxtaposition between past and present is what makes Blue Valentine unique. We meet the pair now: Gosling with a cigarette crutch and Williams with a defunct imagination. The spontaneous and affectionate couple of years past are unrecognizable at first glance.

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I Love You, Phillip Morris
Directed by: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa
Written by: John Requa & Glenn Ficarra (written by), Steve McVicker (book)
Starring: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann

The battle to bring I Love You, Phillip Morris to the screen was a curious one. Originally set to bow in early 2010, the film was shelved for six months by its distributors. A vague legal battle postponed the second scheduled release last summer, and the film finally limped to my local art house in December. There was widespread speculation that one of the reasons for its initial delay was — how should I put this — its gayness.

Honestly, that was one of the primary reasons I was interested in seeing this docudrama, which casts Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey as penal lovers (pardon my French). Distinctly different actors, the idea of the pair performing together proved an interesting proposition, especially if the tone required Carrey to display a modicum of gravity. Unfortunately, a modicum is about all we get.

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The King’s Speech
Directed by: Tom Hooper
Written by: David Seidler (screenplay)
Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Gambon

It’s easy to shrug off awards films when the season rolls around, and on the surface, The King’s Speech shows all the symptoms of shameless Oscar bait. It’s a period drama loaded with stiff English accents, led by a cast of previous Academy Award winners and nominees. In all honesty, the average moviegoer doesn’t have a whole lot to be excited about in Tom Hooper’s new film, but those compelled by the idea of a character study detailing the relationship between King George VI (Colin Firth) and his impertinent speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) will find this an often lively and effective drama.

The speech angle is an interesting distinguishment. Unlike many of the films that helped lend the genre its dry reputation, authentic atmosphere doesn’t substitute for drama here. The King’s Speech works not because we watch a historical personage overcome a debilitating verbal ailment, but because we watch a human being do so. Colin Firth has received much kudos for his performance, but it’s likely many honored him for the wrong reasons. Firth is excellent because he humanizes George VI — making him rounder than some haughty profile — not because he can act with a stammer.

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True Grit
Directed by: Joel & Ethan Coen
Written by: Joel & Ethan Coen (screenplay), Charles Portis (novel)
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin

It makes perfect sense for the Coen brothers to direct a period western. They’ve danced around one for years, with modernist takes on the genre like Fargo and No Country for Old Men, while tirelessly exploring the early side of the twentieth century elsewhere in their work. True Grit, however, is their first giant leap into the past. In fact, outside of a vignette that opens their 2009 film A Serious Man, the winter of 1878, where True Grit begins, is a frontier for both the characters and the filmmakers.

I’m of the mind that the Coens, who have now impressively released four films in four consecutive years, benefit from occasionally stepping outside their comfort zone. True Grit is a fascinating experiment in that regard, though in adapting Charles Portis’ 1968 novel for the screen (and mindful I’m sure of the John Wayne adaptation to which their film would inevitably be compared), Joel and Ethan Coen contribute less of themselves than might be expected. Granted, the dark humor and caustic irony that run throughout are distinctly Coen brothers additions, but perhaps more so than any of their other films, their latest is a mostly opaque effort.

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The Fighter
Directed by: David O. Russell
Written by: Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson (screenplay), Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Keith Dorrington (story)
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, and Jack McGee

It’s easy to take a film like David O. Russell’s The Fighter for granted around award season. It’s minus the panache of the year’s other heavy hitters, and fills a comfortable ‘sports drama’ niche. O. Russell’s film may very well be among the ten best picture nominations announced next month, but it doesn’t have a shot at the title — which is a shame, because it earns greatness in its own right.

The Fighter isn’t the best film of the year, but it features some of the best characters and performances of the year, wrapped in a familiar but accessible underdog story with plenty of fresh hooks. Much attention has been paid to Christian Bale as boxer “Irish” Micky Ward’s crack-addicted brother, and rightly so. Even among so talented an ensemble, Bale shines in his transformative turn, once again whittling himself down to little more than a human wireframe.

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The Tourist
Directed by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Written by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie, and Julian Fellowes (screenplay), Jerome Salle (Anthony Zimmer)
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp , Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton

2010 has been a year glutted with mediocre spy fare. The Tourist joins the dubious ranks of Red, Knight and Day, and Killers — and that it might be the best of the lot isn’t saying much. Anchored by arguably the strongest cast, including stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, he Tourist moves at a more relaxed pace than its blockbuster brethren. Then again, Red was plenty slow, but still wound up nigh incomprehensible.

I understood The Tourist, which is a compliment, unfortunately. The Venetian caper keeps its audience in the loop, with a story thankfully straightforward enough to follow. Jolie plays Elise Clifton-Ward, the squeeze of a master criminal who’s lifted two billion pounds from a no-nonsense English gangster (Steven Berkoff). In order to keep the identity of her mysterious lover secret, she employs the aid of an unwitting proxy, American tourist and self described “math teacher,” Frank Tupelo (Depp).

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Tangled
Directed by: Nathan Greno and Byron Howard
Written by: Dan Fogelman (screenplay), Grimm Brothers (fairy tale)
Starring: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, Ron Pearlman

This is what you get for not seeing The Princess and the Frog. Disney eschewed its revitalization of traditional animation for this forgettable CG adaptation of Rapunzel, which goes by the nondescript nom de plume: Tangled.

If the recent announcement that the animation giant is placing a moratorium on fairy tale films should come as a surprise to anyone, their position on the matter is telegraphed plainly into the first five minutes of their latest and last: modern audiences won’t sit for straight-faced fantasy. The name-change alone underscores the corporation’s feelings on the commercial viability of a tradition it once held proud.

That willful dissolution of magic is a slap in the face to Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. Tangled begins with striking imagery, but buries it beneath a sour, smarmy voiceover by this year’s prince-not-so-charming, Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi). As narrator, he cracks jokes at the expense of the archetypal framework — as if he doesn’t, and we shouldn’t, treat the story with one modicum of seriousness. Being cavalier about your own film isn’t a great way to hook your viewers.

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Love and Other Drugs
Directed by: Edward Zwick
Written by: Charles Randolph, Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, Josh Gad

Love and Other Drugs has an immediate leg-up on its romcom competition in that it actually has a halfway decent premise. Set against the backdrop of the nineties pharmaceutical boom, and with a charismatic Jake Gyllenhaal shucking Zoloft and Viagra for the umbrella company Pfizer (drugs which today are so commonplace that Microsoft Office automatically capitalized them for me), there is the tantalizing potential that Love and Other Drugs may do more than play it safe.

Now consider Anne Hathaway as an artsy early-onset Parkinson’s victim and the hard R for nudity, and it feels as though the filmmakers are genuinely determined to take a few risks — and they do, but not necessarily in the right places. Much of Love and Other Drugs feels frustratingly formulaic, and conflicting ideas (presumably the amalgam of multiple drafts and authors) lend the film an unkempt, atonal quality. A surplus of half-baked ideas suffices in the place of one strong one, and this nearly two-hour endeavor never amounts to more than the sum of its disparate parts.

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Unstoppable
Directed by: Tony Scott
Written by: Mark Bomback
Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Corrigan

With a capable cast and the right script, Tony Scott has made terrific movies. Lately, however, he’s taken on a string of lousy screenplays and contributed little to them. In Unstoppable, it isn’t initially clear whether he’s working for or against us — irksome stylistic choices threaten to derail his momentum at every turn. But like Triple Seven, a ghost train towing a half-mile of hazardous chemicals, the breakneck energy he builds vaporizes any obstructions in its path. Unstoppable is a fun, effective film.

Anchored by charismatic performances by Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, Scott’s latest is refreshingly straightforward: a seasoned engineer (Washington) and his trainee (Pine) are on a routine delivery when they unwittingly become the last, best hope to stop an unmanned locomotive from jumping track in a highly populated Pennsylvanian town. Silly though the characters’ transitions from blue-collar workers to action stars might be, the premise is simple and stays that way, and the plot builds not in scale but in intensity. Of course, there’s plenty of railyard jargon and engineering exposition peppered throughout to create a veneer of complexity, but “Can’t stop the train” is about all you’ll ever need to know.

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Paranormal Activity 2
Directed by:  Tod Williams
Written by: Michael R. Perry, Christopher Landon, Tom Pabst (screenplay), Michael R. Perry (story)
Starring: Molly Ephraim, Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland

Paranormal Activity 2 is inferior to its predecessor — few sequels aren’t. I could rag on it for regurgitating the ideas and scenarios that made the original such a memorable theater experience, but what’s more interesting to me is where it goes right. Very few people awaited this found footage follow-up with any degree of anticipation, and with a conspicuous absence of the advance screenings that so stoked public interest in the first, Paranormal Activity 2 was, to all appearances, shaping up to be an unmitigated disaster.

Turns out it was plain bad marketing. PA2 might actually be the most conceptually creative sequel since J.J. Abram’s Star Trek reboot. Like that film, this is chronologically a prequel, with the ill-fated original stars, Katie and Micah (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat), returning in a supporting role as relatives of the affected family. The handheld camera premise has also been extrapolated on, and after the first paranormal incident (misconstrued as a break-in), the patriarch of the Rey family (Brian Boland) has a series of security cameras installed, by which we monitor his kitchen, living room, patio, bedroom, and nursery.

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Saw 3D
Directed by: Kevin Greutert
Written by: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Starring: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell

How many Saws does that make now? Evidently, even its creators have stopped counting. Saw 3D is only the second film in the annual horror franchise I’ve seen (the first being the first), and this alleged “final chapter” assumes working knowledge of Jigsaw canon. My critique, however, is of Saw 3D as a stand-alone film, though my gut reaction undoubtedly echoes what you already know — this is a ‘fans only’ affair.

The story of Saw fandom is one of diminishing returns. After being decimated at the box office this Halloween and last by the low-budget Paranormal Activity films, the series is struggling to stay relevant, or at least to sell tickets on shock-value alone. Saw has long since passed that threshold, and the obvious draw this year is the incorporation of 3D. It may seem like a gimmicky application of the technology, but having human entrails hurled into the audience is the logical next-step for the series, and may even be the highlight of this experience.

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Red
Directed by: Robert Schwentke
Written by: Jon & Erich Hoeber (screenplay), Warner Ellis and Cully Hamner (graphic novel)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss

Red is bland. Jilting its vibrant namesake, director Robert Schwentke’s pallid comic book movie is about as exciting as a grayscale rainbow. It’s a self-celebratory slog and one of the longest hour and fifty minutes I’ve spent at the movies this year. In my defense, its trailer was a calculated work of CIA-level deception — each moment is expertly chosen to give false impression that the whole is mindless fun. But mindless fun is only half right.

There’s next to nothing to say about a film this unremittingly boring. I’d stop just short of calling it a failure, but the most incredible thing about Red is that such a lackluster script attracted such high-profile talent.

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