All Equine on the Western Front

War Horse

*** out of ****

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston, Peter Mullan and Niels Arestrup

Running time: 145 minutes

Steven Spielberg’s films are, more often than not, moving and magnificent triumphs of breathtaking wonder and deep emotional catharsis. One of American cinema’s eternal optimists, he is a filmmaker who proudly wears his heart on his sleeve.

While his thrilling tribute to adventure serials – The Adventures of Tintin – plays to fans of action-adventure, another one of his big-screen offerings is out in theatres: an earnest, humanistic drama called War Horse.

Based off a children’s novel by Michael Morpungo, which was also adapted into an acclaimed stage play by Nick Stafford, War Horse is a visually stunning journey to the days of uplifting and sentimental classical Hollywood storytelling.

Bookended by images of lush, pastoral vistas bathed in blood red sunlight, the film makes excellent use of the “John Ford horizon line” (cinematography comes from Spielberg’s frequent collaborator, the irreplacable Janusz Kaminski).

War Horse chronicles the rearing of Joey, a gallant and determined thoroughbred with a battered leg. He is picked up at a rural England auction by an idealistic farmer, Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan), to help him plow a field of turnips in time for the harvest. But his wife, Rosie (Emily Watson), disapproves of his purchase, noting that he is more than the family can afford.

Ted and Rosie’s teenage son, Albert (newcomer Jeremy Irvine), gumptiously agrees to train the horse to plow. The young farm boy is drawn to Joey. His first gaze of marvel at the handsome animal epitomizes the "Spielberg Face," when the director focuses the lens on a character's incredulous look to align the audience with the amazement that they feel.

The two bond delicately riding through the English countryside, although this admiration is abruptly severed when Ted decides to give Joey away to a British cavalry Captain (Tom Hiddleston).

Albert vows that he will see Joey again, and gives the Captain his father’s military flag from his service in the Boer War. Irvine has real gravitas on screen, even though his scenes with the remarkable horse are awkwardly piqued by a boastful crescendo from John Williams’ score.

Joey becomes the focal point for many episodes within the film. He ends up a gallant galloper by fighting for both sides, and even becomes the prized possession of a darling French girl (Celine Buckens) and her doting grandfather (a heartwarming Niels Arestrup).

The horse's resilience is uplifting: even though he is an animal, one can feel his relentless pursuit to return to his rightful owner. As Arestrup’s character tells his granddaughter, summing up Joey’s plight, “You have to look forward or you’ll never get home.”

As a battle picture, War Horse is more heartfelt than harrowing. There is nary a graphic moment in sight, with slain soldiers symbolized by horses galloping over barrels of gunfire without their riders.

The title character is played by eight horses, although bizzarely, none of them receive credit at the end of the film. It’s incredible to watch them pant and gallop through furlongs of trenches, smoke, dirt and carnage – undoubtedly upholstered by expensive special effects – and remain unscathed. The crew who trained and worked with the animals should be heralded for this achievement.

Some moments within the film are hokey, even by Spielberg’s sentimental standards. When John Williams’ stirring score isn’t accompanying Joey’s breathtaking spurts through no-man’s-land, it is relentlessly trying to milk emotion.

There is one particularly moving scene where an English and German soldier both approach Joey, lying entangled in bushels of barbed wire, and cleave through the metal together to free the horse. The score doesn’t swell here, and the scene has greater dramatic impact as a result.

All sap aside, Spielberg has crafted a tale of generous humanism that would please Jean Renoir, family values that would delight William Wyler, breathtaking wartime set-pieces that would thrill John Ford, and the keen attention to the codes of classical Hollywood storytelling – long takes, deep focus – that those cinematic titans championed.

Occasionally, War Horse feels too soft and saccharine for the wartime period it is trying to emulate. But with a magnificent beating heart at its centre, it’s a perfectly sincere piece of holiday feel-goodery, and a terrific tribute to the bygone days of boundless Hollywood epics.

One Doodle That Can’t Be Undid

Young Adult

** out of ****

Directed by: Jason Reitman

Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson and Elizabeth Reaser

Running time: 94 minutes

Life has been good to screenwriter Diablo Cody ever since she abandoned her exotic dancing to become a writer. She won an Oscar for Juno, created a hit television show (The United States of Tara) and now occasionally dabbles in writing a guest column for Entertainment Weekly.

Unfortunately, the hip, brazenly funny lady born Brook Busey attempted to pen something new to foster her development as a film scribe: an off-kilter pitch-black character study about an unredeemable mean girl called Young Adult. She also teamed up with Jason Reitman, who directed her Juno script. The results this time, however, are more mixed, as Cody’s character scribblings don’t add up to a satisfying whole.

The agonizing protagonist is Mavis Gary (a blistering Charlize Theron), a writer for a young adult series that is not selling well. Instead of working on the final installment, she walks around her Minneapolis apartment in a stupor, naps through the afternoon while her dog waits to be fed, and then spends hours perfecting an exacting beautification ritual, designed to make her look 20 years younger.

Then, she heads out for another one night stand or evening of drunken debauchery. Mavis wallows in the same superficial aimlessness that the popular homecoming queens she crafts in her stories live in.

After she receives a photo of a newborn belonging to an high-school flame, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), she vows to head back to her “hick hometown” of Mercury, Minnesota to reclaim her old beau. That Buddy’s married to a sweet wife (Elizabeth Reaser) and has a child doesn’t taint her mission to recapture her dream man. Moreover, like the fluffy characters she writes about, Mavis believes a fairy tale ending is on its way.

Back in Mercury, she bumps into a locker buddy she once ignored named Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt, wry and witty), who has a very different recollection of his youth. Over brews and chats, Matt and Mavis take a break from their wayward lives and reminisce about the high school experience that neither have gotten over.

Young Adult is a film designed around a character, and since the character is particularly inaccessible, the film is not an easy watch. Whether one roots for a manipulative, selfish, clumsily irresponsible character may depend on whether the tiny shreds of humanity that peer from the character at her most vulnerable moments make much of an indent. Otherwise, the film is a deadening 94 minutes of spending time with someone one wishes they hadn’t.

Theron is a versatile actress but she is only offered the range of a two-dimensional character. It is amusing to watch her inhabit the aura of an impersonal and conniving prom queen bitch, though, and observe her steadfastness to never losing that persona. It is a bleak, bold, committed performance.

Beyond that, since Cody's script refuses to allow the character to grow, the film is unable to blossom into anything more than amusing character observations - and a petrifying barrage of product placement.

The only scenes that feel fresh involve the relationship sparked between Mavis and Matt. Mavis was idealized high-school perfection, while Matt was maimed by homophobic jocks. Now, she writes high-school teen lit and he walks around with a crutch, both constant reminders of those four years while growing up.

Although they never connected during their fledgling youth, both are able to confront each other about the lives they had and the ones they lead in the present day. Theron and Oswalt bring a sardonic edge to their characters, turning embitterment into chemistry that works.

Their relationship should have been the primary focus of Young Adult, since the situational structure of Mavis’s journey – show up, entice Buddy and take him back – becomes repetitive and ultimately predictable. Without any character arc or progression from the first frame to the last, Young Adult is a monotonous adventure.

There are no surprises here, except for perhaps the quick regression that director Jason Reitman has seen from his superb first three features into this simplistic, mopey attempt at “dark comedy.” I use that genre in scare quotes here, since the film seldom shocks or humours.

How's Your Thirst for Adventure? A Double Review

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

***1/2 out of ****

Directed by: Brad Bird

Starring: Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg and Michael Nyqvist

Running time: 133 minutes

The Adventures of Tintin

***1/2 out of ****

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Featuring the Voice Talents of: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost

Running time: 107 minutes

Just in time for you to avoid last-minute holiday shopping, two big-budget films have emerged from an exhaustive drought of mercilessly mediocre excitements to deliver virtuoso action filmmaking that not only quench the lack of genre pictures as of late, but invigorate the screen with inventiveness and intelligence.

They are Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, filling the void of entertainment that the last James Bond entry, Quantum of Solace, left in the mouths of espionage lovers, and The Adventures of Tintin, Spielberg’s giddiest action film since Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Director Brad Bird, responsible for smart family entertainment such as The Incredibles and Ratatouille, leaps to action-packed live-action with the fourth Mission: Impossible installment.

He first made an impact in the animation world with his heartfelt adaptation of Ted Hughes’ The Iron Giant. Now, Bird makes his first mark beyond Pixar’s animation studios with a different kind of giant – this one’s made of steel – and it’s the 160-storey behemoth that stands in the centre of Dubai.

The Burj Khalifa may be the height of 75 IMAX screens or so – the towering format may be the best way to glimpse the spiny steel wonder – and it’s the location for Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) most death-defying act. Nearly the entire section in Dubai, which also features a bewildering sandstorm that blinds the urban landscape, was shot with IMAX cameras, bringing out the city with an unparalleled magnitude.

Hunt has no choice but to climb 11 storeys of the Burj Khalifa to save the world. He’s pursuing Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), a Russian nuclear strategist looking to kickstart a nuclear war (quite the MacGuffin).

The “impossible” factor of this mission is trickier than using adhesive-based gloves to crawl up the Burj Khalifa. Hunt, broken free from a Moscow prison by fellow IMF agents Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton), must go incognito after his team is blamed for bombing the Kremlin.

With “Ghost Protocol” evoked by the President, any action by the IMF is unsanctioned. So Hunt and his team, alongside intelligence analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner, unsurprisingly strong in action mode), are on their own to track down Hendricks and recover Russian nuclear codes.

Bird, an expert director with animation, proved to be a valuable choice for what seemed like a forgotten franchise. When you’re crafting an intricate scene with bone-cracking action that must be pieced together from various cameras at different angles yet remain consistently clear, it helps that you have experience with storyboarding and visualization. These sequences, well-paced and spatially masterful, move at a clip yet are never disorienting or confusing.

Teamed up with veteran cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood) and legendary editor Paul Hirsch (Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back), Bird avoids jarring chaos and quick edits. Instead, the breakneck sequences are staged and lit well, interweaving with other scenes of a similar intensity to rachet up suspense.

It also helps matters when your lead actor decides to perform most of his own stunts, including the vertical climb up the Burj Khalifa. Risky business, indeed.

With its globe-trotting escapades and nifty gadgets that seem as if they were designed by Edna Mode herself, Ghost Protocol is more than just a James Bond surrogate. It’s a downright thrilling and outright preposterous action-adventure, the most exciting and competently entertaining Mission yet.

Even though Steven Spielberg turned 65 on Dec. 18, he’s always been a kid at heart. Whether resorting to family friendly sentimentality or luminous effects-driven wonders, his films are usually orchestrated with big crescendoes of action and emotion.

Spielberg’s latest swashbuckler, The Adventures of Tintin, presented without an ounce of bloat or backstory, has the most lifelike motion-capture animation I’ve witnessed on a big screen so far.

For those unfamiliar with the popular series of comic books from Belgian artist Hergé, they follow young journalist/sleuth Tintin (Jamie Bell) and his dog Snowy (the coolest, feistiest screen canine in years). Tintin is known in his community for his driven curiosity to pursue every story that smell of intrigue and adventure.

His latest infectiously exciting excursion sends him across the Meditteranean and through the vast dunes of the Sahara. He is off for Bagghar, a Moroccan port where a model of the Unicorn, a three-masted wartime ship, is hidden.

Inside this model ship is a scroll that contains part of a message that will reveal the co’ordinates to the location of sunken treasure. Tintin possesses one scroll, from the Unicorn model he picked up in a London market and another belongs to the menacing Ivan Sakharine (Daniel Craig), who snatches Tintin and Snowy and holds the duo prisoner on a Mediterranean voyage.

Meanwhile, a mischievous, whiskeyed up sea captain, Archibald Haddock (Andy Serkis, the De Niro of motion-capture character acting), befriends the sleuth and joins him on his pursuit to capture the final scroll before Sakharine and his crew can obtain it.

Beyond Spielberg’s contributions to Tintin’s first big-screen adventure, there are a healthy number of other genre visionaries at-hand on the project. Peter Jackson is the producer and second unit director while Doctor Who scribe Stephen Moffat, Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) worked on the script.

That’s a big tub of genre talent right there, and as a result, an audience is richly rewarded with sharply-drawn characters (visually and on the page) and plenty of cinematic tricks.

In one dazzling action sequence, Tintin, Haddock, Sakharine and the antagonist's cronies pusue the scrolls as they fly through the Bagghar markets. What makes the sequence so remarkable is that it is done in one impossibly long-winded swoop. Abrupt and disorienting cuts be shamed, Spielberg uses the animation process to achieve a fluidity of action that would be impossible to achieve in any other format.

In its best moments, The Adventures of Tintin recalls the gleeful homage to adventure serials that defined his 1981 masterpiece Raiders of the Lost Ark. At its worst, it’s a tad too convoluted. Most of the time, though, the film delivers old-fashioned thrills with state-of-the-art technology.

Efficient, energetic and supremely entertaining, Tintin is not just a terrific opener to what is destined to become a defining franchise in animated cinema, but an overwhelmingly assuring reminder of what can happen when Hollywood’s two biggest titans of escapism decide to work together.

So, go ahead and grab a large tub of buttered kernels, put your feet up and suspend your belief that gravity is a force and that humans are not invincible: 2011’s most dazzling adventures are at your local theatre. For fans of action cinema, Christmas has come early – and your stocking is double-stuffed.

Top Tens #6: My Top 10 Favourite Movie Monologues

Words have power. The pen is mightier than the sword, as the saying goes. Since the essence of great cinema is propelled by action and dialogue, it is rare for many films to stop and commit to a lengthy soliloquy or speech.

So when one sees a meaty monologue consuming many minutes of a film’s running time, odds are you’re in for a treat. Whether it’s an inspiring halftime speech, a biting tear-down of a group of middle-rate employees, or a moving argument intended to persuade an audience, great movie monologues can rank among the finest and most personal oratory of our time.

Here are my Top 10 favourite movie monologues, presented in reverse chronological order:

10. “Inch by Inch” – Any Given Sunday

Written by John Logan and Oliver Stone, Performed by Al Pacino

Note: clip contains some strong language

Speeches made by a coach at halftime tend to be legendary. Speeches made by Al Pacino tend to be even better. So I’m essentially killing two birds with one stone by placing Pacino’s terrific halftime proclamation here. Any Given Sunday is a film more notable for its intense, realistic football sequences than its nuanced characterization. But the film’s crowning scene, where the embittered coach confronts his own shattered dreams in front of his team, enticing them to with-hence go back and pick up those pieces, inch by inch, and fight for victory, is its finest moment. By the standards of American sports films, it’s a rather edgy and bracingly honest pep talk. But it comes from the mouth of the excellent Pacino and the pen of Oliver Stone – two men who aren’t known for their pleasantries.

9. “USS Indianapolis” – Jaws

Written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, Performed by Robert Shaw

Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is both praised and maligned for being the first summer blockbuster. But many tentpole pictures lack the daring thrills and strong characterization that Spielberg’s film is known for. In this scene, obssessive shark hunter Quint, played by the great Robert Shaw, explains the reason why he’s taken up such a dangerous line of work. He was on the USS Indianapolis, which delivered parts of the atomic bomb that was later dropped on Hiroshima. When the Japanese torpedoed the ship, causing it to sink and leaving its 1,100 soldiers in the middle of treacherous waters, many of the troops died from shark attacks while waiting for assistance. It is reported that Shaw rewrote the monologue based on survivor testimony, giving the scene an unforgettably haunting texturing.

8. “Your Move, Chief” – Good Will Hunting

Written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Performed by Robin Williams

Note: clip contains some strong language

Although Robin Williams is primarily known for his outrageous comedic talents, I would argue that his dramatic work, film-wise, displays a greater range than his funny bits. Dead Poets Society and One Hour Photo are terrific indicators of this talent, but it would be foolish to deny that his performance as psychologist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting is the most accomplished work of his career. The four-minute monologue, the best scene in the film, could have single-handedly won him the Oscar he received for Gus Van Sant's drama. During the scene, Maguire tells his patient, Will Hunting (Matt Damon), that while the young man may be content with his fastiduous knowledge and intellect as a means to tear into other people, he doesn’t have any useful wisdom to offer. It’s the point in that film where the protagonist, our title character, starts his real education.

7. The Critic’s Lament – Ratatouille

Written by Brad Bird, Performed by Peter O’Toole

If you frequent The Screening Room, you may have noticed the beginning of this speech on the top of the page, placed there as a perfect summation of my thoughts on arts criticism. The succinct, flareful writing comes from Anton Ego, the slouched and often strict food critic from Pixar’s Ratatouille, whose nasty words have the tendency to put restaurants out of business. Ego, brought to life by the warm, prickly voice of the great Peter O’Toole, reports about a terrific new chef at Gusteau’s, humbling his own savage professional obligations in the process. “Not everyone can be a great artist,” he says, “but a great artist can come from anywhere.” That’s a thought that the Pixar staff ought to hang atop the entrance to their animation studios.

6. “Believe Tom Robinson” – To Kill a Mockingbird

Written by Horton Foote, Performed by Gregory Peck

“The defendant is not guilty,” proclaims lawyer Atticus Finch, the fatherly voice of reason and figure of unequivocal integrity at the end of the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. “But somebody in this courtroom is.” It is hard to stand up for the rights of an African-American in the intolerant Alabama county where Finch lives, but he does so even as much of his community remains firmly seated. Masterfully portrayed by Gregory Peck (in an Oscar-winning role), Finch’s last stand before the jury, urging them to cast out their prejudice, is as pointed as it is poignant. To read the closing statements in Harper Lee’s remarkable novel is one thing. To watch Peck pierce the words into the air of the still Alabama courtroom is another.

5. “Always Be Closing” – Glengarry Glen Ross

Written by David Mamet, Performed by Alec Baldwin

Note: clip contains some strong language

Alec Baldwin’s slick, snide, notoriously profane salesman extraordinaire, Blake, doesn’t appear in the original Mamet play, but was a juicy addition to James Foley’s terrific big-screen adaptation of it. And Baldwin’s sole scene is one of the most vicious – and viciously funny – moments of the actor’s career. Blake shows up to a middling real estate office about 15 minutes in and tears every salesman there to shreds, offering bravado sales advice to help the agents close their leads while also belittling them without a shred of compassion or class. I have performed this monologue a few times, and Mamet’s mix of motivation, malice and merciless profanity help make it a knockout each time.

4. “This is Not Just Madness” – Michael Clayton

Written by Tony Gilroy, Performed by Tom Wilkinson

Note: clip contains some strong language

Tom Wilkinson is one of the most underappreciated screen actors of our generation. He should have won the Oscar for his shattering turn in Todd Field’s excellent In The Bedroom, and was snubbed most recently by the same Academy for his tour de force in Tony Gilroy’s dialogue-obssessed thriller Michael Clayton. In fact, he should have been given some sort of honourary prize for his opening monologue – done entirely with voice-over. In the film, he plays a top-tier attorney who is let off the hook after an outburst in the middle of a deposition. This monologue, delivered with urgency and menace, relays to the audience the character’s stamina as well as his vulnerability. Even though we only hear his voice, it’s an undeniably compeling opening, setting the tone and cadence for the high-tension realism of the film, one of 2007’s finest.

3. “Chapter One” – Manhattan

Written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, Performed by Woody Allen

Let’s face it: New York is Woody Allen’s town and always will be. Set to the jazzy strains of Gershwin’s "Rhapsody in Blue" and the intoxicating black-and-white, slice of life images from the five boroughs, Allen (and to an extent, his character in the film, Isaac Davis) tries to find the truest way to sum up the city he loves. Also done entirely through voice-over, Allen rehearses different possible openings to the first chapter of a book he is working on. Eventually he realizes the impossible pursuit of trying to get it all into one sentence, and goes with this: “He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. New York was his town and it always would be.” What a delightful way to sum up the oeuvre of one of cinema’s most prolific writer/directors.

2. “In the Name of Democracy” – The Great Dictator

Written and Performed by Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin’s rousing call to democratic freedoms signified the triumphant climax of his artistic career. While some of his earlier films addressed social and political issues in the periphery, The Great Dictator tackles the rise of Nazism and facism head-on. In the film, Chaplin plays a Jewish barber with a conspicuously similar look to a well-known European tyrant. Mistaken for the leader at the end of the film, the barber is obliged to make a speech in front of the dictator’s fervent followers. Chaplin begins by speaking directly to the soldiers in the film, but turns to face the camera midway through to express his deepest feelings, breaking the proverbial fourth wall in the process while offering a direct, personal statement about how to rise up from the greed and poisonous misery that had taken shape in Western civilization. His closing words, a resounding call to defeat the mechanized soullessness and terror that had become so fraught around the world at the time, still seems appropriate today.

1. “Mad as Hell” – Network

Written by Paddy Chayefsky, Performed by Peter Finch

And speaking of passionate, prophetic, socially relevant calls to change through the form of a movie monologue, none resonate more than Peter Finch’s shattering proclamations that he’s mad as hell and won’t take this anymore in the 1976 satire Network. Finch plays the unpredictable news anchor Howard Beale in the biting comedy – which has aged particularly well – and becomes a prophet of the airwaves by spewing honest and uncompromising opinions of the state of national and world affairs. His words mirror the frustration and misery of post-Vietnam War America, and are still relevant today. Preaching pundits have become all the rage in recent times, giving the film an even greater prescience today. 35 years after its release, audiences are still mad as hell.

Goodnight, Elizabeth

The Descendants

*** out of ****

Directed by: Alexander Payne

Starring: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller, Robert Forster and Judy Greer

Running time: 115 minutes

At first glance, the King family – father Matt (George Clooney), daughters Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (newcomer Amara Miller) – live a comfortable life in exotic Hawaii, with a beautifully furnished home and unlimited access to an oceanside club.

But, as Matt’s disgruntled opening voice-over assures the audience, this Hawaii is not a permanent paradise. His wife, Elizabeth, has been lying comatose in the hospital for two months after she slammed her head during a powerboat race – and she’s not going to wake up anytime soon.

Elizabeth had a close, enduring relationship with her daughters, a pride that Matt cannot attest to. As he regretfully informs the audience, he’s the “backup parent.” Now that Scottie is reaching the cusp of preteen rebellion (she’s 10) and Alexandra has turned to drinking (even though she’s attending a boarding school to help curb a past addiction), Matt doesn’t know how to handle his daughters.

The title of the film, adapted from a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, refers to two lines of lineage extended from the protagonist.

First, to Matt’s great-great grandmother, whose relationship with a missionary on the island has bestowed him the honour of being sole trustee for 25 acres of virgin Hawaiian land. His cousins want him to sell this property to a developer, and in the process unfurl millions into their laps.

Second, it refers to the distance between Matt and his daughters. Matt wades in deep waters, unable to make a solid connection with either Alex or Scottie while desperately trying to reconcile the tattered relationship he had with his wife, who may never come back to him.

As our patriarch, Clooney is magnificent: bitterly sharp as usual but with a piercing vulnerability cruising underneath. Hollywood’s favourite bachelor hasn’t played many fathers during his career, but now that he’s starting to look and sound like one, he captures the strain of raising a family with aplomb. Weakened by the waves that keep crashing into him, Clooney manages to channel his smart-alec persona into a character who keeps his feelings below the surface.

Also notable is Shailene Woodley, who penetrates her rebellious teenager trope with more pathos and bite than one would expect. Woodley reminds me of a slouched version of Natalie Portman circa the late 1990s, offering a scathing wit that adds to her character’s sincerity. Her character is vital to bringing about changes in her father, and Woodley is every bit Clooney’s equal.

The frigid father-daughter relationship brings rise to some rather tender bonding moments later on in the film. However, these moments of family disarray – which eventually surmises in connection later on – aren’t explored with the depth that a film examining the generational gap should. The final shot of the movie is poignant, but not entirely convincing.

The Descendants comes from writer/director Alexander Payne, who brought us the smart comedies Sideways (for which he won a screenwriting Oscar) and the underappreciated Election.

While his latest film is not a comedy, it bears similarities to those earlier films, which also focus on a bruised male schlub strugging in several of his relationships and trying to make the best of a bad situation. In his films, characters have a knack for saying the wrong, strikingly inappropriate thing, and this trend continues here.

But Payne’s bitter cynicism, transparent in those films, starts to break apart in The Descendants just as Matt’s sour outlook shifts. With a relaxed, languid pace, this is Payne’s sunniest and most romantic film, and the film works best when it embraces the warm sentiment that any Edenic location like Hawaii should set.

Field of Nightmares

Take Shelter

***1/2 out of ****

Directed by: Jeff Nichols

Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham and Tova Stewart

Running time: 120 minutes

American character actor Michael Shannon always seems to have a look of petrified worry on his face. That could just be the way he looks, or that the kinds of dangerous, unhinged characters he’s played throughout his career have become so memorable.

You’ve likely seen this look if you saw Revolutionary Road, which earned him an Oscar nomination in 2008, or HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, where he has a recurring role as the special agent going up against Steve Buscemi’s sleazy politician.

But Shannon takes leading man duties in the tense, superbly acted thriller Take Shelter, where he blends in his uneasy stature and demeanor with a hardworking everyman type to masterful effect.

Here, he plays Curtis, a construction worker, husband and father in the American Midwest. We first meet the character as he watches a tornado suck up the fields in the distance, as foreboding clouds approach and orange rain pelts his home. This is just a dream, but the delusions of impending destruction keep rattling at his psyche.

At work, he is distracted with visions that only he can see, like flocks of birds flying in disorient, as well as sounds of thunder on a balmy day. Disturbing thoughts return at night, and Curtis’s howling in bed begins frightening his wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain).

Do the hallucinations signify a psychological disorder, like the schizophrenia that Curtis’s mother developed when she was in her thirties, or are they a forecast of a stormy apocalypse ahead? Curtis weighs both options, although he’d rather acknowledge the latter.

Without informing Samantha – who he has been saving up with to pay health insurance for their deaf daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart) – Curtis starts putting together a tornado shelter in the backyard.

All of the characters feel normalcy except for our protagonist. Curtis believes that these visions aren’t just dreams, since in some instances, they leave him physically scarred. He is the only one who can feel the wrath of something dangerous hurdling toward his community.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols’ film – only his second, and an arresting one at that – grants us Curtis’s point of view. As a pitter-patter piano triplet underscores the tension, the audience's feelings of normalcy and comfort also start to disintegrate.

Chastain sums up a landmark year in 2011 in another stoic performance as a graceful mother. As she unravels, trying to figure out her husband’s alusive behaviour, she is every bit as riveting as Shannon, who delivers a career-best performance. His nuanced American everyman becomes increasingly fierce as the premonitions become more pronounced. The tension builds up to two mesmerizing displays of unsettling ferocity by the protagonist, one delivered to the community and the other to his family.

Take a look back at the past few years, and realize that a lot of the disasters around us could have been avoided. I presume you also remember the tale about the boy who cried wolf. An anxiety of impending terror underlines every scene in Take Shelter, making it not only one of the best psychological dramas in recent memory, but also one of the most relevant.

The Lovers, The Dreamers... And Me

The Muppets

**1/2 out of ****

Directed by: James Bobin

Starring: Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and Walter

Running time: 102 minutes

Although I did not grow up watching The Muppet Show – I did manage to catch their facsimiles on TV commercials and the odd Sesame Street episode, though – Jim Henson’s endearing creations still loom on the periphery of popular culture for good reason.

Whether they be warmhearted (Kermit the Frog), goofy (Fozzie Bear) or just plain raucous (Animal), they are instantly recognizable for children and children-at-heart around the world. (I guess as a film critic, I particularly like Statler and Waldorf, the old grumpsters in the balcony.)

One of those children-at-heart is comedy actor Jason Segel, whose infatuation with the characters led him and director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) to Disney boardrooms, where they pitched an idea to develop an all-new Muppet movie.

Segel fished his wish: using a deft mix of nods to Muppet yesteryear and hip, modern meta-humour, him and Stoller crafted a tongue-in-cheek if wildly uneven tribute to those wonderful marionette puppets.

The film’s prologue sets up the story of Gary (Segel) and Walter (Peter Linz), two brothers growing up in Smalltown, USA who are a big fan of the Muppets. Smalltown is a place where it is customary to randomly break out into a rigorous song-and-dance routine.

The problem is that Gary is a man and Walter is a Muppet. Alongside Gary’s long-time girlfriend, chaste schoolteacher Mary (the adorable Amy Adams), the brothers head out to Los Angeles.

But when they head to a Muppet Studios tour, the trio discovers that the place is in decrepit ruins. Walter sneaks into Kermit’s office and overhears a maniacal Texas oil magnate – appropriately named Tex Richman and played by Chris Cooper – unveil his plans to transform the run-down studios into a spot for oil drilling. That is, unless the Muppets can summon $10 million within the next week to take back their old stomping grounds.

And how can this money come together? Well, bring back the Muppets for a long-awaited reunion show, of course!

But before we play the music and light the lights – and you undoubtedly started humming the iconic theme song there – we have to meet these Muppets. The trouble with this newest reincarnation of the popular brand is that we don’t really get to know many of these furry, freaky or funny creations all too well over a span of 102 minutes.

The Muppets is charming but overstuffed, so eager to please with a plethora of cheeky musical numbers, high-wattage celebrity cameos and variants of meta-humour that any attention the film gives toward developing character and moving the story forward seem like afterthoughts in comparison.

The film instead garners much of its gleeful laughter from winking at the audience and far less from the physical action and verbal candor expected from the title characters themselves.

With the exception of ringleader Kermit and hyperactive dummer Animal – who is taking anger management classes and has resolved to say no to drums – the rest of the Muppets get the short end of the string, story-wise. While Fozzie Bear is a D-list lounge singer in Reno and Miss Piggy works in Paris as editor of a fashion magazine, many fan favourites are lucky to get a line or two.

Meanwhile, Jason Segel and Amy Adams, two very likable actors, play very likable if very flat human companions. Their scant romantic storyline is simplistic and mishandled, and further detracts ample screen time from the title characters.

But, as most Disney concoctions go, the film's heart is in the right place. New character Walter, struggling with a Muppet identity in a mostly human world, is the film’s requisite pulse. His sentimental (rainbow) connection to the Muppet characters mirrors Segel’s (and much of the target audience’s) excited fanfare, and so he works brilliantly as the film’s emotional centre.

Several moments within The Muppets are delightful and heartwarming, while others, such as several stilted, awkwardly paced musical summers are lacking (although the obligatory "Rainbow Connection" number is timeless). These scenes should be watched with Statler and Waldorf heckling their insidious commentaries at the screen.

Regardless, the pleasure of seeing these characters back on the big screen is enough to earn the film a recommendation, even if the originality and charm that set these terrific creations apart in past ventures is curiously restrained. It’s a heartfelt and delightful nostalgia trip, albeit a bumpy one too.