The Best Things I Read in 2010

I'm not a very responsible reader. This must be understood before we go any further.

If I've been asked to review something, or a friend urgently entreats me to flip open some volume that has just rocked their world, I will do my best to do so. Other than that, I rarely make efforts to keep up with the next big thing, or the last big thing, or even the one before that. Therefore, this will not be a list of books published in 2010 that I read and enjoyed. It will be a list of books published a year ago, or two, or 200, that I happened to pick up between January and December of this year and, it turns out, rather enjoyed.

This is a disorganized, rambling, quite eclectic collection assembled from the 150 or so books my Goodreads list assures me I completed this year (And believe me, that number is probably a bit low, as I'm terrible at keeping up with that as well.). They range from children's books to comics to award-winning novels to collections of short stories, but the thing they have in common is that they were all very difficult for me to put down. I'm a reader with a short attention span, and as such I keep a stack of at least 8-10 texts going at one time, sometimes putting certain selections down for months until the mood strikes me again. These are the books that managed to break that behavior.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

This Pulitzer-winning novel chronicles the lives of two cousins, both young Jewish boys (one an immigrant fleeing war-torn Europe), as they create a comic book legend in wartime New York City. It sounds simple, but nothing is ever simple with Chabon. Kavalier and Clay is a book of great depth, exploring not only the creative drive of its titular heroes, but also the bitterness, hate and even terror that creeps into their work as their culture is assaulted by the times in which they live. Chabon's fluid, often breathtaking writing style and genre-bending prowess made this one of the best novels I've read in a while.

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean

Grant Morrison, one of the most iconic writers of modern comics, wrote this masterpiece during the boom of dark comics of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It's a simple dual tale of the founding of Gotham City's notorious mental hospital and how, on one horrid night, Batman must journey alone through its corridors to tame the villains that roam there. Each and every major Batman villain gets a re-imagining with a pronounced psychological bent, and the surreal, jagged artwork of the great Dave McKean completes the picture. Truly a stirring demonstration of the power of graphic storytelling.

Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

This expansive collection of tales -some scary, some funny, some simply unsettling- assembled by one of the hottest writers working today (Gaiman) and one of the best anthology assemblers (Sarrantonio) is further proof that the short story (the real one, not the slice of life epiphany one that's been so en vogue for so long) is not dead. Contributors to this treasure chest of imagination include legends like Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Diana Wynne Jones and Michael Moorcock, relative newcomers like Joe Hill and Roddy Doyle, and bestselling novelists like Jodi Picoult and Jeffery Deaver, along with additions from the editors themselves.

Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

Three people with amazing abilities traveling around finding huge, sci-fi themed secrets form the basis for this all-too-short series by the great Warren Ellis. Eleven years in the making, Planetary centers around Elijah Snow (a seemingly ageless man who can freeze anything), Jakita Wagner (super speed and strength) and The Drummer (he can talk to machines and literally see and hear information). They travel the world as archeologists of a kind, seeking to discover the planet's secret history and unravel the conspiratorial elements that seek to stop humanity from reaching it's full potential. It's grand, epic and thrilling, but it's also very funny and wonderfully rich with characterization.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This Printz Award-winning novel chronicles the harsh life of a young girl trapped in the hate-filled borders of wartime Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Feeling saved by fictional worlds, she takes to stealing books, making up stories of her own, and bonding with a Jewish hideaway in her home. It's a heart-wrenching but achingly beautiful tale, narrated by Death (which sounds hokey but trust me, it works), and was one of the pleasant surprises of this year.

Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey

Few historians can entertain me so well as David Starkey (if you're not into reading, check out his BBC series Monarchy), and this entry into his canon was no exception. Each wife, even those with the briefest, dullest tenures (Anne of Cleves) is given the full treatment of historical exploration. Starkey makes each of them a fully-formed human, each with her own ambitions, desires and faults. No longer are these queens seen as mere victims of a power-maddened king. One of the best historical works I've read in ages.

Fables by Bill Willingham and (mostly) Mark Buckingham

If you're a comics reader, and you haven't read this series yet, something is wrong. If you're not a comics reader, and you haven't read this series because you don't read comics, you're missing one of the best stories of the last 20 years (seriously). Willingham's story follows a virtual army of fairy tale and fable characters from throughout the history of human imagination. After losing their homelands to an (at first) unnamed adversary, they take refuge in a massive apartment building in New York City (except the talking animals, who go to a farm upstate) and plot their counterattack. With the exception of a few issues, this is all simply spectacular. Willingham's tale is endlessly inventive, massively entertaining and just plain fun to read. Volume 14 was released earlier this year, and I'm already grinding for the 15th to hit bookstores in the spring.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

I gave this book the full review treatment on this blog just a few short weeks ago, so I don't feel I should rehash all of that for you. Suffice it to say it's yet another wonderful addition to what is truly one of the finest bodies of work we have in American fiction.

The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and Various Artists

Decades from now, if we nerds all gather and take a vote on what the magnum opus of Grant Morrison's canon was, it's a safe bet we'll be able to settle on this series without much deliberation. The Invisibles is a sprawling, convoluted, psychedelic assault on the senses, a chronicle of the adventures of a group of magicians, freaks and warriors as they try to defeat a great conspiracy that's controlling all of humanity (This was before The Matrix, by the way.). It's one of the most ambitious works ever undertaken by a comics writer, and I proclaim it here and now to be required reading for anyone serious about the medium.

Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Another Pulitzer-winner and the basis for Ed Harris' fantastic film Pollock, this thorough, ambitious biography probes into the life of one of the most enigmatic and debated artists of the 20th Century. The mountain of facts crammed into its 800 or so pages are all the more palatable thanks to some wonderful writing.

Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

If you've been watching the dreadful CBS series, switch if off immediately and pick up this book instead. Halpern, a journalist for outlets like Maxim, began writing stuff his Dad says down and posting it on Twitter, and the grains of surly wisdom quickly spread like wildfire. The result is a memoir that's equal parts funny, smart and deeply touching.

The Sandman: The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman and Various Artists

2010 was the year I finally got around to finishing The Sandman, Neil Gaiman's epic comic sage of Morpheus, King of Dreams, and of the volumes I read this year (4), this was by far my favorite. The Kindly Ones chronicles the beginning of the end for the series, as Morpheus faces off against the Furies of Greek Mythology, with world-shaking consequences.

Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present by Hank Stuever

I discovered Stuever at the Paramount Theatre in Austin during the 2010 Texas Book Festival. He read an excerpt from this book, and I decided I wanted the rest of the story. Stuever, a Washington Post journalist, spent several years researching and writing this book, focusing much of his field work on the modern boom town of Frisco, TX. In an effort to seek out the meaning of the modern Christmas, he follows a professional decorator, a Christmas light maniac, a single mom and several other real characters throughout their holiday seasons. He might not ever find an answer, but the exploration is an extraordinary ride.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

2010 was also my year for discovering the wonderful and diverse work of journalist Bill Bryson. I'm in the midst of my third Bryson book right now (Notes From a Small Island), but of the two I read in 2010 (the other being the also wonderful Shakespeare: The World as Stage), this was my favorite. Bryson journeys through time and space with this work, providing an insightful, often hilarious, overview of physics, metaphysics, geology, geography, mathematics and more. If you take nothing else away from this book, you will at the very least gain some staggering facts to share with people at parties. Oh, and if you can find the audio version, I highly recommend it. The text is fun enough, but to hear Bryson read his own work aloud is a joy indeed.

"The King's Speech," an uncommon film of uncommon quality.

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush with a primitive iPod of some kind.

It might seem unlikely that a film like The King's Speech should be so well-received not just for its craftsmanship and cinematic gravitas, but for its spirit. On the surface, it seems like the sort of pretentious, florid thing that only academic types would enjoy, and it's probable that more than a few people were mystified by the bevy of Golden Globe nominations the flick received (7), not to mention the audience awards it's garnered on the festival circuit.

The technical prowess of this film would never be in doubt. At its helm is Tom Hooper, the visual dynamo who gave us such quality historical pieces as the BBC miniseries Elizabeth I and the John Adams miniseries for HBO. Its stars are two of the most gifted actors of the age, Colin Firth (A Single Man, Pride and Prejudice) and Geoffrey Rush (He won one Oscar for Shine and was ROBBED of another for Quills.). It's set against a gorgeous historical backdrop, with a dynamic and gifted supporting cast and the gravity of history in its corner. Of course it's going to look and sound good.

What comes as a surprise is how wonderful The King's Speech feels. Like Stephen Frears' excellent film The Queen, it somehow manages to subvert the cold privacy so entangled with the modern monarchy, creating instead a vulnerability and warmth that is not only uncommon for this sort of film. It's downright revelatory.

Firth stars as timid yet hot-tempered Albert "Bertie", Duke of York, the younger son of King George V of England (Sir Michael Gambon). While his brother Edward (Guy Pearce) is being groomed for the throne, Bertie leads a quieter life, his patient wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) at his side. His great anguish is public speaking. Repressed by a lifelong stammer, he is unable to deliver even the simplest of addresses, to his family's embarrassment. As his own royal physicians continue to fail him, Bertie's wife seeks out unorthodox speech therapist Lionel Logue (Rush), who begins working to relieve Bertie of his impediment even as it becomes clear that he will ascend from the role of Duke of York to that of King George VI.

The complex, often contentious relationship between the conflicted, often terrified monarch and the level-headed, good humored teacher forms the bulk of the rest of the film, all set to the drum of Europe in the 1930s, as Hitler rose to power and the world feared the worst would come again. It's a towering time in British history, and the gravity of the big moments going on outside the walls of the film, always threatening to crash in, makes the smaller story of a king trying to find his voice all the more effective.

The film doesn't work without its stars, and both are masterful. Rush finds an uncommon reserve as Logue, plumbing the very depths of his talent for a performance so nuanced and rich with small detail, yet full of an impish, gleeful energy, that his every word seems to bring a smile. Firth's performance is also uncommon. He strips away the charm that made him famous, finding instead a pitch-perfect mixture of awkwardness, frustration and fear. Much of the film is simply these two men trading verbal blows in a room, but it works, and it works because two of the world's greatest actors are allowed to steer the ship. There's also, by the way, some damn fine cursing, and you don't see that enough anymore.

The strange mixture of perfectly composed, graceful English filmmaking and energetic, highly emotional acting are what make The King's Speech. This film will creep up and surprise you, convince you of the humanity of princes, and make you cheer.

Matt's Call: Simply one of the best films of the year, and not just because it's well-made. This movie will actually make your heart a little lighter.

"True Grit," a True Masterpiece of Western Cinema

It’s tricky business trying to convince someone that a remake, particularly a remake of one of John Wayne’s seminal films, is worth their time, especially when you’re a person who’s spent years declaiming against most remakes at the movies. The remake stigma – “Why can’t Hollywood come up with new ideas?” “They’ll never replace the original,” etc. etc. – has been clinging to Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit since it was announced they were making it. Even when the stellar cast was named, even when the trailers showed promise, those whispers continued: “But it’s a remake. I just don’t care for remakes.”

Thankfully, the release of the flick seems to be proving most of those whispers wrong. If you’re still on the fence, consider that there are exceptions to the “Remakes Are Dumb” rule. Huge exceptions. Sometimes these exceptions are a re-imagining for a new age (Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead is a good example of this), sometimes they’re just a chance to have fun with ideas we already know we love. Sometimes, as is the case with True Grit, it’s a chance to create a more faithful adaptation of the source material (Charles Portis’ 1968 novel), and to refresh and reinvigorate a faithful old genre: the Western revenge tale.

In post-Civil War Arkansas, 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), is traveling to settle her father’s affairs after his murder at the hands of Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), a hired man who shot him after an argument. After making arrangements for her father’s body, Mattie sets her sights on revenge, and seeks out someone to help her bring Chaney to justice. After hearing that he’s the “meanest” of the U. S. Marshals, she seeks to hire Marshal Rueben J. “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a drunken, overweight, one-eyed lawman who, after persistent pestering from Mattie, agrees to accompany her into Indian Territory on Chaney’s trail.

Also on Chaney’s trail is a flashy, cocky Texas Ranger named La Boeuf (Matt Damon). He’s been hunting Chaney for months, and while Mattie believes the man that killed her father to be a buffoon, La Boeuf cautions that he’s much more, that the buffoonery is only an act, that Chaney is actually a cold, calculated killer who murdered a Texas State Senator months before. La Boeuf urges Mattie to go home to her mother, and he and Cogburn even attempt to set out on the trail early and leave her behind. Mattie, with the help of her new pony, refuses to be shaken from their side, and the adventure into the wilderness in search of a killer begins.

Fans of the John Wayne version will find many recognizable chunks of the story still intact, including the famous “Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!” scene. Where the Coens shove off into new territory is in the film’s tone. While Cogburn was undoubtedly the driving force of the first film, the Coens focus much of their energy on Mattie, who narrated the original Portis novel. Everything happens through her eyes, colored by her determined, unshakeable desire to avenge her father. This not only makes the film more emotionally resonant, but also funnier, as Mattie observes the macho foibles of Cogburn and La Boeuf trying to outride, outshoot, and out-tough one another.

The film is also decidedly darker than its predecessor. The original True Grit, though it deals with dark themes, is bright, brisk, often almost hopeful. This True Grit, seen through the lens of brilliant cinematographer Roger Deakins, is gloomy, dim and crawling with shadows. Combine this with the Coen’s insistence on a more accurate depiction of the brutally desperate American West, and the result is a film that makes its predecessor look tame. 

The entire cast is perfect, but no one can eclipse the daring, iconic performance of Bridges. John Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn was John Wayne with an eye patch. Jeff Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn is unrecognizable as Jeff Bridges. He disappears into the character, inhabits him, transforms into him completely. It’s another landmark performance from one of the greatest American actors. Steinfeld could be commended just for keeping up with the heavyweights that surround her in the flick, but she manages much more. Her vision of Mattie is nuanced, bold and wise beyond her years, just as the character should be. Brolin is wonderful, redeeming himself for the disaster of Jonah Hex earlier this year, and Damon proves he can do Westerns. 

It was inevitable that any major discussion on True Grit would have to involve comparisons to the original, but it’s a shame if that’s the only place the discussion goes. There are parallels, to be sure, but the Coens’ True Grit is a different, more cinematic world, filled with breathtaking images, brilliant dialogue and all the love that comes with two fans of the genre working at the top of their game. It’s still amusing and amazing that two Jewish boys from Minnesota have made some of the great Southern films of our time (O Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men are just two examples). True Grit fits that bill, but it goes beyond. In their first exercise in straight genre filmmaking, working against history and cynicism, the Coen Brothers have managed to create a classic of Western cinema.

Matt’s Call: Easily one of the best films of the year, and the best Western made since Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven nearly two decades ago. Don’t let your devotion to The Duke cause you to miss it.

New on DVD: "The American," a very European thriller.

Clooney finds his focus.

The American, the acclaimed George Clooney thriller about a hit man trying to escape his past, is on DVD and Blu-Ray this week (tomorrow, to be exact). Here's what I wrote upon seeing the flick back in September:

At some point about midway through The American, the protagonist, an assassin and gun manufacturer who might be named Jack and might be named Edward (George Clooney), is sitting in a semi-deserted Italian bar while Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, starring Henry Fonda, plays on a giant plasma screen. When Jack/Edward gets up to pay for his drink, the bartender nods to the screen and says, with justifiable pride, that the director of this masterpiece of Western cinema was “Italiano.”

It’s a moment that is perhaps not helpful to the understanding of the film, but infinitely helpful to the understanding of the influences behind it. For all its spy thriller posturing and cold steel craftsmanship, The American is at heart a character-driven spaghetti western centered around a callous man struggling against his own humanity.

When we first meet Jack/Edward, he has just killed several people, and we are led to believe it was in an attempt to preserve his own life. Someone is hunting him, but we don’t know why. A business associate sends him from Rome to a hideout in a remote Italian village, where he is hired by another assassin (Thekla Reuten) to build a compact rifle.

While slowly putting together his project, he meets an Italian prostitute (Violante Placido) who somehow begins to warm his metalworker’s heart.

As his violent world begins to close around him, Jack/Edward looks for a way out, and tension builds as everything becomes uncertain, and everyone becomes a potential threat.

When I say that this is a “European” film, I mean many things. The American is a conventional thriller in many ways. It’s about a guy on the run who’s good at staying alive. It’s got guns, women and plenty of psychological tautness. And it’s got a big Hollywood star topping the bill. But underneath the superficial layers of American action bravura is something much more. Director Anton Corbijn, most famous for his music videos, pushes this film into art house territory with unconventional camera work, lots of silence and moments in which nothing seems to be happening but everything is revealed about the character we’re following.

As far as I can tell, the people who aren’t into the flick are the people who complain that it’s boring, that what was billed as a spy thriller turns out to be much more of a meditation on loneliness. In a way, they’re right. It’s a slow film, and Corbijn’s hypnotic studies of the jigsaw Italian cityscapes and panoramic countryside only serve to give it more pause. If you don’t like that, there’s nothing I can say to convince you otherwise, and I will personally admit to having been tempted to glance at my watch once or twice. But when you encounter such a film, a film that's more interested in showing than telling, more interested in implying than informing, you have to understand what was intended in the first place. Corbijn and screenwriter Rowan Joffe didn’t set out on this journey to make us cheer George Clooney through another heroic performance. They set out to give a portrait of a man hovering between a real human experience and survival as the cold man he is. And in that, they succeed.

And part of the reason they succeed is Clooney himself. I’ve never understood Clooney haters. Yes, he’s a big Hollywood star with his fair share of sellout moments (Yes, I’m talking about Batman and Robin.), but he’s also a fine actor, as he’s more than proven by now. His portrait of Jack/Edward isn’t flashy or emotional or even exciting, but it is captivating. There’s a fine art to sustaining interest in a man who is boring save for the fact that he could kill you in half a second if he wanted to, but Clooney pulls it off. There’s a focus to his performance that’s uncommon in modern American acting, and even if you don’t like the film, the craftsmanship behind the role is worth appreciating.

This is not a film for the action movie crowd, or the spy genre crowd. This is a film about how a man becomes a killer, and how a killer battles his own guilt for a chance at redemption. It’s not glittery, it’s not overwrought, and it’s not Hollywood. It is an immensely patient, well-crafted piece of work, and though it drags in places, seeing something like this on our side of the pond is rare enough to make it worth it.

Matt’s Call: I was not riveted by this film, or blown away, or overwhelmed, but I was impressed. If you want to see it and enjoy it, abandon all pre-conceptions you have about what a Hollywood star should do in a film about a killer, and you’ll be the better for it.

Thoughts on the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special

Michael Gambon, Matt Smith and Katherine Jenkins

ALERT-ISH TYPE THING...I'll try to keep out the spoilers, but I can't really promise what'll happen once I've got going. (That's What She Said.)

After everyone else here went to bed, I took to the couch to watch the second BBC America airing of A Christmas Carol, the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special, Matt Smith's first such episode as the Eleventh Doctor and Steven Moffat's first as head writer and executive producer.

This particular Christmas special had the same problem that all Doctor Who Christmas Specials have: They're fun because they exist (mostly) out of the general arc of the rest of the series, which gets complex and epic and altogether feverish by the end (lately, anyway), but they're frustrating because they provide such a wonderful primer for a new series that we then have to wait months to see. 

A Christmas Carol found the Doctor on a hazy, steampunk-ish world ruled by a Scrooge-like character (Gambon) whose family has controlled for decades the envelope of clouds that swaths the world in a blanket of fear and uncertainty. There are dark things in those clouds, you see, things with teeth.

The Doctor has made his way to this world (at Christmas) because his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) are trapped on a spaceship currently hovering between crashing and survival in the middle of a belt of clouds. Our Scrooge (Mr. Karzan, he's called), controls the clouds, and therefore holds the lives of Amy, Rory and thousands of others in the balance. Highlights include yet another reference to how cool the bow-tie is, a brief visit to Old Hollywood, a wonderfully villainous performance from Gambon and a highly unusual sleigh ride.

The greatest joy in watching the special is Matt Smith. His Doctor is the same manic genius/child/monkey that we came to love last season. His energy has not faltered, his spirit has not faded, and he's still perpetually in danger of eclipsing David Tennant as my favorite Doctor of all time (but not yet, David...not yet).

I rejoiced when Moffat got behind the wheel of the series after Russell T. Davis stepped down, and great indicators as to why are still present here. His dialogue is masterful, quite possibly better than any other writing on television in any country right now. His storytelling is delightfully convoluted, even bizarre, and his sense of character is remarkably unified. If I have a gripe about this effort, it's that it all seemed a little too easy. Even when things got darkest, they didn't come close to reaching the massive tension of episodes like "The Time of Angels" or "The Eleventh Hour." To be fair, this isn't the same thing, but I, much like Michael Palin's Sir Galahad, could have done with a just a little bit more peril. 

That aside, it's a classic Moffat story. Lots of sci-fi twists and turns, plenty of jokes (even in the sad bits), and a heartstring-tugging conclusion (with a fantastic closing line). It's not perfect, but it's enough for magic. 


Perhaps most exciting, though, is this...



Happy Christmas, Time Lords.

The 80s-Tastic Moment of the Week [When the Turkey Burns]

It's Christmas Eve, therefore I'm busy. Here's a sample of what I'm watching (and what you should be watching too.



MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM A WALRUS DARKLY

New on DVD: "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." Not as relevant as it thinks it is.

Michael Douglas kept a straight face while Shia LaBeouf was trying to be tough. Now that's a skilled actor.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is new on DVD today. Here's my original review from the release back in September.

If there’s any director on the planet that knows about ups and downs, it’s Oliver Stone. The guy has gone from the height of cinematic glory (Platoon) to the deepest valleys of box office and critical failure (Alexander), and everywhere in between. But it’s not because he has strange luck, or because he’s not talented, or even because the world wasn’t ready for his movies. It’s simply because he takes risks, visually, emotionally and thematically. He’s the Hollywood equivalent of a Wall Street broker.

Which is appropriate, because Stone has now made two films, in two very different eras, about the financial system. Wall Street, released in 1987, is widely considered a classic, if condemning, portrait of the Reaganomics era, and garnered an Oscar for Michael Douglas. And now, with a vastly different money world, Stone has released a sequel, his answer to the 2008 financial collapse: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Gordon Gekko (Douglas) is released from prison in 2001 after serving eight years on a bevy of insider trading charges stemming from the events of the first film. Seven years later, Gekko has a new book about his experiences that’s rising up the best-seller lists, and begins making the rounds on talk shows and university speaking circuits.

Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is a rising star in the world of investment banking under the tutelage of a legend in the field, Lou Zabel (Frank Langella). He’s also dating Gekko’s estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan), who refuses to talk to or about her father. 

After the massive, Bear Stearns-esque failure of his firm causes his hero, Zabel, to jump in front of a subway train, Jake sets out to get the man he feels is responsible, fellow investment banker Bretton James (Josh Brolin), while simultaneously attempting to begin a relationship with Gekko.

The financial ins and outs of the plot are fast-paced and often elusive. I didn’t like the first “Wall Street” as much as many did, simply because I don’t care about all the market mumbo-jumbo. Money helps me buy DVDs and comic books, OK? Call me childish, but that’s where I’m at, so a film about investments and sneaky trading is going to be inherently hard for me to follow.

But the emotional basis of the elements at work here is plain enough. Jake is attempting to juggle his own success with revenge for his mentor, his private life, his deepening friendship with Gekko and his interest in an alternative energy company that’s about to go under if new money doesn’t begin to flow to it. All of this proves much too much when Jake realizes he’s not the only person manipulating the powers at work. In fact, everyone is. It’s a film rife with secrets, and it’s how they unfold that makes Money Never Sleeps sometimes hard to watch.

Stone is famous for the message in his films, and it’s clear that this flick has that too. The problem is that at times it seems like he’s not sure what he’s preaching. There’s an element of self-righteousness among the characters that is often overlaid or even walking hand in hand with smug vindictiveness. It’s impossible to figure out any of the characters (except Winnie, who is the victim, of course) right up until the very end, and even then we’re not sure. Maybe that was the point, but when your plot is already more complicated than one brain can handle, making your characters individual puzzles in and of themselves is a bit too much.

There’s also a kind of sensory overload at work in the film’s visual style and sound design. Everything overlaps, visual metaphors fly past at breakneck speeds, and songs by David Byrne and Brian Eno seem out of place and grating against the rest of the flick’s tone. 

But, weirdly enough, the emotional oomph of the flick often makes all of that irrelevant. This oomph of which I speak generally emanates from the actors, all of which (yes, even (sometimes) LaBeouf, and I rarely say that), perform at incredible levels of skill. Douglas steals the show even more than he did the first time he played Gordon Gekko, and to watch him work is to watch a true master. Mulligan, as she was in last year’s An Education, is spellbinding, Brolin is searing, Langella and the legendary Eli Wallach are scene stealers (and Wallach manages this in spite of having only three lines). It’s proof that a great cast can overshadow sloppy filmmaking.

In the end, I think Money Never Sleeps is a film that’s trying too hard to be as relevant as its predecessor, and it simply can’t be done. The world is a more complicated place now, and attempted to place yourself in the heart of the financial crisis and create not only a morality play but a sweeping social commentary borders on a fool’s errand. Stone is still a talented risk-taker, and his film works, but it’s hard not to see flaws.

Matt’s Call: It’s a film unlike anything else at the theatres right now, and it’s often quite thrilling to watch, but don’t expect greatness. There’s too much going on here for anything to rise up and be stellar.

Book Review: "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland" by Patton Oswalt

ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND

Patton Oswalt’s long, twisted journey from suburban boy to comic uber-nerd.

Patton Oswalt’s standup, at its best, is like a nightmarish cosmic stew of Stan Lee, Gary Gygax, Harlan Ellison (the cranky and the adorable), George Carlin and The Sex Pistols, with a hint of perverse, impish, Freddy Krueger glee sprinkled on top.

It’s a potent blend, one that has given the world legendary rants on subjects ranging from KFC’s “Famous Bowls” to the Star Wars prequels to how religion is all built around the promise of cake. Oswalt’s worldview is one that seems to naturally absorb the minutiae of the culture around him, mutate it like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, then spew it back as an absurd revision of its former self, held up in the fluorescent glare like a lab experiment. When he really gets going, his work on stage is a primal snarl of social commentary and poo jokes. 

With Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, Oswalt continues his long tradition of bizarre slants on the world around him in print, and attempts to place his skewed vision in some kind of context. The slim volume chronicles select portions of his childhood in Northern Virginia, his teen years working part time at a movie theatre and losing himself in sci-fi paperback and R.E.M., his insane relatives and their contributions to family gatherings, his beginnings in standup and his theory that all creative young nerds lacking in social skills but brimming over with ideas about how they’ll change the world will choose one of three  initial storylines/idoms to hone in on: zombies, spaceships or wastelands.

Oswalt labels himself a Wasteland. “Wastelands destroy,” he writes. “They’re confused but fascinated by the world…But the blandness of the world we’ve built – a lot of Wastelands come from the suburbs – frustrates and frightens them as much as the coldness of space…A lot of comedians are Wastelands – what is standup-comedy except isolating specific parts of culture or humanity and holding them up against a stark, vast background to approach at an oblique angle and get laughs?”

If you’re thinking this is some sort of book-encompassing theory, it isn’t. It’s just another way for Oswalt to let us in on the secrets of his own demented head. Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is refreshing for many reasons, but perhaps most refreshing is that Oswalt never treats the book like a treatise on comedy, or a manual on how to follow in his rather herky-jerky footsteps, or even a psychological analysis of the more “out there” brains in comedy today. It’s just a collection of memories, ideas, comic bits and stories, all of them funny, all of them peppered with the kind of manic wisdom followers of Oswalt’s standup will remember.

Peppered in with the autobiographical bits are other…things, unclassifiable bits of prose, verse, blurbs, lists and even illustrations. Here, interspersed between Oswalt’s tales of stealing ninja stars from the assistant manager of the movie theatre where he once worked and attempting to make sense of the bizarre gifts his grandmother gave, are things like a mini vampire comic, a collection of greeting card doodles and their meanings, a study of hobo poetry, even a list of faux-pretentious wines with names like “The Sensitive Teen” Charonnay and “Freshman at Thanksgiving” Pinot Noir. At the end of each chapter is a section titled “Full Disclosure,” in which Oswalt lists all the things he did on the internet while writing. As with his stand-up, he doesn’t follow the rules. Print is just another delivery device for what’s in his head, and if it doesn’t want to work his way, he makes it work, harnessing the written word, the power of the information age and his own ferocious wit and riding it like an armored chimera. 

What makes this all work, believe it or not, is that Oswalt can really write. The creative, oddly-literate phrases that make their way into the ether during his stand-up act (“Uncle Touchy’s Puzzle Basement” and “Failure pile in a sadness bowl” are two gems that come to mind.) translate well to the page. There’s a true, palpable style to what’s happening in these pages, somewhere between the drug-fueled sail of Hunter S. Thompson and the analytic tunneling of H. P. Lovecraft. 

But more important than any of the insight, or the language, or the developmental chronicling, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is a damn hysterical book. I laughed until I woke other people sleeping in my house, until I went tumbling off chairs, until I choked on whatever I was drinking and was in danger of smacking my head against the coffee table and taking some sort of Big Lebowski-style journey into a world of bowling pins and White Russians. I laughed far more than the low page count suggests I should have laughed. I laughed an unreasonable, ridiculous, diaphragm-spasming amount. 

Therefore, even if you don’t read books by comedians, or books about comedians, or books about zombies or spaceships, or books at all, even if you’ve never heard of Patton Oswalt, you should hunt down this book, read it, and laugh until you fall over, drool like a child, and pass out.

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is in bookstores Jan. 4.

Advance Reading Copy courtesy of the publisher. 

The 80s-Tastic Moment of the Week [There won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime; some of you had to see it coming.]

I'm on vacation, I'm busy, and there's lots to do before Christmas, but I didn't forget you. So, here's a bunch of British pop stars singing a ridiculous song about Africa's lack of winter wonderlands.





Note the bright orange streaks in Boy George's hair, the amazing blondeness of Dame George Michael and the bizarre undulations of Bono as he sings next to Sting. Also, there's Simon Le Bon with rolled up blazer sleeves, Phil Collins looking like your Dad on drums, and members of Spandau Ballet (because, you know, it's fun to write the words "Spandau Ballet" now and then).

OK, so Africa isn't really the Mad Max wasteland it's played up to be in this tune, but there are lots of hungry and sick people there, so if you feel like helping out, get on that. A Google search will reveal a slew of worthy charities. And even if it's not Africa, be of good cheer and help someone out this Christmas, even if they do, in fact, know it's Christmastime.

By the way, here's the incredibly strange and disturbing cover to the single:

The Return of the Jesus Allegory Lion

Is he Jesus, or are we just really high?

For a while it seemed we would never see another Chronicles of Narnia film.

After the financial disappointment of the second film, Prince Caspian, in 2008, Walt Disney Pictures first pushed back the production of the a third film, then dropped it altogether after they couldn’t agree with Walden Media (the film’s production company) on just how much they were willing to spend for another movie.

Thankfully, 20^th Century Fox rode to the rescue and agreed to provide a portion of the $140 million budget for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third flick based on the series of beloved children’s books by C. S. Lewis. With a new distributor on board, the creative team at Walden Media reassembled the cast (with the addition of some new faces) and continued the chronicles.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader is set a year after the events of Prince Caspian. The four Pevensie children still remember fondly their days rescuing Narnia from darkness, but darkness has come to pervade their own world. The two older Pevensie children, Peter and Susan, are all grown up and off pursuing adventures of their own. War has ravaged Britain, and the two younger Pevensie children, Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) are holed up in Cambridge with an aunt and uncle they don’t like and their cousin Eustace (Will Poulter), whom they downright despise.

As they begin to lament their status in our world more and more, a mysterious painting of an ocean suddenly begins leaking water, and after being submerged, the Pevensie children and Eustace find themselves transported to the world of Narnia.

Floundering in an ocean, the trio are picked up by the Dawn Treader, captained by Caspian (Ben Barnes), now King of Narnia and traveling throughout his realm to restore peace. Caspian greets his old friends, and does his best to take care of Eustace, who spends much of his time shrieking at the sight of talking Narnian animals.

Lucy and Edmund find themselves suddenly embroiled in Caspian’s quest to find the seven lost lords of Narnia, all banished in the dark times before he became king. Each of the lords has a magical Narnian sword, you see, and with these seven swords laid at the table of Aslan (the Jesus Allegory Lion voiced by Liam Neeson), Caspian can banish evil and set things right.

Lewis’ original construction of a simple, straightforward quest story serves the film well. The stage is set, the objective is laid out, and our heroes set forth to find what they’re looking for, facing whatever obstacles hover into their path in the process. There’s nothing particularly creative about this kind of storytelling, but that’s because it’s a tried and true format. Where director Michael Apted (he directed The World is Not Enough, but I try not to hold that against him) and his creative team succeed is in finding creative and exciting ways to complete this journey.

Dawn Treader is filled to bursting with fun fantasy bits, from deserted islands to evil slavers to magic to mysterious green mist to one of the creepiest sea monsters you’ll ever see. It’s all assembled with a clean, glossy, fast-paced feel that has none of that old fashioned Disney plastic feeling (you know what I’m talking about). Apted is successful in engineering a world that we can fully immerse ourselves in, something that fantasy films often struggle with.

Where the film fails is developing a genuine connection to the people who inhabit it. Edmund and Lucy aren’t exactly wooden, but they have little personal connection to the viewer. They’re just wondering, wide-eyed and action hungry, through a landscape they’ve already seen, hoping for new adventures. Motivations for each of them are touched upon, mostly through the theme of overcoming temptation (Ah, those classic C. S. Lewis Christian overtones…), but it never feels that they’re real. Even cousin Eustace, who serves dual purposes as comic relief and redemptive soul, seems like a puppet amid all the action. Nothing’s really wrong with any of the acting, but Narnia itself is the film’s most realized character. Everyone else is at times little more than a chess piece.

Despite this, Dawn Treader manages to remain a fun slice of family adventure. It’s never going to be Harry Potter, but The Chronicles of Narnia remains a viable family fantasy franchise. Here’s hoping a fourth film is on the way.

Matt’s Call: Far from perfect, but also far from the worst you can do at the cinema this holiday season. Take the kids and enjoy the ride.

New on DVD: "Despicable Me," pure cinematic joy.

Tea with a supervillain. Nicer than it sounds.

Despicable Me hits DVD this week just in time for Christmas. Here's my original review.

It’s becoming more and more difficult to rave about animated films these days. It’s not that I’m getting older, or that the films are getting further and further away from my understanding as I lean toward more sophisticated cinema fare. At this point, the level of saturation of animated gimmick flicks has reached somewhere well beyond critical mass.

Animated cinema was once an event to be cherished. Remember the second Golden Age of Disney? In the span of about a decade we got The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. All brilliant, complex, downright exhilarating movie experiences.

It’s not the same now. Now animated films are computer-generated toy commercials interested in little more than throwing lots of light and sound up on screen (preferably though 3D rendering) and tossing out countless cliched gags that have no originality and no real meaning.

I try very hard not to be jaded about these things, but I’m very, very tired of seeing trailers for films with the following premise: “OK, we’re going to take something that doesn’t talk, make it talk, and hilarity will ensue, because animals aren’t supposed to talk, right? Hardy har har.” Or how about this one? “OK, remember that classic story you all remember growing up? Well, look out, because here comes the twist!”

It’s not my fault, I swear. This is the result of two decades of family films and the slow decay of quality in what was once one our proudest subgenres. Every time I go see a new animated flick, even one by the legendary Pixar, I worry that instead of a film, I’m about to instead watch a lengthy moneymaking equation set to catchy tunes and bad jokes.

And then there are films like Despicable Me.

As much as I lament the current state of animated film, this flick, the debut feature from 3-year-old studio Illumination Entertainment, made me forget all of that. It’s so rare that I get to rave about animated films anymore that I promise over the next few paragraphs I will not hold anything back. Simply put, Despicable Me is a dose of pure happiness fed through a projector.

Gru (Steve Carell) is a supervillain. He’s good at his job. He builds balloon animals and gives them to kids just so he can pop them. He zaps people with his freeze ray so he won’t have to stand in line for coffee. He’s got an army of adoring minions, and an assistant, the brilliant (if a little senile) Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand), who can build him any gadget he’d like.

But Gru is being outpaced in the villainy department lately. While he was off stealing the Statue of Liberty (the little one from Las Vegas), new villain Vector (Jason Segel) was busy hijacking the Great Pyramid. Desperate to get back on top, Gru hatches a plot to steal the moon from the sky. All he needs to do it is a shrink ray. Unfortunately, the shrink ray is in Vector’s hands.

Undaunted, Gru adopts a trio of adorable cookie-selling girls: Margo (Mirando Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and unicorn-obsessed Agnes (Elsie Fisher). Knowing Vector’s weakness for cookies, Gru plans to use the girls to infiltrate his enemy’s fortress so he can get his hands on the shrink ray. Of course, being a supervillain, he’s got no head for children, and comedy spontaneously combusts (That’s a weird phrase I know, but I wanted a change from “hilarity ensues.”).

Amid the madcap adventure of it all are Gru’s financial woes (He can’t get a loan from the Bank of Evil. Yes, there’s a Bank of Evil.), his issues with his overbearing mother (Julie Andrews) and his wicked heart melting for the three little girls sleeping in hollowed out bombs in his house.

Everything about the film is just plain playful. There are gags woven into every detail of the flick (see if you can spot where Vector hid the pyramid), from the dialogue to the animation. It’s all spectacularly well-designed, filled with the cinematic craftsmanship that all those garden variety flicks I mentioned earlier just don’t manage.

It’s also a great example of marvelous voice acting. Carell is his usual awesome self, Brand is so adept at his character that you can barely tell it’s him, and all three girgls, particularly Fisher, are mindblowingly adorable. And yes, the “It’s so fluffy!” moment from the trailers really is just as awesome as you think it is.

Right here is normally the part where I nitpick about something the flick did wrong, but I was too busy laughing to see any flaws. I think that just about says it all.

Matt’s Call: Easily my favorite animated film of the year. Two hours of absolute joy on screen. Take the whole family and forget your troubles, because this is what family cinema is meant to be.

The 80s-Tastic Moment of the Week [The only thing missing is Nermal pulling a sled.]

"Nice Touch."

If you're into Christmas specials, 1987 really was the year for you, especially if you weren't tuned into CBS on the evening of Dec. 21. That night, not only did you get the chance to first view Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration, which we discussed last week. You also got the chance to view America's favorite fat cat in a down home Christmas adventure.

I'm not sure from where Jim Davis pulled the idea to interlock his sardonic, lazy epicurean feline hero with the idea of a country Christmas, but A Garfield Christmas Special manages to pull it off. You see, Jon (Garfield's owner), is packing up the car to go to the family farm for Christmas (Because for all his modern lifestyle quirks and dating woes, he's really a country boy at heart.). Garfield is unwillingly dragged along, wedged in the car alongside Jon and the always enthusiastic Odie. This of course, results in singing, whether our orange friend likes it or not.



From here, the trio arrives at the farm, where they enjoy Christmas festivities with Jon's mother, father, underachieving brother Doc Boy and fiery Grandma, who Garfield takes a special liking to. Along with this culture clash hilarity is a healthy dose of Garfield catching wind of the true meaning of Christmas, leading him to conclude that "It's not the giving. It's not the getting. It's the loving." Awww.

I was addicted to a VHS recording of this special that floated around my house from about 1992 onward. You can find it on DVD now, but for a while there was a strange and inexplicable drought of holiday Garfield on TV. It's not the stuff of legend like, say, A Charlie Brown Christmas, but it still holds up. Along with the usual mellow wit of our furry, lasagna-loving friend, there's also a coziness to the animation that makes it feel strangely idyllic, even if it just plain strange to see Garfield following Odie out to the barn to see what sort of shenanigans they can get up to.

You're welcome.

Ode to a Griswold Family Christmas

Around Black Friday the first itch hits me.

They creep in, dull yet unmistakable, around the fringes of my Turkey coma, pulsing in the back of my brain. If I ignore them they grow worse by weekend’s end, evolving into a kind of withdrawal headache and a sense that something is missing.

There’s only one antidote: Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) stapling thousands of lights to his house and accidentally catching his own sleeve, or sledding down a mountain at 100 miles per hour, or being trapped in the attic while his family goes shopping, or watching Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) abduct his boss.

My name is Matthew, and I am a National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation addict.

This addiction began in the throes of my sixth Christmas (1992…it was a very good year). The film was in heavy holiday screening on NBC at the time, and my Dad was interested in seeing it (And, in the golden age of the VCR, recording it.).

I don’t remember my first viewing of the film as being something that was particularly revelatory, largely because I could only vaguely figure out what was going on. As a six-year-old, Christmas movies were things with stop-motion reindeer and sardonic, lasagna-eating cats. But it was on repeat viewings later that same season that I began to realize John Hughes and company were on to something.

These days I’m watching this particular holiday flick at least a dozen or so times each December (I’ve already been through five of my 2010 viewings as of this writing.), and it never loses its luster. The wackiness of it is an obvious appeal to someone of my…idiom, shall we say, but the love of the film has gone deeper than that. For all its comic mugging and slapstick irreverence, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is, at its heart, a film about the bittersweet peculiarity of the modern holiday experience.

It might sound like I’m attempting to project a false profundity onto relatively lightweight cinema fare, but go watch the film so many times that it seeps into your dreams and then talk to me about whether or not I’m wrong. I’m not arguing that Christmas Vacation is not a light film. It absolutely is. You can turn it on right now, watch it through several times, and do nothing but laugh at the unabashed zaniness of it all, from Clark Griswold’s desperate attempts to get his Christmas lights to turn on to Cousin Eddie’s unceremonious disposal of the contents of his RV septic tank. You can do this, quite enjoyably, while giving no thought to whether or not there’s a deeper meaning. In fact, it’s quite possible that the filmmakers themselves had no real inkling of what was lying beneath their comic flights, even as they were filming the thing.

But we are talking about a film written by John Hughes, the late, great pop auteur of the 1980s, the man who brought us The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Home Alone. Hughes had a knack for inserting deeper meaning even when things seemed at their most shallow. His films are of a kind so deeply associated with the American spirit: highly commercial, over the top, even slightly implausible, but packed with a yearning for a genuine sense of truth and emotion. People who think it’s just pre-packaged, supergloss box-office cash-in aren’t looking hard enough for what’s really going on.

Which brings me back to Christmas Vacation. It’s  a film about a man (Clark Griswold) who wants nothing more than to create the perfect Christmas for himself and his family. His overeager, often hapless pursuit of this, is largely selfless, even when it seems destructive. He wants to be that father, that husband, that son, who creates a holiday for the ages. His problem just happens to be that every single thing goes wrong. The lights don’t work, the tree catches fire, the turkey is dry, the Christmas bonus is nowhere in sight, the relatives are unappreciative, uncaring or just plain senile and the wife and kids are simply trying to dodge all of his well-intentioned misfires. 

It’s all very funny, and you can take it as just that, but it’s also a film about our constant yearning for the idealized Normal Rockwell glow that we all wish would materialize in our own living rooms. It’s a film about trying to build perfection out of what will always be chaos, and about discovering that sometimes that chaos is perfection. It’s that undertone, that snow-crested, holly-wreathed quest for a wonderful life, that makes the film so watchable, even when you’re someone like me who’s seen it 200 times.

Of course, if you don’t find all that there, you can always just wait for the moment when the dog chases the squirrel around the house.

Merry Christmas.

New on DVD "Shrek Forever After" or "Shrek The Final Chapter." Either way, we could have done without it.

Donkey has become the wacky neighbor in a bad sitcom...or the new element of spice in Shrek and Fiona's marriage.

Shrek Forever After arrives on DVD today. Please oh please let it be over. Here's my original review.

Shrek’s Final Chapter? Let’s hope so.

When the first Shrek film hit theatres nine years ago, you would’ve been hard pressed to find a bigger fan of the flick than I. I liked the cast, I liked the story, I liked the irreverence, and I really, really liked the idea of turning fairy tales on their head. It was a fun movie, and very family friendly (but not too family friendly, if you know what I’m saying), and so I touted the film.

When the sequel came, I was also pleased, but Shrek 2, despite entertaining me, paled in comparison to its predecessor. By the time Shrek the Third rolled off the Dreamworks Animation line, I had almost entirely lost interest. By then, the Shrek franchise had spawned a series of imitators (fairy tale re-tellings, parodies and the like), and the franchise was bordering on becoming a caricature of itself, a series of bad puns and ogre toilet humor that was practically yawn-worthy.

It’s safe to say that my first reaction to a fourth chapter in the saga of the Scottish-accented ogre (Mike Myers) and his American-accented ogre wife (Cameron Diaz) with their wise-cracking donkey (Eddie Murphy) was, at best, an annoyed groan. Still, I went to see it, hoping to be proved wrong.

You can probably already guess that I wasn’t.

It’s not just that the franchise has completely petered out after nine years of the same tired jokes, or that the concept is worn thin, or even that the three ogre babies that popped out in the last film look downright terrifying (please tell me I’m not the only one that noticed that).

It’s that for this, the supposed “final chapter” in the life and times of our green friend, the powers that be at Dreamworks decided to turn to that most overused of storylines, the proverbial dead horse of bad sitcom fare: the midlife crisis.

Shrek’s life is far different than it was when we first found him alone in a swamp all those years ago. He still lives there, but now he’s got a wife, three kids, a donkey, and the ever-present Puss In Boots (Antonio Banderas), along with a boatload of monotony. Tourists ogle him as he goes to the outhouse, he can’t take a simple mudbath in peace, and he longs for the days when he was the most feared creature in Far Far Away.

After losing it at his kids’ first birthday party, Shrek strikes up a conversation with Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn), a disgraced maker of magical deals looking to get back in the game. After a few cocktails, Shrek agrees to trade one day from his infancy (because he won’t remember it anyway) for one day back in his old life, when he was a terrifying and carefree ogre.

After signing the contract, everything is hunky dory for Shrek as he scares his way through as many villagers as he can find (to the music of The Carpenters, no less). But then, he notices that a change has been made to the Wanted: Ogres posters tacked to the trees: some of them look like his wife Fiona (Diaz).

Shrek quickly discovers that Rumpel took from him the day he was born. He doesn’t exist, and therefore in this world Rumpel is king, and ogres are hunted and imprisoned by hordes of witches. Fiona is the leader of an ogre revolution bent on overthrowing the diminutive dictator, and in order to break the spell, Shrek has to figure out a way to defeat Rumpel and kiss Fiona. The problem: she has no idea who he is.

Much of the film is devoted to Shrek getting his angst out about how much he hates his life (pre-dealmaking) or how much he wants it back (post-dealmaking). This wouldn’t be a problem, except that I know the “Don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone” story far better than I want to already, and putting it in the guise of a fairy tale characters doesn’t really help it feel fresh. I read somewhere a comparison between this film and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Give the ogre Jimmy Stewart’s voice, and get back to me.

Still, there are a lot of jokes, and some of them aren’t half bad, particularly when drawn from Donkey (Murphy) and Puss, who is, in this alternate reality, fat, lazy and retired from the life of a swashbuckling feline. There’s enough to laugh at, or even give an amused smirk to, which gives the film at least a small measure of redemption. I have to say, though, when your funniest moment is a little fat kid simply saying “Do the roar,” you really need to re-evaluate your comedic priorities.

I’ve done a lot of complaining about the premise of this film, which might lead you to assume that the film was doomed in my eyes even before I went it. I will admit there’s probably some truth to that, but let me declare to you that I have no objection to a good redemption story. Notice I said GOOD redemption story, which this film is not. It’s sometimes funny, sometimes even a bit touching, and it retains the same charm for which Shrek became famous. What it doesn’t have is any sense of originality or daring in its subject matter. It’s 90 minutes of CGI fluff packaged up as “heartwarming,” and I don’t blame the talent. I blame the franchise. Shrek is stale, Dreamworks. It’s time to let him go.

Matt’s Call: The kids will love it, and it’s at the very least family safe, but don’t expect to see anything challenging up on the screen. If it weren’t for a few good jokes and a few nice lines, I would have proclaimed this film a 90 minute commercial for toys.

New on DVD: "Inception," strong contender for Coolest Movie in a Long Damn Time

Leo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt conduct their own version of Operation: Mindcrime.

Christopher Nolan's incredifilm Inception hits DVD this week as a perfect accompaniment for all those new HDTVs, Blu-Ray players and surround sound systems you are all no doubt buying this Christmas. I have nothing but good things to say about this one. Behold, my original review from the July release.

Inception really is that good

Some flicks just have an air of destiny about them.

The idea sounds great, the cast and crew come together perfectly, the trailers strike just the right note of anticipation, and when the film finally rolls out for all to see, it turns out it really was the sublime experience everyone hoped it would be.

It’s rare that a film really does that. Films can be good, but not as great as you thought they would be, very often, but it takes something more for them to meet your every expectation. After all, in our minds there are no budget constraints, actors never make mistakes, and special effects look completely real.

It’s an even rarer occasion when a film exceeds your expectations, and rarer still that a film leaves you dumbfounded with a kind of gleeful sensory overload.

Inception, the latest offering from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, is one of those films. In spite of a boatload of impossible expectations, this flick went far beyond my wildest dreams (pun definitely intended) of how great it could be.

It’s not just that this is a lovingly crafted, carefully designed and flawlessly executed exercise in filmmaking. This is a strikingly original piece of cinema, truly something you’ve never seen before, and that alone should be enough to get you marching to this particular drum.

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are thieves of a very particular order. They don’t knock over casinos or museums. They invade dreams in search of world-changing ideas buried in the minds of corporate honchos. They do this because they are handsomely paid by other corporate honchos.

The process involves a technology called “shared dreaming,” in which several people are hooked up to the same sedation machine and simultaneously transported into a pre-designed dream world that is inhabited by figments of the dreamer’s subconscious (this all makes more sense when you see it, trust me). Once there, they find a way to get to the deepest and darkest part of that subconscious, where the secrets lie.

Cobb is good at his job, but he’s also on the run from his own past, and when an Asian tycoon (Ken Watanabe) offers him a chance at redemption through “one last job,” he jumps at it. But the job is anything but ordinary. This time it’s not about taking an idea out, but putting an idea in, something that becomes far more difficult when ensnared in the trappings of the mind.

To pull off this ambitious reverse-heist, Cobb and Arthur recruit brilliant young architect Ariadne (Ellen Page) to design the dream world, and international charmer Eames (Tom Hardy) to rustle up a mass of deceptions, all to be placed inside the head of the heir to an international conglomerate (Cillian Murphy).

I’m stopping there, not just because I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but also because if I wanted to get into the intricacies of this flick’s plot, I’d need a whole book to do it. Nolan, already famous for his magnificently layered films (his breakout film Memento is a prime example) outdoes himself here, crafting a world that’s part reality, part dream, and part dream within a dream, each with its own carefully designed set of rules. 

It may seem a long shot, making a film built around the structure of a heist, which involves careful, logical planning, but set in the illogical and ever-shifting world of dreams. But the whole flick really does make sense, and Nolan achieves this by placing all the things we know about dreams into the context of his tale. Time moves differently, the subconscious intrudes on logic, and everything seems to revolve around the dreamer. All this not only grounds the film, but also makes it believable. Believe me when I tell you that this does not feel like science fiction. 

The realism is heightened by Nolan’s use of special effects. Though what you see is mindbending, never does it feel contrived or intended to impress. It’s all simply part of the world you’ve been pushed into. Cities bend in half, freight trains fly through taxi-packed streets, people spin through hallways in zero gravity, but never during any of that does it feel like Nolan is shouting “Look at me! Look at how cool this is!” It’s all woven into the fabric.

The acting is, put simply, top notch. DiCaprio manages to be psychologically complex without seeming melodramatic, Gordon-Levitt is super-spy cool, Page is alternately curious and wise at all the right times. You don’t feel like you’re watching movie stars cavorting about the blockbuster-scape, and that’s a miracle in itself.

But what’s most brilliant about his treasure of a movie is the way reality almost becomes a character itself. Nolan makes much of the difference between what’s real and what’s not, and is careful to note that as we’re dreaming nothing seems illogical. “Inception” is a film that plays with this concept like no other, bending and shaping reality in layers and shadows into a funhouse of the mind. Never once is the plot, the pace or the conceptual solidity lost in all the smoke and mirrors, and yet by the end you’re still left with a dizzying sense of openness, as if you’re still waiting to wake up. 

Matt’s Call: The best movie of the year so far by leaps and bounds, and nothing slated to come out later this year looks like it will even come close (The Social Network has since forced me to revise this opinion, but not much.). It’s as good as you heard it was, and better. All that’s left is for you to see it.