Quite possibly the cheapest-looking stop-motion film ever made, A Town Called Panic features a bunch of plastic toys that go on ceaseless, careening adventures. The protagonists – Cowboy, Indian, and Horse – all live in a peculiar house in an unspecified (possibly French) countryside. The “plot” of the film involves Cowboy and Indian accidently ordering 50 billion bricks as a birthday present for Horse. The ensuing narrative that arises from that tiny germ of an idea could not be divined by God Himself, nor ever understood.

While I admire the painstaking work involved in making these simple-looking toys come to some sort of life, this is simply not a good movie. No matter how crazy a film gets, it still requires a tangible plot or character arcs that justify sitting in a theater for ninety minutes. This film, however, plays like a never-ending freefall into insanity. When mer-men inexplicably climbed out of the farm’s pond and stole a house, I was ready to leave. The film just goes on and on like that, with one spastic event leading into another without reason or sense.

The animation is hideous, although I did very much like some of the vast landscapes conjured as a backdrop. The characters, standing on little pedestals just like those old army soldier toys, bounce back and forth when talking by way of little globs of clay being postioned under their feet. This technique becomes very distracting, then amusing, then annoying. The puppets used are fairly ugly, and are kept in long shots most of the time. This, however, gives a depersonalizing effect to the film that prevents us from really loving what’s onscreen. Ultimately, this film looks like a very ugly toy set hyperactively scrambling around on its own.

I could have gotten onboard for the technique and look of the film if it had anything going on in its head. But it doesn’t. The film doesn’t make a lick of sense, the characters are barely sketched, and the tone of the film provides little engage an audience. If this is the alternative, then I think I’ll stick to Michael Bay films instead.

Fifteen years ago, the words “Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland” would’ve inspired eunuchs to ejaculate. At that moment in his career, Burton had his trademark visual flair married to a sense of character and story. While I doubt that Burton would have remained true to the original books, he probably would have tried to to keep the focus on the titular character and her story.

Unfortunately, it is not fifteen years ago. The Burton of today, now reduced to a fat-cat idiot savant, cares only about upping the special effects in order to achieve a sort of ceaseless blast of art direction. One could argue that Burton always had a problem with story, and his fantastical drawings/designs were the centerpiece of his films. But films like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice never felt that way. They came off as character-driven stories with very eccentric art direction. Burton’s latest, Alice In Wonderland, feels like it’s the rock-bottom of Burton’s creative downward spiral.

Mia Wasikowska stars as Alice, a 19 year old Victorian-era lady who is about to be arranged in marriage to a chinless idiot. Alice sees a white rabbit disappear in a hole in the ground, she follows, and into Wonderland (here referred to as Underland) she goes. There, she becomes embroiled in the war between the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and she helps rally the odd denizens of Underland, including the Mad Hatter, to fight for their freedom.

What? That doesn’t sound like the story you remember? That’s because Burton and screenwriter Linda Woolverton (who really should find another profession) have made those previous adventures a dream that a very young Alice recalls. By the time Alice reaches 19, she’s entirely forgotten her earlier experience in Wonderland. So this film spends an eternity re-introducing Alice to all of the loony characters in Wonderland Underland.

Burton gets some of these characters (mostly) right. Tweedledee and Tweedledum – two of my least favorite characters from the original – are done well enough here as essayed by Matt Lucas, who plays both. The CGI involved to give them flabby life feels realistic, and the banter is fine (although quite reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s books). I was also quite impressed with the look and sound of the Cheshire Cat. Stephen Fry does a nice job giving the Cat a dry, egotistical tone to his line delivery. Alan Rickman also shows up as the Caterpillar, his voice dripping with Rickman’s typical disdain.

But everything else is a mess. Alice is turned into some sort of feminist, self-empowerment guru, and her whining and platitudes disn’t sit well with me. The White Queen is a blandishment. Crispin Glover is thoroughly smothered by CGI as the Knave of Hearts to the point of inconsequence.

But the worst atrocities come from actors who, at this point, should know better than this. Carter is horrible as the Red Queen, overacting yet again. Her character in the books made for a fairly one-note villain, her catchphrase “Off With Their Heads!” being her sole characteristic. So Woolverton and Burton give the Red Queen all kinds of silly business in between head chopping along the lines of the pig belly crap seen in some of the trailers. The CGI used to enlarge Carter’s head works beautifully. If only they could have simultaneously shrunk Carter’s performance into something less freakishly cartoonish at the same time.

Speaking of freakishly cartoonish, Johnny Depp needs a serious sabbatical from Burton films. Like perhaps forever. Depp sinks the film with his Mad Hatter, a ridiculous-looking creature with changing accents and very precious mannerisms. Previous versions of the character had a fairly normal looking man (in an oversized top hat) spouting nonsense, which did, of course, make his character even more unnerving and strange. Here, Depp’s Hatter is so repulsive looking and bizarre that we expect nothing else but absurdity from him, which then undercuts the effect. Depp is allowed to overact dreadfully, showing emphatically that this once-promising actor has lost his way ever since he hit paydirt with the Piratesfilms nine ago. An awful performance. And I say that without mentioning the breakdancing part at the end, one of the most embarrassing things since Peter Parker disco danced in Spiderman 3.

But if anything can explain how wrong-headed Burton’s film is, it’s this: the Mad Hatter has a backstory. And, much like Willy Wonka from Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, that backstory is STUPID and UNNECESSARY. Burton has the mistaken idea that being a “real” storyteller involves explaining every last detail of every character.

The script is a complete failure. The only reason Burton and Woolverton made Alice 19 is to appeal to the teen market, and the script contortions to explain and re-explain this plot device are exhausting. Alice can’t remember anything about her previous visit … until she needs to. It also allows Woolverton to lift dialogue from the books without having to do a continuation of Alice’s relationship with these characters. Then, Burton and Woolverton take these whimsical, one dimensional characters and toss them into a plot about prophecies and ultimate battles and epic quests. For anyone above the age of fetus who has any understanding of the books or the original story, that idea is ludicrous. Alice is not a warrior. She should not be in full armour battling a giant Jabberwock at the end of the film. Burton and Woolverton are simply trying to appeal to the <em>Lord of the Rings</em> crowd in an attempt to justify the massive budget wasted on this thing. You can almost hear Burton saying: hey guys, seriously, this movie isn’t for kids! It’s got action and epic battles!

Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Burton’s once-fanciful visual stylings here feel mechanical, drab, and rote. Underland is a soiled place decked in ugly, muted colors and a curious lack of life considering all the business going on everywhere. Despite the whiz-bang visuals, much of the film drags. Parts of this film – Depp’s Hatter in particular – are awful to watch and actually painful to the eyes. I did not see it in 3D – I’ve heard it’s even worse – but even in 2D the film felt very flat.

Given what Burton has lined up next, this wish will go unrequited, but I will state it anyway: Burton needs to direct something low-budgeted and personal. He has some talent, as evidenced from films like Ed Wood that Burton made back when his films actually revolved around characters living on this planet. The films Burton has pumped out lately all feel (with a modest exception to Big Fish) very detached and lifeless and, even worse, pointless. The great directors are people who combine visual flair with keen storytelling instincts and a desire to relate to an audience. Burton only seems to have one of those three qualities left in his arsenal. Like Alice, that seems to have disappeared down a bottomless computer-generated rabbit hole, never to be seen again.

America has enjoyed a brief time at the top of the heap, thanks to her capitalistic foundation and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Money and greed have fueled all of her ingenuity; let’s invent new weapons … let’s develop new technologies and new medicines … all in the pursuit of a dollar bill. Thanks to these efforts, the United States became the most powerful nation on Earth in a short period of time, and has remained such at the turn of the century.

But dangerous forces, ones driven by capitalism at its most extreme, are at work in the top levels of her government. Polticians and corporate leaders have become a ruling class, presiding over the average American worker in much the same manner as the King George did over the Empire that birthed the U.S. so long ago. Only now, the members of this ruling class are not robbing people through taxation; they are robbing them outright in plain sight, scaring the people into bailouts and costly wars that go to fill their coffers. It’s a disgusting sight.

It’s this growing concern and anger that fuels some of Michael Moore’s latest provocation, Capitalism: A Love Story. The love story in question is one in which various institutions (political, corporate, financial) combine forces in order to help each other become obscenely wealthy at the expense of the common man. You know, those little people that the U.S. Constitution was supposed to protect.

Moore sounds angry and defeated throughout this film, which is unsurprising given the massive forces aligned against his ideology. Unfortunately, this anger causes Moore to continue his provocative gimmicks, like shouting at Wall Street with a bullhorn like some sort of unhealthy Alex Jones. While slightly amusing, these gimmicks do nothing to support his message. In fact, they detract from the message, making Moore look like an annoying clown, rather than someone who has a message and a plan for change.

There are, however, gems embedded within the antics. At one point Moore talks about “dead peasant” policies, which shocked the hell out of me. Apparently there are corporations in America – big ones, like WalMart, Hershey’s, and Citigroup – that are taking out secret, high-paying life insurance policies on their workers. The corporations receive the monies from those policies when a worker dies. Moore talks to a woman who was left with bills when her husband suddenly passed, only to then found out that her husband’s company made 1.5 million dollars from his death due to one of these policies. It’s horrific. Even that name – dead peasants – demonstrates the attitude of the people behind these schemes. It’s like America is some sort of Soylent Green factory, and America’s citizens are headed for the grinder.

Moore does a convincing and sometimes entertaining job of summarizing how the humming captialism of fifties America went off the rails, cleverly using advertisment footage to hammer home some of his points. It’s during these moments that Moore almost resembles a documentarian, despite the obvious point of view projected onto it. Inevitably, though, Moore reverts back to his silly and truly pointless attempts to trespass and bother security guards. I wish Moore would stay on the facts, where his editorial opinion carries much more weight.

The film focuses on the recent bailout of the American financial district by the taxpayers, easily one of the most ludicrous moments in her history. Had this been attempted in 1790, the American citizens of that day would have risen up and murdered those politicians with pitchforks. Unfortunately, the American citizens of today are lazy, distracted by garbage like IPads and Jersey Shore, and more concerned about the infidelities of Tiger Woods than the infidelities of their government. Moore senses that the current crop of American citizen lacks the courage, intelligence, and intestinal fortitude necessary to tackle these overwhelming problems, so he leaves the finale of the film open-ended. There are no answers given here, mainly because the real answer – revolution – is one that will not be considered by the blob-like peasants working the factories across America.

Unfortunately, with all Moore gets right in the film, his politics – much like the partisan politics that choke Washington – cause him to miss the mark on occasion. For instance, Moore spends a lot of time mocking George Bush and his cronies for this mess, which is deserved. But then Moore practically presents Obama as some sort of agent of change and hope, completely ignoring Obama’s huge and very convincing role in promoting the bailout. It’s this type of left/right political nonsense that undermines Moore and his film.

The raping and pillaging of America’s wealth and prosperity is an important subject for a depp, powerful, and probing film. I wish Moore would have set aside his politics and clownish antics and made that film, rather than produce a half-hearted attempt to explain the problem. If these are the best arrows that people like Moore can fire at these criminals, then America truly is fucked and the bad guys will most certainly win.

The latest film in this growing genre is The Crazies, a remake of a 1973 horror film by Night of the Living Dead creator George A. Romero. As in the original, the population of a small town is slowly succumbing to a mysterious man-made virus that causes them to attack and kill everyone around them. The new film stars Timothy Olyphant as David, a sheriff who quickly discovers that something is terribly wrong with everyone when an armed man casually walks onto a little league field during a game with a shotgun and attacks him. Soon David, his wife (Radha Mitchell), and his deputy (Joe Anderson) are trying to get out of town as quickly as possible.

Like many horror films these days, the filmmakers assume that the audience already knows something about the premise and therefore feels no obligation to explain anything. The film wastes little time in introducing the entire town before the first “crazy” shows up on that baseball field. In this, the film feels like the original Night of the Living Dead, creating a sense of shocking horror out of the mundane. Unlike that zombie classic, however, the “crazies” here never really feel threatening or unstoppable; they stare, they stalk, they wander around, but they never feel substantially evil or terrifying.

The subplot of the film involves a massive government conspiracy involving this man-made virus, which leads to a very annoying story device in which a satellite can see anyone anywhere. There are various shots from the point-of-view of the satellite that completely distract from the believability of the film. I hated this aspect of the film.

Olyphant is fine in this role, and he certainly exudes enough charisma to carry a film of this sort. The rest of the cast screams and runs well, which is all their roles require of them. In a film like this, nobody is looking for a Streep-like performance, however.

The direction of Breck Eisner is uselessly cliched. There are approximately 3.1 million jump scares in this film, each one accompanied by orchestra hits. A mother turns a corner while looking for her boy — Hand on shoulder!! Orchestra hit!! Mother screams!! — and it’s revealed to be her boy. Moments like this litter the film, diluting the truly unnerving scenes. This is ashame, because Eisner and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre have crafted some nice shots that might have worked better in a less-manipulative film.

Ultimately, The Crazies suffers from too much gloss, too many phony jump scares, and an uninspired screenplay. Rather than being derived from a master of horror, the film feels like any run-of-the-mill horror film released in the last twenty years. And that isn’t something to get too crazy about.

His latest film, Cop Out, is a departure for Smith in that it marks the first time he has directed a feature that wasn’t scripted by him. That, unfortunately, doesn’t prove to be a positive, since screenwriters Robb and Mark Cullen are obviously aping Smith’s sophomoric level of toilet humor. I can only imagine Smith’s first reading of this script, cackling like a lobotomized hyena at mentions of “ass-to-mouth” and dick-sucking monkeys; he must have felt like someone was reading his wet dreams. Fittingly, they also managed to construct a limp, haphazard storyline that perfectly imitates the carelessness that Smith regularly displays in his own screenplays.

Bruce Willis stars as Jimmy, a weathered cop who has had to endure a nine year partnership with streetwise Paul (Tracy Morgan). We’ve seen this police dynamic already in at least five hundred films, but Willis and Morgan have some decent chemistry and make some of it feel fresher than it deserves. The “story” that befalls these two characters is far too convoluted and inconsequential to dissect, although I can say that it involves a silly Mexican gangster (Juan Carlos Hernandez), a stolen baseball card, and a thief and parkour specialist (Seann William Scott).

I can also confirm that much of it is very laborious and not very funny. The script meanders aimlessly, pinpointing on endless character asides that are supposed to be (a) funny and (b) enlightening, yet end up being (c) pointless. For instance, Morgan’s character is jealous of his wife, so he installs a camera in their bedroom to see if she’s cheating on him. The contents of that camera become an running concern throughout the film, even in the middle of a crime investigation. It goes on and on, with Morgan carrying on lengthy dialogues about his wife and his feelings for her. Yet we are not really given any reason to care about their relationship, so why spend so much time on this? Almost every character in the film has this type of business going on, featured in protracted scenes that fail to build into a cohesive whole.

Also, the central crime storyline is so silly and weightless that the tone of the movie becomes confusing. Despite the extensive gunplay and frequent shootings, the film plays almost as if it was supposed to be a joke, rather than a serious crime story played with laughs. Imagine if Beverly Hills Cop had been about Axel Foley trying to retrieve an antique lighter from a mobster – that is the level of story we’re dealing with here, and it sucks.

To make matters worse, the script basically hands the entire investigation over to the two policemen in huge chunks without even the slightest hint of clever detective work. For instance, the two cops stop a car thief in order to find out a vital clue; for laughs, the thief is an eleven year old boy, who then blurts out the name and whereabouts of the villain. It’s sloppy and extremely lazy screenwriting.

But “lazy” is the best term to describe Smith’s entire film catalog, and his direction here does not change that impression. Dialogue scenes are simply multiple camera set-ups edited together without rhythm, ping-ponging back and forth like the most robotic tennis match in history. Then Smith employs shaky-cam for “action” scenes, proving that he’s much better off setting his camera on a very rigid tripod. The editing in these scenes feels a little more dynamic, especially in a car chase at the halfway point that contained some nice shots. But these brief moments barely punctuate the blandly static scenes that never achieve life.

What a shame that Morgan, who has been criminally underused for a decade, couldn’t have found a more appropriate project with which to launch a much-deserved film career. Both Morgan and Willis put in fine work, all in a lost cause. This is simply another waste of time and talent from Smith.

Bridges stars as Bad Blake, a 57 year old country western singer who only achieved marginal success in the genre, unlike his fast-rising protege Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell). Bad Blake is forced to tour dead-end bars and bowling alleys, and his depressing life is tempered somewhat by a steady stream of whisky and groupies. Then Blake meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a single mother and writer that captures his heart. Things will not be easy between them, however.

Much has been made of Bridges’ performance as Blake, a role that has won him a Best Actor nomination that he will likely take. Bridges is very good, but the role and the performance isn’t much different from many of the roles that have defined his career. His Bad Blake character is essentially an alcoholic, country-western version of The Dude. Bridges does laid back very well, but fortunately this role allows him to take that character into darker and more pathetic areas.

He’s matched very well by Gyllenhaal in her best performance since Secretary. Gyllenhaal exudes an honesty in the role, and she also adds subtle layers of conflict as her character engages in a difficult and questionable relationship with Blake. I thought many of her scenes were perfect, and I say this as someone who hasn’t really warmed up to Gyllenhaal in the past.

It’s often difficult to make a successful music-based drama because the songs are often not up to par, but the songs provided by Steven Bruton and T -Bone Burnett are very good and believable country-western songs. Bridges does an excellent job of selling his singing, and he looks like an authentic western singer. I kept thinking that Bridges looked like some sort of cross between Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Rogers, and The Dude, which isn’t all that bad.

Director Scott Cooper wisely keeps the film unadorned and simple, his camera trained tightly on his actors. There sin’t much here that hasn’t been told before in countless “hard life on the road” music-based dramas, but the compelling performances and truthful writing make for a thoughtful, introspective experience.

Benicio Del Toro stars as Larry Talbot, an English actor in 1890 who has gone to seek his fortune in America. When Larry’s brother is brutally murdered, Larry reluctantly returns home to be withhis estranged family, including his mysterious father Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) and his brother’s fiance Gwen (Emily Blunt). During his investigation into his brother’s death, he is attacked and bitten by a horrific creature in a gypsy camp, which gives him unnatural powers when the moon rises …

It seems unpleasant and wrong to discuss the turmoil in the making of a film when reviewing it, but it is unavoidable in this case. The Wolfman is a narrative mess, and many of the hackings and arguments behind the scenes show up unpleasantly onscreen. Particularly bad is the entire first act, which flops around in a vain attempt to establish a character and a romance for Larry. Rather than take a careful pace to build up to Larry’s infection and transformation, the film rushes headlong to that point without anything really making an impression. The direction by Joe Johnston is typically workmanlike, but flails in the face of massive script and performance problems.

Some of that might be the fault of Del Toro, who manages the hung-dog look of Lon Chaney Jr. without any of his pathos. I am hard-pressed to come up with a less interesting leading man in a major tentpole film. Couldn’t screenwriters Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self give Larry any kind of character? Even an inappropriate character element would have been better than what ended up onscreen. What remains is a hero that we do not know, and with whom we cannot sympathize or encourage. That’s a bad, bad trait for a film like this.

Even worse is setting up for a romance that has no chemistry. In reality, the romance needs to be very strong, because that imbues the tragic aspects of the story with more pathos and conflict. Unfortunately, Blunt has zero chemistry with Del Toro. The script betrays the romance as well, forcing the two characters together unbelievably (would they really fall in love that fast??) rather than let it breather organically. The real tragedy is how so many professional moviemakers on this set managed to miss this important aspect.

I am also somewhat divided about the performance of Anthony Hopkins and Larry’s peculiar father. He overacts dreadfully, no doubt. This could have worked wonderfully, except that the rest of the film is pitched so much lower. Hopkins feels like he is in another film altogether. Aren’t actors supposed to tune their performances to those around them in order to make a script work? Hopkins’ Talbot Sr. feels like a reprisal of his Van Helsing character from <em>Bram Stoker’s Dracula</em>, which is out of place here. As always, Hopkins is mesmerizing, but he definitely unravels the tapestry of the film.

One of the huge problems with films like The Wolfman or Frankenstein is this: with whom do you sympathize?? Can you really root for Larry Talbot, who turns into a murderous werewolf and slaughters people? Do you root for Detective Abberline (Hugo Weaving) who is trying to find and kill Larry’s wolf?? The viewer is left conflicted about the point of the film, or what outcome would be dramatically pleasing. In Frankenstein, Karloff created a monster that we could love and understand, and thereby crafted an anti-hero for whom we could sympathize and encourage. We cannot do the same thing here.

With all of the dramatic fumblings, the only aspect left to enjoy on any level are the effects, and even those fly all over the quality map. Some of the CGI transformations work fairly well, while other CGI effects of the wolfman leaping and jumping look like more of the same rubber puppet nonsense that I hoped Avatar would make obsolete. Rick Baker’s makeup effects look good, and the gore is copious. But effects cannot make a movie like this.

Ultimately, I am very disappointed. For many years I wanted to see another gothic horror film set in the 19th century. I wanted to see a film draped in webbed stone hallways, and lit wit hthe flickering fingers of candlelight. But while this film manages to do a decent imitation of these things, it often ends up feeling more like an amusement park ride at Disney. The story and setting of The Wolfman might harken back to another era, but its execution is, sadly, very much of the sloppy and phony present.

A missed opportunity.

Percy Jackson is the titular hero of a series of novels that inexplicably became popular in 2005 in the wake of the Harry Potter craze. Judging by this limp and seriously stupid film, the series was written with the sole intent of cashing in on the squirting vein of cash exposed by J.K. Rowling and her boy wizard. Unfortunately the film – and, apparently, the books, have very little of the magic that the Potter series wields.

Logan Lerman stars as Percy, an everyday teenager who happens to have a peculiar affinity for water. As in, he can hold his breath for over seven minutes underwater. This doesn’t seem to faze his best friend Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), for reasons we quickly discover. You see, Percy is the son of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea. Grover is his guardian satyr, pledged with protecting Percy. This soon becomes necessary when Poseidon and Zeus get into a grudge match over Zeus’ missing lightning bolt, and the forces of the netherworld pursue Percy because they think he has it. In order to help him “discover his destiny,” Percy is taken to Camp Halfblood in order to learn his unique gifts.

Most of this film sounds like direct lifts from the Potterseries. A wise old guardian … half human/half supernatural hero … a training camp for these demi-gods … called “Halfblood.” I think Rowling should get her lawyer on the line. These flagrant thefts might be excusable if the entire film didn’t absolutely reek of money-grubbing desperation. The film looks and feels as if it was coughed out in an afternoon; the special effects are laughable, the sword-fighting looks arthritic, and the pacing is non-existent. Plot points fart out of the screen without a whiff of sense or meaning. Even worse, Percy himself is a hero without any heroic characteristics. Typically, the hero of a film must overcome obstacles with his skill and wits in order to succeed; here, Percy is given everything he needs by the people around him, nullifying any semblance of heroism. It’s dramatically lifeless.

I suppose Lerman is okay in a nothing role. The kid looks like he should be modeling underwear in a J.C. Penney catalog, and frequently his acting feels the same way. I somewhat liked Jackson as Percy’s protector, but, again, the role is undernourished. Pierce Brosnan looks absolutely lost as Mr. Brunner, Percy’s wise old mentor. The only performance with any zest at all is Steve Coogan as Hades; he feels like he is at least enjoying himself a little bit. But not much.

This film feels like Potter meets Clash of the Titans in the valley of Van Helsing. In other words, it sucks.

Such is the mind-bending premise behind Charlie Kaufman’s third weird masterpiece, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film stars Jim Carrey as Joel Barish, a dweeby and lonely man who meets the loud and boisterous Clementine (Kate Winslet) on a train. She picks him up, and soon they’re engaged in a romance. Soon, however, things unravel when Joel becomes aware that he was once in a relationship with Clementine, and those memories were erased after they broke up. The race is on for Joel to preserve as much of his memory of Clementine as possible.

Carrey and Winslet are remarkable as the doomed lovers. Carrey manages to exude warmth and fear and longing with simple gestures, not an easy thing in a film this visually and intellectually complex. Winslet frees herself as Clementine, her performance as multi-layered and lively as her hairdos. The two form a believable bond, which is very important as the film tackles themes of romantic destiny.

But the real star here is the script by Kaufman. This is difficult material to mine effectively, but Kaufman plays a smart trick in introducing other couples that have had their minds altered with this technology. By seeing the effects from the outside, we can as an audience peer into the world that Joel and Clementine are struggling to understand. I wouldn’t say the script entirely works; several scenes call attention to themselves as needlessly showy, and some of the pathos of the situation is drowned within Kaufman’s labyrinthine structure. It is, however, a startlingly original work.

Director Michael Gondry matches Kaufman’s ambition with a directorial performance of sheer genius. Gondry uses clever camera angels and weird, stagy lighting to effectively mirror the turbulent emotional states of the characters. There are also some arresting shots that will not easily be forgotten. Gondry keeps the audience on edge through shot and scene construction. It is one of the best directorial jobs in the last decade.

While it may not be the best puzzle script that Kaufman has created, it has a catchy premise and some fine lead performances, while Gondry holds the various disparate pieces firmly in place. A thoughtful and transporting masterpiece.

It’s nice to see she’s using that clout in impressive new ways.

Barrymore makes her directorial debut in Whip It, one of the few films to focus on the wild world of roller derbies. The film stars Ellen Page as Bliss Cavendar, a 17 year old Texan girl dealing with her repressive mother (Marcia Gay Harden, does she play anything else?) and zoned out father (Daniel Stern) with the help of her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat). When the two girls sneak out to experience roller derby, Bliss gets sucked into the lifestyle with some previously unknown talent she has for the sport. The rest of the film deals with her emerging talents as she hides her new life from her family.

Page does another variation on the character she honed in films like Juno; smartassed, wise-cracking punk girl with a gooey little girl center. It’s a bit surprising that Page exhibits no sign of the Texas accent adopted by the other actors around her, and this makes her performance ring slightly false. Fortunately for Barrymore, she managed to surround this okay performance with a terrific cast, all of whom bring subtle nuances to their roles. It’s especially nice to see long-absent Juliette Lewis make a strong return as the “villain” of the film, a rival for Bliss named Iron Maven. I also liked the inventiveness of Gay Harden and Stern in what could have been very stereotypical roles. I could have done without Jimmy Fallon as a derby announcer, though, but I just don’t care for the guy in any of his performances.

Barrymore keeps the film light and frothy, but she also adds a very masculine undercurrent of physicality that really propels this film forward. She also keeps the directorial bells and whistles to a minimum, allowing the characters to take center stage. Despite this very strong effort, I wish Barrymore would have spent either more time or money to really capture the derby scenes on film; some of the shots are not very dynamic in these sequences, and some are just plain sloppy. Fortunately the derby scenes are a smaller portion of the whole, and they do not detract much from the storytelling.

The film didn’t make its budget back in theaters, but I sincerely hope the DVD market is kind to this underrated and underappreciated gem. Fans of fun, loose, and thoughtful storytelling need to support films just like this one.