The Grouchy Editor

Snowpiercer

It’s the future (again), and what’s left of mankind is crammed into a high-speed train that endlessly circles the frozen Earth.  Will the have-nots in the back of the train revolt and seek revenge on the elite at the front?  Snowpiercer suffers badly from comic-book-movie disease:  It takes itself much, much too seriously.  The dialogue is trite and the character development nonexistent, yet the movie wants us to care about the fate of its cardboard characters.  There are, however, some cool-looking sets aboard the train.  Release:  2013  Grade:  B

*****

Frozen

It’s a cynical world, but you wouldn’t know it from watching Disney’s charming Frozen.  What’s not to like?  For starters, Kristen Bell brings spunk and humor to the heroine, a determined princess named Anna.  The animation is startlingly good and the songs are … satisfactory.  There are some lapses of logic in the story (loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”), but hey, this is a fairy tale and double-hey, isn’t this movie supposed to be for kids?  Release:  2013  Grade:  B+

*****

Nebraska

The rubes who populate Nebraska are a bit stereotyped, but it’s a pleasure to watch 76-year-old Bruce Dern and Will Forte as a father and son making a cross-country trip to claim what Dad thinks is a sweepstakes prize.  This isn’t director Alexander Payne’s best work, but his trademark gentle humor is on full display, and so is the Midwest – for better or worse.  Release:  2013   Grade:  B

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Blue Jasmine

You can take Woody Allen out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of Woody Allen – thank goodness.  Cate Blanchett shines as a society snob who takes a tumble when her husband goes to prison and her finances vanish, forcing her to shack up with a sister on the West Coast.  The setting is San Francisco, but the characters – each with his or her own idea of “the good life” – are pure New York.  Release:  2013   Grade:  B+

*****

Honeymoon

Here’s a spooky movie that’s refreshing both for what it is and for what it is not.  It is not zombies and it’s not vampires and it’s not all special effects and gore.  (OK, there is some gore.)  It is a throwback to 1950s science fiction, in which the communist threat reared its ugly head in monsters and neighbors and plants.  The story, in which newlyweds Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway find more than good sex at a secluded lakeside cottage, is a bit pokey at first, but the final act is chilling.  Release:  2014  Grade:  B

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All Is Lost

Robert Redford plays a yachtsman who struggles for eight days to survive in the Indian Ocean after his boat is punctured by floating junk.  Redford was praised for his solo performance in this harrowing tale, and deservedly so, but All Is Lost is really a director’s movie … and a sound engineer’s movie, and an editor’s movie, and a cinematographer’s movie, et al.  It’s a fine showcase for what only Hollywood can do:  dazzle us with sight and sound.  Release:  2013   Grade:  B+

*****

Il Futuro

This is one of those artsy, low-plot foreign movies that suck you in because the characters are interesting and the images are striking.  Sad-eyed Manuela Martelli plays an orphaned teen who, along with her younger brother and his shady pals, concocts a plot to rob an aging blind man (Rutger Hauer).  The ensuing romance between old man Hauer and waif-like Martelli manages to be simultaneously creepy and erotic.   Release:  2013  Grade:  B-

*****

Wake in Fright

“He was a good guy.  But then he fell in with a bad crowd.”  John Grant (Gary Bond) is a good guy, a schoolteacher toiling in the boonies of Australia’s Outback.  He goes on holiday, has a drink, does a little gambling … and then meets the menfolk of a community known as “The Yabba.”  What follows is a harrowing, graphic look at just how low the human spirit can fall – disturbing stuff, but expertly realized by filmmaker Ted Kotcheff.  Release:  1971  Grade:  B+

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The Den

Graduate student Elizabeth (Melanie Papalia) is researching online behavior at a video-chat site, but while she spends hours staring at a computer screen, the computer is secretly staring back at her.  The first half of The Den – shot entirely from Web-cam/phone-cam points of view – feels a lot more like Skype than Netflix.  But after tapping into our primal fears about invasion of privacy, the story devolves from clever and cool into a cliché-ridden amalgam of conspiracy silliness and Saw-like gore.  Release:  2014  Grade : C

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