Midnight in Paris ****

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Adrien Brody

Alison PillCarla Bruni-Sarkozy, Corey Stoll, Kathy Bates

Kurt Fuller, Léa Seydoux, Marion Cotillard

Mimi Kennedy, Tom Hiddleston

From its opening scene, Midnight in Paris establishes itself as a love song: we see how a series of shots of the city comprise a verse that thrills us because of its familiarity (ooh it's Notre Dame! ooh it's Place Vendome!) and despite its otherworldly beauty.

Paris is one of those cities that becomes universal because of the feelings they inspire even if you have never visited them. Tons of films have been set in Paris, tons of romances have been set there as well and to those less inclined by emotions, the French capital has also been the stage for some of the most revolutionary cultural movements in the world.

It makes absolute sense then, that Woody Allen would fall head over heels for it. Not since Manhattan had he shown such passion for a place as he does in this film. Structured like his iconic ode to New York City, Midnight in Paris is formed by a bookend in which we first develop the crush, a large plot development in which we suffer through the ups and downs of love and a final thought that reminds us, not only of our insignificance but about the immortality of beauty.

Throughout the film, Allen, aided by cinematographer Darius Khondji's breathtaking framing, reminds us that Paris will remain even after we're gone.

Take for example the scene in which we meet Gil Pender (Wilson), our protagonist. We hear him talking to his fiancee Inez (McAdams) about the beauty and romanticism of Paris but we can not see either of them. What we see instead is a huge pond filled with fragile water lilies. For a moment, we're not even sure if we're watching a painting or an actual real life image, Then Gil mentions something about Monet and our mind clicks, but so does the camera and we move to find ourselves in front of the people we're about to meet.

In several other scenes throughout the movie, first we see places and things and only then do the characters enter the scene. The camera is sometimes placed before them, as if suggesting the characters need to catch up with time - and wondering if they ever will be able to do it - and sometimes it seems to wander about trying to take in the riches of a city that's too overwhelming for a films's running time.

The subject of catching up with time might be the plot's biggest preoccupation, as Gil finds himself yearning to live in a different place as his writer's block increases. After working as a Hollywood hired hand- and being quite successful at it- he's trying out a novel for the first time. His trip to Paris is meant to inspire him but all he gets are insults from Inez and her parents (the pitch perfect Kennedy and Fuller).

Things get worse when they run into Paul (Sheen) and Carol (Arianda), two friends of Inez who tag along everywhere they go. He's a pseudo-intellectual who knows it all on the surface, she's the loving companion who nods at his every word.

Allen never has any problem revealing to us that the world that surrounds Gil (who in this film is the "Woody Allen character") is truly atrocious. As he usually does, he has no problem affirming that this is a misunderstood man, perhaps a bit too sensitive to be surrounded by the shrewd beings he knows. Allen has never been good at hiding his disdain for bourgeois apathy and while his characters are never exactly saints of any kind, he has always excelled at making us like them.

Gil for example seems to breathe by inertia, we're meant to dislike Inez (the things she says often make you gasp) but we're not supposed to be rooting for Gil just yet. He needs to earn our liking, he needs to achieve a breakthrough.

Woody provides him this opportunity by relying on a fantastical twist that resembles what he did in his brilliant The Purple Rose of Cairo, as in that occasion, everything happens so fast that we're unable to try and reason. Anyone who cared to deconstruct either movie by ways of physics and probability could probably accuse of them of being truly preposterous. During one scene Inez's mother describes a movie she saw as "infantile" and lacking in any believable qualities, but she doesn't deny it had charm (is she talking about the movie she's in?).

However Allen becomes the ultimate alchemist, turning the dullness of the quotidian into magic that defies the most complicated visual effects. Midnight in Paris gives him an opportunity to bask in his love for the Lost Generation and all things 20s, giving us glimpses of a city where you could run into characters the likes of Hemingway (a phenomenal, scene stealing Stoll), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Hiddleston) and Gertrude Stein (Bates) among others.

Leading us in this tour of a golden era is Marion Cotillard, playing the woman who captures Gil's heart. To reveal the many twists and turns in the movie would be to rob the audience of what can only be called utter pleasure. In the past Allen has expressed his love for classic things, however this might be the first time when he seems to find his voice through others.

While sometimes it might seem like a film meant for culture snobs (and what Allen movie isn't?) Midnight in Paris is also remarkable for its unaware passion for the arts. When Gil says to a character "you take art groupie to a whole new level" he might as well be talking about Allen and the movie.

It's no coincidence that the film seems to be based on the theory that places of great antiquity and history are forever plagued with the ghosts of those who once lived there. At many times during the film there are mentions of the main character in Gil's novel; a young man who owns a nostalgia shop, the places where you can buy old records and Shirley Temple memorabilia.

For some this is an enchanting concept (Cotillard's character is "hooked" by it) while others find it creepy and childish. "Nostalgia is denial" says Paul condescendingly, while Gil looks away finding himself in a place far away from judgment.

The movie toys with the possibility of transporting yourself to a time where everything can be perfect and Allen approaches his everlasting obsession with mortality in a way that makes the heart ache and puts a smile on your face.

We realize eventually that Allen is the shop vendor mentioned so much, he's the one always selling us nostalgia, whether it be his use of music, artistic references or the affected way in which his characters talk (the use of words like "pseudo-intellectual", "lovely" and "erotic" usually give his screenplays away).

Midnight in Paris can be read through countless layers, the magic of its ensemble alone is enough to warrant an essay but like the greatest art what's easiest to discuss, perhaps because it inspires excited, clumsy eloquence, is the feeling that it leaves you with: something that resembles the warmth of a good meal and the exhilarating joy of being in love.

After his last movie which failed to invite us into its dark world, in this one a character reminds Gil that a writer can not succumb to despair, his duty is to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence. Woody Allen seems to have taken this advice and Midnight in Paris is the kind of movie that reminds us that heaven might be a plane ride away.

The Blind Side *1/2

Director: John Lee Hancock
Cast: Sandra Bullock
Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Lily Collins, Jae Head
Ray McKinnon, Kathy Bates

The phrase "based on a true story" becomes a warning in this movie.
A warning that the events we are about to see are pimped versions of a person's life, tampered with so that Hollywood will continue its crusade for establishing middlebrow conservative values as the status quo.
It grabs the story of NFL player Michael Oher (Aaron) and deforms it to turn it into an "old fashioned" account of how good sportsmanship, strong family ties and money can help overcome any adversity.
Born and raised in the projects of his hometown in Tennesse, Oher is a big, silent teenager who is accepted in a Christian school (after the coach, played by McKinnon, sees his potential and manipulates the board by suggesting taking him in is the Christian thing to do).
But Michael feels out of place in a school where he's the only poor, black, taller than the average student, he even writes an essay about it, proving to his teachers that he can write and read.
Things change for him when he's taken in by the Tuohys a good, wealthy family who feeds him, clothes him and teaches him about football.
Mom Leigh Anne (Bullock) is the family, and the film's, center, her husband Sean (a charming McGraw) is there for moral support and their kids Collins and S.J. (Collins and Head) serve for comic relief mostly.
The thing with "The Blind Side" is that as it indulges in its own sense of morality and joy, it works like a 1940s movie minus the age factor.
This is no longer the day and age where Bing Crosby could get away with singing a song and fixing divorces, alcoholics and evil landlords. Try as it may, the movie's "all American goodness" is in fact racism hidden under Bullock's perkiness.
It has to be said that her performance is a surprise because the actress has rarely shown this maternal, Earthy side.
But her charm and star power aren't enough to justify the fact that this woman had the nerve to star in a movie that has the guts to say that even an eight year old kid can do better reasoning than an eighteen year old black man. Of course they use it as comic relief and Head is a charmer, in the right doses.
But as the white characters fend accusations of "white guilt", this is in fact precisely where the movie falls.
Oher is compared to "King Kong" and the screenplay tries to fix this by making reference to the Jessica Lange version, to prove that these people are too ignorant for the original.
And even when sassy tutor Ms. Sue (Bates) compares Oher to a Charles Dickens character, the intended uplifting plays out like disdainful condescension.
Oher is reduced to the role of the "magical negro" and the worst part is that the movie is so blind that it thinks it's actually doing good to him.

Chéri ***

Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Friend, Kathy Bates
Felicity Jones, Frances Tomelty

It's become almost a standard of sorts for maturing actresses to eventually play a character that deals with aging.
Michelle Pfeiffer is no exception; in "Chéri" she plays Parisian courtesan Lea de Lonval who is contemplating retirement until she takes on one last mission of sorts.
Her frenemy, and former colleague Charlotte (Bates) asks her to take on her 19-year-old son, the title Chéri (Friend) and seduce him to make his decadent lifestyle stop.
Thinking this will be like stealing candy from a child, Lea suddenly finds herself six years later still having an affair with the young man and, gasp, falling in love with him.
The difference about Pfeiffer, regarding other actresses in similar roles, is that she's exceptionally radiant. At 51, she looks as breathtaking as she did in the 80's, her goddess like bone structure only serving to highlight the, socially contradictory, fact that for all her beauty she's never stopped being a phenomenal actress.
She takes on Lea ferociously, but escapes all nasty "cougar" clichés by embracing her physical qualities but merely using them as the stage for the stirring emotions within her character.
Uttering lines with acidic contempt (from the Christopher Hampton adaptation of a couple of Colette novels) she's utmostly delicious.
"It's her turn now, mine is over" she declares coldly to Chéri when he announces his mother has arranged a marriage for him.
But Pfeiffer's strengths don't lie in her line delivery but in the quieter moments when we find her all by herself (the last scene has a hauntingly beautiful quality that's practically a love song to the actress).
Bates is at her scenery-chewing best, her exchanges with Lea give the film all the social subtext director Frears wants us to understand from the bélle epoque.
The only thing these women have in common, besides their profession, is their dislike for each other.
Friend is also rather good, giving Chéri decadent qualities worthy of disdain and admiration, plus his chemistry with Pfeiffer is delightful.
What keeps the movie from transcending to another level is the mishandled way Frears tries to wrap up everything in the end. The movie has an uneven trajectory during which it tries to fit into several genres, coming up with something that lacks the punch for any of them.
While the art nouveau inspired art direction and costumes are a sight to behold, Frears has a hard time relating to them (despite his effective, if a bit forced narration).
The director never plunges into the mind set of his characters and sometimes they come off looking as actors in a play aware of the audience and expecting their acceptance.
Lucky for Frears he had Pfeiffer, who not only never suffers from this, but finding what lies in Lea's heart achieves a kind of divine humanity.

Revolutionary Road ***

Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet
Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, Zoe Kazan, David Harbour
Kathryn Hahn, Richard Easton

The suburbs have been the mythical creature of innumerable films; it's within the picket fences and tree lined roads where some of the darkest machinations behind American culture have occurred.
Seen by the cynical as the place where dreams go to die, the notion that anyone who holds esteem towards these values is a killer robot or an alien has spoken more about the people who say it, than their actual discourse has done for them.
But when we are invited to view them under a critical light in a context that includes several other variables instead of just one accusing finger, the suburbs can turn out to be much more complex than we'd imagined.
And to explore this ambiguity seemed to be the intention of Sam Mendes' "Revolutionary Road", an adaptation of Richard Yates' cult novel about the Wheelers, Frank (DiCaprio) and April (Winslet), a couple who moves to the suburbs where they find their dreams crumbling before their eyes.
Frank works as an "executive" in a city based company where not even he's sure of what he does, while April stays home looking after the house and their children.
They socialize with the neighbors which include real estate agent, the gossipy Mrs.Helen Givings (an excellent Bates), her son John (Shannon) who has recently been released from a mental institution and the Campbells, Shep (Harbour who does miracles with the little scenes he's given) and Milly (Hahn).
The Wheelers find comfort in their knowledge that they're above everyone else. That the executive lunches, martini breaks and egg salad sandwiches are just a waiting room for the grand life they have ahead of them.
But when April realizes they are slowly giving in to convention, she takes action and comes up with a plan for them to move to Paris where she will work while Frank "finds himself".
Early on the film announces it will be mostly about marital problems and for this it becomes a showcase for its two lead actors who are phenomenal.
DiCaprio, ever more maturing, imbues Frank with the kind of fear only lessened by the fact that you may have seen it in people you know.
His eagerness to please and a sense of "deserving" everything promised with post-WWII America, but not getting it or at least not in the way he expected, touches on a sensitive part of you.
With April, Winslet goes for earnestness avoiding the melodrama one would come to expect from a hysterical housewife. She throws tantrums and most of the time sparks up fights she knows she shouldn't be holding, but there is something remarkably human about April that makes these things comprehensible, maybe the fact that a sense of emasculating her husband is one of the only things that make her feel alive.
Her eyes often wonder "how did we get here?" and her nuances are what give April the soul the movie never obtains. Talking to a friend she confesses how "she wanted in" not escaping and in the same scene she goes from moving and confessional to raw and sexual without us expecting it.
Eventually we wonder if April is putting on a performance all the time. Winslet taps into this element to make us doubt our very surroundings.
DiCaprio and Winslet convey this angst beautifully and turn "Revolutionary Road" into the movie that chronicles the implicitness other dysfunctional suburbia films have taken for granted.
Shannon's character then comes and questions everything about the Wheelers in a way nobody else dared to, think of him as a contemporary viewer interceding for all who have doubts about why people choose these lives.
Because if there is something true about the film is that its themes are as relevant as ever. John whose insanity might receive a milder diagnosis nowadays, has so many questions that he can't contain them and Shannon holds up remarkably well, given how other actors would've dealt with this character.
He represents a rage that most would opt to hide and in his final scene creeps under your skin and gives the film what ultimately becomes it's one undeniable truth.
Mendes crafts a work that is easy to admire, giving it a nice structure and an adequate pace, if the symbolism is nothing too new (enough with the pastels and light! Give us a film about suburbia inspired by German Expressionism!), it's talking to us in the only terms the director knows how and this is perhaps because even he's unsure of what he's trying to say.
The director puts out a troubling representation of traditional values, that nevertheless offers no option. It's like a window to hell from inside a burning house.
If he gets one thing right is the idea that the one thing humans can share is their misery, especially in the last scene where he tries to send us away with an ironic wink at a how it all will become a vicious cycle, but feels more like how Frank is described at the beginning of the film "a smartass with a big mouth" or camera in this case.
Throughout the film something that remains constant is the carelessness for the children, they are barely featured and the characters themselves' are rarely asked for opinion.
They appear purely as accesories and perhaps without trying Mendes makes the most lasting impression with them.
By not taking them into account he makes their consequent story the only one we're dying to hear.

The Day the Earth Stood Still *

Director: Scott Derrickson
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly
Jon Hamm, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Kathy Bates, Kyle Chandler

If there's something sillier than remaking a classic Hollywood film, it might be doing so without a reason.
Director Scott Derrickson updated Robert Wise's underrated 1951 sci-fi classic about an alien named Klaatu (Reeves) who comes to Earth to warn about the impending destruction of the planet only to be met by bureaucrats and skeptical people.
Jennifer Connelly plays Helen Benson, the good hearted scientist who helps Klaatu in his mission and eventually becomes the only person who can help save the world.
Jaden Smith plays her stepson, left under her care after his father's death and who still has trouble dealing with Helen.
Klaatu warns them that the human species has done enough damage to the planet and he's representing a group of planets that has come to the agreement that Earth can only be saved once humans are gone.
His aid is the giant robot Gort (whose design is "inspired" by the original one) who becomes the subject of scientists' studies as they prepare for destruction.
While the original film was a timely allegory for the Cold War, Derrickson's version with his "green" message comes off looking forced and preachy.
The biggest problem is that Klaatu's mission is constantly changing, first he wants to destroy the planet then he doesn't, as if Derrickson doubts exactly what he wants to say with his movie.
He avoids taking stances and is afraid to say something too pessimist but also lacks the vision to deliver hope.
The film features some nice visual effects, that somehow still don't make the impact of the rudimentary ones used in the original and completely forgets to worry about character development.
Connelly does satisfying job, Hamm is sadly underused and Bates takes herself too seriously giving her performance slight strokes of camp.
Smith is utterly annoying, you often wonder why Helen puts up with his tantrums in the midst of world destruction, which shouldn't be a natural thought, but this is exactly what the film's dull pace give you time to think about.
The action sequences are dull, the plot tries to be complicated and deep when it's quite the opposite and unlike the original version you never really understand why is it called that way.
And when it comes to Reeves, you wonder if he also is CGI. His expression remains completely blank throughout the entire film (as with most of his filmography), he delivers his lines with absolutely no interest, as if he just learnt them phonetically.
It's never revealed exactly what planet Klaatu comes from, this movie however must've come straight from planet unnecessary.