Short Take: "War Horse" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"

We get it, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is trying to show us how spying was done in the pre-internet, pre-GPS days, but few espionage thrillers have ever felt as downtrodden and well, lacking in thrills as Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John LeCarré's novel. Gary Oldman stars as the iconic George Smiley, a British intelligence agent whose methods are as laconic as the underrated actor's ability to insert himself so effortlessly into all his characters.
With extreme attention to detail and an earthy color palette - as well as stylized 70s camera moves - by DP Hoyte Van Hoytema, the film concentrates enough on the surroundings and period details, that it forgets that there's a story to be told, and more importantly as it should be in most spy films, there is a mystery to be solved.
In this case the British suspect there is a Communist mole in their organization, but ask anyone how they solve this and most will come to realize that at some point the movie lost their attention. Its execution is admirable but unless Alfredson was trying to make a point about the dullness of bureaucracy, or deglam crime as David Fincher expertly did in his masterful Zodiac, which he certainly doesn't seem to be doing, the film turns out to be an exercise in dullness in which elegant British actors are killed or double crossed while dressed in uninteresting khaki tones.

Out of all the popular directors from his generation, all of whom claim to be devoted cinephiles, Steven Spielberg seems to be the one who cultivated the most middlebrow taste. If not, ask yourself why of all John Ford's films, he had to choose the tepid How Green Was My Valley as his point of reference for War Horse?
There is nothing wrong with him liking Valley per se but to choose one of Ford's most inferior, albeit award winning, works is the equivalent of being an opera singer and doing Christina Aguilera covers. With that said, War Horse desperately tries to recreate what once was Hollywood's way of filmmaking: interior sets, excessive melodrama and strong family values. Spielberg is either paying tribute to the least challenging productions of an era or writing a guidebook on how to win Academy Awards.
Everything in War Horse feels like it belongs in a different era, and more often than not, it should've stayed there. What once was sweeping, now is obscenely manipulative and as a postmodernist exercise the film doesn't have much to say about the current world.
Human characters are perhaps unnecessary as the movie follows the title horse, named Joey, as he goes from owner to owner, surviving WWI in the process. Because we are asked to devote our attention to an animal, the film gets away with complex character development and tends to rely too much on just how adorable we find Joey. The horse, like some sort of Jesus or Forrest Gump, changes the lives of everyone he touches, which more often than not results in unintentional comedy.
It's truly sad to see actors like Mullan and Arestrup at the service of an equine but by the time when Watson is forced to do her frumpiest Jane Darwell impression, the film reaches new lows in how it so cynically tries to squeeze tears out of its audience.
War Horse should've inspired the old fashioned adjective "jolly", instead it goes all out on the preposterous "mush".

Grades
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy **
War Horse *

Let the Right One In **1/2

Director: Tomas Alfredson
Cast: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson
Per Ragnar, Henrik Dahl, Karin Bergquist, Patrik Rydmark

"Are you a vampire?" asks 12 year old Oskar (Hedebrant) to his friend Eli (Leandersson).
"I feed off blood" she answers. Not so much an evasion, this response sets the mood for Tomas Alfredson's unique coming of age story, which happens to include vampires, but isn't a "vampire movie".
Set in 1980's Sweden, the opening scene has Oskar staring out his window, touching his reflection on the glass expecting that someday it's gonna touch him back. His parents have recently separated and he's the target for bullies in his school.
He plays alone in his building's playground where he kills trees while uttering lines from "Deliverance".
One snowy night he meets Eli, who has just moved into his building. She smells weird and only comes out as night, but Oskar still likes her enough to ask her to "go steady".
A creepy valentine to first love if there ever was one, "Let the Right One In" observes the way in which we're drawn up to others by what we have in common with them.
For both Oskar and Eli it's their loneliness that brings them together, Eli is restricted by her species' limitations and by her fear that she will want to have her friends for dinner.
As a love story, the film achieves some absolutely moving moments, especially because the vampire take can be interpreted in a million different ways as a metaphor for acceptance (it's not by coincidence that most of the film you actually wonder if Eli is a boy or a girl, not that it makes much of a difference in the end) and the mature performances by both leads make for an engaging, if abit distrubing experience.
But as a coming of age story, Alfredson debates on whether the nature of the love he seeks within his cahracters is enough salvation for them to fight their inner nature.
Eli expresses at one point that while she needs to kill, Oskar's thirst for revenge is avoidable and somehow unnatural.
But is it? Society has brought us up to solve everything using extremes which usually include violence. Alfredson might've tried to explore the nature of violence in spite of danger, but instead of using this vehicle as a more optimistic opportunity he thrusts both points of view and forces us to choose.
When Oskar finally confronts his bully, are we really supposed to cheer because he threatens to strike back with a pipe? Or are we supposed to believe that it is love which has made him "brave"?
Avoiding vampiric staples like overt sexualization and lust, Alfredson is at his best when he grasps the moment between childhood and adolescence (this tween fantasia does not include Jonathan Lipnicki); using Hoyte Van Hoytema's chilling cinematography, it's always what we can't see what becomes more haunting.
But the director has forgotten that even the undead are hormonal and most of the decisions taken by his characters stay at a more cerebral level and up to the intellectualization of those watching.