It'd be easy to read WHAP as anti-Catholic satire, but that reading misses Moretti's other targets -- news media, psychology, sports, the arts, nuclear family -- things that might replace or fortify religion but here seem inadequate to filling a leaderless void. As the Pope rejects spiritual fatherhood's responsibility, his would-be followers retreat into trivial distractions. The Internet, unmentioned, looms large.

Might surprise anyone expecting Stillman's preppy naturalism -- it's soft sci-fi portraying a planet where high-status girls pursue low-status boys on *principle* (instead of by magic, as in an Apatow or any H'wood film starring a slovenly manchild). Manchildren here are but means to female intellectual & emotional growth. Jokes thud in the instantly forgiven way, damsels retain charm as they slip the shivs in.

Nobody'll confuse DZ for Sans Soleil, but both films gather details from unusual array of sources & paste them into narrative of devastating weight. DZ's subject isn't an interior life but an intensely social life, one shattered by tabloid-style murder. Kuenne rejects Herzogian darkness, but DZ's perfect storm of anger, intimacy, CHAOS, & narrative drive may still convince you that birds aren't singing but screaming.

AALCC solves problem of not having a story by making all characters look and dress same to become one omni-character encompassing a spectrum of possible motivations, alignments, & reactions. Yuichi & Hoshino are our oppressed/oppressor entry points, but their individualities disintegrate into an Internet blur familiar to us from daily consensual shellacking by the Feed. We become by typing; evil is but one username.

We know better from home movies & Y'tube, but Panahi & Mirtahasebi might trick everyone into thinking magick auto-happens, all you do is push Record. What starts out as a lament on Panahi's RL misfortune (banned by Iran's gov't from making films, about to serve 6-year prison sentence) turns into a comedy on the heightened perception granted by trusting one's viewfinder. Support domestic psychedelia/free Jafar Panahi.

S.S. pushes eject on conventional wisdom, dives face-first into uncanny valley & its attendant dislocations -- enhancement of disbelief, sexual repulsion, sense of weightlessness, & the special resentment that comes from waiting while a nerd in full-on nerd trance bogarts the video game. Unshackles Dr Jones' escape/setup/escape structure from H.Ford's clumsy warmth/charisma. We see the little hairs on Tintin's hand.

Part 3 in 2011's Fear of a Blonde Planet Trilogy (Tabloid, Another Earth) knows that genocide starts as a feeling. Trier doesn't fuss w/ a steady cam/focus, but he describes depression w/ oppressive precision, using the heavy-lidded eyes of the 2nd-most hated actress of her time as a weapon. Her limp hair/limbs, enhanced by "Tristan und Isolde", contain the Surfer's power cosmic. BLNT, you happy pieces of shit.

Guest review by my wife: "First half was video version of home & garden magazine, second half was torture porn." Guest review by me: "Weirdest French pro-life movie of 2011 double-clutches my cash by stuffing half a movie into a full movie's bra. Redeemed by wolves reenacting scenes from Rise of the Planet of the Apes." Guest review by Team Jacob: "If there's grass on the field in a future flashback, play ball!"

Hollywood's #1 symbol of matrimonial bliss & extracurricular business success masquerades as desperate, over-the-hill jock on the brink of divorce & unemployment in a sensitive meditation on death's nearness disguised as dumb sports comedy. Newman makes the ladies in this look like hockey players & the hockey players look like monsters; he puts that divine face through hell to fit in w/ the doomed, lovable losers.

Watched this while pounding b-day cake/pumpkin pie & discussing the varieties of women's chins/jawlines because God only knows. Attention's a gift and I don't always know why I give mine to a thing and deprive this other thing. @ half-strength attention, the plot was easy & provided the bare minimum of guess-who pleasure. I feel bad for the genuine & unrequited love of people who make mediocre movies about movies.

Zippy pacing + crazy voice-acting quieted the munchkins present for the matinee screening I attended; nostalgia, weirdness, & decent songs (esp. "Man or Muppet") took care of the grown-ups; the teens were off catching Breaking Dawn; everybody's happy. Kermit socialism goes down easier for me than Pee-wee Herman solipsism, but the Total Child requires good doses of both. Animal's CHAOS goes AWOL: bring that beat back!

Boss villain in this is a murdering rapist remorseless POS, but by the time the film gets around to giving him comeuppance, we've already seen 200+ swordsmen get carved like turkeys, robbing us of bloodlust or justicethirst. Miike submits a pretty interesting theme concerning how combat death provides meaning to bored men, but he lacks the gift for ridiculous fight choreography that makes HK battleporn classics sing.

Koburn's & Cristofferson's faces, sculpted from clay & butter, respectively, threaten to disintegrate the story, which meanders ambiently from one scene to the next w/ the same reluctance w/ which Garrett hunts Billy. My father-in-law gave me some socioeconomic context for the conflict (mercantile monopoly turns murderous); the film boils it down to two dudes' sad mugs speaking sad things when words & bullets fail.

Arlyck takes cue from Apted's Up docs, finds 4-year-old star of his well-received student film for follow-up interviews 30 years later; but Ross McElwee is who he really wants to be. Lacking McElwee's humor, Errol Morris' gift for revealing his subjects, or a strong viewpoint to inform his commentary, Arlyck trusts boomer self-gaze & shameless, aimless 1960s nostalgia to propel film. Sean's a pretty nice guy, though.

Everybody has probably said this, but I only just noticed it: the nerds didn't build a girl. They built God. By using the Internet to build God in the world, not just inside a computer network, they one-upped Tron's trick from three years earlier. One of the nerds made out w/ God. Then they used God to help them get w/ girls who weren't God. This is absolutely true to the idiot heart of the U.S. 14-year-old male.

Movie based on true-life events of 10 years ago spends most of its time asking common questions of today's Great Recession: How can we tighten our belts and still be us? How do little fish fight big, bad fish? Whose narrative & whose numbers should we believe? What happens if I lose my job? Best joke is Jonah Hill's: "That was a metaphor." In baseball, it's probably more useful pointing out what's not a metaphor.

Equally interested in the tedium & the danger in its subjects' lives, Carlos admirably risks being about nothing as it condenses 20 years into a mere 18-hour runtime. It succeeds in equating a terrorist mastermind w/ any asshole artist -- vain, hot-tempered, snobbish, hard-partying, hornily plowing through one Björk after another -- the difference is this guy's not status-obsessed. How can he be? He's in hiding.

Employing neither the tone of righteous disapproval expected in U.S. political discourse nor an appeal to nostalgia, Curtis traces individualism's history: Bernays adapts Freud's idea of subconscious desire, invents PR; psychoanalysis rises to combat perceived widespread mental illness; later psychoanalysts reject control, favor self-actualizing; politics mirrors business, sells you you. Mathematical, metal, 'mazing.

Occupying Revenge of the Nerds' headspace, & clearing further space for Office Space, this socialist fantasy takes Yankovic's music career's effortful humour & mixes in the lust for revenge peculiar to angry nerds. Seinfeld guy is a weak choice for charismatic mascot, but Yankovic's rough charm almost saves UHF from its own eagerness to please. He's a shave & haircut away from looking like a poor woman's Gosling.

White nerd inspired to thoughtfulness by triumphs & travails of divinely gifted black man. What's interesting this time is how A.I. disappears for long stretches, & S.J. lets non-famous citizens of Hampton take the point. If they speak to one another w/ the same ease w/ which they speak to the camera, there's hope for this town. Most endearing, saddest moment is still A.I.'s: his smile upon receiving his HS diploma.

In dismantling the myth of a monolithic Ramones & re-mythologizing the band, Beatles-style, as 4 icons -- nerd, hedonist, drill sergeant, & guy who knew how to do normal things such as buy groceries -- EOTC simulates the natural trajectory of casual fan to #1 fan; but it also deflates the utopian punk ideal ("Take everything bad & make it good. Celebrate it.") & makes it seem quaint. #1 fans will be too punk to mind.

In probably the bloodiest chick flick yet, Ryan G. refines his Blue Valentine character to its uncut, unselfish essence: a personal Jesus to a woman & the child she had by some absent asshole. His devotion ascends to hallucinatory levels, cemented by two dates & a slo-mo kiss, consummated by raging fugues of justifiable homicide. Nobody says much. You have to trust their beaming faces that this was all for the best.

After committing a crime that downgrades her future, Rhoda conducts an experiment on how not to be selfish when the world does everything to make you feel bad about not being more selfish. As Earth 2 gets bigger in the sky, she engineers an improbable chemistry-free sexual relationship that threatens to disrupt the mystery the film has tried to protect. Mystery v. closure: feed one, starve the other, etc.

Line crossed, virtual actor upstages flesh actor, nobody minds. If this is the future of cinema, it might be the most palatable of recent futures. The film goes all in, letting the apes' postures & gestures carry the story; it pays off. Caesar's face & body language surpass Gollum's. Franco is John the Baptist. White guilt is taken to logical self-exterminating extreme. Sequel to be made by all-CGI crew.

Sophie lives w/ kind boyfriend who has the same hair she does and likes to rest his head on her chest in bed while talking like baby who is full of wonder. Throws him overboard for wealthier older man who wears chain and says things like, "This chain means I'm ready to fuck." True or false: chicks dig jerks, old men love young women, having a baby is scary, you can stop time if you keep acting twee into your 40s.

If book doesn't contain wall-to-wall onomatopoeic explosions & 1 or 2 sentences to effect of, "Hermione glanced @ Harry w/ furtive lust," it must be a bit diff from movie. We learn: gun fetishism/violence acceptable in children's story if firearms shaped like sticks w/ handles. After your great childhood adventures, you're no longer of interest: fast forward to your children's childhoods. False ending: exceptional.

Mifune's got superior Japanese engineering, but Marvin's got tenacity & Yankee shamelessness, in this weird war of attrition 'tween two avatars of rugged manhood. They whale on each other, tie each other up, fail to build homoerotic tension, live in the moment -- presexual, preverbal, cut off from duty, emotionally transparent, like toddlers. The suspense is wondering if & when & how hard the adult world will hit.

Although it fails to reinvent cinema as I'd irrationally hoped, Tabloid won't be mistaken for the work of anyone other than Errol Morris, who has the affection-without-endorsement documentary market cornered. He's made a sweet, concise film concerning the necessity of lying, starring one of history's most imaginative criminals. She's using her powers for evil, yes, but if you don't forgive her on principle, you suck.

Thanks to this film, I finally figured out how to always remember the diff 'tween sympathy and empathy. Feeling sad because Mark Hogancamp feels sad because his life's full of undeniably sad things is sympathy. Feeling like you're a resident as well as architect & absolute dictator-for-life of a tiny town populated by dolls who drink, perform violent acts of aggression & self-defense, fall in love -- that's empathy.

Boorman's casually weird adaptation of Le morte d'Arthur modifies the Great Man model of history, emphasizing forces that men, great or not, can't comprehend/control. Arthur's chosen & knows not why. Merlin knows enough to know he's a tool for a dragon bigger than his field of vision. The lake fairy knows. Charms of making may be spoken but not diagrammed: "Anaal nathrakh uthvas bethud dochiel dienvé!" Mirren's tits.