You probably think this world is a dream come true...

Coraline (Selick, 2009)
Having read Neil Gaiman’s novel just before seeing the film, my primary complaint against the latter is that it wasn’t quite dark enough. The book struck me as exceptionally creepy for a children’s story—what with the singing rats and all. The film, perhaps toned down a bit for the kids in the audience, looked stunning, but didn’t seem to capture the creepiness of the book as well as I’d hoped it would. In dealing with adaptations, I try not to compare the content too much, but I do think it’s fair to compare them in terms of effect. Though the film version of Coraline didn’t leave me with the same effect as the book, this is the only flaw I really found with it, and it’s a fairly minor one. The story is relatively simple, and the stop-motion animation brings it to life marvelously. All in all, I enjoyed the film, but it didn’t quite absorb me as much as I had anticipated. I’ll have to give it a second viewing, as I was clearly distracted by my 3D glasses throughout the first screening.

Rating: 3.5/5

Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it.

Revolutionary Road (Mendes, 2008)

Sam Mendes traps viewers in the rather claustrophobic world of his two main characters—Frank and April Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, respectively). While the tedium of this entrapment is part of the film’s pointed and depressing look at 1950s suburban life, after a certain point, I couldn’t take it anymore. Kate Winslet did a fine enough job in the role, but DiCaprio was pretty bland. The script didn’t give them much to work with either. The story demands to be told in subtle moments and body language, and the performances are too exaggerated to work in the small space the film creates. In the end, like the suburban life it critiques, the film is altogether too bland and typical to have kept my interest for long.

Rating: 2.5/5

If You've Ever Seen a One-Trick Pony than You've Seen Me

The Wrestler(Aronofsky, 2008)

Mickey Rourke’s character is the heart and soul of Darren Aronofsky’s film, and without a superb performance by Rourke the film would have been a total failure. Fortunately, Rourke is spectacularly heartbreaking in the lead role. As a character study or actor spotlight, I think the film achieves a great deal, even if some of the supporting performances are less than remarkable. For instance, the scenes between Randy the Ram (Rourke) and his daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) do their part to add to the general tone of the film, but they do so through quantity rather than quality. The tension between Randy and his daughter adds to the sum of his misfortunes and loneliness, but the scenes themselves are pretty forgettable. Wood doesn’t add much to a fairly flat role. Marisa Tomei is good as Cassidy/Pam, the lovable stripper who becomes Randy’s only possible salvation.

And while the comparison the film sets up between them—both, having sacrificed their bodies to the entertainment industry, were treated like pieces of meat and then cast aside—is quite obvious, it works well and doesn’t seem too belabored. (The possible exception is the scene in which Cassidy discusses The Passion of the Christ and its portrayal of Christ being beaten. But as this is a brief moment, I’ll forgive its lack of subtlety.) The treatment of bodies as meat is made even more obvious when The Ram takes a job as a butcher at a grocery store deli. Again, the potential for heavy-handedness abounds here, but Rourke is so good in the role that the scenes behind the deli counter are quite fun. I particularly loved the use of sound here: as Randy walks through the halls of the grocery store about to emerge behind the counter for the first time, we hear traces of the crowd at a wrestling match cheering for The Ram. Though the reduction of people to sheer bodies and pieces of meat is pretty clear throughout the film, the cinematography and sound editing here nicely draw attention to this theme by stylistically enhancing the parallel between The Ram’s wrestling career and his new job as butcher. While this could have come off as insulting to the viewer’s intelligence, I think Aronofsky pulls it off well.

Overall, the formal and stylistic elements of the film aren’t anything special, but the acting is superb and the absence of much formal innovation allows the film to succeed at what it sets out to do without turning into a fashionably obvious piece of fluff.

Rating: 4/5

Who wants to be a 'millonaire'?

Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle, 2008)

This is a film that I’ll probably have to watch again to assess fairly. On the first viewing I was utterly captivated by the editing and cinematography, so much so that I didn’t even mind the unnecessarily cheesy emphasis on destiny (“it is written”), which would have made me gag in any other film. I did think it took away from what would have otherwise been an interesting commentary on different forms of knowledge and a privileging of the experiential knowledge of the poor over the type of knowledge sanctioned by and passed on through formal education. It’s highly possible, then, that on a second viewing I will be more frustrated by the film’s unrealized potential. For now, though, I think it’s nicely crafted and quite captivating. In fact, the film is oddly fun, considering its unyielding portrayal of life in the slums.

Rating: 4.5/5