Sam is on her way home from work in South London when she is mugged by Moses, leader of a band of ruffian youths.  The mugging is interrupted by the crash landing of something from outer space.  Forgetting Sam, Moses and his crew chase the invader and kill it.  Triumphantly parading around the block with their trophy, they get the local drug dealer to hold onto the body till they sell it to the tabloids.  However, it’s not the only creature in town, and they soon find themselves dealing with a much bigger invasion.

One of the most overlooked demographics in cinema are children, cropping up merely when the hero needs to save someone, and rarely granted their own agency.  There are too few films that remind you of yourself as a kid (or at least how you perceived yourself) and Attack the Block taps into that arrogant swagger we all had as teenagers.  The kids are bigger than life, with director Joe Cornish keeping the camera angles looking up (never down) as they walk their streets like the gods they are, and with an equally badass-enhancing soundtrack from Basement Jaxx.

As the kids tool up to fight the opaque monsters from outer space, it’s all fun and games until someone gets their head chomped on.  The perils of the sci-fi variety mix well with the real life socio-political forces the kids are stuck between.  Poverty, the hint of racism, and drug dealers in the block keep the film from being a staid monster flick, and inject a degree of social commentary the best sci-fi/horror films always included.

Social commentary aside, it’s Joe Cornish hilarious script and casting decisions that makes Attack the Block such a great ride.  The kids all have a natural rhythm to their interactions that speaks their history and Nick Frost as a leather fanny-pack-wearing pothead has some delightful commentary.

It’s also imperative to mention that Cornish demonstrates how to use slow-motion for dramatic effect in the final act (instead of mere visual titillation like most directors) and offers an ending appropriate for Attack the Block‘s heroes, one that doesn’t betray itself with sentimentality.

A weak soundtrack can leave a film feeling flat, but a soundtrack that doesn’t have the visuals to support it will feel forced.  Attack the Block is the second-coolest film of the year, just behind the much-lauded Drive, as both have awe-inspiring visuals that back up their musical selections.

A mix of Seven Samurai and Assault on Precinct 13, Attack the Block is a comedy/horror/sci-fi film every fan should see.  Believe.

-Remington Smith

The plots to these spy films rarely vary, and this one is no exception: Tom Cruise is busted out of a Russian prison in order stop a Russian nuclear scientist from starting a nuclear holocaust that he believes will help advance human evolution.

Though I’ve mentioned Cruise’s age, you’ve got to give the man some serious credit for pulling off all of his stunts – and none of them are easy.  Playing Spider-Man on the exterior of the world’s tallest building, Cruise’s high wire act is stunning, even if you’ve seen the behind the scenes video of the stunt’s production.  Closing out with an elaborate, industrial-accident-waiting-to-happen, horrifying fight scene in a vending machines for cars, the film leaves on a great high note, even if its epilogue softens the afterglow.

All credit is due to Brad Bird, whose camera placements transform the skyscraper stunt from potentially gimmicky to a vertigo-inducing sense of stunning wonder (mixed with a dash of terror).  Given the 60′s spy swagger of his previous film The Incredibles, Brad Bird seemed destined to direct this film and his giddy enthusiasm for the material is evident.

Simon Pegg’s extra screen time since the third outing and the addition of Jeremy Renner enhance Ethan’s dour disposition and the overall film, giving it some comedic spice and a tone that’s not unwilling to laugh at itself.

Though the plot isn’t inspired and the film features not one, but two! shots of Tom Cruise running away from CGI somethings looming behind him, the action and laughter vault Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol past ho-hum to decidedly silly-grin inducing heights.

The trailer for Wrath of the Titans preceded the film and prompted my brother-in-law to wonder aloud, “Why do they keep making these?!”  The answer of course, is because however dumb, if it’s packed with enough uninspired CGI, it will make beaucoup bucks.  Going against such a dismal tide is what makes Mission Impossible 4 such a breath of fresh air.

-Remington Smith

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

An American re-make of a popular Swedish film trilogy (itself based on a best-selling book series), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is part mystery, part techno-thriller, with a smattering of sex and violence.  Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is hired by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), an elderly gent who gives Blomkvist the task of investigating the disappearance of his niece Harriet, now forty years gone.  Vanger gives Blomkvist a tour of the neighborhood, pointing to nearby houses that accommodate the occasional Nazi family member.  Vanger’s distaste for his family is made clear, but in a whodunnit, just because a guy decries his Nazi family members doesn’t mean he’s not a suspect…

As Blomkvist dives into photo archives and has the perfunctory “Aha!” moments, his investigation intersects with the hacker-for-hire Lisbeth Salandar (Rooney Mara).  Pierced, tattooed, and decked out in grubby shades of black, she’s not a part of the respected world of Vanger and Blomkvist’s European sophistication.  The pair make an unlikely partnership, connected by their desire to catch a serial killer of women.

Unfortunately, though, there’s too much plot and not enough connective tissue to keep this story sailing.  The first half maintains segregated storylines for Salandar and Blomkvist, leaving Salandar’s story prior to investigating Harriet superfluous.  The bisexual hacker’s motivation for helping the straight-laced journalist seems to stem from her own experiences, but Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian don’t seem to grasp that a woman doesn’t need to be raped by a fat asshole to want to catch a killer who rapes and mutilates other women.

Closing the picture without the emotional pitch of Fight Club or the sober thoughtfulness of Se7en, Fincher feels too removed from the volatile material he’s working with, which leaves the representation of Salandar particularly suspect.  The vicious, gag-inducing rape scene (followed by an equally repulsive act of revenge) fails to play a central role in the film’s plot, which makes you wonder why it was put there in the first place.  Was it filmed merely to shock, and thereby titillate, during a slow patch in the film?  Similarly, Salandar randomly mounts Blomkvist in an act that you think holds some strategic purpose, but a motive never materializes.  Is it just an excuse to get Rooney Mara naked again, this time allowing us to take pleasure in her nudity, as opposed to our disgust during the rape scene?

The whole thing calls back to the 1903 Thomas Edison film wherein he infamously electrocuted Topsy the elephant in a campaign to show the alleged “dangers” of alternating current.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo taps into this same sense of macabre curiosity, allowing (or subjecting?) the audience to lurid events with little artistic pretense.

When you talk about a director you like, you almost speak about them like a dear friend, giving them the benefit of the doubt should people question their actions.  If Fincher were removed from the credits, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would stand as an irresponsible narrative, allowing the audience to take varying forms of pleasure in types violence that our protagonists are investigating.  Had Fincher invested more of himself in the film, offered some meditation on sexual violence, and gotten a better screenwriter to connect scenes that feel marooned from the overall narrative it wouldn’t prove so problematic and stale.

Want a happy meal with your forced fellatio?  Because icing on the cake is the flagrant product placement throughout the film.  Do these brands think the association with such problematic depictions of sex and violence will help sell more goods?  The displays of such crass advertising in such a dark film speak to the careless exploitation present in other areas.

Films like Machete don’t have to justify their violence since the whole point is exaggerated machismo, and Fincher’s depiction of bare-knuckle brawls in Fight Club spoke to the emotional disconnect the men feel from others, themselves, and the world.  People shouldn’t automatically shy away from sexuality and violence since it’s a part of the human experience.  The sex and violence in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, however, feels too prurient and emotionally disconnected to be worth your time.

-Remington Smith

Charlize Theron plays Mavis Gary, a ghost writer for a once-popular young adult book series who is in a life funk.  She drinks herself to sleep and grimaces when she sees her latest one night stand in the light of day and without the alcohol-induced haze.  Mavis thus decides it’s a grand idea to chase her old high school flame Buddy Slade, who is now married and has a baby.  Back in her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota, she bumps into high school acquaintance Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), who tries to steer the tunnel-visioned Mavis away from disaster.  Mavis slathers herself in makeup, slips into dresses befitting an outing to the club for lunch at a sports bar with Slade, and practically huffs the scent of her high school honey when they hug.  No man, woman, or child is going to get in the way of her nostalgic fantasy.

Unlike the previous Reitman pictures, the protagonist here is her own antagonist.  Mavis Gary regularly proves herself to be a terrible human being as she waxes on about getting Buddy to divorce his wife and never fails to keep her nose up when interacting with anyone in Mercury.  It’s to Charlize Theron’s credit that Mavis remains amusing enough that we don’t immediately reject her snotty, primped character; Theron soft-pedals the mean girl vibe so we’re not overwhelmed with simmering spite.  Patton Oswalt is an important balancing element, regularly injecting rationality and humanity to counteract Mavis’s flaming trainwreck mentality.  Considering he’s just “a fat geek”, the man steals Theron’s thunder via naked earnestness.

Should anyone be concerned that the Diablo Cody credit means they’ll be subjected to over-the-top “I’m so cool!” dialogue à la her previous hit Juno, rest easy, since Cody’s script lobs laughs through the mundane insanity of Mavis and her reality.  Cody’s script, Reitman’s quiet direction, and Theron and Oswalt all grant it a surprising degree of reality.

SPOILERS ABOUT ENDING, SKIP PARAGRAPHS

What pushes the film off kilter, though, is its conclusion.  Despite Mavis hitting bottom and heading for her “life lesson learned” moment, she’s steered off course by Matt’s sister who reminds her that Mercury sucks, she’s awesome, fuck this place.  This speech erases any soul-searching Mavis might have performed in the wake of an embarrassing scene at Buddy Slade’s house.

None of this would be troublesome if Reitman himself didn’t seem to support this character’s decision to continue to be a self-absorbed alcoholic. The film ends with a lively, upbeat soundtrack as she goes back to “The Mini-Apple” as the same brat she was when she left.  Remove the soundtrack and her departure from Mercury would mirror her trip to the town at the film’s beginning: as a sad lonely woman with delusions spinning in her mind.  The musical choice for the closing feels like studio intervention, forcing us to emotionally consider her decision an uplifting one despite all the evidence to the contrary, and it’s a volcanic zit on a largely flawless drama.

SPOILERS OVER

Of all of Reitman’s films (Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air), this might rank the lowest, but despite issues with the conclusion and grotesque product placement, it’s a funny drama that speaks to the power of home, nostalgia, and the upsides to growing up – even if some of us refuse to do so.

-Remington Smith

Hugo Cabret is a young orphan  living in the walls of a Paris train station, invisibly traversing the station’s secret pathways to maintain the guts of the station’s clocks.  Hugo’s home is a steampunk jungle of hanging pipes and clock gears that a clumsy Terminator could lose an arm in.  Hugo doesn’t only steal food from the station’s shops to stave off hunger: Before Hugo was orphaned by a tragic fire, he and his father were working on a metal automaton they’d found in a museum.  Hugo has been swiping delicate gears from toy maker Georges in order to fix the automaton on his own.  When the boy is caught red-handed by the elaborately mustachioed toy shop owner, he and Georges find their lives increasingly connected as Hugo and Georges’ goddaughter, Isabelle, unearth clues about Georges’ past.

Unlike the harsh plasticine colors of Tim Burton’s sugar pop world (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland), Hugo‘s practical sets and CGI enhancements offer a lush vibrancy that retains its human intimacy.  The lively production design and color palette harmonize with the film’s amorphous setting between World War I and World War II, making it one of the most inviting historical environments depicted on screen.

Scorsese’s virtuosity behind 3D cameras plays the biggest role in making the world of Hugo inviting. The hustle and bustle of a train station offers Scorsese plenty of opportunities to use the 3D technology to demonstrate the depth of the space, as well as exploring Hugo’s hidden world behind the station’s walls. As the boy races through either of these spaces, the sense of depth adds an extra thrill to the chase, but even simple shots of Hugo cranking the clocks are enhanced by gears crowding the frame at varying depths.  The technology would be superfluous without the rich environment and Scorsese’s keen eye for naturally integrating the space for 3D moments.  It’s definitely to Scorsese’s credit that despite never previously tackling a family film or any movie in 3D, he has demonstrated a mastery of both formats.

Despite benefiting from Scorsese at the helm and a wonderful cast (Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lee, Asa Butterfield), ultimately Hugo has enough ingredients for two films.  The initial story of an orphan with an automaton quickly gets subsumed by the discovery of Georges Méliès, early cinema and special effects/sci-fi pioneer, and there’s not enough narrative linkage to excuse the transition.  It’s not as if either narrative isn’t enjoyable: Hugo’s secret world in the train station is the perfect stuff of childhood fantasy, and it ascends to a whole new level when we’re flashback-ed to the production of Méliès films in the making.  Tampering with depth of field, elaborate sets, pyrotechnics, and trick edits, Méliès’ film studio is the physical manifestation of the imaginative mind, a playhouse any child (or adult) would love to visit.

If Scorsese had given way to popular, garish uses of CGI for more of the film, the spectacle wouldn’t buttress the film so well, but given the stunning world Scorsese invites us to tour, too much plot is a forgivable flaw.

-Remington Smith

Anton Yelchin plays Charley Brewster, a recent nerd turned popular after securing the affections of blond hottie Amy Peterson.  Of course, Charley’s quick rise to power leaves some dorkier friends behind. One of them is “Evil” Ed Lee, a geeky kid who warns Charlie that his new neighbor-that-oozes-sex Jerry Dandrige is a vampire.

Director Craig Gillespie’s last film was the quiet yet moving drama Lars and the Real Girl, and he brings a similar sensitivity to what could have been a mindless monster film.  The man lets the film breathe, with quiet shots of characters lost to the horror just witnessed or shots of the cookie cutter suburbia that plays a central figure to the film.  He also gets some aid from Buffy the Vampire Slayer scribe Marti Noxon, whose taut and amusing script offers some levity to match Gillespie’s visual pathos.

Fright Night of course would not be such a success were it not for the excellent cast:  Anton Yelchin’s version of Brewster draws the audience’s empathy better than his 80′s counterpart; Christopher Mintz-Plasse as “Evil” Ed is slowly but surely moving out of the shadow of his McLovin in Superbad; Colin Farrell’s animalistic intensity is the definition of “creepy”; and David Tennant as the Criss Angel-esque goof Peter Vincent takes the film to higher levels of hilarity as he tries to loosen his junk from leather pants or displays flagrant cowardice.

Even if there are problems with the Fright Night re-make (a terrible CGI car chase sequence; last second unnecessary character development for Peter Vincent; awkward fluff epilogue; useless 3D), the film has too many stellar moments to call it a bad film:  The simple scene of Charley getting Jerry some beer is like witnessing a diplomatic exchange with nuclear holocaust on the line, and Charley’s hide-and-seek venture to save a neighbor may almost rank with Jurassic Park‘s kitchen scene.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS, SKIP PARAGRAPH

One of the film’s best moments, which speaks to the talents of Gillespie, comes when Charley is snooping around Jerry’s house. He opens a closet, finds several different types of uniforms (delivery man, cop, etc.) and then proceeds to discover a holding area for victims–several doors with delicate keys hanging from all but one door knob.  We’re shown, not told these things, mind you, and as they are revealed we’re horrified at the serial killer-like premeditation that Jerry has carried out (as opposed to the traditional “catch you in a dark alley” randomness of other vampire killings).  It’s classic monster movie structure (show things related to the monster before revealing it) and it works with a vengeance.

SPOILERS OVER

Finally, it’s also worth mentioning that the women of Fright Night are not fenced off from notions of agency like they are in the original. Charley gets his ass saved twice by the women in his life (his mother and Amy), though it’s still up to Charley to save Amy in the final act (you take what you can get I suppose).  Neither Amy or his mother are complete imbeciles and though they don’t get a lot of screen time, they feel like full characters, not just tools for plot points.

Though the Twilight films are so bad even cast members slam them, it’s worth putting up with the sparkle vamps since they have given rise to a resurgence of interesting American vampire films (Stake Land, Let Me In). Horror fans are better off with this Fright Night re-make.

-Remington Smith

As per the traditional hero’s journey, lowly-bastard-who-happens-to-have-scrappy-fighting skills Theseus is compelled to stop the evil King Hyperion.  Driven mad with grief that the gods would not hear his prayers, Hyperion seeks the Bow of Epirius, which will free the god-killing Titans.   Theseus and his band of misfits (some fighters and an oracle) attempt to stop Hyperion from releasing the Krakens Titans, but not without a little literal deus ex machina.

Immortals has two considerable strengths: Mickey Rourke as King Hyperion, and Tarsem’s stunning visual aesthetic.  Rourke’s Hyperion is a mash-up of previous Rourke roles, blending the brutish, R-rated violent tendencies of Sin City‘s Marv with the sinister griminess of Iron Man 2‘s Whiplash.  When Rourke says to four female oracles, “You will experience pain specific to your gender” you want to fling the slime from your flesh.

Tarsem’s amazing crew of production and costume designers put the fantastic in this fantasy epic.  More Grimm’s fairytale than a Spartacus sword and sandals picture, Tarsem’s first shots and slow camera movements across beautifully decked out sets and actors is like a potent visual perfume – you’ll be hard pressed not to swoon.

What starts great, however, limps to the finish line.

Henry Cavill as Theseus, though not given a lot to work with, merely fulfills the “looking good” requirement, never coming close to the acting virtuosity of his nemesis, Mr. Rourke.  His motivations are never as crystallized as Hyperion’s, leading to lackluster character development: Theseus’ love connection with oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto) serves merely to offset the heavy homosexual overtones and is about as heartfelt as a drunk dialed booty call.  His journey from zero to hero is barely held together by the forced theme of immorality, culminating in a poorly setup “speech to the troops before the insane battle” scene.

Immortals repeats the same mistakes of 300, failing to build effective tension and momentum. Instead, it’s derailed by spectacles of bodily destruction in the form of literal god-mode moments of head-popping whack-a-mole carnage that seems more apt for Hobo with a Shotgun than a film taking itself so seriously.  Cavill gets to show off his action chops in a small fight scene at the beginning, but it’s all for naught, as it simply teases at what could have been as the fights get grander and goofier with CGI enhancements.

One would think that almost ten years after The Matrix Reloaded made audiences roll their eyes in exasperation as fight scenes devolved into Hollywood versions of Dragon Ball Z battles, filmmakers would learn how to pace their action so they don’t get stuck trying to outdo the undoable.  All glitter and gloss, Tarsem’s visuals and 300-like slow-mo fight scenes with complimentary tracking shots foreclose any possibility of emotional connection.

All of which contrasts to this year’s previous artiste meets Hollywood picture, Drive.  Unlike Immortals, Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn’s poetic eye for visuals enhance the emotions on screen and its graphic action never becomes laughable; instead, it actually says something about the character.  Further, Drive at least has enough self-awareness to complicate the narrative of the white male hero instead of Immortals‘ glorification of the re-assertment of white male patriarchy.

Given the three films we’ve seen from Tarsem since 2000, it’s obvious that the man and his crew are visual wizards, creating unforgettable imagery few can challenge.  As with the works of Guillermo del Toro, when you see a film by Tarsem, you know it’s a Tarsem picture.  Unlike del Toro however, Tarsem is not a great storyteller.  All of his films, even the much-lauded The Fall, lack an emotional core to equal the pulsing aesthetics.

Tarsem’s bigger budget only magnifies his shortcomings as a story teller.  Just like with people, being pretty doesn’t make up for being pretty dumb.

-Remington Smith

Bellflower is told in a mostly linear style; flashbacks and forwards occur frequently but are only really disorienting toward the end of the film.  At the center of this tale are two best friends, Woodrow and Aidan, who take inspiration from their favorite childhood film Mad Max and begin constructing weapons and cars to put them on top in the case of the apocalypse. Their “gang,” the Medusa Mothers, is an exclusive boys-only type club, in which they shoot propane tanks with sawed off shotguns, trick their cars out to belch flame, and do anything else that can cause some (seemingly) nihilistic destruction.

Enter Milly, who shows up at a bar during a cricket-eating contest. Her main competition is Woodrow, and their encounter leads to eventual flirting, phone numbers exchanged, and a bright future for each.

After a cross-country date (she asks to be taken to the most disgusting place he can think of, he takes her to Texas), they return home, sort of a couple, sort of living together, sort of in love.  Meanwhile, Aidan and Woodrow have restored a motorcycle, and finished building their flamethrower.

SPOILERS, SKIP PARAGRAPH

Woodrow has always been something of a self-conscious, unsure gentleman, and that doesn’t stop with his newfound relationship. When he begins to worry, doubt, suspect that something untoward might be going on, he sets up a plan to catch Milly in the act, which he actually does. Milly has been sleeping with her roommate, an awful guy named Mike. In his confusion and rage, Woodrow gets on his motorcycle, kicks his helmet into the street, and gets hit by a car, ending up in the hospital.

END OF SPOILERS

I will give away no more than that, because what happens in the final 45 minutes or so is truly jaw-dropping. The visuals are explosive, mirroring the internal volatility of Woodrow, for whom the world has finally ended, making their weapons and preparation all the more necessary.  The cinematography is profound, vicious, and on fire.  The way director, star, and writer Evan Glodell managed to accomplish such a unique visual spectrum is by building his own camera.  The effect is an apocalypse of one, showcasing Woodrow standing at the center of his own personal Roland Emmerich film.

The promotion for the movie is a bit deceptive.  The ads focus more on the cars and flamethrowers (which do compose an enormous amount of the film’s character), but the film is more about the end of a relationship, the accompanying suffering that comes with that end, the loss of identity and the unbearable lightness of being alone.

Shot on cameras with frayed wires and dusty batteries, the film is rough around the edges, and full of imperfections.  Those imperfections are the very things that make it real – there is no sheen of Hollywoodization, no patina that glosses over the nature of things.

Sometimes life is equally rough.  Sometimes you feel like destroying something beautiful.  Sometimes, particularly after a rough break-up, you want to kill someone, punch a hole in a wall, and/or break something in half.  This film is about that pain and you’ll be hard pressed not to feel it.

-Ben Creech

Bellflower is now available on DVD.

The third film picks up with the duo separated for the last two years as Harold (John Cho) gets sucked into the trappings of adulthood (marriage, mortgage, occupation) and Kumar (Kal Penn) keeps smoking the ganj.  A Christmas crisis throws the pair together, as they encounter hurdle after ridiculous hurdle through their evening quest, including, but not limited to, cocaine toddlers, clay peni, Russian mobsters, and the obligatory Neil Patrick Harris appearance.

Which is another way of saying: If you’ve seen the trailer for A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas:

You’ve already seen all that’s worth seeing.  The trailer commits the cardinal sin of comedy film advertisements by showcasing all the laughs, leaving little to lose your popcorn over after you’ve already handed over your greenbacks – which will be a lot considering the film is in 3D and offers little justification for the format.  Despite making obvious references to the 3D of the film and exploiting any opportunity to throw something at the screen, it barely registers as a necessary or funny part of the film.  Even with the increasingly utilized extreme slow motion Phantom cameras, these visual flourishes are decidedly ho-hum.

Despite a smorgasbord of Christmas iconography to lampoon, solid chemistry between John Cho and Kal Penn, and some funny moments, the film lacks a passionate, cohesive script to hold it all together.  The jokes on sexuality, drug use, racism, are not inherently bad, but it’s not enough to show a stoned toddler and flash the LAUGH NOW sign.  The problem with A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas is that it’s ultimately lazy, poorly staged comedy.  Without more laughter or more yule-tied sentiment, it’s too fractured to feel satisfying.

No Christmas miracle here, the magic’s gone.  At least we’ll always have our trip to White Castle….

-Remington Smith

The film begins with a nearly ten-minute long prologue of wordless images set to Wagner.  This striking tableaux, which resemble shots from his prior film AntiChrist, are profoundly composed, and as we soon find out, part of Justine’s dream.  Some of the images are fears, desires, anxieties, even events foreseen, and we will only understand each image’s meaning at the end of the film.

When the story itself finally gets started, we are at a wedding party for Justine (played with heretofore unseen vulnerability by Kirsten Dunst) hosted by her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg, AntiChrist).  All seems well at the beginning: Justine is a beautiful, happy bride and in spite of her and the groom’s (Alexander Skarsgard, True Blood) late arrival, the imminent tragedy seems far out of reach.

Before too long, Justine’s smile begins to falter, and she is visibly uncomfortable being the center of attention in a crowd. The party lasts for several hours at least, and we see her take frequent trips through the house, preferring her own solitude to the teeming masses.  Without revealing any spoilers I can say that the evening doesn’t end well.  In fact, this might be the worst wedding party ever.

It is, however, distinct from the second part of the film, which focuses more on Claire’s anxieties.  A planet named Melancholia is careening towards Earth, but her husband consoles her saying that it will simply be a fly-by, a near miss.  He puts his faith in the “scientists” who tell him this, but we fear with her that he is  wrong.  All that we know is that it gets closer and closer.

In many ways this seems to be a companion piece to AntiChrist, but I doubt anyone would have any moral qualms with this one.  Instead of dealing with “true evil” or “nature” portrayed in AntiChrist, this film takes its time dissecting the nature of depression and how we all deal with it in ourselves and/or others. It may be the best treatment of depression in film, too.  It treats depression not as a switch that goes on or off, but a sometimes more, sometimes less, gradual shift in mood, beyond anyone’s ability to ultimately cheer up–but not without hope.

The film also shows how others misconceive of depression. When Justine’s new husband shows her the orchard he purchased for them, he tells her “when you have one of your sad days you can just go out there and it will make you feel happier.” He thinks that “feeling happier” is some consequence of a sentimental action. His gesture is adorable and sweet, and she tries to respond in a manner that reflects the generosity of the offer, but when she leaves the picture in her chair it is no wonder she views the whole situation with a disdainful reserve.

The trajectory of the planet Melancholia is the most powerful image in the film,  and it deserves some treatment here. It is no coincidence that von Trier named his planet and his film after the same thing, and this is hinted at when Claire begins to do research on the planet (the first few things that show up all feature the mental condition).  Her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) insists that it will pass, drawing a connection to his demands that Justine smile at her own wedding.  He believes that the melancholy will pass from his wife and sister-in-law just as easily as the planet will pass by, and then will be gone.  He thinks that this is just something they are going through, a stage.  As the planet approaches and recedes, it is an external manifestation of the feelings Justine keeps internal.  It is a staggering metaphor, and the implications it suggests by the film’s end are just as powerful.

Did I think Melancholia could be this good? Not in my wildest dreams.  It certainly isn’t for everyone, as it is incredibly art-y drawing upon a whole tradition of visual art, as well as the works of Jean Genet, Marcel Proust, and Alain Resnais, but for those who are willing to give it a shot, it is an incredibly rewarding experience.

-Ben Creech

Melancholia is presently available in a limited theatrical release and on OnDemand.