The MacGuffin

Sometimes, the beauty of smaller or independent films is that they are populated by characters that feel more tangible than those of big Hollywood films. The achievement of Dee Rees’s film Pariah (2012) is through the believability of its main character. Adepero Oduye, who plays Alike (Ah-Lee-Kay), is so tender and sincere with her performance that it seems as though she were picked up right off the streets and placed in front of the camera. She is so natural here, never gesturing towards the audience or making it known that what we are watching is an “act.” Instead, she breathes and lives her character with an element of truth; not at any moment did I feel any kind of falsehood. Too many lesser actors would strain—trying too hard to gain an effect from the viewer. Oduye doesn’t do that with Alike, she just…is.

A truly great child actor can illicit emotion from the viewer in ways that dissolve once the barriers to adulthood begin to be crossed. Perhaps this is because seeing a child invoke that kind of emotion reminds us that they feel as deeply as we “grown-ups” do, and that our own pain was never silly, like we might now think of it. Perhaps it is because of the inherent helplessness of childhood, where you must face your problems in ways that others determine for you, and the audience cannot judge the character and say “this is what I would have done.” Or perhaps we just enjoy marveling at talent that comes so young. Whatever the case, the pull is there, and I felt it to an amazing degree while watching the star of Tomboy (2011).

Hugo is a movie I wanted to embrace, but found difficult to do. Martin Scorsese is a favorite director of mine and he has an ability to take almost any story and make it feel engaging and as if time has not passed. In that, the film falls short of some of his current modern day masterpieces, but still has strong characters and, for the most part, a strong storyline that he is famous for.

After directing one of the most entertaining horror films of the last decade (The Descent), Neil Marshall was added to the list of directors I wanted to keep my eyes on. It seemed inevitable that he would get plenty of opportunities in Hollywood after the success of that film. That opportunity came in the form of Doomsday, and while that film was a feast for the eyes, it was too unbalanced to really enjoy. Thankfully, it seems that Marshall has returned to his roots and stepped back from the world of polished Hollywood films, and once again made a gritty genre film that leaves you thinking.

There is much you can tell about a movie from its start, the music, the images, and the tone. In Steven Spielberg’s new film War Horse, everything you need to know is spelled out in the first three minutes of dialogue and scenes. We have an over the top image of the countryside with overly cheerful but semi-epic music, giving the sense of a journey but with no real danger. (To bring this point home, the music is repeated several times over the course of the film, doing nothing to make the movie more intense, and gets very repetitive.) This sequence goes on for a while and we get to see a boy, Albert (Jeremy Irving), watching a horse grow up, and him obviously dreaming of owning him. So when his foolish father buys the horse instead of a work horse, for reasons of vanity, Albert and his new horse Joey instantly bond, as Albert tries to train him to be a work horse.

I was probably not the best choice to review the new film Tinker Tailor Solider Spy for The MacGuffin. Double-crossing, secret-plotting, many-character-having spy movies make me anxious; I spend much of the time just fretting that I’ll miss something plot-wise. And if this is the case with a typical James Bond-style adventure, director Tomas Alfredson’s film takes it to new levels. The plot is purposefully, stubbornly obtuse, and often I had to just let go and try to enjoy the scene at hand while acknowledging that I didn’t understand the context—or, to put a finer point on it, what the hell was going on at all. It’s not so much that there are too many twists and turns to follow, but that we’re left to fend for ourselves as they come. I realize that too much exposition can be tiresome, but any summary at some point would have been appreciated. It can be argued that leaving so much gray area enhances the message of the film; I get that. I don’t mind working for comprehension, but I’d like to at least get the impression that if I work hard enough, an answer exists somewhere. But maybe that’s how a lot of spies feel.

Now this is what I’m talking about. The beautiful thing about seeing Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin (2011) is realizing all the shortcomings that made up his lackluster film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Sure, both films have similarities: both are over the top adventure films, both have absurd plots that stretch the limits of believability, and both see our heroes in the middle of thrilling action sequences. But the difference here is that Tintin has much more life, energy, and enthusiasm, while Crystal Skull felt like an uninspired attempt at recapturing the once-great magic of a franchise. While the characters of Herge’s comic book series have been around for quite some time, this feels as though it is something new, something to be discovered and perhaps inviting us to revisit those stories, told in a way that can only come from the partnership of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.

Considering the pedigree of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo—a fiercely successful novel and well-regarded Swedish film already exist—director David Fincher would have had to try really hard to mess this movie up. Since he is not a moron, this movie is well made, interesting, and slick; beautiful people in a dark and brutal world ponder a complicated mystery and exciting things happen. I don’t really think this movie was necessary, what with there being a pretty good film made of this book already, but I can understand why it was made: Hollywood would have been leaving money on the table by not making an English language remake.

Tom Cruise is back once again as super agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), the fourth installment in the highly popular series. This time around, the film is directed by Brad Bird, the man who brought us some of the best animated movies in the last fifteen years in The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007). I was a little surprised that a person who is so associated with the animated world would be helming the next film of a franchise that has seen the likes of Brian DePalma, John Woo, and J.J. Abrams. Would his storytelling abilities translate well to a live action setting? Well, let me tell it to you like this: with a film that has the title Mission: Impossible, I walked in expecting over the top action, death-defying set pieces, preposterous plot twists, and really cool gadgets. I’m happy to report that I was not disappointed.

In modern society, technology has made privacy something of a rarity. Even if you choose not to participate in the hubbub of social networking and other various internet activities, chances are something about you is somewhere online. Privacy is something society has cherished for a long time. The option to intermingle with others but be able to always retreat to where one is not seen by anyone is to some societies just as important as it is an enigma to other societies. In privacy is where we can be who we feel we really are, without the judgment of others; where we can indulge the desires we feel might be deemed shameful by the people around us. In artist-turned-director Steve McQueen’s latest film Shame, he turns the camera’s eye on this concept and what happens when the privacy we rely on to indulge ourselves is stripped away.