Wim Wenders’ Pina is an appropriately unique tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch. Instead of forming a traditional biography, Wenders explores Pina’s life by collaborating with her company of dancers to stage her powerful and evocative masterpieces for the camera. Wenders employs thoughtful 3D to immerse us in the experience, and the gimmick is so effective, one could almost call it validating. The dancers bring Pina into focus through insights and recollections of what she, as mentor, meant to them personally and spiritually. Many of the dancers speak of Pina as a deliverer, describing her choreographies as a sort of liberating body language. Wenders soaks up as much of this extraordinary language as possible in his magnificent film. And the great pleasure of Pina is that it is not a dour elegy, but rather a celebration in which we may marvel at the movements and muse upon their meanings.

The Artist

Certified Copy

Cold Weather

A Dangerous Method

The Descendants

Drive

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo

Hanna

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Hugo

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Meek’s Cutoff

Melancholia

Midnight in Paris

My Week with Marilyn

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Shame

Take Shelter

Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy

The Tree of Life

Honorable Mentions:
Beginners
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff
The Housemaid
How to Die in Oregon
Into the Abyss
Le Quattro Volte
Of Love and Other Demons
Rango
Rubber
The Skin I Live In
Sleeping Beauty
Super 8
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Young Adult

I’d been promising a friend my Blu-ray copy of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows for weeks. I finally remembered to bring it today as I was leaving to meet him for a viewing of Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I bring this up because, after fully digesting the film, I was struck by how much it reminded me of Melville’s work, particularly Army of Shadows. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a genre film, but it operates with the same quiet demeanor and muted dramatics. The film is a great example of the dictum “it’s not what a film is about, but how it’s about it.” The narrative of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is no headier than any other serious genre effort, but it brings itself to a boil not with action or manipulative tensions, but with uncoiling motivations and minute subtleties. Alfredson’s adaption is a work of calculated restraint (with spot-on 70s aesthetics) that is centered by a singular, career-high performance from Gary Oldman. The end result is immensely satisfying, even if the film is, at times, mired by its own density. Condensing le Carré’s novel must have been a wonderful headache.

With A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg continues down his high cinema rabbit hole, delivering an absorbing feast of ideas, both cerebral and erotic. The film, based on screenwriter Christopher Hampton’s historical stage play, is a deliciously erudite chronicling of the relationships between Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), Sigmund Freud (Vigo Mortensen) and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). Cronenberg and Hampton present the story, as well as the nascency of psychoanalysis, through a bold choreography of intellectual and sexual encounters. (While I don’t envy the film’s exceptional actors having to learn their lines, I relished watching them deliver each fascinating conversation.) Cronenberg imbues the film with his familiar undercurrent of dry humor and with a remarkable—and surprisingly immediate—intimacy that eventually devastates. And he doesn’t distract with overly conspicuous cinematics, as this is first and foremost an actor’s piece. Fassbender (who’s had a very good year) and Mortensen delve brilliantly into their respective roles, but the film’s most courageous performance belongs to Knightley as the troubled (and brilliant) Spielrein.

The last few minutes of Melancholia had me paralyzed with fear, on the verge of tears. The film then cut to black and, as if in the place of an insufficient exhale, I began laughing hysterically. That is the spectrum Lars von Trier’s incomparable film inhabits. With their shared emotional, metaphorical and allegorical motifs, Melancholia is very much a companion piece to Trier’s previous film, Antichrist—though Melancholia is the more exhausting work. The film is lensed with the same clockmaker’s precision and it dances along to sobering pieces of Wagner’s opera, Tristan und Isolde. Trier’s blood-colored glasses have only gotten darker, but his fascinating narrative and visual contemplations have become less inclined to impishness, which is surprising given his increasingly inflammatory public persona. Depression is obviously inherent to Trier’s work. With Melancholia, he stares directly into the affliction and I suspect the film’s often stark earnestness stems from a kind of resigned reverence. Staring into the abyss takes a toll, but it can make for great cinema.

My primary criticism of Niels Arden Oplev’s original 2009 adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had to do with the way the film was stitched together. In the original film, the lives of two troubled souls, a brilliant hacker and an embattled journalist, intersect with a thud and then devolve into what I described as an airport novel narrative. I’ve revisited the film a few times, but my interest is mainly to do with Noomi Rapace’s astounding performance as Lisbeth Salander (the hacker), a character of genuine texture and complexity. This was my only concern when considering the possibility of an American adaptation. I even suggested that the producers re-cast Rapace in the role.

I can’t think of any filmmaker more suited to this story than David Fincher. His cold, unflinching precision is precisely what was required to really expose the darkness. The narrative is still rather salacious, at least the parts involving Nazis and devious family histories. But Fincher’s observation of the material brings everything into a more serious focus. And he achieves this clarity without compromising the story with typical Hollywood dilution.

I prefer Fincher’s methodical vision, but I would still suggest seeking out the original film. The differences between the two are fascinating, especially in the way Lisbeth is drawn. Daniel Craig makes a fine Mikael Blomkvist, but it was Rooney Mara who had the biggest leather boots to fill. Rather than imitating Rapace’s singular performance, Mara and Fincher created something entirely their own. This is a different Lisbeth, conceived more as little girl lost, hardened by her decision to survive. She has a more piercing vulnerability and is, at times, ferociously intense.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a sexy, brutal, intelligent, and thrilling film.

After watching Juno, I wanted to put snakes in my ears so I never had to hear Diablo Cody’s version of teenspeak ever again. The inexplicable critical reception for Cody’s screenplay baffled me. So, you’ll understand why it pains me to say that her script for Young Adult is really pretty good. (That burned a little.) I wasn’t sure about director Jason Reitman after Juno, either, but he’s gone on to make films I greatly admire such as Up in the Air. With Young Adult, Reitman and Cody have delivered a refreshingly cynical (i.e., honest) comedy that dispenses with conventions as readily as Charlize Theron’s sociopathic character dispenses with tact. It’s basically a high wire character study, but without a net.

I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed Theron as much as I did here. Her character is built to be immensely unlikable, but her performance lets in just enough light so that, while we may not adore her, we begin to understand. Patton Oswalt is particularly good as Matt Hoffman, Theron’s nerdy confidant. I remember Oswalt joking on one of his records that movies will always need a fat best friend. While his character doesn’t quite fit that designation, Cody wrote one hell of a best friend role for him to explore.

Young Adult is a great film . . . damn it.