"The Master" trailer introduced

Now if this isn't your most anticipated movie of 2012 then this blog is just not for you. No true movie buff would dare miss Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. Following up his intricate 2007 masterpiece There Will Be Blood, Anderson tackles another heavy subject. Religion. Oh boy this is surely going to offend religious zeitgeists but hell I don't care and neither should you. From what we can gather in this trailer, Anderson is taking on Scientology and its creator Ron L Hubbard. The lighting, music, camera shots all look top notch and so does Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Hubbard-like figure and Joaquin Phoenix as the master's protege. Click the link above only if you dare.

As for Anderson, what more can you say. He's proven over the years his worth and talent. which got me thinking about ranking his films in terms of quality. Anderson is right up there with the best American filmmakers working today. I'd put him on top of a list that includes David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson, Joel Coen, Alexander Payne and Christopher Nolan. P.T has only made phenomenal pictures in his career -mixing ambitious ideas with incredibly Altman-esque/Scorsese storytelling- and The Master will look to continue his winning streak.

1) There Will Be Blood
2) Magnolia
3) Boogie Nights
4) Punch-Drunk Love

"Apes" and a second "Earth"

If summer 2011 has taught us anything it's never go in to a movie with high expectations. There have been enough disappointments to cover an entire year's worth of releases. Which is why I dug Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Everything was supposed to go horribly wrong with this latest reboot of the franchise - Tim Burton's much maligned reboot in 2001 starring Marky Mark has been consistently mocked. This latest version is directed by Rupert Wyatt, a relative unknown that made his feature filmmaking debut in 2009 with the rather mixed reviewed The Escapist. Haven't really heard much about that movie but suffice to say he does a remarkable job here with the rather slim material he has at hand. It's a popcorn movie through and through even if I couldn't care less for the romantic subplot that the movie slightly invests in but as I said Wyatt only slightly invests in it and it's a smart decision. The real star here in Andy Serkis who plays Cesar, an ape that is at the central part of the film's dilemma. Caesar is raised by Will (James Franco) a scientist that has a father suffering of a severe case of Alzheimer's - the always great John Lithgow plays the said father and he is the driving force for Franco's Will to break the rules and test out a chemical called ALZ 112 on both he and the ape. It works, but not through and through. I won't spoil much but I will say this; Serkis deserves an Oscar nom for the way he brings real feeling to what is essentially a CGI based character, just like he did with Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings. It's a tour de force performance that elevates the movie into something more than just crass entertainment. Twentieth Century Fox has a real winner here and word of mouth will surely bring much mula to the movie's box office. Well deserved might I add.

However, for some Wyatt's movie might be too big, conventional and bombastic for their tastes (I don't blame them) .. which brings me to Mike Cahill's small, low budget Sci Fi enigma Another Earth. A rather flawed but thought provoking journey into a guilt ridden woman's head. She's haunte by a night when she killed a pregnant mother and her son while driving under the influence - the father survives and when she finishes her 4 year jail stint she tries to correct the ties back by masquerading herself as a cleaning lady and developing a risky friendship that could result in dire consequences. Oh and all in the while, in the background, a mysterious second earth has been discovered and is slowly being dissected. It's of course not even close to being scientifically possible but who cares, the film is interesting to a certain point, despite all of its flaws. The ambition is high despite the familiarity of the story. The Conclusion is a satisfying head scratcher despite occasional lapses into dullness. The actors are incredibly intense, especially newcomer Brit Marling who co financed the film with her director Cahill, an ex flame - both worked on the project for years and both are finally getting rewarded for their efforts. The film won a prize at Sundance and the reviews are considerably positive. It's a worthy effort that shows real promise despite the bumps.

Mini Reviews (The Trip & Crazy Stupid Love)

People have been bitching how I've practically liked nothing this summer. Well, continue bitching. It's not my fault that we have to endure such miserable quality produce. If you want the good stuff you'll have to go to your local art house and watch Terrence Malick's masterful The Tree Of Life or Woody Allen's playful Midnight In Paris -more on that one next week-

Crazy Stupid Love (PG-13) ★★

Here's a movie that tries to be too much. You can't fault ambition this summer, it's a plus. Directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra try to get to the bottom of love in a much different way than their underrated effort I Love You Philip Morris from last year. They overreach but get prime performances from Ryan Gosling and my current Hollywood love thorn Emma Stone. Steve Carrell and Juliann Moore also star in otherwise underdeveloped roles. The movie grabbed me in its first half only to pile on the cliches in its second. This to me is the worst feeling possible to have in a movie -one with promise that ultimately fails. Back to Stone. She's a natural Hollywood beauty with acting chops to boot. As Easy A showed us last year, she has mass potential and even if a movie such as this one doesn't fully show it, you know it's bound to happen with the right script.

The Trip (R) ★★★

A film export from the U.K starring the great Steve Coogan and British comedian Rob Brydon. Coogan is asked by The Observer to tour the country's finest restaurants, he sees it as the perfect romantic getaway for he and his beautiful American girlfriend. However, she backs out on him, he has no one to accompany him but his best friend Brydon. A competitiveness starts to build up between the two as they try to one up each in conversations involving impressions. all in the while trying to grasp each others company throughout the trip. It's a simple formula and it works. There aren't any special effects or overcooked plot lines. Just two actors, great food and a real sense of wonder at some of England's best locations. Definitely not for everybody's tastes but here's a real zesty, underrated treat.

The first great movie of 2011

It isn't for me to actually call a movie a "masterpiece" or "great" but Terrence Malick's The Tree Of Life is just that - a mosaic of a film that tests an audiences limitations but more importantly the cinematic medium's limitations. No matter what faults you may have with Malick's movie, you cannot deny the sheer chutzpah and originality that went into its creation. There has never really been anything quite like it and I highly doubt there ever will be. Malick tries to transcend the boundaries of life itself by trying to find a kind of meaning that can possibly bind us with a higher power. His search is for transcendence, in the little moments that make and shape us. Death, morning, rebirth, transcendence are just a fraction of the themes being tackled here, suffice to say I don't think the Transformers 3 crowd will very warm up to the film's non linear narrative and constant use of abstract shapes and colors representing a kind of big bang.

This is a welcome return for Malick, who's last picture -The New World- I hadn't so much warmed up to as much as was just puzzled by its mystical nature. The Tree Of Life I got. I understood what Malick was aiming for, what his obsessions were and what he was trying to get at. The spiritual nature of the film is undeniable. Here's a film so ambitious that it sets out to find the meaning of life in its images and contrasting colors. It sets out to bring a kind of ecstasy to its audience, a maddening one in fact, that can resort to turning off the most austere, ignorant of audiences and puzzling the more adventurous ones. This is basically Malick refusing to please us with any easy answers and deciding to please his own subconscious in creating something that turns him on and that makes him curious about life itself. He is not only tormenting us but tormenting himself in saying there is no easy answer to be found in all this.

Malick tries to find his answers though the simplicities and cracks of life. He evokes memories of his own childhood into the life of an American family going through life's trials. Brad Pitt is Mr. O'brien, an overbearing, aggressive father to three children and husband to a quiet, fearful wife. She is played indelibly well by Jessica Chastain in a performance so incredible it will be talked about for ages upon ages in every film school imaginable, ditto the film of course. She is quiet because she has no power in the house, she is controlled and so are her children. The rare time we see her smile is when her husband is out of town and she celebrates with such giddy, exuberance, running with kids around the house. The scene is memorable because it shows darkness leaving and light entering. Every scene Pitt is in brings fear and trouble to the settings. He is a controlling, failed man that has lost touch of who he is. It's an incredible performance that might win him an Oscar nomination just like Chastain.

The Tree Of Life is a groundbreaker because it brings out a dimension to life we never thought existed. We get to see things we couldn't possibly imagine with Malick's poetic eye. Frustration might at times linger and it is nowhere near a perfect film (Why Sean Penn? What's with the ending?) but I'm reminded of a great quote by late film critic Pauline Kael who once said "great movies are rarely perfect movies" - that's how I feel about Malick's visionary mind fuck. It is such an inspiring work of art that you can't help but break out a smile at its originality. There hasn't been a more thoroughly breathtaking cinematic vision on screen in -it seems like- forever. People might hate it, people might curse it but they cannot deny its importance to the way we view the way we live and the way our world is shaped. Through the infinites of our deepest subconscious Malick asks us to take his hand and jump along with him, hipsters and tipsters might dig the hell out of his ideas but so could you. Go along with him.

★★★ ½ (PG-13)

Summer Movie Week 2 -- FAST FIVE

Fast Five comes out gunning with an opening that open your eyes up and kicks out your adrenaline. It's a sequence that involves cars, guns and a prisoner heist. Too bad the rest of the film is a sort of Jekyll and Hyde action movie. It's all hit and miss from there as our boy Vin Diesel and his posse which includes a more ripped than usual Paul Walker escape to Latin America as the FBI -lead by The Rock- chases them through tunnels and streams in beautiful Rio De Janeiro. I'm a sucker for heist pictures but this one didn't quench my thirst at all. Its preposterous screenplay is juggled with lots of testosterone fueled muscle/action. I had a few chuckles here and there whenever one of the main protagonists would open his or her mouth and say something that is supposed to be deep? or profound? You won't find deep or profound in this film, all you'll find is a by the books Hollywood formula.

Not to say that I was a big fan of the series. I didn't like any of the first 4 movies. But the somewhat positive reviews that came out with this one had me expecting an entertaining ride. Suffice to say this is definitely not the movie I was expecting. Its characters are filled with pompous air and are not sketched out enough to even bring a glimmer of excitement. If you want real good action check out a great 80's buddy cop flick like Lethal Weapon 2 or Die Hard on DVD. Summer 2011 has not had a very kind start in terms of quality and this new film won't help its cause any further. On a side note; Has Vin Diesel ever made a good movie? The answer is yes but you have to go way back more than 10 years ago to find our man duking it out with darkened creatures in Pitch Black. His spurts of quality have been DOA ever since.

Report Card - ★★

Not much to say about Priest except that I saw it in 3d and it was most clearly the most useless 3d one can watch in a movie theatre these days. These studios really need to stop shoving this cinematic medium down our faces. Unless you shoot with 3d cameras -such as is what James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis are doing- don't release your movie in 3d just to have audiences churn out an extra 3 bucks for stupid plastic glasses that were probably made by Taiwanese children and should actually cost a quarter. As for the film itself, it sucked.

Report Card - ★

Gaspar Noe's new head trip

Enter The Void (NR) ★★★★

Gaspar Noe never seems to settle for a conventional narrative. His latest is called Enter The Void and runs at more than 160 minutes. It is long, flawed, repetitive but is also something I have never seen before in cinema and I do mean that as a good thing. If he shocked us all with a 10 minute rape scene in Irreversible, the shock is not as nasty here but he instead decides to resort to trippy psychedelia and images that represent an other worldly existence. His inspiration is clearly Kubrick, most notably the last 20 or so minutes of 2001 expanded into 2 hours. Although there is a story at hand here and a clear belief of an after life, Noe's interests vary from the connection of drugs to the after-life and the spirituality that comes in living above everything else.

Taking place in Japan, the film uses the colorful and surreal imagery of this country to tell the story of two Americans -brother and sister- that are literally lost in translation, but don't worry it isn't a sequel, there is no Bill Murray in Enter The Void, nor is there any Scarlett and her infamous butt. The brother, Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) has turned into a junkie that is hooked on the drug DMT (the chemical your brain unleashes when you're dying) and his sister Linda has resorted to stripping for money- she also has a semi creepy affair with her Japanese manager. The brother gets shot and basically wanders around the entire film in an undisclosed life form going through flashbacks, present time and another dimension.

Talking about creepy, there's hints of Incest throughout the film although it never really is fully revealed, what that's all about? don't pay too much attention and just let filmmaker Noe transport you into a world of cinema you have never sene before. Suffice to say, I dug this film quite a bit because of its visionary reaches and the way Noe tried to bring a new way of expression to a cinematic medium that has all but failed in inventiveness the last few years. There's no shortage of originality here, although I felt completely drained by the time the film had ended. It's an experience that you will likely not forget, to say the least and I'm looking forward to his next twisted venture into surreality and cinematic boundaries.

Affleck, The Town & Missteps

The Town (R) ★★½ or ★★★

Ben Affleck stars and directs In The Town, a film about cold blooded bank robbers in the corrupt, dangerous town of Charlestown, Massachusetts. If anybody saw Affleck's first stab at directing - Gone Baby Gone- they saw a raw, gritty style that was lacking in Affleck's more recent work as an actor. There was a rebellious style that you didn't find in -say- Gigli. Not to confirm that The Town is a total success. It's a hit and miss movie that has moments of true brilliance and moments of sheer cliche. The action is hit, the drama is miss. Given the fact that it takes time for a director to adjust and mature, I'm giving Affleck the benefit of the doubt with this one.

The good stuff? I liked the way the action was set up, especially the climactic heist which takes place in Boston's legendary Fenway Park. People are not kidding when they sing the praises of this close to 20 minute, tension filled finale. It's the peak of the film and -quite possibly- the best heist sequence I've seen since Heat's climactic finale close to 15 years ago. In that film director Michael Mann mixed character with drama to build up a real classic in the genre- a film that defined a generation of action directors and dared to have Pacino and Deniro go head to head in a film that had as much excitement with its mind games as it had through its violence.

Another high point of the film comes in the form of a car chase scene that takes place in the tightly constructed streets of Charlestown. It's an adrenaline rush that had me admiring Affleck's technically savvy talents for shooting action. Special mention also goes to the bank robbery that opens the film and opens the book on its main characters' judgments and choices throughout the picture. Affleck strives to pull off his own Heat & the influence is all over his picture. Too bad he doesn't pull it off. The flow Mann pursued perfectly in his film is missing here and Affleck seems to be straining to find a narrative style for the film's more dramatic points

Don't get me wrong, I dug the film but Affleck shouldn't have cast himself in the lead role and should have stayed behind the camera this time around. His acting puts a real strain on the story and leaves a coldness to his character and an emotional detachment to the audience. However, casting Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner and John Hamm (Mad Men) shows a great flair for casting and the production values are just top notch but there's something very calculative and cold with it all. I feel like Affleck still has much to grow upon & needs to find better narrative structures to his stories. For the time being, he's on track for better things & seems to be gaining more confidence with his game, he directs The Town in a classical approach reminiscent of late career Eastwood.