The films of Agnès Varda share a deceptive quality. Her stories are based on the simplest of premises (young woman awaits results of a cancer test, homeless girl wanders from town to town, Varda tells the story of her own life), and I always find myself questioning whether or not the experience will be worth it. I should stop worrying. Not one to put much value in first impressions, Varda focuses instead on relationships that develop naturally over the course of the film, slowly revealing not only the depths of her characters but also her intentions as a filmmaker with something on her mind.

In her 2008 autobiographical film The Beaches of Agnès, which inspired the retrospective that Austinites will be enjoying over the next five weeks, Varda starts with a fun bit of business involving some mirrors on a sandy beach. She comes off as a “pleasantly plump and talkative” woman with a few anecdotes to share, but the film adds up to so much more than that. As she jumps back and forth between clips from her films and photographs from her childhood, she constructs a series of connections between her life and her work. Only when the final credits roll are you able to fully grasp who this woman is and what she has learned about life, family, and the source of creativity.

Our heroine in Vagabond is revealed in the same way. Early in the film, Sandrine Bonnaire’s Mona seems like nothing more than your run-of-the-mill street urchin, always on the lookout for the next roof, the next meal, the next cigarette. She shuns any attempts made by others to get to know her or offer her an opportunity to take root and stop wandering. A farmer and his wife give her a trailer to sleep in, steady meals, and a tract of land to call her own, but she can’t be bothered to stop smoking and laying about. Eventually, she makes known her aversion to responsibility and is cast out.

In her unwillingness to foster relationships with others and her blindness to the impact she has on those she leaves behind, Mona reminded me at first of Emile Hirsch’s Chris McCandless in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, a film and character I absolutely cannot stand. However, though both characters meet the same fate (dying alone in the wilderness), the emotional responses to those deaths couldn’t be more different. Whereas Penn and Hirsch see McCandless as a hero for living his life the way he wanted to, Mona’s death is tinged with regret. Where McCandless still appears content with solitude as he takes his last breath, Mona seems to die just as she is acknowledging all the chances at human connection that she let slip away.

Easily the brightest moment in the film, Mona gets drunk with a rich, old woman.

That these feelings are never once uttered by Mona herself is a testament to Varda’s filmmaking. By returning at carefully chosen moments to Mona’s past acquaintances, allowing them address the camera and reminisce about the young vagabond, Varda fills in the gaps in our understanding of Mona that were deliberately left empty at first. In essence, Varda builds the character of Mona mostly when Mona is not onscreen, with what is basically a behind-the-back conversation between the supporting characters and the audience. Are you scared of Mona or revolted by her filthy appearance? There’s a character who agrees with you. Do you feel that a young Moroccan farmhand should have tried harder to convince his friends to let Mona stay with him? In a poignantly silent moment between the camera and the farmhand, you can see that he feels the same way.

By not giving Mona much of a say in how we ultimately feel about her, Varda points the blame at us for accepting a society of surface acquaintances. Sure, Mona didn’t make much of an effort to endear herself to others, but were those others really interested in getting to know her in the first place or were they just interested in feeling better about themselves? In the end, Mona’s death is regrettable not only because it marks the end of a young life but also because it represents the incomplete notions that we often leave behind. When you die, how many people will be able to say they truly knew you? How many of them will be wrong? As I said at the beginning, Varda isn’t much interested in first impressions. Her films encourage us to pursue the deepest truths about others, to really care about the people we care about.

On a cinephile sidenote, Vagabond and the other films in this series serve as a perfect example of why we need the cinema. As much as I appreciate Varda’s work, I likely never would’ve taken the time to sit down and watch this film, which I ended up enjoying quite a bit. There are so many films on each of our lists, not to mention the many other hobbies that take up our time. How nice it is to be able to go to a place where films are programmed for you, where you find yourself shutting everything off and watching something that someone else thinks is worth seeing. Next week’s Varda film isn’t on my Netflix queue; hell, I don’t even know what it’s about or who’s in it or if I’ll even like it. A few hours ago, I could’ve said the same about Vagabond. Now, I’ve already convinced a few others to add it to their queue. That’s why we go to the movies.

When I saw the trailer for Gaspar Noé’s latest film and read some of the advance word, I began hoping that Enter the Void might be this year’s Antichrist, a film that challenges viewers with a unique visual style and captivating thematic material. To my great surprise, Noé’s film actually makes Antichrist look like an exercise in classical Hollywood style. Lars Von Trier’s traditional narrative progression and character construction seem almost antiquated when compared to Noé’s bold third-person POVs and hallucinatory transitions. Enter the Void is definitely challenging, but audiences up to that challenge will be rewarded with a rich exploration of sexual desire and the ultimate fantasy of life after death.

The fun begins with the film’s interesting twist on the three-act progression. Plenty of films have taken liberties with narrative by telling the story out of chronological order, but in this case, Noé provides motivation for the disjunction. We begin in the present, with our hero Oscar making his way to a club called The Void to sell some drugs. Once there, Oscar discovers that he has been set up by his buyer, a former friend named Victor who discovered that Oscar has been having sex with his mother. In the ensuing chaos, Oscar is shot and killed by the cops.

This sets in motion the second act, which constitutes a series of “flashbacks.” Now, we get filled in on Oscar’s past, learning more about his relationship with his sister Linda and how things fell apart with Victor. The trick is that these flashbacks are not simply cinematic contrivances; Oscar, having studied the Book of the Dead before dying, has actually left his body in The Void and is seeing his life flash before his eyes along with us.

We spend most of the film looking at the world through Oscar's eyes or just over his shoulder

In order to carry this off, Noé masterfully edits these sequences to recreate the ways in which we interact with our own memories. Oscar continues to return to seminal events in his past, like the gruesome death of his parents in an automobile accident that left Oscar and Linda orphaned or more pleasant, sexually tinged memories of spending time with his sister and his beautiful mother. Through this repetition, we recognize how we grapple with our own memories, doubling back time and again with different points-of-view based on newfound wisdom or information.

For the entire duration of this journey through Oscar’s memory, Noé never “cuts,” which is something I never thought I would enjoy. Many critics have praised experiments in one-shot filmmaking, like Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 film Russian Ark, but I found Sokurov’s movie to be nothing short of an insufferable denial of an established cinematic language. While Noé doesn’t actually use a single shot, he uses CGI and psychedelic, epileptic transitions to create the illusion that the camera never stops rolling. For this film, this stylistic choice is perfectly suited to Noé’s vision, and I believe it’s the subtle element that makes the whole operation work. We move through three acts (drug trips in the present, memories of the past, a path to reincarnation in the near future), and Noé’s ability to make one continuous journey out of those three stages is quite astonishing.

I won’t go into detail about the final act, but I will say that it makes you wish life after death were not just a pipe-dream (in Noé’s world, death and pipe-dreams look very much alike). More than just a cold shuffling of the deck, where you could end up a world leader or a cockroach, Noé gives us a structured and poignant vision of reincarnation. After nearly three hours of loss, longing, and sexual frustration, Noé’s climax not only makes perfect sense but is simply one of the most hard-earned and well-deserved conclusions I’ve ever seen in a film. Kubrick would be proud.

People spend a lot of time talking about Nicolas Cage’s strange career choices. I think the term “choices” gives Cage too much credit, as if he is actually considering a number of options before going with the script that most intrigues him. Based on his work in the past several years, it seems more appropriate to assume that he is simply taking the first check that falls through his mail slot.

Sure, he can bring an element of creative instability to otherwise dull franchises like National Treasure or Ghost Rider. But after seeing his remarkable performance in Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant, I can’t help but feel that every Bangkok Dangerous or Sorceror’s Apprentice adds to a growing collection of wasted opportunities, the latest being Season of the Witch.

Cage flourishes in the no-holds-barred filmmaking environment that Herzog provides, just as he has with other distinguished directors like Spike Jonze, David Lynch, and The Coen Bros. While many seem to think that Cage will automatically spice up any movie he participates in, I can’t help but feel that he has to be coaxed into life by his fellow filmmakers. Otherwise, he has no problem slumping through uninspired dialogue on his way to the conclusion of a derivative plot.

What's my motivation?

Season of the Witch is the latest example. Not only does the movie pass up an opportunity to keep the audience in suspense as to whether or not the girl is a witch (we learn almost immediately that witches do exist in this world and that this girl seems to have supernatural powers), but in the end (SPOILER ALERT), she’s not a witch at all. She’s possessed by a demon, which places this film squarely into the overcrowded exorcism sub-genre that has just recently enjoyed a modern classic (The Last Exorcism) and will see yet another entry in just a few weeks (The Rite). The writers couldn’t even be bothered to actually write a movie about witches, but they figured they’d disguise the fact that this is just another demon possession movie until the last act.

I know a lot of people love Gone in Sixty Seconds, the 2000 film that first paired Cage with director Dominic Sena, and that’s no surprise. That movie had all the elements required for a great Hollywood action film: an established action star (Cage), a gorgeous superstar on the rise (Angelina Jolie), and a rogues’ gallery of great character actors (Giovanni Ribisi, Scott Caan, Tim Olyphant, Chris Eccleston, Grace Zabriskie, the list goes on).

These elements are missing in Season of the Witch. Outside of the always-welcome presence of Ron Perlman and an all-too-brief cameo from Christopher Lee, Cage has been surrounded by actors that aren’t likely to make much of a mark on the future of Hollywood. Stephen Campbell Moore? Ulrich Thomsen? Robert Sheehan? When you’re working with a tired narrative that sees one character after another die off in predictable fashion, you end up hiring actors that are pretty much good at one thing: vanishing almost as soon as they appear.

Claire Foy is mostly known for her Masterpiece Theatre appearances. Not quite Angelina Jolie

To top it all off, the repentant crusader Behmen is not the kind of character we want to see Nic Cage-Action Star play. After stabbing an innocent woman in the heart in the midst of a battle, Behmen realizes he doesn’t agree with killing women and children in the name of God. This makes for a lot of tortured moping about, obstructing Cage from having any fun with the character or the film in general. Yeah, Cage has moped with the best of them in dramatic features like Adaptation or The Weather Man, but we’re looking for a different persona when we go to a Cage action flick.

Denying us that simple pleasure is just one of Sena’s many mistakes. The movie is so bereft of excitement or emotional involvement that, on the odd occasion when Cage or Perlman try to crack a joke, the audience seemed almost bewildered by it. “Wait, are you trying to make us laugh? Do we have to respond? I thought we were just going to sit here and stare at the screen,” everyone in the theater seemed to think.

Really, that’s the biggest crime of a movie like this one. Nicolas Cage is one of the few actors who can have an audience on the edge of their seat for no other reason than wondering what crazy thing he is going to do next. Directors like Herzog know what a valuable commodity that is. Sena, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have a clue. It’s up to Cage to work with directors who do.

When Pan’s Labyrinth came out in 2006, I remember one critic suggesting that, in hindsight, The Devil’s Backbone could be seen as Guillermo del Toro’s “warm-up film.” Now that I’ve seen them both, I have to say that this statement is right on the money. Backbone confronts many of the same issues, from many of the same angles, as Pan’s Labyrinth, but with only a fraction of the emotional heft.

Like Pan’s Labyrinth, Backbone tells the story of a child living through the political turmoil of Spain in the 1930s and 1940s. In both films, the despair that has already crept into the lives of the adults begins to rub off on the child, and the resulting angst manifests itself through supernatural events. The eerie ghost in Backbone and the fantastical faun in Pan’s Labyrinth share motivations that are at first unclear: do they mean to help the child or do harm? In both cases, the answer doesn’t stray far from the usual conclusions that accompany each genre. Backbone being a ghost story with historical implications, the young ghost unsurprisingly has some unfinished business that he needs our hero to take care of, while Pan’s Labyrinth, leaning more towards the fairytale side of the storybook, teaches our heroine that not everyone can be trusted.

Clearly, del Toro was content to stay mostly within the narrative confines of the ghost and fairytale genres. So what makes Pan’s Labyrinth a contemporary masterpiece of fantasy filmmaking while Backbone only rates as a fairly interesting ghost story? Chalk it up to maturity. Between the two films, del Toro spent a little time in Hollywoodland, undoubtedly having his two commercial films Blade II and Hellboy picked apart by audience-conscious studio executives. Of course, the first inclination is to be repulsed by this idea, but I think some filmmakers benefit from a crash course in what sells tickets. It can help them build a stronger focus on their characters and tighten up their narratives. I think it did just that for del Toro.

Nothing a visit to the dermatologist can't fix

I just saw Backbone a couple of days ago, and I couldn’t even tell you the name of the young boy that the film is about. On the other hand, I haven’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth in two years, but I’ll never forget Ofelia’s name. Her ultimate fate at the end of the film, and how she deals with it, are etched in my memory. Despite all the fascinating creatures that del Toro threw into Pan’s Labyrinth (another aspect of his talent that grew exponentially over the years), the film never loses sight of Ofelia. It almost seems like The Devil’s Backbone happens around its main character, while Pan’s Labyrinth wouldn’t exist without Ofelia.

I think it’s a bit of a shame that, in the past 5 years, del Toro has only directed two films (Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy II). For the rest of that time, he has kept himself busy helping others get their films off the ground, producing The Orphanage, Splice, and many others, as well as three soon-to-arrive films. Now that The Hobbit has fallen through, he seems to be at sea again, announcing upcoming projects here and there with no noticeable results. If rumors that he will reboot Van Helsing for Universal and The Haunted Mansion for Disney prove true, they will be a great setback for those of us who saw a remarkably unique talent at work in Pan’s Labyrinth and have eagerly anticipated his next original story.

Paul Haggis has been involved in two films that I enjoyed, both times as a screenwriter only. The characters he wrote (adapted) for Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby felt like genuine human beings, and I ultimately found myself caring a great deal for them and the outcome of their desperate situation. The plot he helped create for Martin Campbell’s James Bond revitalization Casino Royale took a tired character to new places and made Bond a joy to watch again. For his latest effort as writer-director, The Next Three Days, Haggis has basically attempted to combine these elements into one movie: real people caught up in a suspenseful thriller. For the third time as a multi-hyphenate, he hasn’t succeeded.

Sure, the thriller part of the equation comes off nicely. I give Haggis credit for crafting a decent addition to the heist/jailbreak genre. Watching Russell Crowe’s John Brennan carry off an elaborate plan to help his wife escape from prison after she has been wrongfully accused of murder makes the third act quite enjoyable. The problem is that the film has spent the hour preceding the third act failing to make these characters believable.

Chances are, as you’re watching the movie, you’ll ask yourself the question, “Who are these people?” Like the characters he created for the 2004 Oscar mistake Crash and 2007’s slightly improved In the Valley of Elah, these people behave unlike anyone you’re likely to have met in the real world. In one of the earliest scenes, Russell Crowe’s John and his wife Lara, played by Elizabeth Banks, are eating dinner at an upscale, riverside restaurant with Crowe’s brother Mick and the brother’s wife Erit. Lara has just told them that she had a fight with her female boss earlier that day, and Erit says that women should always have male bosses. This comment irritates Lara, who suggests that Erit only feels this way because she has nice breasts and uses them to get ahead. Within seconds, the conversation escalates, and the women get up from their chairs and actually seem poised to jump onto the table and have a catfight before the men calm things down. These are sisters-in-law!

Crowe and Banks flee from the set to work on a better picture

If you followed movies at all in 2004, then you don’t need me to reiterate the fierce critical backlash against the characters in Crash, which also seemed manufactured to cause (melo)drama. I think the problem lies in Haggis’s twenty years of experience writing for television shows like The Facts of Life and Walker, Texas Ranger. In these situations, characters only had 20-40 minutes to encounter a problem, respond to it emotionally, and resolve it. His film characters seem to be on the same short fuse. Emotions boil over far too quickly, and, no matter how hard he tries to make the details of this film seem true-to-life, John resolves these problems far too easily for a community college professor.

How can Haggis, in one breath, ask us to treat the film as a genuine drama about a real man trying to reunite his wife with his son and, in the next breath, introduce a character like Liam Neeson’s Damon Pennington, a jailbreak expert who escaped from prison seven times and is now a free man writing best-sellers about his exploits. How do you escape from prison that many times and not add 50 years to your original sentence? John finds Pennington by doing a Google search that turns up an Amazon entry for Pennington’s book, which has a title that borders on “How I Did It!” Again, who are these people?

Wow! I'm getting sage advice from Liam Neeson, just like in the movies!

I’m not sure Haggis even knows what he wants when he sets out to write a screenplay. In the few interviews of his that I’ve read, he seems like he wants to be taken seriously as a thoughtful filmmaker but, at the same time, wants to cleave to a formula that ensures he will remain active on the Hollywood radar. In a recent interview for Film Comment, Haggis claims that he wrote the characters in Crash as stereotypes on purpose. He says, “I let you sit back and relax and judge the people, because they’re all stereotypes-they’re doing exactly the things that you know in your heart they actually do. And, as soon as I have you really relaxed, then I can fuck with you.”

Who is this person?

Consider me confused by the R-rated cut of porn director Carter Stevens’ 1977 skin flick Punk Rock. After recognizing the potential to cash in on the burgeoning punk rock craze, Stevens went back to the drawing board to add in some punk rock concert scenes and, supposedly, remove all the naughty bits. However, there are still plenty of vibrators, women asking men to “pick a hole, any hole,” and a whole mess of genitals, male and female. I can’t imagine where this “clean” version could’ve played other than the same porn theaters it had already frequented. But, I’m no expert on 1970s grindhouse cinema.

That conundrum is only one of the many fascinating questions that arise while watching this film, and fascination is really the appeal of films like these. Sure, this detective story’s attempts at hard-boiled dialogue often grate on the ear, and the cameramen are frequently too generous with the headroom. But the street scenes, historical records of urban decay, are as rewarding as some of the musical performances (Whatever happened to The Squirrels?). And, believe it or not, lead actor Wade Nichols (described by Stevens in an interview as “straight-for-pay”) gives a performance that much better than it needs to be.

Ironically enough, if I have one problem with the film, it’s with the copious amounts of new footage shot to replace the porn scenes and establish a long-winded plot involving mobsters and double-crosses. Rather than simply cut out the sex scenes and re-release whatever was left, as many filmmakers did, Stevens went above and beyond to film all this extra story. Unfortunately, the effort has resulted in a number of endlessly talky scenes involving actors whose greatest strength is definitely not talking.

On the DVD copies of the film, which were generously provided to just about everyone in attendance at this Alamo Ritz Music Monday screening, Punk Rock is joined by another Stevens film, Pleasure Palace. This cleaned-up porn flick was handled the old fashioned way, re-released without the sex scenes at a taut 64 minutes, a full half-hour shorter than Punk Rock.

Ultimately, Pleasure Palace is a better watch. Stevens regular Richard Bolla (also in Punk Rock) and Eric Edwards establish a great rapport as partners who go into business as brothel owners, and what’s left of the film after it was (mostly) shorn of sex still works as a narrative. Maybe Stevens should’ve had better faith in his ability to make a fun movie the first time around and left Punk Rock alone. You’ll probably agree when you find yourself having to revisit acts like The Fast, which, for all their faults, surely had the lowest cholesterol of any late 70s punk group.

When I was making plans to see this penultimate Harry Potter film, I briefly considered the IMAX experience at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. I thoroughly enjoyed a recent screening of Inception at the IMAX theatre, with its six-story-high anti-gravity fights and rumbling soundtrack. However, the Harry Potter franchise has become increasingly less IMAX-friendly over the course of its seven films, which is, in my opinion, to its great credit.

A number of critics like Roger Ebert and Anthony Lane would disagree with me, having stated that as the films move further away from the whiz-bang action and fantastical comforts of Hogwarts, they abandon the very things that made audiences fall in love with the franchise. I have no doubt that a large segment of the moviegoing audience agrees with them, but this argument fails to recognize the remarkable achievements of the past few entries.

Is there another film franchise that has been this consistently good? Harry and friends have journeyed through seven films thus far, and not a single one of them has disappointed. (Some might argue in favor of the Star Wars franchise, a debate we’ll save for another time.) What does it take to achieve this level of success? Could we have endured seven saccharine trips to Hogwarts in a row?

The fact is that the series has matured with its audience along the same trajectory as the book series, and I have appreciated every minute of it. For all the magic and wonder of the first four films, they never really ventured beyond the standard color palettes and uninspired framing you’d expect from a children’s fantasy series, though Alfonso Cuaron’s Prisoner of Azkaban admirably took the series as far as it could go under those restrictions. But then director David Yates was brought on board to handle the fifth film, Order of the Phoenix, lifting the series, I believe, to an entirely new level of cinematic achievement. Yates had been primarily known as a director of political television dramas in his native Britain, which made his appointment as Harry Potter director a bit of a headscratcher. But the decision-makers at Warner Bros. were right on the money, and Order of the Phoenix proved to be (and still is) the best entry in the series.

From Order of the Phoenix: the far-right-leaning Dolores Umbridge, the series' subtlest and best villain

In his previous efforts like State of Play, Yates had focused on mature, intelligent characters, lurking in the shadows and holding conversations that could affect the future of a nation. That experience served him well in Phoenix, as Harry moved on from dealing with bullies and house elves to more formidable opponents like the fascist Ministry of Magic and the totalitarian madman Lord Voldemort. Watching this fifth film directly after the fourth is a night-and-day experience. Suddenly, the camera could be placed at intimidating angles, the actors’ faces weren’t entirely lighted at all times, and depth of field was a concept to be explored, not avoided. Based on his successful rendering of this story, Yates secured the director’s chair for the remainder of the series.

That brings us to this year’s entry, the first half of the final chapter and arguably the riskiest Harry Potter film yet. One conclusion frequently drawn about the earlier films was that the veteran British actors carried the weight of the films on behalf of the three young and inexperienced leads. The risk in this latest film, then, is that the crutches of Alan Rickman, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith and others have been almost entirely removed, leaving Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint to fend for themselves. Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the film is watching them pass the test and exceed expectations. Everyone has loudly wondered if these three would be able to find work once this franchise closed shop. Based on their performances here, I think they are going to be just fine.

A picture of promise

For a majority of the film, our heroes journey from one desolate landscape to another, setting up their magical tent and sorting out their differences while they track down the missing pieces they need to conquer Voldemort. In other words, more talk, less broom-flying. Grint’s Ron Weasley, whose latent jealousy over his best friend Harry’s superstar status begins to boil over, establishes an identity for himself as a character and an actor. Watson’s Hermione, torn between her devotion to Harry’s cause and her love for Ron, makes a strong case for this actress’s ability to carry off a simmering love story. And Radcliffe’s Harry, left to fend for himself after the death of his mentor Dumbledore, places the film firmly on his shoulders and truly carries the franchise for the first time.

In what may be my favorite scene of the entire series, Harry notices that Hermione is clearly distressed after Ron has abandoned them and their future becomes increasingly dim. Without hesitation, Harry takes Hermione’s hand and invites her to dance. Although he clearly could use some practice, Radcliffe makes Harry’s intentions clear: to cheer up a good friend in a time of great sadness regardless of how silly he may look. Despite all the evil wizards and corrupt politicians he has dealt with, this may be the most mature thing Harry has done yet. He’s a man now, and he’s acting like one. The fact that Harry as a character and Radcliffe as an actor could not have pulled this scene off a few years ago is just one example of the dual growth we have been privileged to experience.

Performances aside, the usual cliches about the next-to-last film apply here. The film is too busy setting the stage and moving characters into place for this summer’s final battle to make a strong case for itself as a individual film. When that final battle arrives, I’ll be sad to see the franchise come to an end, especially since it seems to be hitting its stride as a cinematic entity. During the Alamo pre-show, I saw a news report from the parking lot of one of author J.K. Rowling’s book signings. Each kid interviewed talked about how the Harry Potter series instilled in them a passion for reading and how they couldn’t wait to read more books. That has been the true gift of Rowling’s work to the youth of our society, and I’d like to think that our young moviegoers, having witnessed the maturation of this film series into a decent representation of smart cinematic technique, will be encouraged to pursue great films in the years to come.

If I may add a cliche of my own, The Last Exorcism leaves no stone unturned in its attempts to cobble together as many successful horror film styles and stereotypes as it can. The remarkable thing is that the film makes something fairly interesting out of these tired old tropes, resulting in one of the more original and sure-to-be-underseen horror films to hit theaters in some time. The concept of the film and the performances that carry it out are so intriguing that the most disappointing moments may be the ones that try to scare us, but more on that later.

The movie focuses on Reverend Cotton Marcus, a man of God who, would you believe it, is having a crisis of faith. He has known for years that his sermons and the exorcisms he performs on the side are simply a means to put food on the table for his family. However, when he begins hearing reports of accidental deaths during aggressive exorcism rituals, he decides to put an end to this charade. In the process, Marcus starts to wonder if God himself is a charade.

Actors Patrick Fabian and Ashley Bell during the ''second-to-last'' exorcism

This entire setup is carried out in the film’s first act, its strongest. We learn that Marcus has hired a documentary team to film his last exorcism, so that he can expose all the fakery and showmanship that lead people to believe they have actually been through a demon-purging. This is actually a smart explanation for the documentary style that Stamm has chosen for the film, and it makes possible the first act’s charming lightheartedness that benefits from Patrick Fabian’s fine performance as Reverend Marcus.

We’ve seen movie preachers with a very real, fanatical belief in God, and we’ve seen snake oil salesmen out to make a buck from the easily deceived. But Fabian convincingly portrays a man who falls somewhere in the middle: he sincerely believes in God (or did once) but is also willing to admit that the spiritual fireworks he sets off every Sunday in chapel have nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. He’s a decent and kind spin on Burt Lancaster’s Elmer Gantry, and that’s what makes the “first exorcism” fun when it could have cruel. Marcus rigs the possessed girl Nell’s bedroom with special effects wizardry that terrifies her and her father but ultimately convinces them that a genuine exorcism has been carried out. Though we generally don’t stand for characters who bring young girls to tears, the childish grin that Marcus wears when he shows us his trick items is infectious. We share in the delight of his successful deception.

That crucifix is rigged with a...well, I'll let you find out.

However, we soon learn that the ruse has not cured Nell of her strange nocturnal behaviors, and suddenly Marcus finds that he must climb a mountain of his own creation. Having convinced Nell and her father that she really is possessed by a demon, the father is unwilling to even consider psychiatric care. At this point, Marcus is forced into a balancing act, in which he begins asking questions of the family the way a therapist might while maintaining a thin religious veneer to convince the father that he is still doing God’s work. This is one of the more interesting ways in which the script plays on conventional horror themes. In past versions of this oft-told tale, priests and psychiatrists have always fought over the fate of the possessed girl, each declaring that theirs is the right solution. In this film, the two sides are at war internally in Marcus’s own mind, as he struggles to determine how much longer he can maintain his religious lies before they do more harm to Nell than good.

These dramatic elements are the film’s greatest contributions to the continued history of the genre, blending characters from The Omen, The Exorcist, and Rosemary’s Baby into one lead role and extending the possibilities of the “home video horror” concept that The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity popularized. The film’s only weakness (for some it might be a big one) is that there is nothing to match the eerily effective moment from Paranormal Activity when the girlfriend is shown standing by the bed for hours as the video fast-forwards. Although there is one particularly exciting sequence when Nell, seemingly under possession, turns the camera on and carries it around with her as she does the devil’s work in secret, Stamm mostly labors to create the sort of tired imagery we’ve seen over and over again in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Haunting of Molly Hartley, and so on.

Nell gets some yoga in after a long day spent painting the barn.

Nevertheless, I would say that this is a better film than those, better even than Paranormal Activity. Though it won’t recreate the shriek-filled experience of watching the latter film on opening night in a packed house, I found the audience for The Last Exorcism glued to the screen, watching intently as the intricately crafted screenplay carried us to a shockingly enjoyable conclusion. By adhering to a strong dramatic narrative in a genre that rarely bothers anymore, this film merits inclusion in the Omen and Exorcist lineage.

Dir. Nimród Antal
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, 7/8/2010, 7:30

[Warning: CONTAINS SPOILERS!]

Predators doesn’t waste any time getting straight into the action. Though it does not begin en media res, it surely begins “in the middle of things.” The film opens on a free falling Adrien Brody who, after waking from unconsciousness, pounds at the beeping, glowing, Iron Man-esque medallion on his chest in hopes that it will release his parachute. It does, but just barely, as the camo-clad Brody tears through thick canopy, landing with a bassy thud on the jungle floor. The film’s title card flashes across the screen: “PREDATORS.”

For those of you who are fans of the original film, you may very well enjoy this picture. It is not nearly as fleshed out in terms of plot development, as the first film. But it does deliver on plenty of key conventions of the first film. There are various scenes of violence among and between the predators and the heavily-equipped group of human badasses constantly shifting the roles of predators and prey. Predators also takes advantage of Alan Silvestri’s percussive score from the original installment, while introducing original music by John Debney that slides in seamlessly along side it. If you were able to stomach Predator 2 (1990), you should adore this latest installment, though the plot development of this sequel doesn’t even live up to the oft-denigrated first sequel.

The gang, or what’s left of them

Brody scurries to his feet, no worse for wear, after his fall. Another body soon follows, landing with a similarly hard thud, introducing the sniper rifle-toting Isabelle, played by Alice Braga. We are quickly introduced to the rest of the motley band of killers: Russian military man Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov), a throwback to Bill Duke’s Mac with his minigun and a heavy trigger finger; Danny Trejo double-fists twin Heckler & Koch MP5K’s as Cuchillo, the Mexican cartel enforcer; Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) is a member of a Sierra Leone death squad and favors an AKS-47; the suit-wearing Yakuza, Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), relies on the more compact Baretta; and, finally, when the bullets and pulse blasts star ripping through air and flesh alike, the death row inmate Stans unsheathes his prison shank?

Then there is Edwin, played by Topher Grace. Edwin, who claims to be a doctor, is introduced, stuck in a tree and screaming for someone to help him. He is not one of the calm, cool killers that comprise the rest of the gang. Instead, he is whiny, helpless, and unarmed. Surely there is more to Edwin than meets the eye. This is no spoiler, as anyone who knows anything about film and/or character development should be immediately suspicious of a character like Edwin. Brody’s character Royce spells it out in the first few minutes of the film when he tells Isabella that Edwin doesn’t belong.

Edwin is one of the big flaws of this film. He works as little more than a plot device, his naïveté luring the other members of the group into dangerous situations and providing a few moments of comedic levity. Of course there is a none-too-surprising revelation at the climax that shifts spectators’ understandings of Edwin. But, without revealing too much, I must simply say there is no reason for Edwin to be in this film. His plot progressing role as an initiator of danger could just have easily been serviced by the many traps laid by the predators, as it does in other parts of the film, and the minimally-armed Stans, is already positioned as a possible—even superior—comedic outlet. Edwin’s character twist near the film’s end is anticlimactic, anything but surprising, and too ephemeral to earn a place in this script.

You don’t need bulging muscles if you sport a big enough gun.

Brody, on the other hand, works well as the trim, but convincing American-born mercenary Royce. I was skeptical of the wiry actor’s abilities to fill a hard body action hero role. But Brody put on a few pounds, a hulking gun, and a jaded demeanor to transform into a fitting successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch. Predator fans will also be pleased with the addition of a new species of predator that avoids the rather hokey quality of the Alien/Predator hybrid created at the end of Alien vs. Predator (2004) as well as a dog-like creature the predators use to flush out their prey.

The film is not void of entertainment, though clearly there are major flaws in the forms of underdeveloped plot and characters. I hesitate to recommend this movie to the general pool of filmgoers, but fans of the franchise as well as violence-seeking, teenaged boys and girls will probably enjoy it.

One of Predators’ new predators and his dog.

Increasingly, the discourse surrounding Pixar films suggests that they truly are “family” movies, in that they contain something for the kids and something for the adults in the audience. To a certain extent, this has been true of films like Finding Nemo and Up, which featured heroes for both the younger and older moviegoers. While the kids could associate with the young fish Nemo or the boy scout Russell, their parents might see themselves in Nemo’s worried father Marlin or Russell’s cranky neighbor Mr. Fredrickson. However, at the end of each of these films, the underlying depths of emotion provided by these older characters ultimately intersected with the more light-hearted elements directed toward children, resulting in undeniably happy conclusions. This is not the case with Toy Story 3, which actually has two concrete endings. For the kids, the film provides one of Pixar’s patently moving finales, but for the adults, the film actually ends a few scenes earlier, in an unusually stark, wholly genuine display of friendship and mortality.

The story of the film is known by anyone who has managed to get to a recent film early enough to see the trailers. Andy, the owner of Woody, Buzz, and the other toys, is shipping off to college, so what is to become of his toys? By the time they end up at a daycare named Sunnydale, allusions to the feelings of abandonment and isolation that humans encounter as they enter old age are flying at full force. The toys, at least in terms of their relationship with Andy, have hit what we generously describe as their “golden years,” and there is some debate among them as to how to handle it. While most of the toys see the daycare as a second life rather than being put out to pasture, Woody, always the most loyal toy to Andy, is unwilling to move on and desperate to make his way back to his old friend.

The sadness and desperation of old age is represented by this lovable stuffed bear. Believe it.

Thus, the film belongs to Woody, and his conflict is simple: as he enters the last years of his life (even toys have to go sometime), with whom does he want to spend his remaining days? The general thrust of the series thus far has always been the toys’ efforts to remain with Andy at all costs, but as Woody realizes over the course of this film, the bond he has formed with his fellow toys has grown stronger than any other, even the one he shares with Andy. So, in that “grown-up ending” I just mentioned, the toys find themselves facing incineration at a local landfill, and they lock hands with one another in an overwhelmingly poignant acknowledgment of the love they feel for one another. If it has come to this, at least they have one another. Although the toys ultimately escape their fate, to the delight of the kids in the audience, the adults, who are all too aware of their own mortality, know that a similar moment will eventually come for them, and the scene leaves them hoping that, when it does, they will have a few friends there with them.

I will admit that I wasn’t expecting the third film of this franchise to rival the thematic explorations of recent Pixar films like Ratatouille and Wall-E, so I must also happily admit that I was wrong to worry. Along with such inspired storytelling, the Pixar animation team shows no signs of stopping in its continued evolution of cinematic style. I came away from this film believing that there are a few people working at Pixar who could direct a feature-length live-action film tomorrow if they wanted to. The film combines the kind of adventurous camera movements associated with animation with the familiar elements of classical Hollywood style to a more successful extent than ever before, and I think it may be only a matter of time before one of these Pixar directors is considered for some of Hollywood’s many directing awards. The latest technology has allowed for a greater sense of depth than ever before, thanks not only to the new 3-D craze but also to remarkable advances in light and shadow capabilities. So this is what they meant when they started worrying about human actors being replaced.

I'm gonna miss these guys.

Next up for Pixar, reportedly, is a sequel to Cars, and I can think of no better praise for Toy Story 3 than to say that I’m going to give Pixar the benefit of the doubt and plan on Cars 2 being another masterpiece. Cars is almost universally considered to be Pixar’s weakest film, so one wonders why they would want to make a sequel. One theory could be that, every five or six years, Pixar needs to take a storytelling break and just toss out a fun little movie about talking cars. But this is a company who has left the disappointments of A Bug’s Life and Monsters Inc. far behind them (only for Pixar could those films be considered disappointments, by the way), and I can’t help but think that, somehow, they have a truly great idea for the continued adventures of those obnoxious cars.

Here are some related titles you might be interested in: