By Armond White

George Lucas’ sales tactics for Red Tails, his $93 million production about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American pilots in the armed forces, make a bigger bang than the film itself. On the publicity rounds, Lucas has talked about the dearth of movies with African-American heroes, promising that Red Tails will give black teens the kinds of on-screen heroes and patriotic good feeling they’ve been denied. Apparently, Lucas has missed all blaxpoitation, post-blaxploitation and post-hip-hop cinema, not to mention the 1995 TV film The Tuskegee Airmen. Lucas’ ignorance condemns Red Tails to be irredeemably condescending.

It’s also one poor piece of filmmaking. Red Tails’ 332nd Fighter Group are a bunch of superficial GI stereotypes, black only in the brown-skinned Obama sense, displaying superficial personal traits. Their captain, Easy (Nate Parker), drinks for courage, and pilot Lightning (David Oyewolo) is a brash daredevil.

Their commanders, Col. A.J. Bullard (Terrence Howard) and Maj. Emmanuel Stone (Cuba Gooding Jr.) are shallow lifers given to speeches about perseverance. All are cartoon figures; visually, the film also resembles a cartoon: postcard colors that make the squadron’s base at the Ramitelli Airfield in Italy look like it was shot in Southern California (oops!).
Cartoonishness defines Lucas’ approach to Hollywood revisionism; he doesn’t take World War II any more seriously than he took the Galactic Empire, and the Tuskegee Airmen mean no more to him than the Jedi knights.

The pilots, who due to military segregation were denied the right to fly combat missions but were used as escorts and decoys for white fighter pilots, perform selflessly to unspecific codes of conduct, as if they were uninvolved in history. This is goofball heroism, though totally without a sense of humor—less, even, than Snoopy’s fantasy dogfights with The Red Baron, which Red Tails frequently evokes.

Why comic strip artist Aaron McGruder (The Boondocks) participated in co-writing the screenplay is mystifying given the film’s total lack of his usual sarcasm. McGruder, too, must believe in The Force, which has infantilized American cinema since Star Wars, and so answered Lucas’ call to sign up. That meant signing on to the notion that moviegoers wouldn’t respond to a serious depiction of young men who fulfilled the intellectual requirements of aviation or comprehend the complexity of young black people who felt duty-bound to fight for the country that denied them basic civil rights.

By promoting Red Tails (named for the Airmen’s customized new P-51 Mustang aircraft) as a correction of Hollywood bigotry, Lucas shows that he knows nothing about how popular culture works. In a New York Times magazine puff piece, Lucas explained his wish for cultural crossover: “…which is what you get with sports. Which is what you get with music. I wanted to do it with just being an American citizen.” He ignores how black moviegoers have often identified with white movie heroes and enjoyed cinematic patriotism—and not vicariously. When Red Tails’ Airmen fraternize with white officers, they never so much as ask which states they came from. This isn’t American culture; it’s beer commercial bonhomie.

Red Tails not only insults the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen, it is disconnected from the figures of black male dignity that audiences embraced when forged by Rex Ingram, Paul Robeson, Juano Hernandez, James Douglas, Canada Lee, Woody Strode, Ivan Dixon and others that George Lucas forgets. He’s Jar Jar Binked us again.

Ronni Thomas, a filmmaker and oddity enthusiast, has created a new web series documenting the darkness, eccentricity and mystery of the uncharted and unimaginable happenings of New York City.

Fittingly named The Midnight Archive, these videos boast an eclectic class of characters such as Sue Jeiven, a tattoo artist at East River Tattoo, and Madame Cagliastro of Brooklyn. Jeiven, who is featured in episode three, specializes in anthropomorphic taxidermy, creating lifelike tableaux from dead animals that she guts, stuffs and lovingly clothes in vintage human attire. Madame Cagliastro also deals with animals, performing mummification for pets weighing 20 pounds or less—she mummifies a dead toad in the first episode.

Episode eight, the latest on the Midnight Archive website, is entitled “Wax.” Sigrid Sarda, an artist who started making hauntingly human wax sculptures after the death of her father, hosts with her spooky collection of wax figures that line every inch of her house.

Other members of the odd ensemble who work on the series include Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult New York; Jere Ryder, conservator for the Guiness Automata collection at the Morris Museum in New Jersey; and professor Paul Koudounaris, who traveled the world photographing ossuaries and charnel houses, places constructed of human bones.
In his IKA Collective office at 15 E. 32rd St. in Midtown, Thomas sits among a giant Grim Reaper, scary child dolls and other spine-chilling items as he edits a new episode of the show.

The episode features Thomas himself discussing his collection of stereoviews, a late 19th century entertainment consisting of 3-D images projected through a stereoscope—a much older and intricate ancestor of 3-D View-Masters.
“The lecture was on my collection of macabre stereoviews, in particular my set of diableries, which are French stereo tissues from the 1860s that depict Satan’s daily life in hell. I always kind of sat on these macabre demented things, these private fetishes. When I saw the variety of people who showed up for my lecture, from Harvard professors to gutter punks to people I didn’t even know from my old high school, I decided, let’s make a film out of this stuff.”

Many of the eclectics filmed for The Midnight Archive are lecturers at the Brooklyn Observatory, an event space at 543 Union St. in Brooklyn that serves as a multipurpose room for artists. That’s where Thomas met Joanna Ebenstein, the curator of Morbid Anatomy at the Observatory and now the producer of the series.

Thomas said that after the first episode, TV networks were offering to air the show, but it would have meant less creative control for Thomas and the guys at IKA Collective, whom he says have “fostered a very artistic environment” for him to pursue his work. Television might also “exploit these people or make them look stupid,” and even though the money would be good, Thomas remains speculative about selling out his perverse brainchild.

“I want people to see these everyday people doing extraordinary things, and I wanted to give them a view from an insider, myself, who has had a lifelong fascination and respect for these things. There is a dark underside to all things, and I want to open up that side to those who are outwardly interested and to those who live two lives,” he said.

To watch, visit themidnightarchive.com.

By Susan Reiter

Now in its 40th year, Dance on Camera is at a new level of maturity. The annual event at the Walter Reade Theater that once fit into a three-day weekend has expanded to fill five days, Jan. 27–31, and within its brief duration has its own opening night, centerpiece and closing night films.

This year’s festival also takes advantage of the recently opened Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (across 65th Street from the Walter Reade), which will host free screenings of short films as well as conversations and panel discussions with filmmakers on Saturday and Sunday. Many of the regular screenings will also include appearances by directors and participants.

With 14 programs packed into its five days, the festival includes films exploring a wide variety of dance styles, artists and institutions. For New Yorkers, the opening night documentary, Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance, is an expansive reminder of the rich and often turbulent history of what was once a mainstay of the local dance scene before the company relocated to Chicago.

The film’s opening strikes a jarring note: While proclaiming the Joffrey’s record of innovation and originality, it starts off with scenes of Lar Lubovitch’s Othello in rehearsal. A ponderous ballet already performed by ABT and San Francisco Ballet at the time, this is hardly the type of work that made the Joffrey’s reputation.

But once the 90-minute film gets going, the performances—and voices—of many talented and personable Joffrey dancers and the company’s never-a-dull-moment history makes for riveting viewing.

Coming of age during the 1960s, the Joffrey also had its finger on the pulse of the times as the counterculture emerged and the Vietnam War dominated the news. The documentary rightly gives significant attention to Joffrey’s choices of Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table and Léonide Massine’s Parade in 1973—painstakingly detailed revivals that made these seminal works live for a new generation.

Another American dance institution with an even longer history—Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival—is the subject of Never Stand Still. The Ron Honsa documentary’s choppy approach takes some getting used to as it interweaves the history of this influential festival and school—giving due attention to Ted Shawn and his male dancers of the 1930s—with what amount to substantial mini-documentaries on such worthy and fascinating subjects as Mark Morris, Paul Taylor, Suzanne Farrell, Shantala Shivalingappa and Gideon Obarzanek, who speak not only about Jacob’s Pillow but about their own artistic and esthetic philosophies.

An intriguing festival documentary is The Space in Back of You, about the influential but relatively unsung Japanese dancer and choreographer Suzushi Hanayagi. She became part of New York’s earliest postmodern dance scene and made significant contributions to several of Robert Wilson’s elaborate productions.

For fans of ballet competitions and their inherent drama, there is First Position, focusing on a particularly interesting and varied selection of contestants at a recent Youth America Grand Prix. Still Moving: Pilobolus at 40 is fun as it chronicles the launch of that distinctive collaborative troupe, offering a glimpse of its founders as shaggy-haired Dartmouth jocks and a touching tribute to the late co-founder Jonathan Wolken.

And for the closing night, there is the truly special—and long-awaited—Check Your Body at the Door, which profiles the New York City club dance scene of the 1990s. It offers a full and vibrant portrait of a number of important dancers, displaying their amazing physical skills in both club and stark studio settings.

Dance on Camera 2012
Jan. 27–31, Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St. (betw. Broadway & Amsterdam), and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 W. 65th St., www.filmlinc.com; $12.

By Marissa Maier

When done well, documentary film has the rare ability to transcend the confines of the silver screen to effect real change in the lives of its subjects. Like Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost trilogy about the West Memphis Three helped free three wrongly convicted men. With their third installment in the series, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, which premieres on HBO Jan. 12, the duo has closed the book on a story they have chronicled for almost 20 years—one that has left an indelible mark on them as filmmakers. The story entered their lives by chance. In 1993, Sinofsky said, he and Berlinger were working on a film about the funeral industry when Sheila Nevins, president of HBO Documentary Films, sent them a small piece from the New York Times’ wire service. The brief described how three teens—Damien Echols, 18, Jason Baldwin, 16, and Jessie Misskelley, 17—were alleged to have killed three 8-year-old boys in a creek in West Memphis, Ark. The article, which was biased against the teens, inspired Berlinger and Sinofsky to travel to the South, pursuing a story about children killing children.

“[We started filming] right as the guys were arrested. The trials were a long way off…Our original impulse was to tell the bad-guy story, which makes for good cinema,” Berlinger recalled. “But halfway through, we realized they were innocent. I wouldn’t say a lightbulb went off, but we started to seriously doubt the state’s version of events.”

Over the course of the trials, state prosecutors posited that the teenage trio killed the young boys in a satanic ritual. With the trial kicking up a media frenzy, Berlinger said those involved stopped asking basic questions surrounding the teenagers’ assumed guilt, like about the lack of physical evidence at the crime scene or DNA evidence linking the teens to the site. Misskelley and Baldwin were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, while Echols was put on death row.

After the first film, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, which documented the trials and those involved in the case, was released in 1996, both Berlinger and Sinofsky thought the film would lead to outrage and the reopening of the case. While it was met with critical acclaim and sparked a grassroots campaign to free the teens, dubbed the West Memphis Three, it did little to speed up the cogs of justice.

Almost 10 years later, in the midst of preparing to release the third documentary on Aug. 19, 2011, it was announced that Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley had accepted the rarely used Alford plea, in which they were freed while the state maintained their guilt. Backed by a cadre of celebrity supporters, like Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines, and a team of experts, the trio were preparing an appeal when the plea was negotiated.

While Berlinger described the plea as a bittersweet conclusion, he and Sinofsky were faced with a different challenge: creating an alternative ending for their film, which was set to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September. With Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, Berlinger and Sinofsky sought to make two films: one that appealed to those who had avidly watched the story and one for those unfamiliar with the case. The film has been shortlisted for an Academy Award.

While it appears the story has reached its conclusion and the men are moving on with their lives—Baldwin reported receiving his driver’s license and getting his first job—the experience of documenting this extraordinary story has stayed with Berlinger and Sinofsky. While watching days upon days’ worth of footage for Paradise Lost 3, Sinofsky was struck by the feeling that “after 18 years, it was still fresh in our minds. The experience was so acute it was as if it had never really disappeared.”

By Armond White

Guy Ritchie’s calculations in his sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows are so low-down they’re almost diabolical. He has retooled the famous fictional detective character with no respect for either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary creation or the ticket-buying audience. Against tradition (previous incarnations of Holmes emphasized mystery and deduction), Ritche panders to the current, degraded taste for blatancy and violence.

A scene from Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows

This time, Holmes’ (Robert Downey Jr.) clash with arch villain Moriarty (Jared Harris) evokes 9/11 and Afghanistan along with the previous film’s kung fu anachronisms, over-done F/X and Ritchie’s brand of macho banter between the disguise-crazy Holmes and his fusty sidekick Watson (Jude Law). It’s what Brits call lad humor, but Americans understand it as thuggish. So Downey’s fake British accent suits Ritchie’s concoction for a facetious, half-Hollywood hit.

The period setting recalls Jonah Hex, which apparently was too sophisticated to be popular. Ritchie reboots Holmes for a market unaccustomed to thinking, impatient with suspense but eager for relentless, if monotonous, visual stimulation—and massive promotional hype. Adapting his Brit-Tarantino thuggery for the video game demographic, Ritchie often slows down the fighting and gunfire as if relaying the thought  processes behind Holmes’ actions. The narrative constantly backs up as if on rewind. Ritchie does our perception for us, creating no sense of history or emotion, just jovial machismo, brandishing close-ups of Holmes’ facial bruises, wounds and scars.

A Game of Shadows is ready-made for Xbox; its plot is a mess of contiguous chaos in drinking dens, theaters, forests, waterfalls, mountaintop castles, on trains and in great English halls. Holmes and Watson tangle with anarchist bombs, Romany rebels (led by Noomi Rapace, here the girl with the gypsy tattoo) and the dastardly Moriarty spouting nonsense like: “You’re not fighting me, you’re fighting the human condition and the tendency toward moral ignorance.” Ritchie should know.

Ritchie should also know better. His RocknRolla was one of the best action-comedies of the past decade—a funny, sexy, heartfelt play with modern British identity. The only justification for this Holmes hackwork would be to finance the sequel promised by RocknRolla’s cliffhanger ending. Instead, Ritchie abandons his own cultural creation to ruinously imitate the James Bond franchise—he’s closer to Will Smith’s Wild Wild West fiasco.

Follow Armond White on Twitter @3xChair.

January marks the beginning of a new film festival season—and what better way to kick it off than with the 21st annual New York Jewish Film Festival, Jan. 11–26? Presented in partnership with The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the festival promises to provide a diverse global perspective on the Jewish experience with 35 features and shorts from 11 countries, many of which will be followed by post-screening Q&As with filmmakers and special guests in attendance. 

Scene from A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

The opening night kicks off with the New York premiere of Guy Nattiv’s Mabul (The Flood). Nominated for six Ophir Awards (Israeli Academy Awards), Mabul follows 13-year-old Yoni on the eve of his bar mitzvah. Facing bullying from his classmates, an institutionalized older brother living with autism and parents who are barely on speaking terms, Yoni’s bar mitzvah becomes the catalyst for buried family secrets to come to light.

For those who have harbored a soft spot for Catskills resorts ever since they first saw Dirty Dancing, be sure to see the closing night film, the world premiere of Caroline Laskow and Ian Rosenberg’s Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort, a documentary about the last surviving Jewish resort in the Catskills and its overarching influence on sports, entertainment and “Borscht Belt” comedians.

The festival’s world premiere documentaries scan the globe, from Africa to the streets of Paris. Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot’s Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story presents a moving portrait of Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu, who was killed at the age of 30 leading Israeli special forces in the 1976 hostage rescue mission at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

Avishai Yeganyahu Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen’s 400 Miles to Freedom documents the 1984 escape from Ethiopia to Israel of the Beta Israel, a secluded, 2,500-year-old community of observant Jews in the northern Ethiopian mountains.

Filmmaker Joel Katz explores what it means to be white in America in White: A Memoir in Color. Katz examines his father’s role as a white professor at Howard University during the civil rights era and the influence it had on his and his wife’s decision to adopt a mixed-race child. Sam Ball’s fascinating Joann Sfar Draws from Memory details the life of graphic novelist and filmmaker Joann Sfar, author of the popular The Rabbi’s Cat series and director of the recent film, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. The film follows Sfar as he visits his favorite Parisian neighborhood spots and muses on his artistic process and the influence of his Algerian and East European family heritage.

For musical fans, Eytan Fox’s New York premiere, Mary Lou, promises to be “a cross between the television series Glee and the musical Mamma Mia! by way of La Cage aux Folles.” It follows a young man who finds himself in the Tel Aviv gay community, performing as a drag queen while searching for his estranged mother.

Gili Gaon’s Iraq ‘N’ Roll bridges the past and present with the story of acclaimed Jewish musicians (and brothers) Salah and Daud al-Kuwaiti. Considered the fathers of modern Iraqi music in the 1930s, the documentary follows Salah’s grandson, popular Israeli rock musician Dudu Tassa, through the process of remixing their original tunes for contemporary listeners.

Richard Oswald’s 1933 musical My Song Goes Round the World showcases the talents of the great tenor Joseph Schmidt, known as the Jewish Caruso, who faced challenges in both career and love while standing less than 5 feet tall.

Dramatic features include Adrian Panek’s dazzling period drama Daas, about the influence of 18th-century false messiah Jacob Frank. Branko Ivanda’s Lea and Darija tells the story of 13-year-old stars Lea Deutsch, known as the Croatian Shirley Temple, and her dancing partner Darija Gasteiger in pre-World War II Croatia. Katia Lewkowicz’s romantic comedy, Bachelor Days Are Over, follows a groom-to-be grappling with the conflict between marriage and following his heart.

Single screening tickets for The New York Jewish Film Festival are $13, $9 for students and seniors (62+) and $8 for Film Society and Jewish Museum members. For tickets, more information and a full schedule, visit www.filmlinc.com or www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212-875-5601.

50/50—The buddy comedy genre faces cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is helped through crisis by Seth Rogen. Decent emotions get cheated of depth by blithe, nonspiritual approach. Dir. Jonathan Levine.

The Descendants—George Clooney shakes off the snark, but filmmaker Alexander Payne puts it back on in this Hawaii-set story of how Americans squander their paradise and advantages. Adultery, greed, family dysfunction and death go unenlightened by the film’s stupefying visual banality. Dir. Alexander Payne.

Drive—Fake toughness, fake sentimentality, fake style infected by Michael Mann. Brooding existential stuntman and petty criminal Ryan Gosling is so laconic and cool he’s inadvertently comic. This second-rate actor occasionally drops his Steve McQueen impersonation and lets slip Mickey Rourke’s old smile. Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life—An inventive political, cultural, ethnic defense of France’s ’60s pop icon and rebel Serge Gainsbourg shows a caricaturist’s whimsy—especially in the Jewish self-consciousness subtext, psychopolitical anime effects and Eric Elmosnino’s lead performance. Laetitia Casta does a worthy, knockout Brigitte Bardot impersonation. Dir. Joann Sfar.

Jack and Jill—Adam Sandler, the least abashed comic actor outside the Borscht Belt, tackles Jewish self-deprecation in this sibling rivalry laff fest. Playing both male and female twins, Sandler show tribal affection by turning bad vibes into good. Al Pacino’s cameo as Jill’s suitor is both crazily romantic and a brilliant professional salute. Dir. Dennis Dugan.

J. Edgar—Using the career of longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to promote a gay sympathy ought to be subversive (that’s the intention of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who wrote Milk). But despite Leo DiCaprio’s eager-beaver empathetic performance, this grim, humorless exercise, featuring lousy old-age makeup, turns out ghoulish and self-congratulatory—just like Milk. Dir. Clint Eastwood.

Melancholia—Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg play Eurotrash sisters waiting for the end of world—literally: A planet named Melancholia, symbolizing their depression, comes crashing toward Earth. Another Lars von Trier prank, this is apocalypse for nihilists. Dir. Lars von Trier.

Puss in Boots—More Shrek dreck, this time losing what little appeal the Puss in Boots character (voiced by Antonio Bandera) brought to previous episodes of the franchise. At least there are fewer human facile grotesques, but all the fairy tale/pop culture satire (from Humpty Dumpty to Jack and Jill) and feline cuteness becomes a jumbled-up overload. Dir. Chris Miller.

Real Steel—Hugh Jackman’s Lost Father and his Estranged Son (Dakota Goyo) come together in the near future of robot boxing—a metaphor for mankind’s displaced emotions in the digital age. This surprisingly touching footnote to producer Steven Spielberg’s A.I. is a fairytale of archetypes. Dir. Shawn Levy.

The Rum Diary—Another try-and-miss attempt at putting Hunter Thompson’s fevered journalism on screen. Although Johnny Depp’s too old to play the young Gonzo writer, the dissolute story ignores optimism and innocence. It is dully cynical. Dir. Bruce Robinson.

The Skin I Live In—A fairy tale using sexual anxiety as identity crisis. Mad scientist Antonio Banderas falls in love with his human guinea pig (Elena Anaya) in a narrative as convoluted as it is engrossing. Twisted yet ultimately humane, it gloriously refutes Lady Gaga. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar.

Take Shelter—Midwestern laborer (Michael Shannon) becomes unstable, sensing apocalypse in the changed wind (as Bob Dylan would put it). Political paranoia takes elemental, eschatological form, driving wife (Jessica Chastain) and blue-collar buddy (Shea Whigham) to the edge. Tipping into horror movie cliché, the political tension gets unbearably overwrought. Dir. Jeff Nichols.

Tower Heist—Eddie Murphy’s sharp, profane delivery can’t save this witless high-concept heist movie about a team of luxury apartment workers (led by Ben Stiller) seeking revenge on their Madoff-Trump boss. Dir. Brett Ratner.

By Mark Peikert

“I don’t think I’ve ever said the words ‘I’m proud of myself,’” Ellen Barkin said over coffee recently at Soho’s MEET at The Apt. “But this movie is the greatest accomplishment of my career.”

Barkin was speaking of Another Happy Day, which she produced and stars in, but that statement could have been about any number of projects over the course of this past year. In April, she made her Broadway debut in The Normal Heart, winning a Tony Award in the process. This summer saw the release of the indie film Shit Year, with its sure-to-be-iconic poster of Barkin in runny makeup, eyes mostly closed, a cigarette dangling from the side of her famous mouth. But it’s Another Happy Day, writer-director Sam Levinson’s first film, that has the former Upper East Sider so uncharacteristically happy with herself.

Ellen Barkin produced and starred in Another Happy Day.

“Quite frankly, I’m having a very good five years,” she said seriously. “I never say nice things about myself and I get yelled at all the time for not owning my accomplishments, but I do have to say over the last five or so years… And it has really hit home in the last year.”

Another Happy Day finds Barkin leading a cast that includes Ellen Burstyn, Demi Moore and Kate Bosworth. Her role as Lynne—a divorced and remarried mother of four struggling to get through her eldest son’s wedding day amid family dysfunction—was, according to Barkin, “the most difficult, rewarding, complicated, cathartic role of my life. This was a killer.”

Among other reasons, Barkin found the role challenging because of her character’s less-than-stellar parenting skills.

“To sit up there on the screen and basically tell the world that I, Ellen Barkin, made some very big fucking mistakes as a mother…” she said, of how audiences might view her performance through the lens of her past. “I’m not a bad person, I’m not a bad mother. It could have traumatized my children.”

Ellen Burstyn, left, George Kennedy, Thomas Haden Church and Demi Moore co-star in Another Happy Day with Ellen Barkin.

Some pressure was removed thanks to Barkin’s close relationship with Levinson, son of director Barry Levinson, who gave Barkin her big film break in 1982’s Diner. “As a producer, I was lucky enough to be working with an extremely gifted and wildly focused, unbelievably well-informed, very strong writer-director who worked really fast,” Barkin said, then grinned. “That writer-director was also a first-time writer-director, so anything that was asked of him he thought was normal. And it was fabulous!”

After being at Levinson’s side for the three years from writing to filming, Barkin said her need for his input as an actor had already been satisfied, leaving her free to focus on her producing chores. “So I’d have to finish the scene,” Barkin recalled, “and say, ‘OK, that’s an hour you’ve been lighting that. Too long. Kate Bosworth is maybe the prettiest girl in the movies. You don’t need that much time. Save it for me!’ It actually really worked.”

Another Happy Day seems to be the perfect grace note for Barkin to end her year. “I feel inspired, invigorated, energized,” Barkin said. “I feel brand new, with a life’s worth of experience behind me. And I feel that at 57 years old, I am ready to embrace whatever it is I have to offer as an actor and as a producer. And not to be afraid of it.”

50/50

The buddy comedy genre faces cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is helped through crisis by Seth Rogen. Decent emotions get cheated of depth by blithe, nonspiritual approach. Dir. Jonathan Levine.

The Descendants

George Clooney shakes off the snark, but filmmaker Alexander Payne puts it back on in this Hawaii-set story of how Americans squander their paradise and advantages. Adultery, greed, family dysfunction and death go unenlightened by the film’s stupefying visual banality. Dir. Alexander Payne.

Drive

Fake toughness, fake sentimentality, fake style infected by Michael Mann. Brooding existential stuntman and petty criminal Ryan Gosling is so laconic and cool he’s inadvertently comic. This second-rate actor occasionally drops his Steve McQueen impersonation and lets slip Mickey Rourke’s old smile. Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

An inventive political, cultural, ethnic defense of France’s ’60s pop icon and rebel Serge Gainsbourg shows a caricaturist’s whimsy—especially in the Jewish self-consciousness subtext, psychopolitical anime effects and Eric Elmosnino’s lead performance. Laetitia Casta does a worthy, knockout Brigitte Bardot impersonation. Dir. Joann Sfar.

Jack and Jill

Adam Sandler, the least abashed comic actor outside the Borscht Belt, tackles Jewish self-deprecation in this sibling rivalry laff fest. Playing both male and female twins, Sandler show tribal affection by turning bad vibes into good. Al Pacino’s cameo as Jill’s suitor is both crazily romantic and a brilliant professional salute. Dir. Dennis Dugan.

J. Edgar

Using the career of longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to promote a gay sympathy ought to be subversive (that’s the intention of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who wrote Milk). But despite Leo DiCaprio’s eager-beaver empathetic performance, this grim, humorless exercise, featuring lousy old-age makeup, turns out ghoulish and self-congratulatory—just like Milk. Dir. Clint Eastwood.

Melancholia

Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg play Eurotrash sisters waiting for the end of world—literally: A planet named Melancholia, symbolizing their depression, comes crashing toward Earth. Another Lars von Trier prank, this is apocalypse for nihilists. Dir. Lars von Trier.

Puss in Boots

More Shrek dreck, this time losing what little appeal the Puss in Boots character (voiced by Antonio Bandera) brought to previous episodes of the franchise. At least there are fewer human facile grotesques, but all the fairy tale/pop culture satire (from Humpty Dumpty to Jack and Jill) and feline cuteness becomes a jumbled-up overload. Dir. Chris Miller.

Real Steel

Hugh Jackman’s Lost Father and his Estranged Son (Dakota Goyo) come together in the near future of robot boxing—a metaphor for mankind’s displaced emotions in the digital age. This surprisingly touching footnote to producer Steven Spielberg’s A.I. is a fairytale of archetypes. Dir. Shawn Levy.

The Rum Diary

Another try-and-miss attempt at putting Hunter Thompson’s fevered journalism on screen. Although Johnny Depp’s too old to play the young Gonzo writer, the dissolute story ignores optimism and innocence. It is dully cynical. Dir. Bruce Robinson.

The Skin I Live In

A fairy tale using sexual anxiety as identity crisis. Mad scientist Antonio Banderas falls in love with his human guinea pig (Elena Anaya) in a narrative as convoluted as it is engrossing. Twisted yet ultimately humane, it gloriously refutes Lady Gaga. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar.

Take Shelter

Midwestern laborer (Michael Shannon) becomes unstable, sensing apocalypse in the changed wind (as Bob Dylan would put it). Political paranoia takes elemental, eschatological form, driving wife (Jessica Chastain) and blue-collar buddy (Shea Whigham) to the edge. Tipping into horror movie cliché, the political tension gets unbearably overwrought. Dir. Jeff Nichols.

Tower Heist

Eddie Murphy’s sharp, profane delivery can’t save this witless high-concept heist movie about a team of luxury apartment workers (led by Ben Stiller) seeking revenge on their Madoff-Trump boss. Dir. Brett Ratner.

By Tom Hall

There is an ineffable fear lying just beneath the surface of the modern American experience, a sense that powerful forces beyond our control are conspiring to have a profound impact on our lives. A visit to any of the 24-hour news channels only serves to reinforce the anxiety; images of war and revolution only make way for stories of political gridlock, missing children, true crime and natural disasters. The uncertainty fomented by these images populates our nightmares, spinning its own terrible narrative. How do we act rationally, how do we keep our cool, when everything seems to be falling apart around us?

Jeff Nichols’ extraordinary new film, Take Shelter, stands this proposition on its head; what happens if our anxiety overtakes us, if the rational world suddenly falls away and disaster looms everywhere we look?

Curtis (the astonishing Michael Shannon) is an Ohio construction worker with a beautiful wife (Jessica Chastain), a daughter (Tova Stewart), a modest house and visions that, very soon, it will all be swept away in an apocalyptic storm. Curtis’ nightmarish hallucinations inspire him to action and he scrambles to prepare for the coming disaster and protect his family at all costs. But the more time he spends in preparation for the apocalypse he perceives as imminent, the more his real life begins to suffer; his working life, his role as husband and father—all of it pales against Curtis’ burning need to find a haven from his nightmares.

In a time of both manmade calamaties and bizarre acts of god, Michael Shannon gives a stunning performance as a construction worker father who becomes obsessed by what he believes is an impending apocalyptic storm.

But where? As the clouds gather around him, Curtis responds by undertaking the construction of an underground shelter, a massive project that draws the scrutiny of his family and, crucially, his employer. But when the local news channel announces an impending storm, Curtis and his family descend into the darkness of the buried sanctuary, riding out the storm, terrified of what may await them when they get back above ground.

Nichols’ premise takes on an added spiritual dimension by his decision to place the audience in complete cinematic empathy with Curtis, legitimizing his fear as more than just the panicked delirium of a troubled soul. Take Shelter is ambiguous about Curtis’ visions; tension is formed by the thought, planted ever so carefully inside each of us, that perhaps what Curtis sees is indeed prophetic. This is not a film that plays games with perspective or has a bag of tricks up its sleeve—we see what Curtis sees and we fear what might be true. The decision to honor Curtis’ point of view is crucial to the dramatic success of the film and pays massive dividends as the movie spirals toward its harrowing climax.

In addition to a formally adventurous use of CGI effects in an otherwise low-budget American independent film (Take Shelter would be a unique cinematic experience if only for its use of effects), Shannon’s performance as Curtis, a rational, working-class man who can scarcely believe what he’s seeing in the world around him, is electrifying, a wide-eyed descent into the unknown that should garner award season attention.

The film, which premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, seems all the more prescient after the storms of 2011, when several American communities experienced devastating tornadoes and flooding. Take Shelter does not exploit that experience, but instead elevates it to the level of great cinema, a powerful reminder that art’s examination of human subjectivity, the darkest places inside each of us, remains fertile, uncharted territory.