MOVIES NOW AND THEN

127 Hours – R

James Franco gives a captivating performance in 127 Hours, Danny Boyle’s inspiring, if possibly incomplete, film about adventurer Aron Ralston. Ralston’s hand was pinned under a rock when exploring a canyon, and he was stuck for five days until he severed his own arm. The film adds a lot of touches to keep the scenes of the trapped Ralston from growing tedious. We see unusual point-of-view shots from places like Ralston’s water bottle as fluid is sucked out and his camera as it rewinds his video. It also intercuts Ralston’s physical endurance with his flashbacks and hallucinations, which call to mind Dalton Trumbo’s novel Johnny Got His Gun (another amputee story, but a much less hopeful one).

Best-of-the-year lists for 2010 are already passé, but my decision to go home for Christmas delayed opportunity for me to see a few movies. To speed the process, my cutoff will be seeing and reviewing The Illusionist, Winter's Bone and Blue Valentine since the first one is a movie I've looked forward to and the others are ones that will likely show up on the Oscar ballot. There are a few, like Rabbit Hole and Another Year, that I may write about if they get any substantial nominations, but I've drawn the line and will publish my list as soon as possible.

Now that the fall semester and holidays are over, I can catch up on a few Oscar contenders that I’ve been too busy to see immediately.

Black Swan


Darren Aronofsky’s intense and dark fantasy follows Nina (Natalie Portman), an "aging" ballerina (mid-to-late twenties, but old enough to feel she needs bigger roles now) for whom the pressure of starring in Swan Lake initiates a chain of paranoia, sexuality, physical torture and overdue freedom. Portman is brilliant as both a girl who has taken too long to grow up and, in Nina's hallucinations, a carnal savage that wants to escape. She is surrounded (and her character oppressed) by a very good supporting cast, which includes a candid Mila Kunis as a rival dancer, an eerie Barbara Hershey as Nina's mother and an imposing Vincent Cassel as the ballet's director. His character is what Boris Lermontov (the impresario Anton Wolbrook played in the 1948 classic The Red Shoes) would be like if he had a libido.

I apologize for delivering this holiday gift guide so close to the end of the season. This would have come sooner if I did not have to prepare for final exams. Nevertheless, as long as it is not yet December 25th, I can still offer movie fans some good holiday gift ideas.

This was the year in which I converted from DVDs to Blu-rays, and I have not regretted it once. The picture quality is such that you can see every cobblestone in the road, every shingle on the road and every line in person’s face. If you haven’t considered a Blu-ray player before, I’d say it’s about time to start. My model is a Panasonic DMP-BD45, which works fine despite not having Internet capability. If you want a regular player, I suggest a higher-level Panasonic unit. The best one I’ve seen, however, is Sony’s Playstation 3, which is Internet capable and loads discs at a much faster speed (not to mention Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the best video games I’ve ever played).

Disney celebrates its 50th animated feature by releasing Tangled, a loose adaptation of the fairy tale “Rapunzel” that combines the storytelling conventions of the old classics with today’s computer animation. In many ways, the placement of this movie at that particular studio tally is a very fortuitous one. Tangled is a mostly harmonious work that pays reverence to Disney’s traditions and embraces the continuing advances in the medium of animation.

Have you ever had to perform a long and seemingly pointless task and realized there is still more to do after the job is done? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, the penultimate installment in the fantasy movie franchise, is slightly similar to that. There is nothing in this movie that will compel audiences to skip the final film next July. Still, it tends to feel sluggish thanks to the meandering plot and interrupted tone.

To offer an idea of what sort of movies you can find here in New York, I pay tribute to my favorite nonprofit theater, Film Forum. Located in Greenwich Village, this theater offers new independent works, fictional and nonfictional, and revival screenings of beloved and forgotten classics. Here are three examples from their recent schedule:

My Dog Tulip


My Dog Tulip is one of the strongest examples in recent years of an adult animated film. The movie is a dramatization of J.R. Ackerley's memoir about his relationship with his German shepherd. Ackerley's recollections (adapted by director Paul Fierlinger and exquisitely voiced by Christopher Plummer) are more earthy and mature than the cute kid-friendly stories one often finds in dog movies. Despite remarking on matters like Tulip's bowel movements and Ackerley's attempts to find her a mate, these comical moments are not too crude. In fact, many of them are funny to anyone who has owned a troublemaking pet. For the more philosophical film viewer, the screenplay also features plenty of wit and wisdom as Ackerley contemplates the fulfillment Tulip gives him that humans have not. My Dog Tulip is alternately thoughtful and humorous, possessing a more adult sensibility than is usually found in American animation.