Tarentino-esque in humor and violence, yet I was way more disturbed watching Kick-Ass than while watching Inglorious Basterds.

There is a dark element of dysfunction running through each of the main characters in Kick-Ass. But the actors and the filmmakers’ gleeful embrace of that dysfunction makes the movie wildly cathartic and satisfying.

Absolutely NOT for kids. This movie has a hard R rating for a reason.

Beautiful animation, incredible world-building, excellent voice acting. As long as you accept some overly simple story beats (actual newspaper headline in the film: “MACHINESTURNAGAINST US”), you should find it very moving.

Couples Retreat boasts a large cast of lovable stars and a dazzling setting, as well as some promising premises for each couple, but the hasty, oversimplified resolutions cast a “meh” over the entire movie.

The couple that fare the best are Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman’s Dave and Ronnie, an ordinary couple with job, kids, and home renovations to deal with each day. Their storyline is simple, but it feels realistic, and the chemistry is good. Akerman shines in comedies (she was terrible in Watchmen), and she is very likable here.

The rest of the couples have realistic problems but, unfortunately, totally unrealistic resolutions. It’s a toss-up whose happy ending is more ludicrous: Joey and Lucy’s (Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis), who literally go from declaring their mutual infidelities to making out in the space of 60 seconds, or Shane’s (Faizon Love), whose ex-wife appears in the movie’s climax (at a remote and very expensive island resort, mind you), declaring that she’s had her fill of other men and is now ready to return to her true love. He takes her back, of course. Deus ex-wife machina, indeed.

I haven’t even yet mentioned the typical Hollywood beautiful-wife/schlubby-hubby pairings. Jason Bateman is the most attractive of the husbands, but even then, he’s paired with 29-year-old Kristen Bell. Don’t get me wrong — I will love Michael Bluth and Veronica Mars forever, but let’s just put it this way: When all the so-called old married couples go to the swinging singles club on Eden East in the climax, K-Bell does not look at all out of place. Put another away: Michael Cera once guest-starred on Veronica Mars as a college freshman giving a campus tour to high school senior Veronica (Bell). Cera, of course, played Bateman’s son on Arrested Development. And now Bell’s character is married to Bateman’s. I believe KB can play almost any character, and her acting is no problem here, but for once I’d rather see Jennifer Aniston in a movie than Kristen Bell. Aniston would be the right age match for Bateman and would better embody the anal-retentive, slightly pretentious wife struggling to conceive.

The movie blitzes through all four years of several stock characters. None are particularly deep or surprising, but they are all talented, which makes the musical and dance numbers very entertaining.

Kay Panabaker’s character is pretty annoying, though. There’s no indication that she (the character) has star quality, yet she is treated as a protagonist.

I’ll start with the good stuff, and by “good,” I mean spectacular—literally. Jim Cameron’s Pandora is fully realized, so immersive that you can almost feel the vibration of each glowing dandelion puff in the air. The beauty and danger within the alien world is breath-catching, the CGI-enhanced Na’vi aliens gorgeously rendered, successfully leaping over the uncanny valley to form characters as distinct and empathizable as those crafted by the hand and breath of God Himself. You’ve never seen anything like it, and the movie is worth the price of admission based on that alone.

That said, it’s pretty clear Cameron spent all 12 years of the film’s gestation developing the groundbreaking technology, and then cribbed a story from a seventh grade social studies morality play. It’s Fern Gully + Pocahontas (as told by Disney) + Dances with Wolves.

In the Na’vi, James Cameron portrays the noble savage as more noble and more savage than National Geographic could ever hope to capture. These foreign creatures, with their mystical connection to nature and their nudity and warpaint and their non-industrial ways, are so exotic that they are literally from another planet. By the way, the Na’vi are played by black actors, plus Wes Studi (Hollywood’s go-to tribal chief since 1988!). Sigourney Weaver reprises her role as Dian Fossey plays Grace Augustine (a gift to anthroponomastics), the leading human expert on Na’vi culture and pioneer of a neurotechnology that allows humans to control cloned Na’vi bodies of their own.

Obviously, the Na’vi are the good guys and the members of the corporate military-industrial complex that seeks to raze their magical treehouse for profit are the bad guys. But the main good guy, the hero of the movie, is not a real Na’vi, but a handsome square-jawed white ex-Marine who learns their ways and, of course, eventually surpasses them all to become their savior. This shouldn’t really be a spoiler; this is exactly what happened in Dances with Wolves. And Fern Gully. And probably The Last of the Mohicans, if I could remember that movie.

Some critics have chosen to analyze Avatar from a religious perspective, noting its pagan worldview, but I saw the film more through the lens io9 did, as a liberal white fetishization/fantasy:

_These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color – their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the “alien” cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge their overwhelming sense of guilt, they switch sides, become “race traitors,” and fight against their old comrades. But then they go beyond assimilation and become leaders of the people they once oppressed. This is the essence of the white guilt fantasy, laid bare. It’s not just a wish to be absolved of the crimes whites have committed against people of color; it’s not just a wish to join the side of moral justice in battle. It’s a wish to lead people of color from the inside rather than from the (oppressive, white) outside.

Think of it this way. Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege. Jake never really knows what it’s like to be a Na’vi because he always has the option to switch back into human mode. Interestingly, Wikus in District 9 learns a very different lesson. He’s becoming alien and he can’t go back. He has no other choice but to live in the slums and eat catfood. And guess what? He really hates it. He helps his alien buddy to escape Earth solely because he’s hoping the guy will come back in a few years with a “cure” for his alienness. When whites fantasize about becoming other races, it’s only fun if they can blithely ignore the fundamental experience of being an oppressed racial group. Which is that you are oppressed, and nobody will let you be a leader of anything._

Besides the race relation wish-fulfillment, the other theme that jumped out at me was, once again, mainstream Hollywood’s love of the anti-corporate fairytale. Here I will just quote Armond White of the New York Press (I’m linking to his review, but I don’t really agree with the rest of it. He kind of goes off the rails with his interpretation at the end):

Cameron fashionably denounces the same economic and military system that make his technological extravaganza possible. It’s like condemning NASA—yet joyriding on the Mars Exploration Rover.

Please don’t mistake the ratio of my praise to criticism as an overall negative assessment of the movie. I’m not saying the writing is poorly executed (Cameron isn’t committing George Lucas-esque sins of dialogue); rather, it’s resolutely competent, as banal as its visual brushstrokes are revolutionary. Avatar is not so much a story told cinematically as it is an excuse for a two-and-a-half hour showcase of cutting edge visual technology. And whereas I am usually a Story First kind of person, I can acknowledge the feat of filmmaking here.

Put another way: It’s like a painting of a stick in the mud, where the loam is rich and lushly textured, as is the branch, with little ants and bits of moss rendered in painstaking detail on top of and between the cracks in the nubbly surface. If you ask me to explain it, all I can say is: “It’s a stick in the mud.” You have to see it for yourself.

This was my gateway album into the Christian rock scene, which I stayed into throughout high school and college. I gradually realized not all Christian artists were of Jars’ caliber.

“Much Afraid” is an underrated disc, but, possibly because it was my first Jars album, it’s one of my favorites. To me, it has such a beautiful Brit pop/rock sound.

(My full review can be found here)

Let’s get one thing straight: I am a big superhero movie fan. I’ve been waiting for TDK since the credits rolled on Batman Begins three and a half years ago. But last summer I was mired in pre-Beijing Olympics work, and couldn’t get my act together in time to buy the IMAX tickets a month in advance of the premiere, before they were completely sold out. I know. I’m ashamed of myself too.

When I heard that Warner Brothers would re-release the film in IMAX in January, I knew that I couldn’t cave and simply watch the movie on the regular screen, on DVD, and especially not downloaded illegally from some torrent. No, I held out and scanned the press releases until last month, when, visiting the IMAX official website, I spotted a press release, relatively buried in the headlines: Batman IMAX double feature, one night only! The very night I found the press release, in fact!

I quickly rounded up two of my friends and we met up at the Lincoln Square IMAX shortly before 8 p.m. It was the perfect Batman experience. A refresher course in Batman Begins, followed immediately by my personal premiere of The Dark Knight. Both in glorious IMAX. It was totally worth the wait.

The first two acts of this film are nearly flawless, with the stunning visuals melding perfectly with the soaring score. Think Oliver Twist in Mumbai. Two musical montages by A.R. Rahman and M.I.A. will especially leave a lump in your throat.

I think the film would have been better served if it had not ended up focusing on the love story. I would have rather Jamal’s love for Latika been a subplot, and his relationship with his brother given equal importance.

See my full review here.

I rated this movie “worth consuming” because it does spark a lot of discussion, and people’s opinions vary wildly, so it’s worth watching to be able to join the debate.

I didn’t hate Crash, but I thought it had a lot of flaws. None of its racial observations were untrue, but neither were they very revelatory.

My complete review has spoilers.