Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

Up until a few minutes ago I had no idea what Moonrise Kingdom was about, now that I know, this poster is a thing of beauty. However before finding out what the plot was, the poster gave me a slightly creepy vibe, it reminded me of a Todd Solondz movie and we all know those aren't exactly fuzzy and cute.

What does the Moonrise Kingdom one-sheet say to you?

How I Feel Today.

Fantastic Mr. Fox ***1/2

Director: Wes Anderson

Few working directors have such a recognizable visual style as Wes Anderson (if that is good or bad is another matter). In "Fantastic Mr. Fox" his first foray into animation (if you don't count the strange sea creatures from "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou") he transports his unique aesthetics to a world populated by furry, anthropomorphic puppets.
Particularly Mr. Fox (George Clooney playing Danny Ocean) a former chicken thief who chose the right path and became a newspaperman after his wife Mrs. Felicity Fox (a sly Meryl Streep) became pregnant.
When his son Ash (a brilliant Jason Schwartzman) is twelve fox years old, Mr. Fox decides he's had enough of his quiet domestic life and sets to pull off one last heist.
He recruits Kylie (Wallace Wolodarsky) the superintendent opossum, and Felicity's athletic nephew Kristofferson (Eric Anderon) to rob the farms of Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness) and Bean (Michael Gambon).
The job goes as planned but the angry farmers retaliate and plan to get rid of Mr. Fox, his family and all the neighboring animals.
This forces the charming hero to make things right and solve the sort of existential -crises-hiding-behind-entertaining-facades that Anderson has become known for.
But "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is more than "The Royal Tenenbaums" in stop motion, based on Roald Dahl's novel, the movie actually digs deeper than Anderson ever reaches with live action.
It's as if this micro world was invented just for him as he populates it with an assortment of characters, quirks and details that are a pleasure to behold.
The puppets' little coats and accessories have textures that we could stare at for hours and the stilted way of some of their movements is a shocking contrast to the relentless need of CGI to imitate real life.
Watching this movie we're supposed to know we're watching something unreal, perhaps Anderson's actual intention was to have us wonder throughout the film "how did they do that?". This is an interesting proposition because it immediately forces us to experience the wonders of childhood where even thunder was a mystery (it might be no coincidence again that Mrs. Fox is obsessed with painting thunderstorms).
The film's surrealistic nature serves Anderson because he is finally able to explore the absurdities of his characters without the selfconsciousness of actors.
He's at such balance with the animation technique that we recognize several visual keys (like Kylie's insanely funny blank eyes) from his live action films, but if he went and gave the real Bill Murray (who voices a real estate Badger here) a furry coat, the result might be just weird.
Anderson's detachment from keeping an equilibrium between what we see and how we respond gives him the chance to create one of his greatest characters in the shape of Ash; a son trying to live up to what he thinks his father expects from him.
The droll characterization of Ash-who wears a weird cape and underwear that makes his father think he's "different"-offers enough fantasy and truthfulness to make us laugh while blushing because at some level we might recognize ourselves in him.
Forget about the zany dialogues (although Anderson and Noah Baumbach made a witty adaptation), the Jarvis Cocker cameo or the intricate production design, the real wonder in "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is that when we see a puppet shed a tear we too might be getting misty eyed.

The Ten Movies That Defined My Decade.

8. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)

The first time I saw "Lost in Translation" I was with two friends.
"That was it?!?" one of them exclaimed.
"What did he tell her?" the other replied just as shocked when it ended.
The only thing they agreed on was how much it had sucked.
They also agreed that I must've been some sort of a crazy person for feeling so elated after watching this.
And in fact not even I was sure what had moved me so much about it. Why had I invested so much in the simple story of Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson)? Why had I been so fascinated by the moments when "nothing" happened and we just watched the characters watching something else?
Two days after I saw it, the movie won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. If it had been up to me it would've also won Best Director.
It was Coppola who crafted something so delicate and bruising, so intimate and detached. You could also touch her influences during the movie: her story extracted out of a Wong Kar Wai journal, her sexy camera angles straight out of that Alain Resnais movie and well to mention Fellini would be too easy (considering "La Dolce Vita" is featured in one prominent scene).
But Coppola wasn't proving how well versed she was in the cinematic arts, she was declaring she had a voice of her own.
Extremely autobiographical, the movie is able to be both specific and very general. Maybe not all of us have been as deeply annoyed by Ms. Diaz as she was (Anna Faris gave by far my favorite limited performance of the decade) but almost everyone has had that moment when they feel just lost.
You don't even have to like the characters, for all I know Bob comes off looking very arrogant most of the time and Charlotte is a stereotype of mid-twenties ennui, but they transcend their facades and become beautiful archetypes that detail the saving capacity of love and the inexplicable bond created through friendship.
Who cares what Bob told her in the end? What's important is that they will never forget each other, they will live within one another even if they don't meet again.
With them Coppola beautifully captured the essence of spirituality and faith.
To this day I don't know of my friends "got" why I loved this movie so much, but I'm sure by now they also have been told things that help keep them warm at night.

The Limits of Control *1/2

Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Isaach de Bankolé, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton
Gael García Bernal, Hiam Abbass, John Hurt, Paz de la Huerta

Watching "The Limits of Control" two questions come to mind: does Isaach de Bankolé ever smile and what the hell was Jim Jarmusch thinking when he made this movie?
The stone faced de Bankolé stars as a hitman on some sort of a mission that has him traveling across Spain where he meets with strange characters that give him matchboxes.
Somewhere in between conversations about molecules, Rita Hayworth, bohemians and old guitars Jarmusch expects us to have an epiphany about existence.
What he fails to see is that he's the one who's going through an existential crisis and a plot-less movie will not help him solve it.
The movie plays out like a really bad dream (if Jarmusch was trying to pay homage to David Lynch he never reaches the fascinating creepiness and surprising universality of Lynch's stream-of-consciousness movies) with selfindulgent cinematography by Christopher Doyle who does capture beautiful images, that play like awkward Renault commercials.
The saddest thing is that Jarmusch is probably aware of how empty his movie is and often tries to justify himself in the silliest ways.
When a gangster (played by Murray) asks de Bankolé "how did you get here?" he answers "I used my imagination". This response plays more like "The Matrix" by way of "Sesame Street" than as a spark to make us reflect on how the whole thing might be a dream within a dream.
During the film's only interesting scene Swinton appears as a blond (Jarmusch references tons of film noirs here) with a movie obsession.
She tells de Bankolé that she likes movies where you don't know if you're having a dream or watching a film.
Jarmusch should've learned that sometimes dreams, like films, should be kept all to oneself.

Zombieland **

Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin

After zombies have taken all over the world, human survivor Columbus (Eisenberg) is trying to reach his hometown to see if he has a family to get back to.
Not out of any special connection, but because it's the normal thing to do, as he explains in a self deprecating narration.
On the way there he encounters Tallahassee (Harrelson) a Twinkie (as in Hostess pastries) loving redneck with a special talent for killing zombies and tough sisters Wichita (Stone) and Little Rock (Breslin) with whom he forms an unlikely family.
They stick together, only after learning to trust each other of course, and Columbus gives up his original plan in order to help the sisters get to Pacific Playland, an amusement park in California that reminds them of better times.
Forget the fact that these people think a rollercoaster ride is a priority, what matters here is that the filmmakers chose this over more "important" things.
It's clear from the start that this isn't a movie a la "28 Days" and its intention isn't to use zombies as a parable for anything else. What "Zombieland" tries is to push the genre forward and trying to emulate the wonderful "Shaun of the Dead", the filmmakers end up delivering something that works more like a buddy/road movie with a pinch of zombie parody.
Never scary enough to get the most out of the genre, the movie usually relies on the zombies as means to justify its need to utter pop culture references (Harrelson's micro rendering of "Deliverance" is delightful!) and exploit the likability of the actors.
Breslin can do no bad and even when she's holding a machine gun she manages to look adorable and age appropriate, while Eisenberg brings his "I am not Michael Cera but I act and look like him" qualities to a place where you can actually identify with his too self conscious deprecating.
The movie has its moments, in fact it has one of the most memorable cameos in any zombie movie ever, which despite its hilarious finale sadly feels like it lasts too little.
But most of the time it movies around aimlessly, like a zombie...
"Zombieland" is an exaltation of everything that is geek, from cult movie references to shameful confessions about virginity it's all a fantasy for people like Eisenberg's character.
Because of this it has franchise possibilities; if this one's about the geek getting the girl, there can be a million more about how he overcomes obstacles he can be bullied for.
But for all its heart it can't help itself from making the audience expect for it to end with geek waking up from a crazy dream with a familiar wet spot on his underpants.