Arthur Christmas ***½

Director: Sarah Smith

Leave it to the Brits to make a film so good and unique that Americans almost had to spoil by way of terrible marketing. The ad campaign and trailers for Arthur Christmas made it seem like it would be one of those "hip" animated comedies that rely on cheap jokes about modern issues to attract the masses, but then are all but remembered three hours after they've over. The truth is in fact, that Arthur Christmas has all the elements of a timeless classic in the making.
Few movies feel the need to feel audiences with joy - they're usually more concerned about pleasing themselves - this one however reaches out to you with such sincerity that you have to wonder how Pixar didn't make it.
The simple answer is because it was made by Aardman Animations (in collaboration with Sony Pictures Animation), the people responsible for Wallace & Gromit.  
Arthur Christmas might not be claymation, but its computer generated images contain such beauty that you might want to revisit it just to admire the great detail with which the animators created every single character and setting.
The film opens with a gorgeous vista of a small English town, where a little girl carefully deposits a letter for Santa Claus in the mailbox. When Christmas arrives we see how the once quaint and rustic North Pole, has become almost militarized and Santa's big mission is a task worthy of an army.
Thousands of elves behind computers check and see that nothing goes wrong, while Santa's older son Steve, supervises the entire operation. We see how Santa's sleigh has been replaced by a modern spaceship that can camouflage itself in the night sky to help the delivery.
The elves enter people's houses using all sorts of spy techniques and we are told, more than once, how important it is that nobody discovers them. Back in the North Pole, Santa's younger son, Arthur, watches the entire operation with admiration and a deep desire to be part of it all. His job is less important, nobody thinks he'll amount to much.
When Santa returns, Arthur realizes one present wasn't delivered and he makes it his mission to deliver it himself. After this setup, we are treated with a lovely take on the "black sheep" story as the courageous Arthur overcomes all obstacles - including genre stereotypes - to become a man and gain his father's respect.
The superb screenplay (written by director Smith and Peter Baynham) could've easily relied on complicated setpieces to keep us entertained, instead they devote such care to developing every character that we could see entire movies dedicated to each of them.
From Arthur's own brand of meek heroism, to Steve's brand of creepy perfectionism (there's a Margaret Thatcher book in his room!), the film is more interested in reveling in these characters' humanity than in their comedic skills. A feisty elf named Bryony and a scene-stealing Grandsanta, round up the film's most memorable characters.
Best of all must be the joy that emanates from every single scene in the movie. Where it could've been moralizing and trite, instead it delivers a unique brand of existentialist thinking, leading us to wonder whether we've corrupted the spirit of Christmas or if it has corrupted us in a way.
The film thrives with clever dialogues, stunning action sequences and pierces your heart in the most unexpected of ways. It will move you to tears and leave you yearning for the times when you too believed Santa was real.
Kudos to director Smith for finding the perfect balance between originality and homage (there are several sequences that can only be called Spielberg-ian, a la E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters, mind you...) don't let phony advertising fool you, Arthur Christmas is truly a present you'll love to unwrap.

Glorious 39 *

Director: Stephen Poliakoff
Cast: Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Julie Christie
Eddie Redmayne, Juno Temple, David Tennant, Charlie Cox
Jeremy Northam, Hugh Bonneville, Jenny Agutter
Christopher Lee, Corin Redgrave

If you liked Atonement but wished it had been a bit more like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, then Glorious 39 might just be the movie for you.
Set in England during the summer of 1939, it recounts the dramatic story of Anne Keyes (Garai) a wealthy film actress who discovers her family might be involved in a political plot to stop WWII.
That might not sound like a bad thing, but it is! Setting the bizarre mood for a movie that rarely knows where it's going and much less how to get there.
You see, the pro-appeasement movement in pre-Churchill England was not merely used to avoid combat but also would help maintain the status quo among the upper classes who promoted it.
Of course writer/director Poliakoff doesn't seem to care about this and instead of using these ambiguities to make a comment on the way money shapes history, simply chose to throw it all away in favor of a plot that has everyone, except Garai's character, act like Stepford wives.
This is especially sad for the older actors, especially Christie and Lee, who has to endure a scene so terrible in the end that you wonder how much they paid him to go through with it.
Surprisingly Garai survives the movie with the least harm. The camera is obviously in love with her and despite Poliakoff's intentions to turn her into someone else (look it's Keira Knightley! No wait it's Cate Blanchett!) Garai's uncommon beauty helps her deliver a performance that's magnetic and well intentioned. She tries to be Ingrid Bergman in Notorious and obviously fails, but her spirit overcomes the tragedy that is the rest of the movie.
Therefore, an amazing ensemble is utterly wasted, used to bring to life a plot that confuses with its erratic tonal shifts.
The thing with Glorious 39 is that it doesn't know if it wants to be an homage to classic films (sometimes it feels like a "count the Hitchcock references" game), a Gothic horror movie, a surrealistic psychological portrait or a parody.
It moves so aimlessly among genres and styles that you never know for sure which one to pay attention to.
But beyond genres it fails to make any sense of who the characters are, which seems impossible to understand given the actors playing them.
Even the fact that the heroine is an actress (point which is brought up by mockers and skeptics throughout) teases us with an actual intention on the director's part.
Can he be trying to mention something about history's need for drama or about the roles we play unexpectedly? Can he be drawing parallels between the work of a spy and the work of an actress?
To formulate those kinds of questions would be too kind an offering for a movie that shows us a burning pile of cats and dogs, confuses randomness with intrigue and would make G.K. Chesterton roll in his grave.

G-Force *

Director: Hoyt Yeatman
Cast: Bill Nighy, Will Arnett, Zach Galifaniakis, Kelli Garner

Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it's a good idea...
But apparently producer Jerry Bruckheimer doesn't give a damn about that and decided that a movie about a group of guinea pigs aspiring to become FBI special agents would be awesome.
And following his usual style he delivers the explosions, the slow motion and the mindlessness, only this time it's aimed for the under thirteen crowd.
They will undoubtedly have a good time (especially considering how little children read nowadays...) and will be impressed by the colors, action and "suspense".
But the whole movie feels like a creepy maneuver to train these children so that they will grow up thinking Bruckheimer style movies are OK.
Now with all the racist jokes, lack of coherence and utter irresponsibility from the screenwriters the idea that this is aimed at kids is rather sick. One of the film's twists turns around the whole idea of eco-friendliness that the guinea pigs have been trying to enforce...
Only to later have it turned back again, all for the sake of a giant robot made out of evil home appliances.
What will children think when they leave the theater? But judging from how the movie turns out they're counting on kids not even doing any thinking.

Valkyrie **

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Tom Cruise

Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Carice van Houten

Thomas Kretschmann, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard

It takes but a slight knowledge of history to know how "Valkyrie" will end. The film chronicles the attempt to kill Adolf Hitler led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) on July 20th 1944.

Teaming with high rank members of the German Army Stauffenberg planned a coup that would use the Fuhrer's very own "Operation Valkyrie" to take over Germany and make a truce with the Allies putting an end to World War II.

When the key members of the army are played by character actors like Branagh, Stamp and Nighy the idea of the kind of prestige drama this could amount to would get any film lover salivating.

But when this remarkable team is led by Tom Cruise, it works in a completely different way. Not even attempting to have a German accent, Cruise doesn't make a clown out of von Staffenberg, because we never even get to see past the actor playing him.

Whenever Cruise tries to be serious and muster some sort of gravitas, all we really see is Tom Cruise wearing an eyepatch and trying to kill Hitler.

Rarely has the public perception of an actor affected so much the outcome of an entire movie, but it seems that deep down Cruise has come to terms with the fact that he's a movie star and if you stop taking the film as a serious historical piece and choose to view it as an action thriller the results can be obscenely entertaining.

Singer, who directs like a stock filmmaker under the studio system, just goes with the flow and lets his star shine.

The director's meticulousness is outstanding in the small flashes he let's us see, like the care he has taken in showing us bureaucratic and logistic methods of the era.

Since there is absolutely no regard for character growth and background, scenes with extras and unknown actors in small roles showing the chilling efficiency of the Nazi regime make for a treat.

Singer choreographs the action sequences with just as much care, giving the plot an actual tension even if you know how everything will end.

"Valkyrie" often plays out like an appointed B movie made for propagandistic reasons, after all movie stars were used to draft people during WWII and watching Tom Cruise battling the Nazis, although preposterous and somewhat disrespectful, still is able to engage the audience on a primal level.

When it comes to entertainment "Valkyrie" is an effective, if inconsequential, accomplished mission, as cinema it stays merely as a drill.