David Fincher has a tough act to follow. Not only is he having to adapt source material that’s already had a critically-acclaimed film version, he’s also following up on last year’s extraordinary THE SOCIAL NETWORK. Fincher and co. have handled the build-up to its release perfectly, with inventive trailers touting DRAGON TATTOO as ‘The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas’, cryptic websites containing hidden footage, and a controversial poster.

DRAGON TATTOO’s story is a deconstruction of the ‘locked room mystery’ Agatha Christie made famous, with an overarching commentary on Sweden’s sociopolitical climate, and (even though it’s set in 2003, the time of the novel’s publication) it’s troubled history before and during World War II. In it, a wealthy CEO, Henrik Vagner (Christopher Plummer), hires a disgraced journalist by the name of Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to investigate the decades-past disappearance and possible murder of his sister, Harriet Vagner. Along the way, Blomkvist teams up with introverted hacker Lisbeth Salander, who assists in his research as the investigation turns up a connection between Harriet’s vanishment, and a series of bizarre and brutal serial killings occurring around the time of the incident.

The novel is far from perfect. The first third of it in particular is plagued by a frustratingly slow pace, with little happening in overly-detailed sections that seem to go on forever. However, once all the characters are in place, it leads to an incredibly compelling mystery that lends itself well to a film adaptation.

David Fincher and his screenwriter, Steve Zaillian decide that the way to fix the novel’s pacing problems is to proceed at such an accelerated rate that they don’t give the audience any breathing room. Although this approach helps in making the story more engaging at points, the film is likely to be very confusing to those who have never read the novel or seen the Swedish film. Even at such a fast clip, Fincher creates a tense and brooding atmosphere, with echoes of his earlier film, SEVEN. There’s plenty of suspense and incredible detail.

As you can see from the cast list on the right, there’s a roster of great performers to be found; but the most incredible of all is Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. Through a rigorous exercise regimen, she looks exactly as you’d imagine Larsson’s character to look; short, pale, and somewhat androgynous. Her speech pattern is scarily close to the odd, clipped, somewhat-monotone verbiage of someone with a social anxiety or developmental disorder. You can tell that this is an actress who really dove headfirst into the role she was given.

Daniel Craig is, as always, an engaging lead as Blomkvist. Taking more from his work in LAYER CAKE as a cautious but exacting career criminal, he builds the character well as a level-headed guy caught up in something much bigger than himself.

David Fincher has been given due praise in his past work for his marvelous technical prowess, and this is no exception. From his beginnings as a commercial and music video director, there’s always been a masterful cinematographer by his side. This is his third collaboration with Jeff Cronenweth (son of legendary cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth), who expertly milks the loneliness and expansiveness from even the smallest and darkest of locations.

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and fellow musician Atticus Ross, fresh off their Oscar-winning score for THE SOCIAL NETWORK have put together another engaging musical score. Composing close to three hours of music for DRAGON TATTOO, the duo furthers the eerie atmosphere. Karen O even sings a cover of the classic Led Zepplin “Immigrant Song” over the incredible opening title sequence, with backing from Reznor and Ross.

Despite all its technical and acting prowess, DRAGON TATTOO is a bit of a letdown due to its rushed storytelling and wonky pace. Nonetheless, it’s worth a look for its strengths; brilliant technical work, an amazing musical score, and memorable performances.

There’s never been a more different breed of science fiction filmmaking than the kind Andrei Tarkovsky got to the screen. Tarkovsky films are challenging, slow-moving, and full of extremely long tracking shots and introverted, damaged characters. There’s a precision to the way every last part of the frame is utilized, and a bizarre, almost subliminal brand of storytelling and characterization. You feel as disconnected from the proceedings as the characters, only to be pulled in as close to the action as possible at precise moments.

Working from a novel by Polish author Stanislaw Lem, Tarkovsky crafts an eerie love story as psychologist Kris Kelvin journeys to evaluate a group of scientists on a space station orbiting the mysterious world of Solaris, a seemingly sentient planet that conjures up figures from one’s memories. Kelvin’s late wife appears to him as the other scientists on the station debate whether or not they should continue their dangerous and mentally-damaging research.

Tarkovsky seems determined to ignore and bend every facet of science fiction filmmaking in telling his story. It’s a slow character study that has a deliberate, often glacial pace, and a lack of visual effects (there is only one exterior shot of the space station in the entire film). Worth noting is a sequence where Kelvin’s friend, a former cosmonaut, is driven through Tokyo in a five-minute scene without dialogue. There’s much speculation around the reason for this being in the movie, the most popular of which is that Tokyo in 1972 looked incredibly futuristic and advanced to Soviet audiences in the same era.

It’s elements like that, coupled with the dense allegorical content, that make SOLARIS a very tough sit. However, it’s a thoroughly rewarding film that you’ll be going over in your head for weeks if not months to come. Just keep in mind that this is more ‘art’ than ‘film’, and that your patience will be rewarded in the end.

SOLARIS is one of those movies that had a convoluted release history. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972, winning a Grand Jury Prize, and at some point was recut by Tarkovsky to a shorter length. In spite of running afoul of censors, it played in limited runs for over 10 years in the Soviet Union, with showings frequently selling out. SOLARIS didn’t have an actual stateside release until 1976, when it was shown dubbed in English and missing over 30 minutes of footage. The full-length Russian-language version didn’t play to a public audience in America until 1989, at the reopening of the Film Forum theater in New York.

Though it contains a plethora of deleted and alternate material, Criterion’s Blu-Ray misses out on the shorter English dubbed version, which would compliment how far the film has come (a’ la Criteron’s THE LEOPARD and BRAZIL packages). Also missing is the previous 1968 TV movie adaptation of the novel, which would also serve as a good comparison. The supplements we do get however are quite good (including an essay by Akira Kurosawa), and it’s topped with a typically immaculate new transfer. This transfer actually corrects an error from the older DVD; many of the black-and-white sequences were supposed to have a light blue tint to them, and this version remedies that.

Though it’s a tough sit no matter how many times you watch it, SOLARIS is a truly unique science fiction story, and Tarkovsky’s approach to the material is so incredibly different from the norm that it holds up remarkably well today. Hopefully Criterion releases more Tarkvosky on DVD and Blu-Ray soon, as this is quite an impressive title.

John Frankenheimer certainly knew his way around an action sequence. With GRAND PRIX, his first film in color oddly enough, he pushed his cast and crew to the limits for realism in the film’s three incredible racing sequences. They’re the best ever put on film, period. Many of the actors are doing their own racing, and there’s absolutely no process photography or overcranking. All of this is helped along by Saul Bass’ ingenious montages that extensively use split-screen and include narration by the actors as their characters, talking about their pasts and why they race. It’s truly remarkable filmmaking, and the sequences have been immeasurably influential. The camera placement, cutaways to pre-recorded commentary and interviews with the athletes, car-mounted cameras to get us up close to the action, helicopter shots, etc. are all staples of live televised sports.

As soon as it moves away from the racetrack however, GRAND PRIX becomes an exercise in boredom. Two-thirds of the film’s three-hour runtime is devoted to plodding dramatic scenes that serve no purpose other than to pad the film to absolutely absurd overlength, and the plot is always straightforward and predictable. When you compare it to Frankenheimer’s previous films SECONDS and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, which relied on expertly composed and suspenseful dialogue scenes, as well as unbeatable pacing, it’s absolutely baffling how he turned in something this tepid and uninvolving. Talented actors like James Garner and Eva Marie Saint don’t make the material come alive either. Toshiro Mifune (whose voice is dubbed by an unbilled Paul Frees) is similarly underutilized as the head of a Japanese racing company that wants Garner as a sponsor. If you want to see Mifune in a good non-Japanese production check out HELL IN THE PACIFIC. One bit of notable casting however, is a young Jessica Walter, who later played the matriarch of the Bluth family in ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and is now doing voiceover work for the excellent ARCHER (in fact, during one episode of ARCHER, set at the Monaco grand prix, she states, “This isn’t my first grand prix you know”).

Regardless of the mixed quality of the film itself, this is a reference-quality presentation. The 70mm-to-hi-def transfer is like looking out a window, and the audio furthers the you-are-there feeling. The supplements, ported from the 2006 DVD, are an interesting mix of modern retrospectives and vintage promotional material.

GRAND PRIX has never been considered a ‘great’ film, but it has an hour of absolutely great spectacle. If you fast-forward through the glacially-paced dialogue and go straight to the racing sequences, it’s a remarkable (and short) viewing experience. If you can find it cheap, Warner’s Blu-Ray is excellent, and anyone looking to get the most out of their Blu-Ray player should certainly pick it up.

If you’ve ever worked at a TV station in any capacity, especially in the news department, James L. Brooks’ BROADCAST NEWS will hit very close to home. The last-minute changes, the mad rush to get something on the air, the constant fear of lay-offs, and tension between the new hirees and industry professionals are depicted with sometimes-uncomfortable accuracy. Looking at it, I’m actually surprised how quick people are to label it as a moment in history that’s come and gone.

The film was made 24 years ago, when cable TV was just starting to branch out, and CNN was considered to be in a niche market. ‘Infotainment’ was just starting to move from local stations to national news, and it’s fitting that one of the opening scenes depicts Jane Craig (Holly Hunter), warning a roomful of disinterested industry professionals that TV news is being turned into a dumbed-down, feel-good medium. It’s an earnest scene, and a very depressing one as well when you realize that her words would still fall on deaf ears. Jane’s despair builds as she runs into the only person who seemed interested in her speech, Tom Grunick (William Hurt), a former sportscaster who is about to become an anchor at the station she’s working at as a producer. They instantly quarrel, and the tried-and-true romantic and sexual tension begins between them. All of this is worsened by the fact that Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), the talented correspondent, is also vying for Jane’s affection. The standard love triangle ensues over the backdrop of a news station in transition, as Jane slowly falls for Tom, in spite of the fact that he represents what she hates.

Since writer-director James L. Brooks is famous for practically inventing the ‘dramedy’, there are frequent shifts in tone, all of which seem perfectly in tune with the performers. Albert Brooks stands out the most for me as the professional Aaron. He starts off as a charmingly cynical guy who gets a lot out of life and loves his job, then slowly and painfully becomes a miserable, self-loathing introvert as the film wears on. The iconic scene of the film has him anchoring the news at last, sweating profusely during a live broadcast, to the point where panicked viewers are calling in to the station to make sure he isn’t having a heart attack on-air. It takes real balls to make the funniest scene of your film be what tips it off into dramatic territory, and that’s exactly what James L. Brooks does. Even though Aaron is cracking jokes about the humiliating experience in the very next scene, Jane’s affection for Tom is eating him alive; a fact that he does not keep to himself. Emotional outbursts rarely seem genuine on film, but this is a rare exception. Hunter and Brooks have just had their platonic-but-happy co-existence shattered, and everything the two of them do from now on will be haunted by that little inkling of a thought that they might have had something together, had Hurt not entered the picture.

Speaking of William Hurt, he also gives a terrific performance, having to shift from disarmingly clueless to deceitful to caring at a moment’s notice. During his initial scene as an anchor he looks genuinely scared out of his mind as Holly Hunter gives him instructions from an earpiece.

Hunter too is given a richly-developed character, an emotionally-unbalanced but strong-willed individual who pushes her news team to the limits but justifies her sometimes unorthodox methods at every turn. The chemistry between her, Hurt, Brooks, and her underlings at the station, is a key part of what makes the film work. There’s never a moment where you think that anyone was miscast or is trying too hard in their role, and the performances gel perfectly with the directing style.

Criterion has offered up BROADCAST NEWS on DVD and Blu-Ray, and as usual their presentation of the film is as good as it could possibly be. The supplements are outstanding, with James L. Brooks providing fascinating commentary over the film itself, the legendary, long-sought-after alternate ending, and a reel of deleted scenes that include an entire supporting character. You wouldn’t think that a film like this would be helped by a hefty amount of extra features, but the insight it gives into the making of BROADCAST NEWS and James L. Brooks’ exceptional career as a whole with the documentary “A Singular Voice”, make it well worth anyone’s time.

Industrial Light & Magic is probably the first thing that would come to someone’s mind if you asked them to name a visual effects company. They got the most illustrious start anyone could ask for; revolutionizing special effects with their work on the original STAR WARS trilogy, and expanding into a company that now has over a dozen Oscars to their name. They’re not the first place that would come to anyone’s mind if you asked them to name an animation studio, and yet here they are with their first foray into animating an entire feature. Not surprisingly RANGO is a sight to behold; the characters are surprisingly expressive, environments expansive and visually stunning, and action beats appropriately kinetic.

Director Gore Verbinski is in the same boat as ILM. He’s done effects-heavy work before with the PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN trilogy, but this is his first animated feature. Visually it is a match made in heaven, especially with Roger Deakins credited as a visual supervisor (the same position he held on WALL*E and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON), and the bracket to your right shows off the impressive cast, while the trailers that have been playing since last summer gave you a taste of the Looney-Tunes-in-the-old-west action beats. Verbinski’s filmography shows that he knows how to pace action, but is scattershot when it comes to pacing the scenes where the visual effects are on their smoke break. Comic timing doesn’t seem to be his strongest suit, and the third PIRATES feature boasted a way-overlong running time and dreadful pacing.

Rango, as played by Johnny Depp, is a pet chameleon with lofty acting ambitions living with a wind-up fish and half a Barbie doll in a tiny aquarium. When his owners move, his cage is knocked out of the back of their car and shatters on the Nevada highway, leaving him stranded and alone in unfamiliar terrain. Wandering through the Mojave desert, he finds himself in a podunk town called Dirt, whose inhabitants are quickly running out of water. The mayor of Dirt (Ned Beatty, doing a scarily dead-on imitation of John Huston in CHINATOWN) is the white-suited villainous tortoise who is secretly in control of the town’s water supply, and uses henchman to do his bidding. Through comedic circumstances, Rango is elected sheriff after killing a dreaded eagle that’s been terrorizing the town, and is tasked with forming a posse to find a water supply, slowly piecing together that he’s a pawn in the mayor’s schemes.

It’s standard western stuff, and rarely makes attempts to break or parody genre conventions, instead going for a thoroughly by-the-numbers story, with no sense of spontaneity or surprise. The characters also seem convention-bound, especially in the case of Beans (Ilsa Fisher), Rango’s love interest and the standard holier-than-thou lady of the west. Fisher certainly has the voice and demeanor down (sounding like Mattie Ross all grown up), but there’s no development to her outside of ‘she is the love interest.’ Character actors like Stephen Root, Alfred Molina, Harry Dean Stanton, and Ray Winstone breathe life into well-designed but otherwise dull supporting players, while “Little Miss Sunshine” alum Abigail Breslin steals every scene she’s in as a dry, sarcastic mouse who constantly asks Rango if she can have his boots if he’s killed in action.

Even with the weird dream sequences, coupled with the plentiful references and visual nods to Sergio Leone and John Ford, (not to mention story elements lifted straight out of THREE AMIGOS! and BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III and a big shout-out to APOCALYPSE NOW), RANGO is for the most part a lumbering mess, and it’s flaws are encapsulated perfectly in one of the first scenes. When our eponymous hero enters the town of Dirt, he wanders into the local saloon, and when asked who he is, he gives himself a badass past, claiming he killed seven bandits with a single bullet, and engages in various comic shenanigans with the patrons, such as inadvertently belching fire onto one of the bad guys. The scene sounds well and good on paper, and is greatly enhanced by the grimy, low-lit look of the saloon and it’s gruesome patrons (including an ornery chicken with an arrow sticking through its head), but in practice it’s aimless and protracted with constant gags and one-liners that are only intermittently funny. It doesn’t help matters that the scene keeps getting jarringly crosscut with non-comedic plot-driven scenes that instantly stop whatever rhythm the bar scene was going for.

That’s the whole first hour in a nutshell; an overlong chaotic mess. Jokes fall flat while the pacing and tone shift radically from scene to scene. Every sequence either drags for an indeterminately long amount of time, or feels as if it was haphazardly cut down to about two or three shots. During all this random frantic scrambling, the visuals, beautiful as they are, become the film’s only consistent strength.

RANGO doesn’t pick up momentum until almost an hour in, when we’re introduced to villainous gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nigh), who sports not only a Lee Van Cleef-style mustache, but a rattler outfitted with Gatling guns to boot. He’s working as the mayor’s right hand man, and he’s a force to be reckoned with. His retractable teeth, menacing voice, and fire-and-brimstone speak will scare the hell out of kids in the audience, and make everyone else wonder why he didn’t show up earlier to save the first hour of the movie from sucking.

It’s during this scene that Rango gets the standard ‘he’s-a-faker-who-needs-to-be-run-out-of-town’ treatment and bolts, having a strange vision quest along the way that provides the movie with it’s best scene (which I won’t spoil). Of course, Rango comes to Dirt’s rescue and the movie steadies it’s pace for a nifty action climax.

A mixed bag if there ever was one, RANGO is the kind of movie you should wait for until it comes out on DVD (or Blu-Ray to get the most out of the amazing visuals) and start at the one-hour mark, maybe going back and watching some of the first hour with your thumb hovering over the fast-forward button if you’re so inclined. If you are saddled with seeing it in a theater, there is one positive; you’ll save a couple of bucks as it’s the first CG animated film since “WALL*E” to not be released in 3D.

Roy Frumkes’ Top Ten (or Twelve) DVDs, BluRays, Theatrical & TV releases.

I see two theatrical features a week, and try to watch one DVD or BluRay every night. At that there are those who see three or four times what I do, but I haven’t figured out how to reduce my other activities like showering, exercising, going to the bathroom, and sleeping. So I remain behind the front guard of cinema enthusiasts in terms of viewing. Still, I’ve seen a lot, as have FIR’s other writers, so here are a few TopTen lists for the year we left behind:

My DVD & BluRay choices first: At a certain point, these are no longer in order, but the first few are…

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Criterion) The archeological restoration of the year, this immaculate BluRay transfer is accompanied by a 2 1/2 hour compilation doc of equally pristine outtakes from the film, with sound, so that one can hear Charles Laughton directing, can see and hear the little girl chiding Robert Mitchum for forgetting his lines, Shelley Winters praying in Hebrew, the boy warmly following directions even though he comes off stiff in the final version, and countless other wonders. It’s one of the great treasure discs of all time. It’s been around for years, but has been updated slightly for this, its first home theater release.

THRILLER (Image/Universal) 14 DVDs containing 67 episodes. Though almost all the episodes have dated in one way – they now appear padded in an effort to support the hour time slot – they are still remarkably well lit (PIGEONS FROM HELL has the lowest key lighting I ever remember seeing on TV), elaborately scored by such luminaries as Jerry Goldsmith (with many M&E tracks isolated), dripping with fun star power (Henry Daniell is in five episodes – the first times I remember his being in the same films with Karloff since THE BODY SNATCHER in 1945), introduced and occasionally featuring Boris Karloff, and accompanied by insightful commentary tracks. It’s the best-produced DVD release of the year in terms of marshalling outside forces to bolster the original material. THE ALIEN QUADRILOGY, for example, is even more packed with phenomenal commentaries, featurettes, alternate cuts, etc. It’s astounding, to be sure. But all that material was within relatively easy reach. The producer of the THRILLER package had to think out what material would best accompany each of the 27 commentary-supported episodes without becoming redundant, and then go out and hunt down appropriate commentators, and he’s done a miraculous job. As examples: For THE FINGERS OF FEAR, a pre-meditated mixture of THE HANDS OF ORLAC and MR. SARDONICUS, about a pianist (played by SARDONICUS’ Guy Rolph) whose obsession with a rival performer leads to doom, the commentary track is all about horror filmusic, and for THE HOLLOW WATCHER, which has a vaguely Western theme, the commentary focuses on Horror Westerns.

METROPOLIS (Kino) Refer to Ben Peeples’ review, though it is better served on DVD, considering the format and degraded condition of the recently restored footage.

THE LEOPARD BluRay (Criterion) You don’t need a 3D TV, or 3D glasses, to get the depth effect here. The film is so gorgeously transferred, and Visconti layered it so elaborately with art direction, that you feel you are looking into those vast period rooms with bewildering dimensionality. Both versions are available, and there’s Nina Rota’s magnificent score.

THE ELIA KAZAN COLLECTION (Fox Home Entertainment) Plus a heartfelt doc by Martin Scorsese. This is a beautifully packaged, near-inclusive slew of Kazan films on DVD, showing his progression from stage-bound flicks to fully cinematic works.

THE ALIEN ANTHOLOGY (Fox Home Entertainment) This BluRay update trumps the earlier DVD release, something I didn’t think was possible. There are more supplementals, but just the increased sound quality alone is astounding.

KING KONG (Warner Bros Home Entertainment) Better than ever on BluRay.

THE HAMMER ICONS OF SUSPENSE COLLECTION (SONY Pictures Home Entertainment) – THESE ARE THE DAMNED, CASH ON DEMAND, THE SNORKEL, STEP ME BEFORE I KILL!, MANIAC and NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER. This was a genuine surprise – that so late in the game, six delightful non-horror Hammers would see the light of DVD. Pictorially they’re all fine. In terms of execution they vary in quality, but all of them are compelling, and CASH ON DEMAND and STOP ME BEFORE I KILL! Particularly so.

THE AFRICAN QUEEN (Paramount) – Refer to my review earlier in the year. On BluRay, it’s better-looking than it was when originally released.

GONE WITH THE WIND (Warner Bros) BluRay. Like film… And in a beautifully designed collector box.

DALI & DISNEY: A DATE WITH DESTINO (Disney) BluRay. I liked the end result of the long-buried, never completed short produced by Walt Disney and directed by Salvador Dali. But I loved the feature documentary made about the ill-fated venture. It captures their two creative personalities, and the times, and follies of creativity and genius.

OCEANS (Disney) The old True Life Adventures were never like this. From Monstro the Whale (in the flesh) to vast schools of fish doing head-trips on us, it’s an overwhelming experience.

TOP 12 THEATRICAL & TV releases:

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

BLACK SWAN

TOY STORY 3

THE GHOST WRITER

THE TOWN

HEREAFTER

TRUE GRIT

TRON LEGACY

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

MOVIES & MOGULS (Mini-seies)

FISH TANK

FROZEN

Bryan Layne next…

Usually when a franchise lies dormant for a decade or two and a new installment crops up, it’s a sign that you should run far, far away from any theater showing it, lest your beloved childhood memories be forever tainted with the likes of Jar Jar Binks and Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast at ground-zero. So what on earth to make of TRON: LEGACY? It’s been twenty-eight years since the original came out to middling reviews and a disappointing box office intake. TRON was one of those movies that found a steady after-market, with several hit arcade games based off the film that generated tens of millions in revenue, a bestselling special edition DVD release (now out of print for some reason), and collectable merchandise. It’s a guilty pleasure for just about anyone who saw it as a kid (myself included), and in 1982 there was nothing else out there that looked even remotely like it. TRON ushered in the era of computer animation as a visual effects tool nine years before TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY and eleven years before JURASSIC PARK made it viable.

The original TRON had a simple but intriguing premise. Jeff Bridges played Kevin Flynn, a computer genius who gets transported (via an experimental laser bay) into the computer world and had to fight his way out. At the end of that film, Flynn became CEO of Encom, a computer company with vast resources at its disposal (including that laser bay).

TRON: LEGACY begins with an inadvertently creepy-looking, digitally de-aged Bridges, telling his seven-year-old son Sam about the computer world and all of it’s wonders as a bedtime story. Flynn vanishes that very night, leaving his son an orphan and his company in shambles. The movie jumps ahead 20 years, and after some clunky scenes of the now coldly-corporate Encom getting hacked into by the understandably rebellious and angry Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the movie gets to it’s main plot.

***Be Warned… The Next Two Paragraphs Spoil The First Half of the Movie***

An old friend of Kevin Flynn’s, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, reprising his role from the original movie), tells Sam that he received a message from the office at Flynn’s long-abandoned arcade. Sam investigates, and after discovering a hidden room at the back of the arcade with the experimental laser bay from the original movie, gets transported into the computer world. Once there, he discovers that an evil ‘program’ doppleganger of his father named Clu (Bridges, digitally de-aged) rules the computer world with an iron fist, and sent the message that brought Sam to the arcade. Clu immediately puts Sam on ‘The Grid’, a sort of gladiatorial arena of deadly futuristic sports. During a scene with the famed ‘lightcycles’ (wouldn’t be TRON without ‘em), Sam is rescued by a program named Quorra, who takes him to where his father is hiding. The basic conflict of the movie is that Clu is cultivating an army of programs, and has found a way to beam said programs out into the real world to take it over, but needs Kevin Flynn’s ‘identity disc’ to do so. It’s up to Kevin, Sam, and Quorra to save the day.

But wait… why does Clu need Sam at all for this? Couldn’t he just confront Flynn? For that matter, how was Clu able to send Alan a message that would lead Sam to the arcade if he can’t send things back to the real world? There’re three possible explanations for this: (1) The plot holes were a necessary evil to keep the story the filmmakers wanted intact, logic be damned; (2) I missed something; or (3) It’s the same case as the STAR TREK reboot last year where all the scenes filling in the plot holes were scrapped and ended up as DVD extras so that the movie had a manageable pace and running time. Whatever the case may be, these are distracting flaws that you’ll be going over in your head as the end credits roll.

***End Spoilers***

Sadly, the flaws don’t end there, as the first section of the film is poorly-paced, and the plot takes forever to get going. Although the pre-computer world segment was destined to be a “Can we just get to the action?”-kind-of-affair, it didn’t need to be this plodding and reliant on cliche (rebellious twenty-something recklessly driving a motorcycle!). The pacing problems carry over somewhat into later parts of the film, and I couldn’t help but think that the movie would have been improved with just one more trip to the cutting room.

I’m delighted to report however, that the positives outweigh the negatives. Jeff Bridges is fantastic in his dual roles, and has a few moments where he gets to channel his now-immortalized role as The Dude from THE BIG LECOWSKI (during a particularly tense moment he tells his son, “You’re kinda ruining my zen, man!”). This is also a movie that requires him to do a lot of narration and voice-over work, something which, given how suited his voice is for it, I’m surprised I haven’t seen him do much of earlier. Garrett Hedlund, playing Bridges’ son, is perfectly-suited for his role, and brings life to what could have been a very uninvolving character, even during those aforementioned clunky opening scenes. Oliva Wilde similarly makes her role come to life by playing Quorra not as ‘the chick’, but as a surprisingly emotionally-nuanced character. The cast deserves a lot of kudos for being able to shine in a movie you’d expect to leave only talking about how cool the visual effects were.

That being said, the visual effects are remarkable, and there was a lot to live up to given how groundbreaking the original TRON was in that department. Back in 1982, it was highly unusual to have a movie so driven by visual effects, to the point where over an hour of that 96-minute film had some kind of after-the-fact effects work done to it. Nowadays, that’s a dime-a-dozen. We’re jaded. We need something really substantial and epic to live up to the likes of WALL*E, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, and AVATAR. Thankfully, this movie delivers that. The computer world is a dark, somewhat eerie open space, full of futuristic buildings and physics-defying airships. The light-cycles and gladiator games I mentioned earlier are vivid, impressively staged action set-pieces that actually use computer animation as a way of showing us something that would otherwise be impossible to visualize. Once you see a hapless program get derezzed, exploding into a storm of illuminated cubes that shatter on the ground like glass, you’ll be staring in slack-jawed awe, waiting anxiously for the next cool effect, which the movie has in spades.

Even with all the special effects, the movie still has some absolutely gorgeous set design. The director, Joseph Kosinski, is a former architect, and his previous occupation has served him as well as you could possibly imagine when it comes to putting together all of the sets. It’s the most impressive aspect of the whole show, and in years to come will certainly be mentioned alongside BLADE RUNNER, METROPOLIS, and DARK CITY. It helps that most of the sets are standing, physical creations, not just something filled in later by a computer. This undoubtedly helped the performers, and you can certainly see a difference between something like this, and a project where the actors have nothing there to work with, and are just parading around in front of a blank green wall.

French electronic duo Daft Punk’s music score is yet another plus, and easily rivals Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score for THE SOCIAL NETWORK as one of the best soundtracks this year. I read a comment recently, “Daft Punk isn’t in TRON. TRON is in Daft Punk.” They’ve created a perfect mix of the standard booming orchestral score that all event movies are required by law to have, with their own trademark sound. They also cameo in the film, and anyone who knows what they look like on stage should recognize them immediately. What’s really worth mentioning about the score, however, is that according to director Kosinski, it was completed while the film was shooting, and played on-set for key scenes. Apart from AKIRA, HOUSE and Sergio Leone’s films, I’m hard-pressed to think of another instance where this has happened.

Finally, it’s time to talk about the 3D. This year has been very testing on the format. 2D-to-3D conversions have been universally reviled, and even some films shot in the format have gotten the general consensus of “Why was this even made in 3D if they didn’t use it?” (case in point, TOY STORY 3). Once again, TRON: LEGACY exceeds expectations in this department. In a surprising way, its use is somewhat limited. The first 24 minutes play almost entirely in 2D, as do the concluding scenes. A disclaimer before even the Disney logo tells us that these 2D scenes are presented as originally shot but that we should still wear the 3D glasses for the full duration of the movie. I’d actually suggest taking the 3D glasses off after the opening sequence, and then putting them back on once Sam Flynn gets beamed into the computer world. That way, those of you who find the glasses uncomfortable won’t have to endure the whole two-hour length with them.

Even if it’s not present throughout the entire film, the 3D is a necessary part of the experience. If it’s presented in 3D, then it was shot in the format (with the same camera system as AVATAR). It never feels forced, and it never overstays it’s welcome. The 3D is used more to convey depth than to have something akin to say, the paddle-ball guy in HOUSE OF WAX. There’s even a scene where Michael Sheen, as a delightfully camp nightclub owner, gestures with a cane, and that cane never goes past the normal perspective of a 2D screen.

TRON: LEGACY, in spite of it’s narrative hiccups, is a very enjoyable, engaging bit of spectacle. Fans of the original won’t be disappointed, and even if you’re going in cold, you’d be hard-pressed not to have a good time.

I’ve seen HOUSE twice now; once in January at the IFC Center in one of Janus Films’ stunning 35mm prints, and once on Criterion’s new and equally stunning Blu-Ray. There is a very, very big difference between seeing this movie alone and seeing it with an audience. Any audience is sure to be dumbstruck by just how gleefully strange and surprisingly funny this movie is. It’s one of those very rare movies where people will hang out long after it’s over just to piece together what in the hell it was they just saw.

The plot involves a young girl named Gorgeous who goes with six fellow female classmates to her aunt’s haunted house for a vacation and, as you can probably guess, they start getting picked off one by one in increasingly bizarre ways while trying to piece together what is causing all of this mayhem. Gorgeous’ aunt is some kind of undead monster who eats people in order to stay forever young. She’s pretty damned unstoppable, with an evil cat, hungry lampshades, and a killer piano at her disposal.

Seeing HOUSE at the IFC Center was a truly unique experience. Everyone seemed to be in the same boat as me. We had all heard for months about just how bizarre this movie was, and were expecting an off-the-wall horror movie. I don’t think any audience can be sufficiently prepared for the sheer insanity that they’re in for.

It’s not really a horror movie, and it plays around with so many genres that it’s nearly impossible to categorize. What starts as a very stylized, glossy-looking, quiet, slice-of-life piece about a high school student, escalates into a comedy that’s meant to look like a live-action cartoon, turns into a weirdly-shot horror movie, and ends with a brightly-lit music video-style sequence. Much of it is shot on soundstages, with highly stylized sets, and the exteriors are enhanced with surreal matte paintings.

Between all of this you have director Obayashi throwing every film and special effects technique he can muster onto the screen in successively crazier ways. There’s stop-motion animation with actors, hand-drawn animation, bluescreen work, mechanical effects, puppetry, multiple exposures, fast motion, black-and-white sequences, and even some early video effects. There’s no shortage of crazy visuals, and the movie has the color-for-its-own-sake look of a Technicolor musical. It looks every bit as vibrant as a Technicolor musical, and with all the techniques and special effects mixed in, it becomes one of the most visually diverse movies ever made.

The music too has a lot of range to it, going from calm orchestral swells, to bubbly pop, to eerie Goblin-style synthesizer score, to upbeat jazz. This is one of the very rare films where the musical score was composed before production. Obayashi would play the soundtrack on set to enhance the mood, and coax unusual performances from his actors. Characters sometimes dance to the music, and at one point a cat sings along (you read that right).

With all of these styles and genres clashing against each other, HOUSE somehow works, because it never loses it’s child-like imagination and good-natured humor. Obayashi and his screenwriter Chiho Katsura clearly meant HOUSE as a counterpoint to ‘Japanese’ films and to the gritty, realistic style of American and European films prevalent in the 70s. It’s meant to be a purely cinematic fantasy, fearless and unbound by the ‘rules’ of filmmaking. I can’t think of anything as a basis of comparison to it, and it’s easily the strangest movie I’ve ever seen that actually had money behind it.

***

Shockingly, the movie was a box office success in it’s initial release in Japan, while critics brutalized it. Obayashi states on the Blu-Ray’s supplements that Toho, the film’s distribution company, were not supportive of the film when it came out; shocked and disappointed that what they considered to be a goofy little lark from a first-time director was turning out to be a financial hit, instead of a ‘prestige’ picture taking it’s box office thunder. Although the film was greenlit in 1975 by Toho after they saw the script (which they thought would be “the next JAWS”, no joke), it was another two years before HOUSE entered production. No director in Japan wanted to touch it, thinking that they would become the laughing stock of the film industry for tackling a project this offbeat. In the interval two years, Obayashi went to unusual measures to get Toho interested in putting the film into production. There were comic books, a novelization, and a soundtrack available a full year before the movie was in theaters, and Obaysahi made sure that entertainment magazines in Japan were regularly running stories on the movie.

When HOUSE hit theaters in August of 1977, it was touted as a movie for “kids under 15″, according to screenwriter Chiho Katsura, and it turned out to be influential among young directors in Japan who saw it as kids. For whatever reason, the movie didn’t become an enduring cult movie outside of Japan until very, very recently. Janus Films only started showing the film late last year in theaters along the West coast, and it quickly built word-of-mouth, selling out many of its showings. I once again need to bring up New York’s own IFC Center theater to convey how quickly this movie has become a cult phenomenon. HOUSE was only supposed to play there for a one-week engagement, but ended up playing for over three months, frequently selling out during it’s evening and midnight showings. Janus Films actually had to strike a new 35mm print just to meet demand in other cities.

Criterion is releasing the film on Blu-Ray just in time for Halloween, and it is an essential buy. Criterion has the best track record of any studio when it comes to presenting films on video (even going back to their laserdisc days), and HOUSE continues their tradition of excellence. It doesn’t look like video, it looks like you have a pristine 35mm print that you happen to be projecting onto your TV. It’s demo disc material, and the supplements are just the icing on the cake. One of Obayashi’s experimental short films, EMOTION, is included as well, and it’s a fun watch.

Even on video, it’s essential to watch HOUSE with a group. This movie is greatly enhanced by having people in the room with you who are just as baffled and entertained by it as you are. If you want to see something different, look no further.

With Hollywood in a frenzy of remaking old properties, it’s very surprising that A STAR IS BORN hasn’t been considered for another go. It’s a property that’s been made three times as a movie (four if you count WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?), and it seems that alone would be reason enough to update it for modern audiences. The classic story of a washed-up star falling in love with an up-and-coming actress and shepherding her career as he spirals into depression works during any time period as a microcosm of Hollywood.

WHATPRICE HOLLYWOOD? was directed by George Cukor in 1932. It was loosely based on both the relationship between actress Colleen Moore and producer John McCormick, and the nervous breakdown and suicide of director Tom Forman. In 1937, a suspiciously similar film called A STAR IS BORN was released to great critical acclaim and success. Strangely enough, Cuckor was a supporter of the 1937 film, and made some suggestions about the screenplay. In the early 50s, Cuckor decided to helm a remake of A STAR IS BORN at Warner Bros., and it, too, was a critical and commercial success.

The big draw of the 1954 version was the casting of Judy Garland. This film was her comeback after being booted from her contract at MGM, and fired from the 1950 film of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN due to her continuing drug problems (she was one of the first celebrities to have a publicly-known drug addiction). This Blu-Ray is pretty disconcerting to watch at times, since you can see that Garland’s drug addiction took it’s toll on her appearance, and she looks at least 10 years older than she was at the time of the production. The fact that she appears too old to be playing the role of an up-and-coming actress can easily be counted as a case of miscasting, but her performance is excellent. Garland’s character, Vicki Lester, intentionally parallels her own life, and once again, it’s bizarre to see an actor do this, especially in 1954.

James Mason is the real powerhouse here, though. He is perfectly cast as Norman Maine, the washed-up, alcoholic matinee idol who is on his last legs. Mason’s performance is heartbreakingly sincere and stunningly ahead of it’s time. The biggest strength of this film was how seriously Mason and Cukor took the character. Instead of just portraying him as a one-dimensional drunkard, they made him a believable, identifiable, and ultimately sympathetic character. It’s a brave performance, and by far the best aspect of the film.

The story involves Norman Maine falling in love with Vicki Lester, and as his career plummets, her career begins to take off. There’s surprisingly little conflict between the two leads; most of the outside hardships come from Hollywood itself. It’s the characters trying to survive against a location, instead of through a relationship, which is a welcome change, and a good twist on a melodramatic premise.

The film’s opening sequence especially eschews the melodrama, and feels years ahead of it’s time, with it’s oddly detached tone, gloomy performances clashing with entertainment gossip cheeriness, and the tense, cynical commentary on Hollywood. It is uncompromising, and the impact of it carries over the rest of the film.

Even with all its strengths, the film has some very distracting flaws. First and foremost is that George Cukor seems to have been the wrong choice as director. He films the dialogue scenes with great care and consideration, but once the film calls for something dynamic (except in the aforementioned opening sequence), Cukor starts using a very pedestrian directing style. The music sequences are, for the most part, not all that exciting to watch, even though Garland and co. are giving it their all, and the songs are pretty good. These sequences need to be exciting and memorable, not sedentary. I kind of wish Vincente Minnelli had directed this film, since he proved himself to be such a talent for this kind of musical – more a melodrama with songs. One very positive note about the direction though is that even though this was one of the first films shot in the CinemaScope format, the widescreen compositions are gorgeous and really add to the impact of the film.

A STAR IS BORN has had a pretty bizarre release history. Following its premiere, it was sloppily cut (without Cukor’s knowledge or consent) from 182 minutes to 154 minutes by Warner Bros. In 1983, the film was restored to a length of 176 minutes, and here’s where things get really frustrating. A soundtrack existed for almost all of the missing scenes, but in many cases, footage didn’t, or it was so badly damaged it was unusable. To cover this, a nearly ten-minute-long chunk of the film plays with production photographs underlined by the original audio (the same technique was used on the 1980s restoration of LOST HORIZON). It’s incredibly distracting, but necessary to elaborate on what’s going on. I’m honestly baffled as to why Warner cut the footage that they did. The scenes that were removed weren’t just throwaway bits dropped for pacing reasons, they were scenes that made the film a coherent whole and contained some of the best acting in the film. Even more baffling, is that there were other scenes present in the 154-minute version that were throwaway segments, and they could have easily been removed instead in order to improve the film without taking away its coherence.

The new Blu-Ray uses the same restoration from 1983 and it looks superb, almost reference quality, with vivid colors and incredible depth. The extras (housed on a second disc) are mostly transported over from the 1999 DVD. There’s a good assortment of material here, including a making-of TV special from the film’s release, and outtakes from the musical sequences. It isn’t quite the classic it’s touted as being, but it’s still a damn good film, and the Blu-Ray is the perfect way to watch it.

I feel like this movie doesn’t really need an introduction, but here it goes. This is an era where movies, TV shows, and video games are constantly being touted with the promise that they will change their respective industries forever, set a milestone, and be a major influence on every piece of media for decades to come. METROPOLIS is one of the few things to actually live up to this pedigree. It truly stands as one of the most influential films of all time, setting the stage for practically every science fiction film that came after it. BLADE RUNNER, DARK CITY, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, and STAR WARS are just a few of the movies that wouldn’t exist if not for METROPOLIS. It didn’t stop at sci-fi either; the camerawork, editing, set design, and characters influenced everything else under the sun. FRANKENSTEIN and DOCTOR STRANGELOVE would be very different movies if not for METROPOLIS.

Over the years there have been a few adaptations of it as well, including a stage musical. Francis Ford Coppola has been trying to get a remake made for decades, with just about every major actor, writer, cinematographer, set designer, and special effects artist being associated with it at some point or another. The closest to a full-fledged remake came strangely enough from the 2001 anime film of the same name, which was itself loosely based on a 1949 comic book (also titled “Metropolis”) written by the creator of ASTRO BOY, Osamu Tezuka. It was visually stunning to say the least, with a jazzy score and one of the most arrestingly beautiful uses of source music in any film. Although the lack of an interesting story and somewhat dull characters take it down a few notches, it’s an enjoyable film and certainly worth a rental.

***

Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS is set in the titular futuristic city, and begins with an epigram declaring ‘The mediator between head and hands must be the heart’. As our story begins, we see the ‘hands’ of the city; the oppressed workers, forced to live and toil in horrible, often deadly conditions underneath the surface of Metropolis as they keep the city running. We are then shown the New Tower of Babel, the tallest building in Metropolis, and the home of its founder and ruler Joh Fredersen, the ‘head’ of the city. Joh’s son Freder is unaware of the workers’ plight, and is horrified as he wanders into the underworld and sees many of them killed while trying to operate a massive machine. Maria, a young woman also concerned with the plight of the poor, preaches to the workers in the catacombs about how a mediator will unite the city and end the class struggle through peaceful means. Freder attends one of these sermons disguised as a worker, and after telling Maria who he is, Maria declares him to be the mediator they’ve been looking for; the ‘heart’ that will connect the head and hands of the city. A mad scientist named Rotwang, under the order of Joh Fredersen, captures Maria and creates a robot double of her in order to provoke distrust between her and the workers. Rotwang, a bitter rival of Fredersen’s, instead instructs Maria to provoke an uprising, destroy the city, and kill Joh and Freder. It’s up to Freder to stop the worker’s uprising, save the city, and act as a mediator between the workers and his father.

The plot sounds simple enough when summarized, but in just about every version of the film except this new restoration, the story was a glorified mess. Subplots would vanish, characters would be introduced and discarded, and the symbolism always felt tacked on. After watching this restoration, I can almost see the producers in 1927 with reels of the film, just cutting scenes out willy-nilly. The infamously butchered GREED was more coherent than most versions of METROPOLIS have been up until now. Still, the movie earned it’s legacy, as film critics and historians with some knowledge of it’s original intent, consistently praised it as one of the best films of all time.

From it’s original premiere, METROPOLIS was shown in extremely truncated versions, running around 85 minutes. In 1984, a restored version was compiled and produced by composer Giorgio Moroder, who scored it using contemporary pop music by Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tyler, Loverboy, and Adam Ant. This version also replaced the intertitles with subtitles that played over the footage, as well as adding color tints. This version divided critics, but opened up the movie to a new audience. It was a modest success in theaters and a hit on video. Clips from the Moroder version were even played as music videos on the then-new MTV (it’s more than a little bizarre to see Fritz Lang’s name pop up on the credit snipe for these videos).

In 2001, the Murnau Foundation released what was then the most definitive restoration of METROPOLIS available. Even so, it was missing a significant amount of footage that had been removed after the film’s premiere in 1927; footage that was at that point presumed to be lost or destroyed. The missing footage was cleverly covered up with text explaining scenes that were absent. It also used Gottfried Huppertz’ original orchestral score. This marks the only other time I’ve seen this movie on the big screen, and for me it was concise, making the story much easier to follow than it had been in previous versions.

In 2008, a 16mm reduction negative of the premiere cut was discovered at the archives of the Mueso del Cine in Buenos Aires. For almost a year, the Murnau Foundation worked to restore the almost 25 minutes of footage from the negative that was thought lost since 1927. Even though two scenes are still partially missing, this restoration is the most complete version of METROPOLIS known to exist. With that said, it is quite easy to spot the newly-discovered footage. The print found in Buenos Aires was not in good condition, meaning the new footage looks severely damaged. The same 16mm-sourced footage does stand in stark contrast with the pristine 35mm-sourced restoration that takes up the bulk of the film, but keep in mind that there’s really no way to fix this sort of jump in quality. I have no complaints about how the new footage is weaved into the film.

As for the footage itself, it brings the movie to coherency at last, restoring Lang’s intended story, as well as his innovative use of metaphor and symbolism. The intricate and often fast-paced storyline is finally a consistent whole, instead of a messy series of subplots that would come and go at random. The characters finally make sense as well, especially Joh Fredersen’s menacing spy, the Thin Man. In previous versions of the film, he had at the most five minutes of screen time, and was just a vague threat for Freder, never really accomplishing anything even though he’s set up as an important character. In this restoration, the Thin Man becomes a full-fledged supporting character with an interesting arc, being assigned to spy on Freder in order to make sure he doesn’t join the worker’s uprising. The Thin Man crosses paths with another character that gets an expanded role, Georgy, the worker who Freder switches identities with early in the film. This new version gives Georgy an arc as well, leading to a very poignant death for the character that ratchets up the stakes even higher in the final section of the film.

Other extensions include Rotwang’s obsession with Joh Fredersen’s deceased wife Hel, who he has built a literal monument to. Photos from these scenes in particular circulated for decades, and it’s downright chilling to see the scenes in motion. They give a reason for why Rotwang was building an android in the first place, and why Joh Fredersen and Rotwang are constantly at odds.

The symbolism is greatly enhanced in this version as well. I mentioned earlier that it always felt ‘tacked on’ in the truncated version, but here it’s downright ingenious how Lang weaves the symbolism into the story and characters. All the references to the Tower of Babel are given new meaning and weight, especially in the case of the false Maria.

There’s really too many changes to go over in this review (Kino’s press kit lists 96 additions), so I’ll conclude by saying that yes, this is the perfect version of METROPOLIS. It looks like a perfectionist’s work, something that would have required a 17-month shoot and a record-setting budget. The story, characters, set design, camerawork, visual effects, and music all work in unison to create a perfect whole. I feel that everyone with a passion for film needs to see this version as soon as they can.