Writer/director Sean Durkin’s first film follows a young woman who joins and then decides to leave a cult.  Martha Marcy May Marlene opens with a scene that establishes the insidious heart of the matter: Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), who has just run away from a compound in the woods that a cult led by Patrick (John Hawkes) calls home, sits in a diner and is approached by one of the male cult members.  She tells him she isn’t coming back; he simply gets up and leaves without looking back.  The rest of the film, which ties together Martha’s attempt to readjust to life with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and her life as “Marcy May” in Patrick’s clan, shows why Martha may have abandoned her old life and why the man in the diner doesn’t need to take her back.  Here is a life ruined.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

With the Shrek series (hopefully) at an end, Puss in Boots is an attempt to expand the universe of the previous series–or perhaps it’s just a way for a studio to keep its cash cow from drying up to soon.  Puss in Boots (voice of Antonio Banderas) is a charming little fellow who managed to steal the second Shrek movie from under the noses of established characters and a cavalcade of new ones, and that charm carries over during the start of the movie as we become re-familiarized with him.  Once his own adventures gets going (with an extended flashback as exposition and little play on fairy tales), though, it becomes clear that sometimes supporting characters should stay as such.  My review is here.  Available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D on Friday, February 24.

Tower Heist has a talented cast, a sociopath of a villain, and a central setpiece that involves multiple people and a 2,000-pound car dangling hundreds of feet in the air.  Ben Stiller plays the manager of a luxury condo building who finds himself leading a ragtag group of would-be thieves (including Eddie Murphy) after the building’s owner (Alan Alda) takes his employees’ pension money to cover a series of bad investments.  It’s breezy stuff and also entirely insubstantial.  That might be fine, but the screenplay leaves more than a few important plot points dangling, most noticeably a 2,000-pound one.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

There’s a strong dissonance between Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay and Clint Eastwood’s direction.  J. Edgar is either a subversive undermining of the legacy of the controversial FBI head (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) or a biography without any aim.  The question arises because Black’s script views history as an extended rumor (Hoover’s personal life goes through the wringer) while Eastwood plays the gossipy material with a solemnity that undermines the tabloid feel.  The narrative covers Hoover’s expansive career, which offers plenty of opportunities for either Black or Eastwood to make a definitive statement about their subject, but alas, there is none.  My review is here.  Available on DVD, Blu-ray, and DVD/Blu-ray Combo.

Oh boy, another sports movie about an underdog team beating the odds and saving the day.  This kind of material can work, but The Mighty Macs toils to ensure that it does not.  Carla Gugino plays a full-time wife who decides to assert her independence by becoming the basketball coach at a Catholic college that is financial trouble.  Gugino’s character isn’t a character but a collection of traits of hard-as-nails-but-really-caring coaches from countless other stories like this.  My review is here.  Available on DVD.

Tom (Martin Sheen) decides to walk the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage route that still draws people, after his son (played by writer/director Emilio Estevez, who is, of course Sheen’s real-life son) dies doing the same.  There’s lots and lots of walking.  There’s dialogue that’s either bumper-sticker philosophy or wholly expository.  There are characters that exist as walking, talking clichés.  Did I mention the endless walking?  It’s drivel–well-intentioned, sure, but still drivel.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

That film, of course, is The Artist, a loving homage to the film industry and, specifically, silent movies.  In theory, the Academy loves this stuff; a campaign from the Weinstein Company doesn’t hurt, either.

Reaching for gold.

So, once again, in the spirit of what really matters when it comes to the Academy Awards: Good luck in your various pools.

Best Picture
My prediction: We can eliminate all but three.  Hugo, which is tied for the highest number of nominations this year, is a legitimate dark horse, which, like the other potential upset The Descendants, has the magic trifecta of nominations (Picture, Director, and Editing).  Martin Scorsese’s passion project is also, in part, about the movie industry of a bygone era.  I would be tempted to consider The Help a contender, but it’s lack of Director and Editing nominations certainly undermines its status as an audience favorite and social-message movie.  This category is for The Artist to lose.
My pick: The Tree of Life

Best Director
My prediction: Safe money is on Michel Hazanavicius to win for The Artist (and for the presenter to mispronounce his name), so take that into consideration.  I’m going to go out on a limb (and probably get this wrong) and predict that Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life) will pull off a win in a similar fashion to Roman Polanski’s surprise win in 2003.  I may also be a bit biased in this regard (See immediately below).
My pick: Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Best Actor
My prediction: Like the film he stars in, this is for Jean Dujardin (The Artist) to lose.
My pick: Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Best Actress
My prediction: Could Meryl Streep win her third Oscar with her 17th nomination?  Yes, but Viola Davis (The Help) has come to dominate the major pre-Oscar awards, and she is a well-respected actress who has paid her dues with smaller, less-showy roles for years.
My pick: Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor
My prediction: Voters have four chances for a career award (Kenneth Branagh, Nick Nolte, Max von Sydow, and the eventual winner) and one to award an actor playing against type (Jonah Hill).  Christopher Plummer (Beginners) really deserves this, though–career award or not.
My pick: Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Best Supporting Actress
My prediction: This is probably the weakest of the already weak acting categories.  Bérénice Bejo, the best of the bunch, is technically playing a lead.  Jessica Chastain is fine in The Help but gave stronger performances in almost any of the other five films in which she appeared last year (Hence, the rationale for my own personal pick).  Melissa McCarthy could be a surprise; the Academy does do that occasionally, especially when it comes to comedic performances.  Octavia Spencer (The Help) will surely get a boost for having a showcase role after years of playing bit parts.
My pick: Jessica Chastain, The Help

Best Original Screenplay
My prediction: Midnight in Paris
My pick: Margin Call

Best Adapted Screenplay
My prediction: The Descendants
My pick: Moneyball

Best Animated Feature
My prediction: Rango
My pick: Rango (Note: I have not seen A Cat in Paris or Chico & Rita.)

Best Foreign Language Film
My prediction: A Separation
My pick: N/A

Best Documentary (Feature):
My prediction: Undefeated
My pick: N/A

Best Art Direction
My prediction: Hugo
My pick: Hugo

Best Cinematography
My prediction: The Tree of Life
My pick: The Tree of Life

Best Costume Design
My prediction: Hugo
My pick: Hugo

Best Documentary (Short)
My prediction: ”The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement”
My pick: N/A

Best Film Editing
My prediction: The Artist
My pick: Moneyball

Best Makeup
My prediction: The Iron Lady
My pick: The Iron Lady

Best Original Score
My prediction: The Artist
My pick: The Artist

Best Original Song
My prediction: ”Man or Muppet” from The Muppets
My pick: ”Man or Muppet” from The Muppets

Best Short Film (Animated)
My prediction: ”The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore”
My pick: N/A

Best Short Film (Live Action)
My prediction: ”The Shore”
My pick: N/A

Best Sound Editing
My prediction: Transformers: Dark of the Moon
My pick: Drive

Best Sound Mixing
My prediction: Hugo
My pick: Hugo

Best Visual Effects
My prediction: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
My pick: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The 84th Annual Academy Awards airs this Sunday, February, 26th on ABC at 7:00 pm CST.

I will be livetweeting the show on Twitter at @markreviews, much to the chagrin of my followers not watching.

There were more murders in Chicago in 2008 than there were deaths of American soldiers in Iraq.  This is when the story made national news, but before that, director Steve James was in the city to follow the non-profit organization CeaseFire.  The Interrupters follows three “violence interrupters,” volunteers who step into the fray to hinder retaliatory violence before it erupts.  James ignores statistics and instead watches–with devastating precision–the effects of cyclical violence.  This is a testament to courage and the possibility of redemption for the individual and society as a whole.  The fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s documentary branch failed to recognize it (as they did with James’ Hoop Dreams) is a disgrace.  It’s one of the best films of 2011.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Michael Shannon’s slow-burn performance anchors Take Shelter.  Shannon plays Curtis, an ordinary working class man who begins to have terrifying, lucid dreams that revolve around a massive storm.  He’s convinced they’re a prophecy, but then again, they might simply be the first stages of insanity.  His wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) slowly comes to realize something is amiss with her husband as his behavior becomes more and more erratic.  The ending (which I would be remiss to reveal) is disappointing, if only because it offers an answer, but it is a chilling study of a man gradually, inexorably walking toward a precipice.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

The Rum Diary is a kind of origin story of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.  This version of Thompson is named Paul Kemp, and he’s played by Johnny Depp (who, of course, played another one-note variation of the Thompson persona in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).  The plot–what there is of one–follows Kemp’s allegedly wild and wacky adventures in Puerto Rico while working for a local newspaper.  There’s very little about Kemp’s (and, hence, Thompson’s) growth as a writer.  It’s all about incidents, and they aren’t too entertaining, either.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

“It was the ’70s,” one of the subjects of Project Nim jokes about her personal life, and that mantra becomes a  jokey theme of the events of the film.  ”Let’s raise a baby chimpanzee as a human baby,” because, after all, “It was the ’70s.”  It might have seemed a noble experiment to observe the nature vs. nurture debate, teaching little (then big) Nim Chimpsky sign language and allowing him to live with a family, but James Marsh’s documentary is all about hindsight being 20/20.  The cruel irony of the whole project is how those noble intentions of treating a chimpanzee as a human are so quickly dismissed (not to mention the chimp itself) when the people behind the study realize the obvious: A chimpanzee is not a human being.  Available on DVD.

Anonymous imagines that William Shakespeare was a fraud–a tool to hide the identity of the aristocratic Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), who actually wrote the plays of Shakespeare (including penning A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he was but a lad).  It is, of course, a fallacious, condescending theory with a foundation that falls apart with any minimal effort.  Aside from that, the movie is a well-researched bit of historical speculation.  The rub is that Edward’s story is a tedious one, and we keep hoping that it is indeed inaccurate.  The real popular version of Shakespeare’s life is at least an interesting one.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

The penultimate entry in the Twilight ”saga” leaves us still wondering exactly what the point of this whole thing might be.  Bella (Kristen Stewart) and her vampire boyfriend Edward (Robert Pattinson) tie the knot while werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is still pining for her.  The climax, a horrifying birthing scene, is solid, and, honestly, this entry resolves everything of any importance.  What more could there be?  ”I already know how this is going to end,” Jacob tells Bella at one point, and we wish he would let us in on the details so that we can finally get on with our lives.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray on Saturday, February 11.

The most shocking part of A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas is how quaint it is.  Here’s series that has prided itself on seeing the everyday world dissolve into insanity as its heroes (John Cho and Kal Penn) do whatever it takes to get high.  Set in New York City at Christmastime, this entry is just ordinary and inoffensive.  Sure, some taboos arise (A baby graduating from a contact high to a full-on dose of cocaine, for example), but the last thing this duo needs is a feeling of routine.  That’s the only thing this entry has to offer.  My review is here.  Available on DVD, Blu-ray, Blu-ray/DVD Combo, and Blu-ray 3D.

An unnamed Driver (Ryan Gosling), a Hollywood stunt driver by day and getaway driver by night, has a very specific set of rules for his life and his work, and Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn’s vibrant character study, watches as he finds himself in one situation after another that causes him to break those rules.  From the virtuoso opening chase sequence, the film is a thrilling marriage of characterization and style.  Set against the backdrop of a slick and seedy Los Angeles, the story revolves around Driver’s relationship with an essentially single woman (Carey Mulligan) whose husband (Oscar Isaac) returns from prison with a debt to settle to criminals.  Albert Brooks plays the villain, Brian Cranston is Driver’s boss/partner-in-crime, and Hossein Amini’s screenplay is empathetic to all its characters.  It’s one of the best films of 2011.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Narratively, Texas Killing Fields is a bit of a mess.  It follows three detectives (a weary Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a brooding Sam Worthington, and an empowered Jessica Chastain) track down a killer.  The investigation is piecemeal; information comes in fragments.  By the end, there’s never much clarity about what has happened.  Yes, these are fundamental faults, but screenwriter Donald F. Ferrarone and director Ami Canaan Mann are more concerned with the bare essentials of the genre than the winding and weaving plot.  It’s about characters reacting to a growing aura of fear and turmoil as inescapable danger lurks around every corner.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

The Big Year is pleasant to the point that it’s wholly disposable.  It’s about three obsessed men who are determined to make something worthwhile of their lives by winning a birding (for the rest of us, birdwatching) competition.  Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson play the trio.  The first two are the underdogs; the last is the champion.  It’s good-natured competition, and director David Frankel keeps the pace lively and the tone affectionate.  There are hints of the isolation that comes with a passionate pursuit, but the few simple conflicts here are resolved too easily to really dig into these men lives.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

In the future, people are genetically engineered to stop aging at 25 and then only have another year to live.  They can earn additional time, which is the currency, by almost any means necessary.  Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is bequeathed over a century by a man who thinks he’s had more than enough time and decides to steal time from those attempting to be immortal and give it to those who literally live day to day–hour to hour.  Puns and thinly veiled political statements ensue.  The concept is not nearly as intelligent as the movie supposes.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

An odd prequel that might as well be a remake for all the elements it copies, The Thing relies on computer-generated effects to create its grisly freak show, and the results are shockingly clean.  The parallels to John Carpenter’s 1982 original are too many to name (I like that this one, by keeping a few character types, implies that every scientific base in the Antarctic has a roguish helicopter pilot), and like its predecessor, it loses the paranoid concerns of people who think everyone around them might be a shape-shifting alien to become a standard chase movie.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

As it turns out, I probably wasted a lot of effort in my review trying not to reveal the identity of the killer in The Double, since the movie’s trailer does so pretty quickly.  Either way, the movie tells you exactly who the villain is just at the end of the first act, and I suppose the point is that the tension is supposed to come from the dramatic irony.  It doesn’t, and the movie, a regression to 1980s Cold War paranoia and the genre conventions that resulted in the movies, hardly has a connection to reality.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

50/50 is not so much about the effects of cancer.  In downplaying the medical plight of its protagonist, an ordinary 30-something man named Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing a character loosely based on screenwriter Will Reiser’s own experience) who discovers he has cancer and a 50 percent chance of survival, the film finds some genuinely affecting moments exploring the support structure surrounding him.  The female characters (i.e., his psychologist (Anna Kendrick) and girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard)) become problematic (Kendrick’s character works until some unfortunate but admittedly sweet romantic feelings develop), but the relationship between Adam and his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen), who seems to be taking advantage of his friend’s misfortune until we come to realize the depth of his caring, is truly touching.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Rachel Weisz’ performance as a UN officer in Sarajevo who discovers a sex trafficking ring is the high point of this well-intentioned drama.  It’s outraged, but merely in a general way and more about the shadowy military-industrial complex that works to cover up a corrupt system of despicable men, corrupt cops, and violent clients.  This raises the age-old question of which is worse: the crime or the cover-up.  I’m inclined to lean toward the former, though The Whistleblower disagrees.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Set in a near future where people have grown bored with human beings beating each other for sport, Real Steel is a simple movie about simple pleasures, namely watching robots pound each other into scrap.  The fact that the story revolves around the idea of people looking for more carnage in sports seems to point to a self-awareness on the part of John Gatins’ screenplay (loosely based on a short story by Richard Matheson).  The human story, about an absentee father (Hugh Jackman) bonding with his son (Daktoa Goyo), is secondary to the fights.  The movie’s routine nature is why it’s a near-miss; it hints at something unique beneath the surface, only to dismiss it for convention.  My review is here.  Available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy Combo.

The series once again goes into the past to unravel more of its useless mythology.  Paranormal Activity 3 finds the previous movies’ central characters as kids as they are tormented by a demon of some sort.  What’s there to be said, really, other than that it’s the same old game of parlor tricks and cheap moments of startles?  Available on DVD/Blu-ray Combo.

The Ides of March tells the ageless story of a man who gains everything but loses his soul in the process.  The question of whether or not the man had much of a soul to being with is another matter entirely.  He is Stephen Myers, the assistant press secretary to an overtly liberal governor (George Clooney) running for President.  The story of a rough Democratic primary will seem familiar to anyone with even a vague recollection of our previous presidential election, but what really sinks the movie–after it does a fine job exploring a campaign in the world of 24-hour news cycles and blogs–is its ultimate reliance on conspiratorial machinations to make a trite point.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

It’s not that I’m not a fan of sports movies; it’s that a good number of sports movies are composed of cliché after cliché.  That’s not the case with Moneyball, which is an underdog sports film for people who have grown tired of the formula of underdog sports movies.  Brad Pitt starts as Billy Beane, the general manager of the professional baseball team with the lowest budget in the MLB.  He decides to try a new approach to recruiting players with the help of a math wiz (Jonah Hill).  Little takes place on the field; this is about conflicts professional and personal on the business side of baseball and how one man tries to make something out of what he thinks might be a wasted life.  It’s one of the best films of 2011.  My review is here.  Available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray/DVD Combo.

What’s Your Number? breaks what is perhaps the only hard and fast rule of comedy: acceptance.  You have to accept the setup, otherwise there is no punch line.  Ally (Anna Faris) is in a state of denial throughout the entire movie as she tries to rekindle a romance with one of the ex-boyfriends so that she doesn’t surpass the average number of sexual partners a magazine article says women have before getting married.  The scenes with the exes either stop short or never happen, meaning whatever jokes the movie might have had never come to fruition.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

You probably won’t believe me until you see it for yourself, but, trust me, Killer Elite is a train wreck.  ”No,” you might say; “It has Jason Statham and Clive Owen and Robert DeNiro.”  Yes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an incoherent mess of political intrigue, literal cliffhangers, and–I kid you not–flashbacks to a failed romance while flying on a plane.  Don’t ask me to explain the plot, and I won’t ask you to if you decide to watch it.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

A throwback to the old, star-studded disaster movies of the 1970s, Contagion takes a clinical approach to witnessing the effects of a global pandemic.  The movie’s opening scenes, following hands as they touch infected faces and then public surfaces, are its most effective, and then we get a big cast, featuring actors like Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, and Laurence Fishburne, who must read stilted technical and metaphorical dialogue.  It’s flat and really only adds up to a thoroughly researched argument for washing one’s hands.  My review is here.  Available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray/DVD Combo.

This could have been scary, but Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark reveals its hand far too early and pretends we didn’t notice.  A young girl (Bailee Madison) moves into a big, spooky manor with her father (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend (Katie Holmes) only to be terrorized by creatures the size of rats one might find in a Chicago alleyway.  They screech and whisper and can be killed by a single blow from 7-year-old girl with a flashlight.  Far from frightening, these little nasties move between unintentionally funny and flat-out annoying.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

Chris Evans plays Mike Weiss, a personal injury attorney with issues, in Puncture, yet another movie that suggests lawyers have the most potentially treacherous occupation imaginable.  If he isn’t being chased by shadowy figures, then he and his best friend/partner (co-director Mark Kassen) are this close to losing their firm because they can’t keep up with the bills.  The big case involves safety needles, and it’s a story that, one day, could be done justice.  My review is here.  Available on DVD and Blu-ray.

The Final Destination franchise has been unique for the fact that they are slasher movies without a tangible, mask-wearing, knife-wielding villain.  It’s just Death dispatching people with a macabre sense of humor; the climax of Final Destination 5 even wrecks that in the climax.  Like the other sequels, takes the premise of the first and gives it a new twist, which is…  Let me check my notes…  Oh, yes: An intended victim can kill another person to take their place.  It’s actually a clever gimmick but one that isn’t revealed until about halfway through the movie and after a handful of gruesome deaths.  My review is here.  Available on DVD, Blu-ray, and DVD/Blu-ray Combo.

There’s a lot of talking about a good, old-fashioned orgy in A Good Old Fashioned Orgy before the characters actually get to it.  A group of friends is about to lose their summer home and decide to throw a good, old-fashioned orgy (Note the proper punctuation) to boost their dull and boring lives.  The actual orgy follows through on the promise of the title, and until then, the only things that are missing are the actual jokes.  My review is here.  Available on DVD.