According to Colwell

Green Zone, which brings together Bourne director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, has some of the same gritty tension from the streets of Baghdad that made The Hurt Locker so gripping. But unlike Locker, which concentrated on the personal and battlefield experiences of a handful of soldiers, Green Zone is wrapped in a package designed to tell the story of the whole sorry mess of how we got into the war in the first place and how we got on the path that led Iraq to years of sectarian violence. It’s an ambitious goal for what is superficially an action movie, and if one accepts the simplifications of that story as legitimate artistic license, it is a goal that is pulled off quite neatly.

It is painful to watch Chief Warrant Officer Miller (Damon) and his team going into dangerous sites in and around Baghdad looking for the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction that will never be found. In spite of pointed directives from his superiors that his is not to question why, his is but to dig and try, Miller wants to understand why the intelligence reports are consistently wrong. When an Iraqi informs him of a suspicious meeting of high-ranking Iraqi military in a nearby house, Miller takes part of his team “off the reservation” to go after a target that won’t turn out to be a figment of everyone’s imagination. This leads him into a power struggle between the cocky young mastermind of Iraqi reconstruction, Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), an underling and proxy for Paul Bremer - the man behind the policy of de-Baathification, and one wizened CIA agent, played by Brendan Gleeson, who had the sense to see the turmoil that was about to ensue.

With Greengrass’s characteristic fast-moving handheld camera tracking chaotic chases and action, and Miller’s dogged pursuit of the truth behind the faulty intelligence reports, Green Zone manages to make you believe for a time that things might turn out differently. And it is smart enough at the same time to emphasize that even a different outcome, perhaps better by some standards, would have been a bloody, and a moral, mess.

Full disclosure: my brother was the First Assistant Director on this movie, and somewhere in the background of one scene is the back of my daughter’s head. Like many of Nancy Meyers’ movies (Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday), It’s Complicated concerns the relatively uncomplicated problems of middle-aged people with beautiful houses, exquisite taste, and a bit of relationship trouble. Here, Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Alec Baldwin) are the long-divorced parents of a trio of perfect children, the youngest of whom has just graduated, and another of whom is about to be married to Harley (John Krasinski). Jane has a classy bakery, while Jake has a classless younger wife, Agness, whose five-year-old son she had with another man while married to Jake. While Agness (yes, two s’s) drags Jake to fertility treatments to get another baby, he begins to long for the life he left behind. Just as Jane begins to entertain the idea (perhaps, post-mid-life crisis, she can reconnect with the Jake she first fell in love with), a less-complicated option in the form of Steve Martin’s architect, Adam, appears. Adam is designing a major addition to Jane’s already splendid Santa Barbara mansion. He is careful, quiet, and a bit unsure of himself, which is a fun casting against type of Martin, while Jake is brash, a bit reckless, and far more sure of himself than he probably should be.

Jane and Jake’s grown kids are confused by the sudden reappearance of their father in their mother’s life, and Jane is confused about her feelings for Jake and Adam, and Adam is confused about whether or not Jane is actually available. Jake, played with typical mischievous glee by Baldwin, is the one who seems pretty sure about what he wants, namely, to lose the complications of his young wife and her manipulative kid and regain the comfortable security of his original family. Krasinski, as the future son-in-law, provides a number of funny moments, and the movie garners an R rating for an extended scene where Jane and Adam are stoned at a party. It’s Complicated has a number of funny scenes and managed to keep me guessing about just how Jane, who is the central character of the movie, would decide to deal with her complications.

This is not going to be a favorable review, but in all fairness to The Lovely Bones, I should have known going in that it was not likely to be a movie I would like. I find movies (and books, for that matter) about serial killers purely unpleasant. I have never found a positive aspect to any sense of suspense I get from watching them.

I have not read Alice Sebold’s book, which this movie is based on, but I knew that it was narrated by a teenage girl after her murder. I had hoped that would mean the story would be more about the lives of the people she left behind. Unfortunately, it came as a complete surprise to me when at the end of the movie, the dead girl Susie (Saoirse (pronounced “Jane”) Ronan, very good) explains that the “lovely bones” refers to the relationships that built up between people after her death. It was a surprise because most of the movie deals with Susie’s death, her subsequent exploration of purgatory, and her father’s (Mark Wahlberg) grief-stricken pursuit of the killer. Somewhere in there is a reasonable suspense movie about a psychopath - not a movie I would like, mind you, but a reasonable movie nonetheless. I’m guessing that most of the movie takes place on our mortal coil, but it sure felt like the forays into Susie’s dreamscape between heaven and Earth lasted an eternity. She walks across a meadow, but look! The meadow is actually the ocean! No, wait, it’s a forest! And the leaves on that tree just became birds that flew away! That kind of stuff can get old in a hurry.

Susan Sarandon shows up as Susie’s grandmother to try to hold the family together. She is initially a ridiculously over-the-top incompetent (cooking leads to fires, laundry leads to a roomful of suds, dirt is literally swept under the rug). But, like Susie’s own mother, her story of transformation is not told. There are glimpses of interesting character development with Susie’s little sister, but too little time is spent on her and too much on Susie wandering through the fields of purgatory. Maybe it is normal that the one character I found I could relate to was Susie’s father. And connecting to a man whose daughter has been brutally murdered, as I mentioned up top, is not my favorite movie activity.

Another Quentin Tarantino guilty pleasure, Inglourious Basterds is a peculiar mix of suspense with a pace that is at times maddeningly slow. Each act of the movie is almost a standalone short. String them together, though, and at 2 hours and 40 minutes, the whole was too long for me. And I don’t understand the misspelling of the title. But, knowing that Tarantino probably did not feel constrained by history when making a World War II movie, there is real tension and suspense about the plot of an undercover band of Nazi-slaughtering Americans led by Brad Pitt. On the other side, Christoph Waltz plays Hans Landa, an SS officer adept at sniffing out the plots of the Americans and the French resistance. Pitt is all hokum and Tennessee slang, while the polyglot Landa is pure refinement. The contrast ends there, though, as each is equally brutal in dealing with the enemy. With brutal violence typical of a Tarantino film, this movie is not for everyone, but I certainly found it more satisfying than Kill Bill.

Normally I only review movies I see in a theater if only because I would not be able to keep up if I included movies seen in airplanes and on DVD. However, I’ve decided to make an exception for those movies I see on DVD screeners that I receive thanks to being a member of the Screen Actors Guild. To promote movies for the SAG awards, some studios provide screeners to SAG members (a non-trivial 100,000 membership) in advance of the awards. The Up in the Air DVD all but self-destructs after the awards: reminders that it is for awards screening appear every 10-15 minutes at the bottom of the screen.

So how’s the movie? One of the best this year. It certainly stands out as a thoughtful and touching movie with an intelligent script compared to most of the formulaic genre movies that make it to the multiplex. When I mention that it is about a man whose job it is to go around firing people, the movie might sound like an art-house downer. It is nothing of the kind. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham who works for a company that other companies hire to handle the messy business of laying off their employees. So he flies back and forth across the country, pursuing an astronomical number of frequent flier miles. In fact, entry to the most elite club of frequent fliers (”I have a number in mind. I’m not there yet.”) seems to be Ryan’s life goal. Unburdened by anything to large to fit into his carry-on bag, his least favorite destination is his own home. When he’s not telling people they’ve been fired, he gives motivational speeches. The wrinkle is that he is trying to motivate people to disconnect. Disconnect from their belongings and their human relationships. They are, after all, the heaviest baggage we lug around. Right?

When his company hires Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) fresh out of college and full of ideas to streamline downsizing, Ryan’s clockwork march to lonely frequent flier supremacy is put in jeopardy. But not in the way he first thinks. Ryan tutors Natalie while carrying on a casual airport-hotel affair with Alex (Vera Farmiga), another frequent flier. Ryan’s estranged family, and Natalie, and even Alex inadvertently offer Ryan glimpses of an alternate life. Ryan, professing lack of interest in personal baggage, is nevertheless frequently the most compassionate and empathetic character in the movie. Kendrick and Clooney are superb, and the script by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner based on Walter Kim’s novel paint a portrait of believable, complex, and likeable characters. The movie is a pleasure.

I have a soft spot for musicals, especially those that have lots of showy song and dance numbers, so Robert Marshall’s adaptation of the stage musical Nine would seem to be right up my alley. But Nine pretty much only has showy song and dance numbers. Which is to say, it’s kind of missing a story. Usually musicals can get by with a thin story if the songs are strong and if they are in fact telling that thin story. Nine has two problems: the songs are not that strong, and they are not telling a story. So it wasn’t long before I was wondering why I was watching it. The reason, I guess, was to see if the next song was good. Sometimes it was, sometimes not so much. Also, Marion Cotillard was charmingly beautiful and a pleasure just to look at.

These problems with Nine have their roots in the source material: it is based on a stage musical which in turn is based on Fellini’s 8 1/2, both of which are about a movie director who is unable to make a movie. Yes, this is a movie about a guy not doing something. And it is clear from the outset that nothing will be done. It is filled, then, with imagined musical numbers performed by the women in his life. Some of these were quite entertaining. I particularly liked Fergie’s number, and Kate Hudson’s song was catchy. I don’t really remember the others. Cotillard was beautiful, and Penelope Cruz was simultaneously cute and sultry (a difficult double-trick to pull off I would imagine). Daniel Day-Lewis does as much as can be done with what he is given, which is a troubled, philandering middle-aged artist who has writer’s block and a penchant for imagining musical numbers by the women he has known.

Sherlock Holmes is a kick-ass scientist hero! The reinvention of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as a Victorian era action hero duo in the new movie Sherlock Holmes may change the character of Holmes’ adventures, but it also celebrates the deductive reasoning of his character.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Holmes with Jude Law as an equally adventurous, and macho, Dr. Watson. The movie begins with what appears to be the culmination of their final joint enterprise in apprehending 19th century bad guys in London. They stop a demonic serial killer, Lord Blackwood, (also a member of parliament, naturally) who has been ritualistically murdering young women to serve some nefarious and mystical scheme. When Blackwood appears to rise from his grave, however, the two reunite to close the case.

Director Guy Ritchie does an excellent job of putting us in the head of Holmes who, it must be said, leads a somewhat tormented existence because of his inability to put the brakes on his runaway brain. It’s great for solving crimes and mysteries (and, in a clever wrinkle, figuring out where the other guy’s fist is going to land), but not so great for light dinner party banter. Holmes engages in bare knuckle boxing matches, apparently for the diversion. Whenever he bothers to pay attention to his opponent, he is able to anticipate and plan the series of blows that will win him the bout. It’s a 19th century version of the Matrix’s “bullet time.” When challenged by Watson’s fiancee to divine her past, however, Holmes’ inability to edit and control his powers of observation and deduction just make for embarrassment and a glass of wine to the face. Downey is characteristically charismatic, but his English-inflected bass mutterings, frequently at a rapid clip and into his collar, were sometimes difficult for me to understand. Jude Law is a fun Dr. Watson, far from the hapless assistant of past Holmes incarnations.

While the resurrected Blackwood continues killing people in ways that appear to be magical, a former flame of Holmes played by Rachel McAdams gets involved in his investigation. But her role seems mostly designed to lay the foundation for a sequel. But Holmes stays focused on solving the conundrum of Blackwood’s cultish murders and plot to - what else - take over the world. While those around him are readily persuaded that supernatural forces are at play, Holmes is steadfastly rational. “Data, data, data!” he demands of the police investigating one of Blackwood’s apparently magical murders. Holmes lives by the basic tenet of science: any theory lives and dies by how well it fits the data. His entire approach is based on collecting data and conducting experiments. Plus some pretty kick-ass hand to hand combat.

Movies with as much hype and expectation as Avatar do not come along every year. The movie has been assigned the duty of revolutionizing cinema and doing for 3D movies what The Wizard of Oz did for color 70 years ago. With such expectations, it is hard not to use superlatives in describing the movie. I made an effort to keep my expectations modest prior to seeing Avatar, a job made more difficult by a daughter who could barely contain her praise after seeing a midnight showing on opening day. Not only did it exceed my expectations on a technical level, it certainly deserves the mantle of a landmark movie as a work of art.

This was the first “RealD” 3D movie I have seen, and it was also the first time I’ve seen a movie in 3D without the annoying ghost double images that have plagued every other 3D technology. The 3D effect is not used to dangle objects over the audience or shoot things toward the camera to make us jump. I did not see a single shot that seemed designed to capitalize on the 3D effect, and for that I thank James Cameron. Instead, for the most part, it worked the way 3D should work and just made the actors and action on the screen look like it was actually there. The effect was subtle, but convincing. Avatar may very well end up being the landmark movie that makes 3D the new standard. While it by no means ruined conventional 2D movies for me, it achieved the technical feat of making 3D really work, without any sacrifices to the quality of the picture or the telling of the story. Maybe soon we will all have our own RealD glasses that are nicer and more comfortable than the loaners from the theater.

Avatar takes place on a moon called Pandora orbiting a gas giant planet around some unidentified star. Our own gas giant Saturn has a moon named Pandora, but it is a puny rubble pile of rock and ice, while Avatar’s Pandora is resplendent with life and color. To the misfortune of its inhabitants, Pandora has a large deposit of - I hesitate to write the name - “unobtainium.” Its whimsical name reveals that what it is and why people need it is irrelevant to the purposes of the movie. It is the classic McGuffin. Humans have invaded Pandora with a sizable military installation and a tiny scientific contingent consisting of Sigourney Weaver’s botanist, Grace, and a handful of assistants. Enter Jake Sully, the identical twin of one of Grace’s crew who died just before he was about to make use of a new avatar - bottle-bred bodies made by mixing the DNA of the native Na’vi people of Pandora with the DNA of the future human user of the body. Jake, a paraplegic Marine, is brought in to take the place of his dead brother.

He, and Grace and another scientist, Norm, enter their avatars by climbing into chambers and having their consciousnesses transported through unspecified means into the minds of the otherwise unconscious avatar bodies. Wisely, Cameron wastes little time on establishing Jake’s past, Earth’s problems, or the mechanics of avatars. He gets us quickly into the avatar and into the discovery of Pandora. Plant and animal life literally glow with a rich palette of blues, greens, and fiery reds that make the paintings of Maxfield Parrish look practically monochrome in comparison. To describe the creatures and the scenery of Pandora in words would be to make them trite, kind of like saying the Mona Lisa is a painting of a woman with an enigmatic smile, or Michelangelo’s David is a sculpture of a muscular man.

The story itself is both simple and familiar, even as the movie’s technology and setting are complex and completely novel and alien. The Na’vi are noble primitives that live in harmony with their ecosystem. They are the embodiment of the most romantic image of Native Americans fighting the noble struggle to keep their peaceful and harmonious existence safe from the invading hordes of Europeans. Jake is granted three months by the military industrial complex, personified by the militarily evil Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang - bulging muscles, scars, and an obvious desire to kick some native ass) and the corporately evil Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi - practicing his putting on the control center floor, twiddling samples of unobtainium, and counting the days until the next quarterly report is due) to earn the trust of the Na’vi and convince them to move off their prime piece of real estate and avoid a bloody relocation.

Jake is first rescued by, and then trained by, none other than the chief’s beautiful daughter, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). You can imagine the rest if you have not yet seen it. Yes, it is a complete cliche, but I found I didn’t care. Creatures on Pandora have neurological ports as part of their biology - a tangle of nerve endings at the end of a tentacle (concealed by a braid of hair for the Na’vi) - that enables two individuals of different species to communicate telepathically. It is at the heart of why the Na’vi are so connected to their home, and has a lot of interesting story potential on its own that is not really explored in this movie. The idea is a staple of science fiction (think of the ports on the back of the neck in the Matrix movies), but here it is given an entirely new twist. It is just one example of the imagination that is on display on the screen. Not only is the movie a visual work of art, but I found myself totally drawn in, cheering for the overpowered Na’vi, hoping to see Quaritch get his due, and rooting for Jake to succeed in his transformation. I’ll see it again, on the big screen, in 3D.