Chronicle vs Warrior

Before Chronicle, there was a trailer for Project X, a “found footage” movie about a high school house party. By the end, I had hit my limit of first-person, hand-held, Blair Witch-style storytelling. The novelty is gone, leaving only limited perspective, plot holes, and ugly cinematography. And then Chronicle started, and it’s told the exact same way.

Fine, but this is the last one.

Luckily, in Chronicle, the camera is held by a character that knows how to use it, and has a life truly worth filming. Andrew (Dane DeHaan), is a nice High School kid who has decided to record his life. His mother is terminally sick, and his father is abusive. It’s not quite clear if he’s seeking to document only this period in his life, or if it’s an ongoing project, but early in Chronicle, he uses the evidence as a threat against his thug of a dad (Michael Kelly). Andrew’s treated at school much as he is at home, meaning, with taunts and fists. If Andrew were more socially-accepted, his classmates would probably love that he brings a camera everywhere; but since it’s an outcast behind the lens, they treat him like a voyeur. Andrew has a friend in his much more outgoing and laid-back cousin, Matt (Alex Russell). If not for the opportunity to film everything, Matt would have never gotten Andrew to a party. It’s basically a rave, held in an empty building near the woods, and it’s packed with teens. Eventually, Andrew is driven back out into the parking lot, having grown tired of the camera being slapped. I get the need to paint Andrew as an outsider, but show me a party full of teens in 2012 that minds having their picture taken. Suddenly, Matt rushes to Andrew, needing his camera. He’s with Steve (the fantastically named Michael B. Jordan), a popular jock running for Class President. What would those two bros want with Andrew? They lead him into a clearing in the woods, where they’ve found a hole in the ground. There’s an odd sound emanating from it randomly, like speaker feedback. Steve jumps in the hole, followed by Matt. Andrew doesn’t want to, but he has the camera, and it’s not like he has anywhere else less scary to be otherwise. The hole actually leads to a cave, which you might have guest, houses a meteor. Did the meteor drop into the original hole and then roll into the cave? Did it drop to Earth, create its own hole, and then grow? Was it there all along? Why did all the other kids leave? Matt says there were others, but that they got bored. Maybe the meteor wasn’t as interested in them? Whatever the reason, only three guys go down into the cave. The meteor is glowing and spiked, and contains tiny black roots that stretch out from within and appear to be reaching for them. Everyone’s noses bleed, which in a movie you know is bad news. Fade to black.

When we next see the three meteor-touchers, they’re best friends, happy, still filming everything, and out enjoying a sunny day of moving things with their minds. They’re still getting the hang of it, Matt got smacked in the face with a baseball, but the guys’ powers are legit. Something in that cave gave them telekinetic abilities. Because of the flash forward, we don’t know how much time has passed, or which of them noticed his powers first. Before long, they’re moving much more than baseballs, tossing people and shopping carts around in a store, and sliding a car into a different spot in a parking lot. And then they figure out how to fly. Andrew, Matt and Steve don’t just hover around their bedrooms or yards, either. They fly high above the city, throwing a football and diving through the clouds. The question arises of what to do with these abilities, besides fun and pranks.

Chronicle is not typical of the genre its cinematography suggests. Instead of a horror film, we get a movie more like Unbreakable: an origin story for superheroes with no comic book. One of the pranks, in the trial run of testing their powers, goes horribly wrong. Matt declares that they have to establish rules for using their new powers, and have to agree to keep their secret. It’s all very “With great power comes great responsibility.” And the one among them who probably knows the most comic book origin stories—Andrew—is also the one who has the most trouble adhering to their guidelines. The anger he feels over his situation at home and school amplify his powers in a way the other two don’t experience. A school talent show gives Andrew a brief glimpse of a happier life, but like Carrie at the prom, it’s not meant to last.

Chronicle is the first film directed by Josh Trank, who finds ingenious methods of sneaking wide-screen cinematography and special effects into a movie that’s supposedly made with a teenager’s video camera. Andrew upgrades to a better camera, and becomes adept enough with his telekinesis that he can let go of it, letting it float behind and above him and his friends, getting the shots unavailable to the characters in Cloverfield. Whenever the opportunity arises, Trank cuts from Andrew’s point-of-view to security cameras, bystanders’ phones, and another documentarian working on her blog. Other movies that have attempted this technique have done so in a way that seems to mask a lack of special effects prowess, but in Chronicle’s case, the opposite is true. By giving Chronicle a documentary aspect, the special effects are as magical and believable as movie special effects can muster these days. In that way, Chronicle reminded me a little of District 9.  Andrew and his friends really do seem to fly; just like the kids watching that talent show, we see it, know it isn’t possible, and then believe anyway, because we haven’t been given another option.

The acting in Chronicle is mostly good. The bulk of it rests on Dane DeHaan, who shows us what might have happened if Leonardo DiCaprio had played Donnie Darko. As in that movie, it’s really only the lead with much of an arc to play. Matt and Steve already probably seemed to Andrew like people with super powers before they’d ever gone down that hole. And Andrew’s parents are never more than Sick Mom and Mean Dad. Chronicle tries to pitch Andrew as the movie’s hero and then makes him its villain, with too few scenes remaining for a fully satisfying payoff. A tag before the credits does a little damage control, a little too late. Still, that Chronicle thrives in a genre I had washed my hands of before the opening scene, gives me hope that we may have a director who might be able to freshen up other tired genres as well.

Chronicle is one of those movies that reveal its template as it progresses. Although I didn’t like it quite as much as Super 8, Chronicle’s influences are just as apparent, and for the most part are celebrated just as much. It’s tempting to follow it with Spider-man, but another recent film had a similar surprising emotional resonance for its genre, as well as a much-needed jolt of realistic effects.

Warrior, directed by Gavin O’Connor, tells the story of Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a father and high school teacher trying to keep his head above water financially. His wife (Jennifer Morrison) thinks he’s moonlighting as a bouncer at a club to help make the mortgage, but Brendan is really fighting in matches held in the parking lot.

Across town, Tommy (Tom Hardy) has returned home to his father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), whom he hasn’t seen in years. Tommy’s memories of his father are of alcoholism and abuse, even though Paddy is sober and repentant now, and seems thrilled to see his son. Tommy is a marine, and there’s a shadow of secrecy over why he’s come home, and why he sought out his father after all this time (Tommy’s mother died a few years back). The only motive Tommy will reveal is that he wants to start fighting again (he wrestled in school), and wants his dad to train him. Paddy loves the idea, and sets up a plan for getting Tommy into fighting shape, although any hopes he has of reconciliation are for naught.

You can probably tell a couple things (both were spoiled by the trailer, but you’d get them anyway): Tommy and Brendan are brothers, and they’ll eventually have to fight each other. But like Chronicle, Warrior is a movie we think we’ve seen enough of that makes the case for watching at least one more. The fight movie has a list of plot points to move through, and of course Warrior checks them all. But there’s a focused honesty at play, both in the MMA fight scenes (every punch seems to actually connect, and the sound effects crew makes sure we hear each one), as well as the quieter moments of family drama. Edgerton is a convincing fighter, but makes us believe Brendan gets his strength and inspiration from his family. Tommy has different motives, but Tom Hardy is so good that they don’t matter. We want him to win just as much, because it’s so apparent that whatever brought him to the ring was a last resort. Also, Hardy looks like he could fight for real. Dude’s shoulders have shoulders.

The backbone of the movie is Nick Nolte’s performance. Paddy created a map of violence for his boys to follow in life, but managed, somehow, to give it a practical application. They both hate him, probably justifiably, but I couldn’t. Nolte plays Paddy as if he’s got open wounds. A scene late in the movie finds Paddy breaking down, quoting Moby Dick and searching for someone or something in his life to hold on to, and maybe something that will hold him too. It’s a hell of a performance, bigger than the genre its in and the camera that captured it.

Chronicle: B

Warrior: A-

Top Ten 2011

 1. Hugo

 2. The Artist

 3. Young Adult

 4. The Descendants

 5. Shame

 6. Moneyball

 7. The Tree Of Life

                                          8. Super 8

                                          9. Drive

                                        10. Beginners

Best Actor: Michael Fassbender, Shame & A Dangerous Method & X-Men First Class

Best Actress: Charlize Theron, Young Adult

Best Supporting Actor: Nick Nolte, Warrior

Best Supporting Actress: Carey Mulligan, Shame

The Iron Lady vs Evita

Every frame of Evita delivers on the intention of presenting Madonna as Serious. Serious about singing, serious about acting, serious about, I dunno, historical accuracy and tight hairstyles and covering the gap in her teeth that no serious actress would ever leave uncovered. And it worked. Madonna is good in the role of Eva Peron. Her costars, Jonathan Price and Antonio Banderes are good too, the latter exceptional, but the entire point of the movie, from the day Madonna was cast, was to make sure she didn’t suck. What would have happened if she did? Broadway geeks would have revolted? Or they would have celebrated? Evita being bad would have been a disappointment, I guess, but it being good was probably one too. Six of “I told you so” is worth half a dozen crow-eatings. So director Alan Parker made sure Evita was right down the middle: so classy, straight-laced, and by-the-book that no one could find fault with it; and so classy, straight-laced, and by-the-book that no one could truly get excited about it either. I get that casting a pop singer in a prestigious musical brought a certain amount of baggage, but I think the movie could have benefited from letting a little of it bleed into the material. Chicago, Moulin Rouge, and even Hairspray were successful because they embraced a more modern aesthetic, and were decidedly dark in tone. Evita, with its built-in music video star, could have broken new film musical ground, had it been directed by one of MTV’s 1990s’ auteurs, like David Fincher or Mark Romanek (both of whom got better performances out of Madonna than any of her film directors). Parker does a serviceable job, but plays it safe, as if adding any flash, irony, or humor to the movie would tempt accusations of distracting from his somber topic. Eva Peron was controversial because of her lavish lifestyle, political corruptness, and mankilling seductiveness, and she was played by an actress we’d all already seen hitchhiking naked. Why not turn up the volume, interpret the original piece, and make a statement on politics and celebrity (or at least film in a shade other than brown)? Oliver Stone tried for years to make Evita; now that’s a guy who would have pissed off the theatre geeks. Parker gained access to the actual palace balcony for Eva Peron’s speeches, and then frames it as if it’s a set. Filming on location, and you just set the camera in front of the balcony? Helicopter that shit in, Parker! Steadycam from down the block. Shoot from Evita’s point-of-view. And turn on some lights; come on dude, we know it’s a movie.

The Iron Lady has the opposite problem: It stars an actor commonly regarded as the very best, and puts her in a film prepared to distract from her at any given moment. You have Meryl Streep. Can we hold the camera still for a second?

The Iron Lady tells the life story of Margaret Thatcher, the only woman to rise to the position of British Prime Minister. We see her, non-linearly, at three stages in her life: from her teen years through her first political campaign; during her campaign for, and eventual tenure as, Prime Minister; and in her later, post-retirement years, staving off the symptoms of dementia. The first period is portrayed, quite well, by Alexandra Roach. The second two are handled by Meryl Streep, in a performance so detailed, it seems given by two distinct actresses, as if Judi Dench had played both periods of Iris Murdoch’s life in Iris.

Streep has played non-fiction characters before (Karen Silkwood, Julia Child, a thinly-veiled Anna Wintour), but none to such a meticulous extent as in The Iron Lady. Besides the age range represented (the movie spans around seventy years, with at least fifty of them portrayed by Streep), The Iron Lady checks off each shift in Margaret Thatcher’s persona. Thatcher underwent significant changes in the way her public self was perceived, including wardrobe and hair makeovers, as well as vocal coaching (shades of The King’s Speech) to give her a more commanding presence to voters and her peers. So Streep starts with being made over to embody Margaret Thatcher, and then Margaret Thatcher also gets made over. Did I say Streep was playing two versions of Margaret Thatcher? Make that three. Thatcher had, by the time she was Prime Minister, grown confident in her views, as well as the methods necessary to get them heard. Thatcher demanded respect, to the point of manipulating and humiliating her colleagues when necessary. By the end of her reign, she was perhaps drunk with power, more satisfied with getting her way than in making true progress. The Iron Lady is murky about a lot of its political details. Director Phyllida Lloyd never focuses on any specific moment in Thatcher’s career, jumping from one generic moment of gender discrimination or victory to another. Like Evita, The Iron Lady has footage (I think The Iron Lady’s is real) of crowds rioting in the streets, and as in that movie, not much is said to explain what’s happening. We’ll see Thatcher and her staff around a boardroom table, then cut to a violent protest, without ever being given any indication that it’s outside her window, or across town, or in another city altogether. The only situation that’s given any clarity is Thatcher’s ordered attack on Argentina in the Falkland Islands. This conflict would have made a strong film all its own. Historical dramas that focus on one incident in a politician’s life, think Thirteen Days or The Queen, often have a greater impact than one covering a character’s entire life. I mentioned this thing covers about seventy years, right?

Unfortunately, Lloyd remedies the problem of playing out seventy years in two hours by jump-cutting back and forth between time periods, often just as things start to rev up. Streep has done massive amounts of work here, and some of it’s breathtaking. Thatcher’s later years are especially well-crafted. Streep modulates carefully between Thatcher’s moments of lucidity and dementia. It never plays like she’s got some movie-contrived spell coming on. She’s never cartoonishly wonderstruck, or overly grizzled and curmudgeonly. The latter-day scenes have a warmth and resignation that don’t exist in the rest of the movie, in which Thatcher is driven by ambition. Jim Broadbent plays her husband (in the later scenes, he’s either a ghost or a figment of Thatcher’s imagination), and is a charming foil for Streep. Don’t get used to it. As soon as they settle in for tea and conversation, we flip back to a debate in Parliament. And as soon as that version of Thatcher gets worked into a lather of fierce rhetoric, look out, because we’re heading live to mounted police in riot gear, hosing down soccer hooligans. And when a scene is allowed to play out for any length, the camera spins around its subjects, or turns on an angle, or fuzzes to represent Thatcher’s tunnel-vision, with the sound coming and going. Meryl Streep is probably the greatest living actor, with no one disputing her casting in any single thing. We want a great director to tell the story, but if she has Meryl Streep on board, then the greatest storytelling tool is already in place, and tricks aren’t necessary. Save those for the pop stars.

The Iron Lady: B-

Evita: B-

A Dangerous Method vs It's Kind Of A Funny Story

At first, mental health issues were handled by stoning you in the town square because you were a witch. And then later, you were put in an asylum for nymphomaniacs. Right? I’m making up the history here, if you hadn’t guessed. Treatments for mental problems have only been non-terrifying for about a hundred years. We have Carl Jung to thank for that.

The first patient we see visit Jung (Michael Fassbender) is Sabina (Keira Knightley), a young Russian woman so deep in the throws of hysteria that her face and body become locked in the pained, distorted expression of someone having a seizure. Her fingers curl, her jaw juts outward, and she can barely speak. Sabina’s earliest memories of are of abuse, and any reminder of them leaves her completely debilitated. Dr. Jung informs Sabina that her treatment will be primarily based on conversation, and that he’ll sit behind her, to keep her from becoming self-conscious. I assume it works, because their therapy continues long enough for Dr. Jung to take Sabina on as an assistant, reading a little light meter during personality tests.

A couple years pass, and Sabina is stable enough to live on her own, continue her education, and begin her own research. Of course, she still needs to see Dr. Jung, only now she sees him in her apartment. Sabina and Dr. Jung’s meetings in her apartment cross the line of doctor/patient privilege, and give A Dangerous Method a surprisingly heady, kinky rush.

During this same period of time, Dr. Jung has become friends with Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortenson). Freud is of course already highly-regarded, and serves as a mentor for Jung. They have long conversations that often dissolve into therapy sessions for Jung, in which Freud finds sexual parallels in each of his stories and dreams. Jung feels like there’s value in studying things like precognition, telepathy and telekinesis, but Freud dismisses the idea that the mind is capable of influencing the outside world. We see that view played out in their stories as well. Dr. Jung, despite having a wife and baby at home, has a free imagination about the possibilities of life. By the film’s peak, he’s become down right adventuresome, at least in his opinions and attitudes. At home, things are more staid and conventional. I never got a sense of much love between Jung and his wife, beyond maybe a traditional form of comfort in the familiar. His wife (Sarah Gadon), reminded me of Winona Ryder’s character in The Age Of Innocence. She’s wealthy, and defers to the man in her life, but to mistake her demureness for naïveté is taking a pretty big gamble. I’m sure some viewers will pity Jung’s wife, but she’s only a victim for as long as she’s willing to be. I found her less interesting than Sabina, but Jung’s reasons for his role in each of their lives, and theirs in his, were pretty sound.

Kink aside, much of A Dangerous Method is standard historical drama. We get handy time and setting subtitles at the beginning of each (frequent) chapter of the film. Some of the shifts were too abrupt for my taste. We’d settle in on a rich conversation between Freud and Jung, only to cut away instantly to another city, two years later. Likewise, the time shifts cause great leaps in Sabina’s mental state that might have been illuminating to see play out. She’s screaming and thrashing about in the mud, then she’s working on her studies and living alone. David Cronenberg is such an unconventional director, it’s a bit of a surprise to see him take on something as traditional as A Dangerous Method, with its drawing room debates and adherence to historical documents. A Dangerous Method contains none of Cronenberg’s usual flights of greed-based violence. What we have instead is a sort of sexual freedom uncommon in other movies, and I’d wager uncommon to the times of Jung and Freud as well. Dr. Jung maintains separate lives; at home it’s one of courtly manners, wet nurses, and rote sexuality. At Sabina’s apartment, the sex is of boundaries pushed and belts swung. It’s rough and exciting, and potentially dangerous for the relapse-prone Sabina. There’s a moment with some blood that is at once practical and honest, but also a wink to those of us in the audience expecting Cronenberg to bring the gore.

A Dangerous Method is smartly, and somewhat cheekily, cast and performed. Michael Fassbender fills Dr. Jung with a passionate curiosity for his own passionate curiosity. Dr. Jung is always searching, asking, testing. His fascination with Sabina’s journey to recovery leads him to an awakening of his own. I saw A Dangerous Method the day after I saw Shame, and kept thinking how helpful it would be if Fassbender’s character in Shame could just sit down with Dr. Jung for an afternoon talk. As Freud, Viggo Mortenson gets to be the voice of the previous generation, groaning through Jung’s more elaborate theories. He’s also a cigar-chomping metaphor, puffing around A Dangerous Method’s sexual subplots (Vincent Cassell helps with this as well, as a patient who gets a perverse joy out of showing Dr. Jung the fun of embracing darker impulses). The biggest surprise is Keira Knightley. As Sabina, Knightley has the job of being the audience’s introduction to the practices of the time. She’s our guinea pig for what treatments work and which do not, and gaining our sympathies is key. I was with her from the start. She’s also required to be the film’s sexual and romantic touchstone, its voice of reason, and the agent of change for the plot, all while playing a non-fiction character. Sabina is subject to the rules, laws and desires of men in her culture, but also in complete control of her own destiny. I’m not sure Knightley is who I would have picked to play Sabina, but I’m glad David Cronenberg did.

The Age Of Innocence is another movie of characters trapped in a culture divided by changing sexual mores, directed by an icon better known for handling more brutish subject matter. If you’re looking for an adults-only, costume drama double feature, you could do so much worse. For example, you could bring it to the present day and watch It’s Kind Of A Funny Story, which takes the idea of A Dangerous Method’s “talking cure” and treats it like a fun thing to do when you’re bored, or maybe a little stuck creatively. Check in to the Psych Ward, chill out, meet a cute girl, no sweat.

The kind of funny story of the title belongs to Craig (Kier Gilcrest), a high school kid who’s smart and quiet, and I guess lonely or something. He’s just a bit muddled, not sick, but checks himself into the adult Psych Ward anyway, to make sure he’s not crazy. He’s not. He’s not even movie crazy. He wouldn’t fall under the banner of Borderline Personality Disorder, or clinical depression for that matter. He just doesn’t look forward to much, or feel much hope. Dr. Jung would be baffled not to find anything diagnosable wrong with Craig. Dr. Freud would tell him to go home and masturbate. His therapist (Viola Davis) seems kind of bemused by his precociousness. Craig already seems to know the language of therapy, how to diagnose himself, how to be cured. He grows the most in his week of treatment, through art (Craig draws beautiful ink cityscapes), and through his friendships with Bobby (Zach Galifianakis, so good. I’d watch a full movie of him and Viola Davis talking shit out.), and Noelle (Emma Roberts), the latter of whom has an artful scar on her cheek. Craig thinks she’s beautiful anyway, obviously, as if he’s the one to win over. Craig is a sad-sack slack-jaw (Gilcrest is fine in the role, just calling them like I see them), and is pursued not just by Roberts, but by Zoe Kravitz. But he just needs to work on himself first, everybody, because It’s Kind Of A Funny Story is really Garden State.

Remember in Garden State when Natalie Portman and Zach Braff are in the bathtub (or in front of the fireplace maybe?), and she tells him (I’m paraphrasing), “When my mom sees me really thinking about something, she’ll say ‘You’re in it.’ That’s you, right now you’re really in it.” And just because he thinks she’s meaningful, and sounds sincere, everyone went out and bought the soundtrack and a decade later we still can’t get rid of Coldplay? But it’s actually meaningless dialogue that could have been said by either character about anything? It’s Kind Of A Funny Story plays like it was written and directed by that line of dialogue. It’s Kind Of A Funny story tries way too hard to be clever and modern and young, but it’s so much we’ve seen before. Patients put on scrubs and pretend to be doctors. Formerly quiet patients express themselves musically. Good artists are troubled artists. The kids in It’s Kind Of A Funny Story would run screaming from Sabina and her sexually-repressed rages. I bet their doctors would find her a nice change of pace.

A Dangerous Method: B+

It’s Kind Of A Funny Story: C

Shame vs Somewhere

The portrayal of addiction in movies is a tricky one, because there’s always an equator to cross between, His life looks like fun. I think I could handle it. and Whoa. That would kill me. In Shame, it takes about ten minutes. Brandon (Michael Fassbender) lives a life of such risk, mentally and physically, that nearly every scene seems to put his life in danger, even when no logical danger is imminent. Brandon lives a life of cool efficiency. His apartment is pristine, with everything in stainless steel, and decorated in whites, grays and blues, a scheme duplicated in his wardrobe. Brandon is modern and industrial, like he’s part of the city, and not just one of its inhabitants. In a fantasy setting, Brandon could be Bruce Wayne, or Patrick Bateman. In a way, he’s both. Brandon is smart, successful and charming, but he’s also nearly crippled by an addiction to sex. In the initial moments, I thought, yeah, looks fun, I can handle that. By the end of the first twenty-four hours of Shame’s story, I had changed my tune.

Shame is the second collaboration between Michael Fassbender and director Steve McQueen. Their first, Hunger, was the true story of IRA members hunger-striking in prison. It’s a harrowing experience; you can practically smell the dank cells. So I didn’t go into Shame expecting No Strings Attached (which claims to only have sex on the brain, but can’t focus). Even with a warning, I was taken aback by Shame’s emotional frankness. I know the buzz of the movie is its sexual frankness, and that’s there as well, although not as much as you’d think. Fassbender and his various partners (mainly prostitutes), are indeed shown naked from all angles, but camera cuts away from, or zooms too close to, the action, so that we’re seeing less than we think. This tactic is most effectively used in a three-way scene in which the camera, rather than stepping back and showing us everything, pushes up close, so close that it’s practically a four-way with the viewer involved. Brandon’s life is exhausting for him physically (his workday is punctuated by Red Bull, the full-sugar kind. Pervert.), but also emotionally. He exhibits a cool, charming persona amongst strangers, allowing him to put some non-prostitute notches in his bedpost. The persona cracks some when Brandon is in the presence of what I call rookies. His boss (James Badge Dale) is an obvious, clumsy flirt, of the Entourage/Axe school of ladykilling. Brandon is meticulous, noticing eye color and showing an interest beyond sex, even though he has not one single interest beyond sex. Another rookie, of a different sort, is Brandon’s sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan). Sissy breezes into Brandon’s life so casually, I assumed she was an ex-girlfriend. We’re first introduced to her in a series of increasingly agitated voicemails, and then she appears one day, in Brandon’s shower. It’s clear these sort of visits happen once in a while, when Sissy’s recovering from a break-up, or when she needs money. She’s only tentatively welcome in Brandon’s house. He doesn’t want her there when he’s not there, and he wants her to move back out quickly. Sissy is humored by Brandon, and gives him shit about his stuffy lifestyle, but she also has genuine sisterly affection for him. There’s a shorthand for sorting out their personalities. Sissy is loud and impulsive. She wears bright colors. She’s emotional and hyper. She drinks from the carton. Sissy says she has a gig in town, eliciting skepticism in both Brandon and me. But sure enough, she has a job singing in a nice club above a hotel. She sings New York, New York slowly, as if it’s a lullaby. McQueen keeps the camera on Mulligan for long stretches of time, as she sings the entire song, beautifully. By the end, Brandon is crying a little, which is bound to be an uncommon occurrence.

The bulk of Shame involves Brandon pursuing his life of sexual addiction (it’s like he has three jobs. The night shift is the roughest.), while trying to maintain his immaculate, secret life at home without too much interference from Sissy. I can see how this might play out differently in a comedy, and to be certain, Shame has its share of funny run-ins and misunderstandings. But for the most part, it’s a serious, cold, compelling story that raises as many questions as it answers. Brandon and Sissy obviously have a dark past we aren’t fully privy to. Their conversations are often shot as if to camouflage something. One will be in motion while the other is still, or one will turn away from the other. In the most interesting, revealing scene featuring Brandon and Sissy, McQueen keeps the camera behind them, and doesn’t cut away for the extent of their conversation. Shame is full of long, lingering takes, the best of which is a date between Brandon and a woman from work (Nicole Beharie). They’ve circled each other on the job, but are having dinner for the first time. Their conversation is light, but also personal, and there’s an obvious chemistry beyond the sexual. There’s also a tension; Brandon seems nervous, younger. What would a relationship look like in Brandon’s world? There’s no doubt he’s considering the consequences throughout dinner.

Shame is skillfully directed by McQueen. His eye for color and framing in terms of characterization is truly impressive, and I’m guessing, economical. The minimalist sets and costumes aid in storytelling in ways that other directors should, and too often don’t, consider. And the script, by McQueen and Abi Morgan, pushes the boundaries enough to earn its NC-17, but not just through nudity. There’s an adult tone to the entire movie that I appreciated. Could you take out the nudity and present Shame as PG-13? No. The true jolt the movie delivers isn’t in the bedroom (or the alley, or the back room of a club, or up against a dumpster, or standing over the sink, or in the men’s room stall, or pressed against a window, or sitting at a computer). When Shame truly delivers, it’s because of the beautiful, layered performances of Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. Fassbender, obviously, takes on the bulk of Shame’s challenges, and gives what I think is the most impressive performance this year. Brandon is pathetic, maybe, but he’s no villain. His life is sad and stressful, but he does whatever he can to keep the majority of the victimization on himself, rather than anyone he encounters. Fassbender keeps that on screen at all times. Brandon does some horrible things, and suffers for them, but I never felt his actions or problems made him pathetic. Would I want to hang out with him? Well no, but it’s not like he’s got the time anyway.

Somewhere is another tale of a man set into a dangerous routine, interrupted by the visit of a female relative. It’s visually lush, well-acted, and like Shame, polarizing for viewers. Somewhere is the most recent film by Sofia Coppola, and the one that turned some of her public against her. It tells a story that at first, I envied, but by the end knew I couldn’t handle.

Stephen Dorff plays an actor named Johnny Marco. Is there anything harder than coming up with believable fake movie star and rock star names? Like you’d never name an actor “Dorff”, even though that’s obviously a realistic choice. Anyway.

Johnny is staying at the Chateau Marmont. Actually, it appears that he’s living there. He’s in the midst of a junket for his latest film (his costar, Michelle Monaghan, is unimpressed), and leaves his room periodically for photocalls and the like. Otherwise, he just lounges around his room, getting visits from a stripper duo, who set up poles in his bedroom and put on little shows. They’re only slightly less bored than Johnny. Why does he order them up if he’s just going to nod off in bed while they dance? I suppose he used to get a charge from it, and it became such a routine to throw money at strippers, he just kept at it, even once the thrill was gone.

Enter Johnny’s daughter, Cleo (Elle Fanning). Cleo is sweet and smart, and gives Johnny, and the movie, an energy not present before. They swim, and go for drives, and he sits in on her skating lesson (in a nice juxtaposition to the stripper scenes). They also start to domesticate a little, cooking meals and hanging out with Sammy (Chris Pontius), the closest member of Johnny’s entourage (it’s never absolutely clear if Sammy is a relative or not. He comes across like an uncle to Cleo, but also as someone who doesn’t know her). These scenes are the most vibrant in Somewhere, and the most necessary. Fanning and Pontius are so funny and at ease, that they bring out a natural charisma in Johnny that was lacking before. When he’s just shuffling around his hotel room, there’s no sign that this guy could be a movie star. It’s only when we see Johnny in relation to other people that it becomes clearer what the big deal might have been about him in the first place.

And that’s it. Somewhere is largely silent, and like Shame, built up of long, lingering takes. The cinematography is lovely, the soundtrack is good, and as you’ve likely heard, not much happens. I’ve joked that I liked Somewhere because I still love staying in hotels. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t want to live in one forever.

Shame: A

Somewhere: B-