The Oscar nominations are being announced tomorrow morning, and unlike most recent years, I’m not really jazzed about the frontrunners. I mean, I liked The Artist well enough, and I didn’t hate The Descendants, though that little brat of a teenage boy sure pulled me out of the story every five seconds. When a film has a character that is so obviously inserted into scenes just to let the filmmaker make a joke or a point, then I get annoyed. (For an excellent report on that movie’s limitations, check out Sarah Bunting’s write-up.)

Where was I? Oh, right. Frontrunners. I’ve also been up front about why The Help left me frustrated and Midnight in Paris made me wish Woody Allen hadn’t soured his sweet little films by indulging his desire to scorn Republicans.

There were, however, many films I enjoyed in 2011. To celebrate them, I’ve created a dream Oscar ballot for Best Picture and the acting categories. What’s on your fantasy list?

Standard warnings apply: I haven’t seen quite a few critically lauded films from 2011, but “A Separation”  and “Margaret” will just have to wait.

BEST PICTURE

What isn’t here?

The above-mentioned films, as well as War Horse. Because.. you guys? I can’t. I saw the play, I saw the movie, and I just can’t. I simply do not care about the magic horsey, and I think the boy who signs up for a war just to follow the horsey around has a mental disease. (It’s much more apparent in the play, by the way, that the kid goes traipsing off to the trenches to find his pony.) Slap on Spielberg’s sentimental hoo-hah about sons and fathers and I am out.

Dream nominees (in alphabetical order)

(1) Beginners — This is my favorite movie of 2011, for all these reasons and for the ongoing impact of Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer’s performances.

(2) Drive — Brutal and elegant and beautiful and scary, Drive was the best action movie I saw this year. Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan both do great work, and if Albert Brooks gets his expected Oscar nomination for playing a vicious gangster, he will absolutely deserve it. Between him and Plummer, this year’s Supporting Actor race should kick ass.

(3) Hanna — Oh my god, please see this movie. It’s a diseased fairy tale, a spy caper, and a blackly comic masterpiece. I’ve raved about it already, but let me reiterate: It makes the story of a child assassin feel archetypal, like a howl rising up from our shared cultural narrative.

(4) Higher Ground – Vera Farmiga directs and stars in this lovely, tough, and intelligent story about a woman wrestling with her conservative Christian church. It’s the rare movie that takes faith seriously—neither overselling nor mocking it—and by showing us both how deeply the characters want their religion and how desperately some of them need to escape it, it crawls right inside my heart.

(5) Hugo — Look! I loved a movie that will probably get a Best Picture nomination! And seriously, I did love this movie. Martin Scorsese directs with such obvious passion that I tumble into the story of a young French boy who secretly lives in a train station and ends up meeting one of the world’s great filmmakers. It’s an utter fantasy that’s grounded by a deep understanding not only of the magic of the movies, but also of the healing power of kindness. And there’s enough wry comedy to keep it from becoming mawkish.

(6) Martha Marcy May Marlene – Like the spiritual opposite of Higher Ground, this film drops us into the aftermath of a young woman’s escape from a cult. The slow revelation of what happened to her there, coupled with the sickening sensation that maybe she’s not out of the woods, pretzeled my stomach. I am still shuddering over the last scene.

(7) Moneyball – This is the other film on my list that stands a shot at a Best Picture nod, and I really hope it scores one. I enjoyed it even more, I think, because I don’t follow baseball, so I had no idea if Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) was going to succeed with his crazy plan to change the rules of how players are scouted. That helped me get really wrapped up in the story, as did the spectacular script and acting. I’d put this alongside Bull Durham and The Natural on my list of favorite baseball films.

(8) The Tree of Life — It left me challenged, annoyed, unsure, and occasionally exhilarated. There were parts of this film that felt so painfully true I couldn’t watch them—the way the brothers respond to the “bb gun incident,” for instance—and others that just mystified me completely, like everything involving Sean Penn. But you know what? I’ve got to salute a film that dares to take me somewhere, even if I don’t always know where I’m going.

(9) Weekend — What a treat that there were two excellent, gay-themed films this year! (The other is Beginners, of course, and maybe Pariah is a third. I’m seeing it soon.) Weekend quietly, perfectly articulates the squirmy-nervous feeling of falling for someone, and it layers in some very real things about the gay male perspective on this experience. From the anxiety of making out in public (“will we get beaten up?”) to the carnal delight of that first bedroom encounter, it’s a refreshingly honest take on healthy love and sex between two men. For all the gay men you see on screen, you rarely see them behaving like adults with genitals and hearts that work just fine, so I’m doubly glad to discover these gents in an excellently made film.

(10) Young Adult — A surprising, defiant comedy that I’ve already praised at length. My respect for Charlize Theron’s performance and Diablo Cody’s script continues unabated.

Extremely honorable mention: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — Real talk: I think this movie is better than the Swedish original and Stieg Larsson’s novel. It jettisons the latter’s unnecessary subplots, and it replaces the chilly efficiency of the former with dark, erotic energy. Granted, I like the book and the first film, but this version is far and away my favorite.

Extremely honorable mention: Attack the Block — An alien movie with a sociological heart and a knack for thrills. SEEK IT OUT.

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Best Actor

Who isn’t here?

Michael Fassbender. I just can’t.

Dream nominees:

Tom Cullen, Weekend

Ryan Gosling , Crazy, Stupid, Love –Even though he was great in Drive, Gosling’s really spectacular here, playing a womanizer who (whoops!) falls in love with Emma Stone. This entire movie rules, save for an unfortunate twist that implies it’s okay for teenage girls to give nude photos of themselves to 14 year-old boys. But whatever. The rest is great, and Gosling is the best part.

Ewan McGregor, Beginners

Brad Pitt, Moneyball –Don’t let pundits convince you that Pitt just showed up and acted like star in this film. There’s subtle, emotionally resonant work going on.

Michael Shannon, Take Shelter — I may have had issues with the movie, but not with Shannon’s performance, which moved and scared me in equal measure. His freak out at the pot luck dinner is enough to merit a nomination.

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Best Actress

Who isn’t here?

Glenn Close. As Roommate Joe will tell you, nothing about Albert Nobbs is very impressive. Also, I can’t support Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn: All I saw was posturing and posing—a technically proficient performance with no heart.

Dream nominees

Viola Davis, The Help – Being great in a mediocre film doesn’t make her any less great.

Saoirse Ronan, Hanna

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady — I am not immune, people. This move is a mess, but Meryl Streep creates yet another sterling, unforgettable character. She may very well win for this performance, which would be weird, since the movie’s not very good, but hey… I’ll consider it overdue compensation for Julie and Julia and The Devil Wears Prada.

Charlize Theron, Young Adult

Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids — Yes, ma’am. For me, the movie was a little flabby and weirdly paced, but Wiig killed it, turning her characters in a neurotic mess that I nevertheless rooted for.

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Best Supporting Actor

Who’s not here? Jonah Hill in Moneyball and Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn. I quite liked both of their performances, but not quite enough to put them in my top 5.

Dream nominees:

Albert Brooks, Drive

Ben Kingsley, Hugo —The man brims with pain and love in his role as a forgotten cinema giant.

Chris New, Weekend

Christopher Plummer, Beginners — He’s an odds-on fave to win the Oscar. I’d vote for him.

Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes — I don’t think nominating a motion-captured performance would signal the end of humans performing on screen, particularly because its Serkis’ nuanced work—his work as a human actor—that makes his character so memorable. Caesar may be a monkey, but thanks to the man behind the electronic gadgets, he’s also an inspiring, sympathetic protagonist.

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Best Supporting Actress

Who’s not here?

Octavia Spencer in The Help. To me, this performance is hammy in a way that makes Minnie just the kind of stereotype she wasn’t intended to be.

Dream nominees

Jessica Barden, Hanna – As Hanna’s saucy Australian gal pal, Barden is a hilarious, breakout star.

Berenice Bejo, The Artist – Again, I liked this movie well enough, but I found Bejo’s turn as a rising starlet totally enchanting.

Cate Blanchett, Hanna – As I wrote for the New York Times magazine, I think Blanchett creates an iconic villain in this role.

Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter – As many have noted, homegirl was great in many films this year. I saw three of her six performances—in Take Shelter, The Help, and The Tree of Life—and this was my favorite. Her cautious support of her husband’s (possible) insanity is captivating.

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids — Months of endless praise have not diminished how funny she is in this movie.

Dream Winners

Beginners

Michael Shannon

Charlize Theron

Christopher Plummer

Melissa McCarthy

… and a few more dream winners while we’re at it:

Director: Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, Young Adult

Adapted Screenplay: Steven Zaillian, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Last night, while I was waiting for Top Chef, I decided to watch Devil on HBO On Demand. In case you don’t know this masterpiece, it’s mostly set in the elevator of a Philadelphia office building. The elevator gets stuck, and one by one, the five people in it are murdered. Because one of the passengers is Satan.

This is a pretty good idea for a movie—a supernatural update on the claustrophobic suspense of Lifeboat and other such tales. But the good idea gets trampled by the execution.

Consider that we learn about the Devil’s presence from a building security guard who is watching the elevator madness unfold on closed-circuit television. He proves the Devil’s nearby by dropping a piece of toast on the floor. When it lands jelly-side down, he says, “See? When he’s around, things always go wrong. The toast lands jelly-side down.”

This is not played as a joke.  Jellied carpeting is considered proof that El Diablo is in on the grounds.

I could spend more time dissecting this movie’s awfulness—what’s up, African-American with a criminal past and Hispanic gentleman who believes in “spirits!”—but the fact is, I wasn’t surprised it was awful. You see, it was executive produced and based on a story by M. Night Shayamalan. His name alone signals hackery.

That wasn’t always so, of course. There was a time when Shayamalan was a Golden God in Hollywood and with audiences. But now, he’s destroyed that goodwill.

And that got me thinking: Who else has pissed away the love they so rightfully earned? Who else is close to doing so?

I’m pleased to present this round-up of goodwill squanderers. Can you think of any more? Let’s discuss!

(Caveat: They have to have ruined themselves through their work and not through their tabloid behavior. Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson are not who we’re talking about here.)

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The Squanderer: M. Night Shayamalan

Why We Used to Love Him: The Sixth Sense, y’all. It’s more than just a twist ending: It’s an elegant film that blends chilling suspense with nuanced writing and performances. That scene where Toni Collette breaks down in the car is memorable because it’s so human, not because it involves the ghost of her mother. The love continued through Unbreakable, which is imperfect but memorable, and Signs, which is cheesy and hokey but sometimes really scary.

When The Trouble Started: ‘Round about The Village, which intensified the creaky logic and self-righteous puffery of Signs. From there, Shayamalan clearly decided he was going to bless us with the wisdom of his films, which meant he payed less attention to story than to noxious moralizing. See: The Lady in the Water and The Happening.

Where We Are Now: At this point, the dude’s ego is even less endurable because his once-impeccable filmmaking has gotten sloppy. The Last Airbender? Please. Plus, he has the audacity to suggest that Devil is just “part one” of “the Night Chronicles,” as though the world needs more half-assed horror films.

Goodwill Levels: Entirely destroyed

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The Squanderer: George Lucas

Why We Used to Love Him: Well, American Graffiti is a lovely, Oscar-nominated film that understands the bittersweet truth about growing up in… oh, okay. Star Wars.

When The Trouble Started: Honestly? Ewoks. Additional warning flares were shot when Lucas emerged from decades of behind-the-scenes special effecting to re-release his original trilogy with added scenes and altered effects. Couldn’t he leave well enough alone? But the death blow came when he unleashed the boring, horribly written, and terribly acted prequel trilogy. Is there any adult in the world who truly likes these movies?

Where We Are Now: Lucas has released 8 million versions of Star Wars, each time implying that he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care why people loved the original films. His tinkering has almost made it impossible to remember what was so great about these movies to begin with, and by fucking up one of the most beloved pop culture touchstones of the last century, he has made a lot of people mad. (Oh, and complaining about his fans because they don’t support his endless bullshit is not a great way to get people back on his side.)

Goodwill Levels: Entirely destroyed

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The Squanderer: Nicolas Cage

Why We Used to Love Him: Come on! He was the indie-cool actor of the 80s. From Valley Girl to Raising Arizona to Moonstruck, he was always turning in exciting work in offbeat films. And then in 1995, he delivered on all that promise with his Oscar-winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas, which hasn’t lost any of its devastating power. And just to prove what a good guy he was, he occasionally shifted his indie gaze toward popcorn movies like Con Air. They were disposable, sure, but they were fun…

When The Trouble Started: … until they were all we had left. By 2002, Cage’s Oscar-nominated turn in Adaptation seemed like a distraction from his boundless enthusiasm for crap. Reflect, if you dare, on Cage’s recent CV: Knowing, Snake Eyes, 8MM, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Next, The Weather Man, The Wicker Man, Bangkok Dangerous, Season of the Witch, Drive Angry, and the one-two punch of the National Treasure movies.

If Cage’s career had started in 1996, the year he made The Rock, then he would seriously be enshrined as the worst movie star of our the last 15 years.

Where We Are Now: Cage is so deep in this rut that he may never get out. Instead of filming a spiritual sequel to Leaving Las Vegas, he’s filming a literal sequel to Ghost Rider, which was already the least essential superhero movie of all time. It’s possible that his upcoming film The Frozen Ground, based on the true story of an Alaskan serial killer, will be good, but since it co-stars John Cusack, his fellow squanderer of 80s cred, the odds are working against it.

Still: It’s hard to forget that this man can really act when he wants to.

Goodwill Levels: On life support. But the memory of the great films is strong enough to sustain mild hope that another will emerge.

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The Squanderer: Meg Ryan

Why We Used to Love Her: Who didn’t love her? She was Gal of Our National Dreams! So spunky and cute and approachable and sweet and smart! When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle proved she could win our hearts, while Courage Under Fire and When a Man Loves a Woman suggested she could handle dramatic roles.

When The Trouble Started: I’d say she and Tom Hanks both started on downward slope with You’ve Got Mail, which was one visit too many to their cutsie-poo well. (Hanks’ descent didn’t kick off in earnest, however, until The Terminal.) After that, Ryan showed little understanding of what made her appealing. Her comedies became shrill (Hanging Up, The Women) and her dramas became weirdly dark (In The Cut, Against The Ropes.) If we want dark, we’ll go to Jodie Foster, thank you. We prefer Dramatic Meg Ryan to be nobly wounded or neurotic.

The real downside of these films, though, was how they exposed Ryan’s limited facility as a performer. Around 2000, people were claiming her Dennis-Quaid-cuckolding affair with Russell Crowe could harm her career, but that wouldn’t have mattered if she’d picked projects that showcased her particular strengths or if she’d been able to handle the material she did choose.

Where We Are Now: You may have heard that it’s hard for older women in Hollywood. Even Julia Roberts is struggling now, while Julianne Moore and Annette Bening and Laura Linney seem to be handling the dramatic roles just fine, thanks. That leaves Ryan without much to do.

Goodwill Levels: Perhaps “squandered” is the wrong word here. Perhaps we should say her goodwill has simply been overshadowed by our struggle to remember who she is.

—–

The Squanderer: Johnny Depp

Why We Used to Love Him: Um… he was hot as hell. And he was tortured, brooding, and sensitive. And he brought those qualities to tortured, brooding, and sensitive movies like Edward Scissorhands and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. And when he went mainstream, he did it by creating Captain Jack Sparrow with a performance so strange that no one else could have gotten away with it. That led to Oscar nominations and the amazing fact that an “outsider star” had become a regular star without losing his outsider status.

When The Trouble Started: But think about it… when was the last time Depp delivered a really great performance or appeared in a truly exciting film? Sweeney Todd was pretty good, but even that was four years ago. Otherwise, Deeps has been serving up reheated versions of his own persona, whether he’s making the 500th Pirates movie or pantsing around in yet another self-consciously rebellious movie about Hunter S. Thompson. And you know what? Ricky Gervais was right to mock The Tourist. It sucked. So did Alice in Wonderland and the interminable Public Enemies.

Where We Are Now: These days, Depp shows up at the Golden Globes using a bullshit British accent. He also seems disinterested in bathing, and while that’s hot on a twentysomething, it’s just sad on a man approaching 50. His upcoming films also suggest that his autopilot is still in charge. Dark Shadows may be good, but it may be another half-baked genre exercise. And you can practically see the tongue sticking out of The Lone Ranger‘s cheek.

Goodwill Levels: Slipping. Depp needs to make a great movie really soon, or his free pass may be revoked. And a cameo in 21 Jump Street is not what I mean.

Young Adult was a happy upheaval of my presumed taste in movies. Typically, I think of myself as someone who dislikes bone-deep cynicism, who finds it cheap and lazy. Yet the cynicism in Young Adult, which is directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, manages to be insightful, humane, and comic in both the structural and amusing senses.

I know, right? How’d that happen?

The film focuses on Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a woman who has moved from her small Minnesota hometown to a “better life” in Minneapolis. Except, whoops, her life there sucks. She’s essentially an alcoholic, the young adult series she’s been writing is down to its final novel, and worst of all, she’s an emotional infant. She knows, however, that she peaked right after high school, so she concocts a plan to go back home, steal her old boyfriend from his wife, and be fabulous again.

And right there, things could get ugly. This movie could become the female-driven version of a hundred Will Ferrell comedies about grown folks who act like fools for our amusement. Except here’s the thing: Movies like Role Models and Kicking and Screaming kind of want us to admire their man-children heroes, even as we laugh at their idiocy. If we aren’t meant to emulate them, then we’re at least meant to root for them and feel good when they bumble into good lives.

In Young Adult, however, we’re never supposed to think Mavis is cool. It’s always clear she’s a delusional freak, and the uncomfortable comedy comes from seeing how utterly unaware she is of herself. Mavis just doesn’t understand why it might be weird to tell the victim of a brutal beating that his suffering is nothing like hers, and her utter lack of perspective is kind of hilarious. We’ve all known people who self-dramatize—and let’s face it, we’ve all turned a paper cut into a bleeding wound—and seeing that tendency run amok can unleash a dark, knowing laughter.

It helps that Cody’s script is so witty and that Theron’s performance is so subtly unhinged. The star always smirks where another actor might scream, and for me, her restraint makes her more believable. She’s so convinced of her own importance that she doesn’t need to overdo it… until one climactic scene where it really matters.

I appreciate this movie for not pretending like Mavis’ shit is okay. Yet at the same time, it doesn’t make her a pure villain. That climactic scene involves some startling confessions that humanize her and help ground her casual evil. The movie doesn’t fully explain or justify her—that would be annoying—but it offers just enough context to make Mavis more than an archetype. And while archetypal characters are often comic gold, the choice to avoid that strategy here gives the movie a level of thoughtfulness that you don’t get from, say, Cameron Diaz’s Kooky Babe in There’s Something About Mary.

Then there’s the closing scene where Mavis almost has a breakthrough about how she needs to change… and then gets talked out of it. For me, this moment makes the entire movie. It suggests that there is hope, that people do have the capacity to change, but that personal patterns and the expectations of other people make change very hard. There’s something deliciously comic about that: Crazy people get to the edge of sanity, but then say, “Fuck it. I’m going back in.” They willingly live in the craziness machine because they get just enough validation for what happens in there.

So… The movie is cynical. But it’s not suggesting we’re all like Mavis or that we all should be like Mavis. Instead, it just tells a story about an asshole who stays an asshole without turning that assholery into a grand statement. And how can I argue with that? Assholes do exist, and when they’re depicted with such incisive humor, then I’m happy to know them. From a few hours anyway.

(To hear a great conversation about Young Adult, check out the latest podcast from Extra Hot Great.)

Over at Monkey See, I just explained why I’m all in on the Rock of Ages trailer. I truly believe this is going to be an amazing movie. The wigs alone will be worth the price of popcorn.

After you’ve read my write-up, I’d love to know what you think? Are you in or out?

So… The Artist: It’s a lovely silent movie about silent movies themselves, following George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a superstar who’s distressed to realize he has no place in the emerging talkie world. As it tells this story—which also includes the meteoric rise of Valentin’s costar Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo)—it delivers some of the most imaginative and delightful scenes I’ve witnessed in ages. And because The Artist more or less follows the conventions of old silent films, it creates these moments with real-world props and ingenuity. The lack of CGI makes this film feel dazzlingly human in its magic, and that is wonderful to behold.

Early in the film, for instance, Peppy is still just a chorus girl trying to get a break. On the set of George’s latest film, she overhears some music and starts jitterbugging with abandon. (As you do.) From across the soundstage, George sees her dancing… or rather, he sees her legs. Peppy is behind a piece of scenery being wrangled by two stagehands, and as they lift it off the ground, they reveal her dancing feet, then her dancing ankles, then her dancing calves. Before he sees the rest of her, George runs up and starts matching Peppy’s steps, so we see a man dancing in perfect time with a pair of legs. It’s delightful.

And honestly, I think this scene is even more satisfying because it comes in a silent film. With only a score playing, and no “real-world sounds” to distract me, I was able to focus completely on the dancing. I was able to lose myself in it.

By the end of The Artist—which is the first silent film I’ve ever seen in a theater and one of maybe five I’ve seen in my entire life—I was intensely grateful for the special focus that soundlessness demands. I couldn’t look away from the movie for a moment because there was no chance I could follow along just by listening to dialogue as I rustled around in my backpack for a water bottle. By demanding so much of my attention, the movie created a more intimate connection, and I can’t remember the last time the act of watching a film felt so personal.

That’s interesting, since this connection is ostensibly created by 3D effects, but with a few exceptions (Avatar, Up, etc.) 3D rarely excites me. I guess my “poor theater” aesthetic has reared its head again, reminding me that I get transported further when the art I’m watching is working with less, not more.

There was never a chance I was going to enjoy the movie Shame, but I was hoping I’d at least respect it.

In case you haven’t heard, Shame is the NC-17 tale of Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender), a sex addict who humps his way through an emotionally disconnected life in New York City. (And I do mean humps. We see loads of graphic sex and plenty of The Fassbender Member.) In the midst of his humpitude—which involves as much porn and naughty chatroom behavior as actual sex—Brandon’s sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) arrives. She’s also prone to poor sexual choices, and she blends them with emotional need and suicidal tendencies. Her crazy plus Brandon’s crazy leads to High Drama and a series of breakdowns that make Brandon face the fact that he’s screwed up.

Spiritually and philosophically, I almost always reject stories like these, because I do not see meaninglessness or sadness or chaos everywhere I go. Do all these things exist? Yes. Have I been sad and hopeless? Of course. But those feelings are small holes in the garment of my life. For the most part, the seams are in tact. I know that makes me privileged, and I’m grateful.

And that’s why I’m predisposed to movies like Beginners or plays like Hedda Gabler or writers like Thornton Wilder and Annie Dillard and Walt Whitman. All these works and people see the darkness and pull light from it anyway. They don’t deny despair, but they don’t suggest there’s nothing else.

So a movie like Shame, which begins with a man in misery and ends with him facing misery of a different kind, faces a disadvantage with me. But I’m not saying it has no shot. No Country for Old Men is pretty fucking bleak—much more bleak than Shame, actually—but I love the book and the film. Breaking Bad is shot through with evil and desperation, and it’s one of my top three TV series of all time.

Shame, however, is not sophisticated enough to win me over. Though people I respect have enjoyed it, all I see is an insultingly shallow story filled with ham-handed pretension.

(Major spoilers ahead)

Let’s start with the large arc of the plot. Shame, which is directed by Steve McQueen and co-written by McQueen and Abi Morgan, is one of those works that confuses identifying a problem with actually exploring it.

Sometimes, when a problem is new in our society, identification is good enough. The HBO movie Too Big To Fail, for instance, essentially just lays out the architecture of the housing crisis, but that crisis is still so fresh and so confusing that it’s gripping to behold the moving parts. But when a work’s primary audience has already absorbed the basic facts of an issue, mere identification is no longer enough. A movie like The Net feels unsatisfying today because it hinges on the “shocking” notion that the internet can be used for evil. Few people in 2011 are unaware that online life can have identity-thieving consequences, so we demand that a story go further.

To that end, I’d argue that everyone who’s going to see an NC-17-rated, art-house indie like Shame is well aware that sex addiction exists, that sex addicts have a hard time making meaningful emotional connections, and that the internet facilitates that addiction. Yet that’s about as deep as the movie goes. In the last five minutes, Brandon has a climactic breakdown, cries about his suicidal sister, cries his way through an orgy with two whores, and then flirts with a subway stranger he saw earlier in the film. Dramaturgically, the movie seems to be saying, “Wow! He’s finally aware he has a problem, and now he’s got another chance to fuck this stranger on the train. Will he do it? Will he be able to change?”

But… um… we got it. We got it within five minutes. These last-reel “revelations” are tiresomely obvious, yet they’re packaged like explosive truths. What’s worse, they’re underlined in black magic marker, as though the audience is so naive that we can’t possibly pick up on these blunt messages without help. In one scene, Brandon tries to have sex with a co-worker who actually connects with him emotionally, but he can’t get it up. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? In his first encounter with the subway flirt, she’s sitting next to an ad that says, “How could this happen?” GET IT, Y’ALL? HOW COULD A PERSON BECOME SO DIVORCED FROM HIS FEELINGS?

The shallowness  extends to Sissy. Like so many on-screen waifs, she’s a tremulous deer in a world full of headlights, and her openly damaged femininity is primarily a symbolic counterpoint to Brandon’s repressed, masculine malfunctions. She externalizes all the shit he keeps inside, and in one endless scene, she manifests her craziness through a nightclub performance of “New York, New York,” which is slowed into a somber dirge.

This is frustrating for many reasons. First, there’s the fact that no nightclub this fancy would give this gig to someone with Mulligan’s dubious vocal chops, or would let the piano itself be out of tune. Those are symbolic billy clubs to our knees, making sure we realize that this ironically slow version of a peppy tune is a metaphor. The same goes for the lengthy close-ups on Sissy’s face followed by shots of Brandon quietly crying. It takes one second to grasp the uncomfortable, emotionally intense, and slightly incestuous connection this implies—a connection that’s continued in scenes in Brandon’s apartment, where the siblings keep getting naked in front of each other. Yet the movie drags this shit out for a year, as though an obvious statement somehow gets deeper with repetition.

Yet there are hints of a dangerous, interesting story between Brandon and Sissy. How did they get to this point? When did he become the kind of person who, went caught masturbating by his sister, will leap on her and start slapping her?

Some people have praised the film for not pushing into the details of this backstory, but I’d argue it does something worse. It just vaguely tells us that Brandon and Sissy’s fucked-up childhoods made them this way. (“We’re not bad people, we just come from a bad place,” Sissy says, moments before fulfilling the destiny of all metaphorical waifs by trying to kill herself.)

To me, this is the worst kind of cop-out: It gives the audience just enough information to feel like it “gets” these people without shading its simple conclusion with compelling detail. It invites “knowingness” without demanding thought. I’d rather be taken fully into Brandon and Sissy’s history or get no information about it at all, left adrift in a rootless world where the fucked-up people simply are fucked up. Ultimately, though, the movie isn’t brave enough to commit to either extreme. It coddles us in limbo.

Somewhere, there’s a story worth telling in this film… one that doesn’t let Fassbender mug his way through lots of “grief sex” and that perhaps pushes beyond that last moment on the subway, showing us what happens in the frightening next moment when a problem has been identified and must now be dealt with. But it’s not fair for me to write the movie I wish I’d seen. All I can do is be exasperated by the one I did.

This weekend, the New York Times Magazine will publish its Hollywood Issue, and the content went online early this morning. I’m pleased to say that I’m part of a fun “year in movies” feature about the cinematic moments and trends that will likely be overlooked by the rest of the punditry.

My section is dubbed “Tomorrow’s Iconic Villain Today,” and it celebrates Cate Blanchett’s nasty turn as Marissa Wiegler in Hanna, a brilliant movie that’s still in my top three for entire year.

The rest of the package is fantastic, and I’m tickled to be included.

Hey all! While the head writer’s on vacation, I’ll be posting at NPR’s Monkey See blog every day this week. Woo!

Today’s post is about the trailer for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I have so many reasons to dislike it, yet it makes me cry. Oh, my divided soul!

Take a look and let me know your thoughts!

After two weeks away, I am back from China, and this is the most revolting thing I ate while I was there. Now that I’ve returned to the U.S., jetlag is pretty much dominating my daily life, so that around, say, 3:00 in the afternoon, my body decides I have to be asleep right now.

In my rare waking hours, I’ve been catching up on relationships, reading, TV, and (of course) movies. Yesterday, I saw Take Shelter, which stars Michael Shannon as Curtis, a construction worker from Ohio who begins having prophetic visions of a coming apocalypse. But are these visions real or are they signs that he has inherited schizophrenia from his mother, who was felled by the disease when she was about his age?

The acting is great. I was startled by how much Shannon’s performance made me feel, since he’s so mannered as a Crazy Prophet in Revolutionary Road and Boardwalk Empire. Here, I could feel his fear that he was losing his mind and his compulsive  need to protect his family, just in case his visions were true. It reminded me of the time I was on a plane with a woman who had Tourette’s Syndrome. She kept screaming, “There’s a bomb on the plane!” and then she’d apologize for it. She was acting like a madwoman, but she was also pitiably aware of it.

As Curtis’ wife Samantha, Jessica Chastain delivers her billionth excellent performance of the year, following The Tree of Life and The Help (and probably The Debt, which I didn’t see.) For once, the role of “the wife” is not underwritten (props to writer-director Jeff Nichols), and Chastain knows how to layer Samantha’s conflicting feelings of loyalty, love, and fear.

Curtis and Samantha’s daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart), meanwhile, is deaf. It’s an obvious literary symbol, but her condition has a powerful effect: Hannah is cut off from the world, but is that saving her or hurting her? If you can’t engage with what’s actually happening, are you spared when everything goes wrong, or are you denied true wisdom when you need it most? Is Hannah’s deafness reflected in Curtis’ increasing withdrawal into his visions, where he can’t listen to reason, or is it reflected in the rest of society, who can’t hear what Curtis is trying to tell them? Or both?

If only the ending were this tantalizingly ambiguous. That’s the trouble with either/or plot devices. When your story hinges on the “Is he or isn’t he?” riddle, then either answer is kind of a let down. It’s a question with only two possible answers, and as I watched the movie, I naturally started looking for clues as to which one was “correct.” I happened to be right, but even if I’d been wrong, I would’ve been disappointed. Either way, the answer strips the movie of its tantalizing ambivalence and reduces it to something obvious.

I remember feeling a similar disappointment with Frailty (Is Bill Paxton seeing the devil or not?). Can you think of other either/or stories? Did you like the way they ended?

By Doug Strassler

What with all the attention to recent earthquakes and hurricanes, I’d forgotten to pay attention to the coming of the fall movie season. Now, all of a sudden, it’s upon us, having crawled in like a little lamb. Today sees one of the season’s big entrants with the star-studded disease flick, Contagion.

I mean, looks at the who’s who of a cast: four Oscar-winning actors (Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet), and two additional nominees (Laurence Fishburne and Jude Law). Plus Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh is at the helm. It may just be a pulp popcorn flick about fast-moving germs, but it’s unquestionably a prettily dressed one.

So why am I probably not going to run and catch Contagion? No, it’s not because I already saw it when it was called Outbreak. What’s keeping me from it is precisely what will likely attract the bulk of the movie’s audience: the movie’s starry starry cast.

It’s not that I don’t like this lineup (which also includes the great Jennifer Ehle, Bryan Cranston, and Sanaa Lathan); I do, very much. But all reports show that these actors all came in and filmed separate elements of this story about a rapidly moving virus. For instance (MILD SPOILER ALERT!), Paltrow is out of the movie almost as soon as she’s in it. What’s the point of reuniting the three leads of The Talented Mr. Ripley if they won’t even get the chance to interact?

And so my problem with stunt casting like this actually goes way back to my early childhood fantasies of celebrities, which was this: that they were all friends, all hung out when working together and all knew each other. In my mind, Hollywood was a more sophisticated high school, where even if you didn’t necessarily have a class together, you saw each other in the hall or the parking lot. Everyone knew each other. I mean, I wouldn’t have expected Geoffrey Rush to pal around with, say, Brett Butler, but there’s no reason to think that co-stars like Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon didn’t keep palling around after Thelma & Louise. And there was something really romantic about that. I’ve long since move past that super-silly (but also super-attractive) notion.

But here’s the thing. Contagion, and other movies whose storylines only run parallel to each other, won’t even let me pretend that that kind of film star fraternity exists, and I want that too. Having these actors show up at different times, doing their thing for a few days, and going, is to me then the equivalent of having a high school where students show up at different times for private tutoring sessions and then leave. Take a movie like The Breakfast Club, or Twelve Angry Men, for example. Knowing that these actors were working in the same room at the same time allows me the fantasy of thinking, “Hey, these guys bonded here!” which leads to “Maybe they still hang out!” which in super-fantasyland can even build up to “Maybe I’ll see them out and join them!”

Seeing an assembly-piece production like Contagion, however, reminds me that it’s all just work. If Fishburne and Damon were to run into each other at a red carpet event, or even at the gym (in this fantasy all celebrities work out at the same gym and shop at the same Trader Joe’s), they wouldn’t be able to say, “Hey, remember that time they made Kate Winslet drool for ninety takes straight?” or “Hanging out at the mall with flesh-eating bacteria makeup on? Classic!” (No spoilers here; this is all mere surmising.) And the idea of on-set camaraderie was always one of the more appealing things about show biz to me as a youngster.

As a grown-up, I’m aware of the way this all works. But the kid in me holds out hope that maybe there’ll be a sequel where a cast is forced to be quarantined together in close quarters. Then their characters’ suffering will allow my old fantasies to flourish.