THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (US/New Zealand, Steven Spielberg)
Allow me to wax nostalgic for a moment - probably not an unusual thing to do when discussing Tintin. For I discovered the beloved graphic novels when I was a wee lad visiting my grandparents in Norway. At the local general store - they really lived in the middle of nowhere, some 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle - I was astounded to find exactly one book for sale in English: the Tintin-starring The Red Sea Sharks. I probably read and re-read that book some twenty times during my Norwegian summer, so Tintin holds a special place in my heart. Unlike most Americans, which is why despite the pedigree of having Steven Spielberg direct this motion capture adaptation, and Peter Jackson produce it, the movie has been a comparative flop stateside, though unsurprisingly it's made big bucks across Europe and in other countries where Belgian writer/illustrator Hergé's characters are much more familiar.

Like most people, I'm not a fan of motion capture (MoCap). As a former animator, I find it an artless alternative to real, made-from-scratch character animation. It has its uses when blended with live action, but I've avoided fully-animated features that rely on MoCap (most of them made by the technology's misguided champion Robert Zemeckis) because of the so-called "uncanny valley", the term that describes the hyperrealism of humanoid characters betrayed by their creepy, soulless eyes. The facial expressions in Tintin are actually pretty good, but there's still something missing, and I think I know what it is: When you watch an animated feature, you expect the characters' movements to be exaggerated. It's a cartoon, after all! But MoCap is based on real human movements by real actors. And those movements look stilted and formal within a fully animated environment. (The Tintin characters' faces and bodies are pretty closely modeled on Hergé's cartoons, so their limited movement is especially noticeable.) For me this proved consistently distracting while watching the movie, and for that reason alone I can't recommend it, because it seriously detracts from the fun and excitement that the story (a pastiche of three Tintin books) has to offer. Spielberg's visual talents and knack for suspense are still strong, but the awkwardness of the animation actually makes the storyline itself feel mechanical, and on several occasions I predicted the plot twists far in advance. A well-paced action movie like Tintin should leave me so breathless that I don't have time to think about what's coming next. Still, the movie is entertaining to a degree. It just hasn't won me over to the MoCap dark side. I can't help but think that if it were a Pixar-type film, with the characters animated from scratch, then it would have been a significantly more satisfying movie.

THE ARTIST (France/Belgium, Michel Hazanavicius)
This tragicomic look at the end of the silent movie era is noteworthy for actually being a silent movie, shot on black and white with the old aspect radio of late '20s/early '30s cinema, complete with title cards, old-fashioned transitions, and a sweet musical score that is (mostly) reminiscent of the era. France's Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin, a top silent star who suddenly finds his fortunes changing when the "talkies" come around and he is not suited for them. (Strangely, the story doesn't acknowledge the likely reason why an actor like Valentin would be doomed by sound: If he's anything like Dujardin, his French accent would have been too thick and indecipherable for the post-silent era. Perhaps the filmmakers assumed this would be obvious to those in France, but perhaps not to American audiences unfamiliar with Dujardin.) Playing a rising star who owes her big break to Valentin is Bérénice Bejo, whose character is supposed to be an all-American girl next door, even though Bejo is obviously Gallic. But Bejo's own likely bad English isn't an issue because guess what! The Artist is a silent movie! Actually, the film's awareness of the benefits of being dialogue-free is one of its greatest pleasures, and writer/director Hazanavicius mines it for all it's worth. Shot in Hollywood with a mixed French and American cast (including John Goodman, Penelope Anne Miller and James Cromwell), The Artist may owe more of its visual style to Citizen Kane than to anything made between 1927 and 1932, when the film is set, but who cares? It's lovely to look at and fun to watch. It does take a while to get into, though. At first it seems like nothing more than an exercise in style, and even for someone like me who has actually gone to see silent movies in the theatre many times, it's hard not to think, at first, "will I be able to sit through this all without squirming?" But once the second act kicks in with a very clever sequence, The Artist hooks you in, and reminds you that a movie doesn't need any of the trappings of modern technology to still win hearts. It may not be the best film of 2011, but it's one of the best, and a rare opportunity to live like our grandparents (or great-grandparents) and experience the joy of watching a brand new silent film. That's something which - excluding Mel Brooks' semifunny 1976 Silent Movie and the odd Guy Maddin experiment - we haven't been able to do since Chaplin caved in and started talking.

CORIOLANUS (UK, Ralph Fiennes)
I'm kind of a Shakespeare geek. But only kind of. What that means is that I inherited this massive tome of his works - complete with photos of famous British actors performing the roles from the 1950s, neat! - and, many years ago, while bored, I read through several of his plays. Even the lesser-known ones. Two seldom-performed plays stood out: Measure for Measure, which is impossible to categorize into any particular genre, and Coriolanus, accepted as one of Shakespeare's late dramas along with King Lear and The Winter's Tale, during a period which suggests that the Bard was a bitter man who for whatever reason felt betrayed by the people around him. There is no evidence for this other than his work, but it's there, and certainly there in the title character of Coriolanus (which, for the record, does rhyme with "anus"). Four centuries later, renowned British thesp/Voldemort Ralph Fiennes makes his feature directorial debut with a Coriolanus updated to 2011, where the ancient Rome of the play becomes "A Place That Calls Itself Rome," according to an opening title card. (Filmed in Serbia and Montenegro, it's not hard to imagine the relatively recent Balkan War as the backdrop for the military action of the story.) On paper it must have looked like an interesting setting, since Coriolanus is a mighty general in a small, war-torn country where he has reasonable access both to the powers at the top (i.e. the Roman Senate) and the ordinary folks in the marketplace. But the thing about Shakespeare's play is that a lot of it is based on ancient Roman customs, with the drama's key moment centered around a bizarre ritual in which a would-be Senator must first dress in rags and win the approval of the Great Unwashed - something the proud but oddly modest patrician Coriolanus is loathe to do. Although one could imagine a contemporary analogue, with an American politician putting on a cowboy hat and line-dancing with the rubes out in West Texas, Shakespeare's very specific dialogue, and Fiennes' setting, precludes this from becoming so plausible. In other words, the update doesn't really work. I could go on for ages about this, only because of my own peculiar interest in the play. But I'll make it short and say that, unless you too have a peculiar interest in this play, there's no reason for you to see Coriolanus, which for all of its semi-exterior locations is a flat, claustrophobic experience.

THE DESCENDANTS (US, Alexander Payne)
Let me state up front that I am a big fan of Alexander Payne. Ever since his brilliant sophomore effort, 1999's Election, I've found him to be a filmmaker whose work consistently rewards viewing. Okay, I didn't totally adore Sideways, but I could still appreciate it. Payne has a fondness for exploring the petty and banal aspects of human behavior, but even in his films' more outrageous moments, nothing ever rings false (except maybe in Citizen Ruth). It's been seven years since Sideways, but Payne has returned with another clear-eyed portrait of ordinary Americans in crisis, proving again his gift for finding and adapting new and refreshingly little-known novels to the big screen. The Descendants is based on the debut novel by Hawaiian author Kaui Hart Stevens (which she herself had expanded from a short story of hers) and takes place mostly around the Oahu neighborhoods that tourists never see. George Clooney plays one of several distant cousins who are the titular descendants of a 19th century Hawaiian-Anglo couple. Just as the family prepares to unload a huge chunk of pristine land on Kauai to a developer for untold millions, with Clooney as the sole trustee, Clooney's wife is injured in an accident and sinks into a coma from which she will never emerge. Added to Clooney's woes are the stress of dealing with his two daughters, the older of whom has entered her rebellious years. The film could be seen as something of a companion piece to Payne's About Schmidt, and although one might well guess how the story all turns out, it's how the characters get there that really matters. With a soundtrack of gentle Hawaiian music and a genuine appreciation for a locale that surprisingly doesn't show up very often in American movies (unless it's subbing for somewhere else, like a deserted island or the jungles of South America or Southeast Asia), Payne has created a unique family drama that earns its emotions scene by scene. Clooney is in fine form and leads a pitch-perfect cast, so good that even when some familiar faces show up, their presence doesn't distract. This is a completely satisfying movie, by turns amusing, painful, and heartbreaking. I can cite no reason why you should not see, and enjoy, The Descendants.

HUGO (US, Martin Scorsese)
Those even slightly familiar with the life of Martin Scorsese know about his fabled childhood, where little asthmatic Marty became enthralled by the movies as he was usually too sickly to play outside with the neighborhood kids. Only Scorsese knows how true this legend exactly is, but the image of him forlornly staring out of his Hell's Kitchen window at the other boys playing on the street is hard not to shake as we watch the lonely orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) hiding in his secret home in the rafters above the Montparnasse train station in 1920s Paris, painstakingly trying to restore an automaton (a mechanical man popular during the Victorian era) for reasons kept secret from us at first. This automaton gave its name to the children's book on which Hugo is based, Daniel Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which is a much better title than the vague and dumbed-down Hugo, but that's a small quibble. Scorsese - all of whose films, even the failures, are worth seeing - has given us another sort of challenge: a childen's film that doesn't really seem like it's for children, a movie that looks forward (it's Scorsese's first experiment with 3D) just as it looks back (much of the latter half of the story concerns early French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès, nicely played by Ben Kingsley), and a film that at first seems entirely unlikely to have come from Scorsese - a twinkly, family-friendly holiday movie? - but that ultimately becomes Scorsese's most personal work: As a loving tribute to the value of film historians and a passionate argument for film preservation, it touches on the obsessions closest to the director's heart.

Much of this may come as a surprise to those going to see Hugo as a boy's adventure story, especially as it takes more than an hour to even establish that the "Papa Georges" who operates a toy store at the train station is in fact the great Méliès, but since talk of Méliès and his legacy has dominated most conversations about the film, including those with Scorsese himself, and since Hugo is ultimately all about Méliès, it's a plot twist that I can't exactly leave undiscussed. Also, while there are some fun chase scenes at the beginning and end of the film, as Hugo continually finds himself on the run from the station's buffoonish inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen, whose slapstick antics in the film's trailer almost kept me away from Hugo, but who turns in a sly, witty and - pardon the pun - even three-dimensional performance), Scorsese takes it rather slow most of the time. As a result, some children may squirm in their seats, and Hugo's two-hour running time won't help. Also, like many Hollywood films nowadays, the script (by John Logan) bogs down at times to let the characters feel sorry for themselves. This bummer trend really should stop - it was my sole issue with Super 8, J.J. Abrams' own love poem to the movies, as well. But if Hugo is a little too long and unexpectedly morose at times, the last act more than makes up for it. Scorsese's own giddiness about the early days of cinema is palpable, and certainly his film looks spectacular. The director makes pretty good use of 3D: the great champion of the tracking shot sends his camera through lots of long hallways and tall towers, remembering that 3D's real joy is in the "in your face" effects. Special mention should also go to the young actress Chloë Grace Moretz, as Hugo's only friend. The star of Kick-Ass, Let Me In and the upcoming Dark Shadows certainly seems to be making the most out of her childhood stardom, and her British accent - yes, although the movie takes place in Paris, everybody speaks like a Londoner, perhaps because most of the rest of the cast is actually English - is better than those affected by many American actors twice her age. Kudos to her dialect coach. And kudos to Scorsese for giving us a magical film that is so packed with detail and ideas that it's practically tailor-made for repeat viewings.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL (US, Brad Bird)
I haven't been too compelled by the Mission: Impossible film franchise, as I never watched the '60s TV series on which it is based, and don't think much of Tom Cruise. I did check out the John Woo-directed second installment, which was okay, but essentially forgettable. I chose to see Ghost Protocol for one reason only: director Brad Bird, making his live action feature debut after knocking out three classic animated features in a row: The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Now, this is a guy who knows how to tell a story. But can he do the same when dealing with flesh and blood actors? The answer, happily, is yes. Bird simply knows how to pace a film, with an inherent understanding of the mechanics of suspense. The mostly well-oiled plot follows Cruise's character Ethan Hunt, a top member of the famed IMF (Impossible Missions Force, not the International Monetary Fund), America's cleverest spies, as he tries to track down a crazed Swede(!) who plans to launch global nuclear war. That's all well and good, except that Hunt, after being unjustly fingered in a terrorist attack on the Kremlin, is officially disavowed by the force and only has the support of three colleagues: the expertly chosen Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner, and Simon Pegg (adding just the right amount of comic relief without becoming annoying). One twist that doesn't actually have anything to do with this disavowal is that all the nifty gadgets that the gang depends on become rather faulty, which adds a delicious amount of tension to the proceedings as the IMF agents are constantly forced to think on their feet. Several of Bird's set pieces are relentless - the film's central scene, which involves Cruise trying to scale the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world - is so tense that it literally made my palms sweat as I watched. Unfortunately the rest of the film doesn't quite match the scenes in Dubai, and the epilogue is a little flat, but the final battle still delivers the goods. Cruise is tolerable - even quite likable; perhaps Bird understands that the more physical work Cruise is given, the better he is - and the supporting cast is flawless. Of course there's nothing remotely believable about this story or its characters, but that's kind of the point, no? Ghost Protocol may not be high art, but it's a great popcorn movie.

RAMPART (US, Oren Moverman)
Oren Moverman quickly follows up his impressive 2009 directorial debut The Messenger with a gritty but inscrutable drama about a tough LAPD officer (Woody Harrelson, whose costarring role in The Messenger earned him an Oscar nod) who, in the middle of the department's notorious 1999 scandal in its Rampart division - where several cops in the anti-gang unit were busted for misconduct - gets in deep trouble thanks to his own misdeeds. You can probably thank the difficult author James Ellroy for the bizarre qualities of the script, which he co-wrote with Moverman. Harrelson's dialogue is filled with ridiculously florid words, and although the effect isn't pretentious, it does seem to serve only to remind us that his character is a true eccentric. Add to that a superhuman smoking habit, an apparent inability to eat anything whatsoever, and his unique living situation, where he owns a house next door to two sisters (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon, among other famous names who pop up in the cast) who are both his ex-wives. Harrelson's character is completely dominated by these no-nonsense females (including his two adolescent daughters) at "home", yet when he goes out philandering, he's attracted to equally independent-minded women. It's an interesting contrast to his bullet-headed demeanor and unapologetic attitude about his violent past with perpetrators, including a serial date rapist whom he had killed several years earlier. But it's hard to put all the pieces together in Rampart, either from a logical or an emotional standpoint. It's a decidedly odd film, intriguing but somehow unengaging, not unlike those other bent dramas about corrupt cops, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant and Werner Herzog's in-name-only sequel Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans. Though it's more oblique than outrageous, I think it will similarly gain a cult audience, especially among those film critics who will laud its unusual narrative and even more unusual character. But for me, while I found it interesting, I never connected with it.

A SEPARATION (Iran, Asghar Farhadi)
In the opening scene of A Separation, a couple makes their case for a divorce to an offscreen judge: the wife wishes to move to another country; the husband wants to stay in Iran to care for his elderly father, afflicted with Alzheimer's. In the middle is the couple's emotionally mature 11-year-old daughter. But the wife's real intentions remain cloudy - fitting, perhaps, in a stressful film about people whose good intentions lead to bad outcomes, and whose lies and stubbornness make things even worse. The crux of the story is about just what exactly happened to a woman hired to take care of the elderly father after the wife moves out of the house. I won't give anything away, but it's a moment that happens just millimeters off camera, making us as uncertain as most of the characters, wondering just who is telling the truth, who is lying, and why. Those whose only exposure to Iranian cinema has been to the slow, long takes of international festival favorites such as Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami will be pleasantly surprised by writer/director Farhadi's brisk, Western-style plotting, camerawork and editing. Which isn't to suggest that there's anything particularly American about A Separation, but it's a riveting drama that is accessible to all, with great performances across the board and a story that, while it has its ambiguities, is never less than engaging. Not exactly a lovable movie, but still a compelling one.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS (US, Guy Ritchie)
There seems to be new trend in studio blockbusters based on popular franchises: some are saving the best-known villain for the sequel. It's a risky move - unusual for Hollywood - because if the first movie flops, then the fans will never get to see that series' interpretation of their favorite bad guys. But if it's a hit, then the producers not only have a built-in marketing device for the sequel, they have a chance at telling a larger, more iconic story (as compared to the olden days, where movies like Ghostbusters and City Slickers had no initial plans for a sequel, and so had to rely on reheating the same old stuff and hoping it worked). This strategy paid off for Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, and so the 2009 Sherlock Holmes followed his model by teasing at Professor Moriarty in its final minutes. How well he would work as a villain in the sequel was still up in the air, as moviegoers are less familiar with Moriarty than they are with the Joker. Which may explain why Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows got off to a slow start at the box office. Weeks later, however, the film has proven to have "legs", thanks to positive word of mouth. The praise is well-deserved, as the film is actually better than its predecessor.

Credit goes partially to English character actor Jared Harris, perfectly cast as Moriarty; though rumors circulated about A-list stunt casting in the role (I believe even Brad Pitt's name was thrown about by the press), Guy Ritchie and his team did the smart thing by hiring the best man for the part, name or no name. Less successful is the casting of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Noomi Rapace as a French gypsy(!) whose involvement in the plot is ultimately unimportant, and so she looks good but her talents are somewhat wasted. Still, the filmmakers - the entire creative team behind the first Sherlock Holmes has returned, with the exception of little-known screenwriting couple Kiernan and Michele Mulroney replacing the scenarists from the first film - know what audiences like the most: the repartee between Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law). The Mulroneys give us more of the same, in a good way, even taking the homoerotic undertone of their relationship that was hinted at in the first film and damn near raising it to camp level, with Holmes in drag in one scene saying "Lie down with me, Watson" and the two gentlemen ballroom dancing together at a crucial moment. It's all in good fun, and Ritchie and his crew make sure all the other things that worked in the 2009 film - the split-motion "Holmes-o-Vision" sequences, the rich Victorian detail, the clever mystery - are back, but on a more epic canvas that involves chasing (or being chased by) Moriarty all across Europe. Those who hated the first Holmes will not be won over by Game of Shadows, but those who enjoyed it while longing for a bit more substance will surely be satisfied. Production value is top-notch, as is Hans Zimmer's loony score and Stephen Fry's droll supporting part as Holmes's brother Mycroft. I also enjoyed the script's surprising faithfulness to the Arthur Conan Doyle stories, relatively speaking - even including some of their story points and dialogue. This is one for the fans, to be sure.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (UK/Germany/France, Tomas Alfredson)
This atmospheric spy picture, set mostly in 1974, has a simple enough setup: There's allegedly a Soviet mole at the very top of the British intelligence community, and George Smiley (Gary Oldman), who once belonged to that elite half-dozen of super spies at the top before being forced into retirement after a botched deal in Budapest, is quietly tapped to ferret said mole out. He only has four unsavory cohorts to choose from, but even then, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy isn't really an effective whodunit. In fact, I found myself not caring in the least who the mole is, and the story may not really care either. What this film - based on the John le Carre bestseller which was published in the year the film takes place - seems more interested in is the soul of the spy, and how he balances his love for espionage with the pressures and desires of his personal life. Oldman, who has admitted to channeling the spirit of Alec Guinness (who originated the role of Smiley for several BBC television movies), is in fine form, much quieter and more vulnerable than normal, and looking much older as well. He leads an enviable cast of in-demand UK talent, from Colin Firth to Tom Hardy to Mark Strong. There's even John Hurt, seen mostly in flashback as Smiley's dearly departed boss, adding his whiskey-throated wryness to the mix. Tinker Tailor is a spectacularly European film, shot in London, Istanbul and Budapest, co-financed by Britain, Germany and France, directed by a Swede, scored by a Spaniard (the great Alberto Iglesias), and shot by a Dutchman. Tomas Alfredson, who made a name for himself with the extraordinary vampire film Let the Right One In, proves once again a talent for capturing the past with authenticity, although any real film from 1974 would reveal hairstyles and suits far more outlandish than the understated '70s look on display here. (Perhaps it was felt that true realism would be so silly-looking as to be distracting.) He's pieced together an elegant character study in the form of a mystery thriller. I can't say that Tinker Tailor wound up staying with me for very long, but it's smart, sophisticated storytelling, which is always welcome in any movie these days.

WAR HORSE (US, Steven Spielberg)
After several years of comparatively challenging filmmaking - the misfire of the last Indiana Jones movie notwithstanding - Steven Spielberg is back in the gee-whiz populist mode that marked his '80s output. That's not necessarily a bad thing. In his epic World War I fable War Horse, the director finds a canny balance between the golden-hued schmaltz of The Color Purple and Always and the gritty brutality of his later Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List. It's the right approach for this episodic saga of a beautiful horse named Joey, who develops a friendship with a poor farmboy on the idyllic English countryside, only to be "drafted" into the British Army, and from there moved about from one voluntary caretaker to another as the war gets bloodier and ever more senseless. There are strong traces of John Ford in the film's first act - Spielberg's work is obviously informed by Ford's "old country" classics such as How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man - but the battlefield scenes actually reminded me less of Spielberg's own war movies (notably, as War Horse is PG-13 and ostensibly designed for mature children, the violence is muted and mostly off screen) than of Roman Polanski's The Pianist, as it is Joey's nonpartisan grandeur that saves his life, just as Polanski's hero escaped the horrors of the Holocaust because of his musical talent. There's a funny thing about horse movies, though. Whereas I can sense the emotions in a dog's face, and find the depth within the carefully coaxed body language of other on-screen animals, there's something about a horse's glassy-eyed blankness that keeps me from believing in a true connection between the creature and any of its human companions. Horse lovers will clearly disagree. But Joey's willingness to serve anyone who treats him kindly suggests a lack of commitment to any one individual human. Nevertheless, with truly exquisite cinematography by Spielberg's longtime DP Janusz Kaminski and just the right blend of corniness and authenticity, War Horse may be a movie that you can take your granny to, but it is still high quality storytelling. I'll even say that it's Spielberg's most emotionally satisfying film since 2002's Catch Me if You Can - perhaps even since Schindler's List.