UNBREAKABLE (US, M. Night Shyamalan)
If you don't want to hear about the plot twists in this film, then don't read this review. However, I have to say, I guessed the big twist ending of Shyamalan's breakout film The Sixth Sense about a third of the way through watching it, and that actually made me like that film more. In the case of Unbreakable, an insider friend tipped me off on the big twist ending months ago, so perhaps that clouded my enjoyment somewhat.

Unbreakable is about an ordinary man (Bruce Willis) who, after being the sole survivor of a horrible train wreck - and escaping without a scratch - begins to wonder if he has, in fact, some sort of superpower. His curiosity is goaded by a weirdo comics dealer (Samuel L. Jackson, sporting a nappy afro) who appears to be the polar opposite: born with broken limbs, he suffers from extremely fragile bones and is thus as "breakable" as they come. Jackson seems intent on proving to Willis that not only do superheroes exist, but that Willis is one of them. Why does he care? Ah, the irony that lies therein is the stuff of which twist endings are made.

Unbreakable is the perfect companion piece to The Sixth Sense, and shares a similar setup: a lonely Philadelphia resident discovers a preternatural talent that seems a curse until he can channel it into a blessing, with help from a troubled stranger who isn't quite what he seems to be. The mood is identically gloomy, the music equally sparse, the slow pacing very much the same. Which isn't a bad thing: I think Shyamalan is quite a good director, the closest thing to a stylistic successor to Stanley Kubrick that I've seen. But his script was too portentious and serious for me. I think Shyamalan was understandably bowled over by the phenomenal success of The Sixth Sense, and was goaded by the studio into quickly making a follow-up before it was time. It shows. Unbreakable isn't without merit, and as for its twist ending, I think it's all rather clever, hypothetically (the story becoming as much about the making of a supervillain as it is about that of a superhero), but when the last act unfolds before your eyes, it feels rushed, unfinished. It's pretty clear that Shyamalan wanted to put his own personal spin on the standard "Superhero Origin" story, and structurally he gets away with it. But it offers few of the emotional rewards of The Sixth Sense. Shyamalan the director is so good at building suspense and sustaining a mood that Shyamalan the screenwriter should be given more time to perfect a script that will be worthy of his own direction.

UNITED 93 (US, Paul Greengrass)
There are undoubtedly those who will avoid this film, imagining it to be little more than a bunch of patriotic malarkey, due to its subject matter (the passengers on the fourth hijacked airliner on September 11, 2001, who rose up against their captors before the plane could be crashed into whatever unknown target it was aiming for). This sort of attitude merely betrays the divisiveness in the U.S. over the government's response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and ignores the primal horror and confusion that gripped the country on that day, the passengers of United 93 even moreso. Though we now have had several years to form our opinions, theories and suspicions about everything that happened on that day, as well as events that transpired before and afterwards, United 93 takes us on a purely visceral and emotional journey back to that very morning. Though there are certain blanks that writer/director Greengrass fills in with his own educated guesses - he presumes the plane was headed towards the Capitol Building in Washington, he debunks the niggling theory that military fighter jets actually destroyed the plane in midair - he maintains a tight, tense, basically objective approach to the events. Although the story's already been used as fodder for two TV movies, what sets this film apart is Greengrass' decision to include lengthy scenes with the FAA and the military as they react to the hair-raising drama (the great irony being that none of the personnel was even aware that United flight 93 had been hijacked until it crashed into Pennsylvania farmland). With many of the real-life military and government characters playing themselves, and the rest of the cast a collection of ordinary-looking unknowns, the film gains an extra layer of authenticity that makes for a frightening, this-could-happen-to-you experience. I think the very point of the film is to show that the rebellious passengers on flight 93 weren't larger-than-life heroes but ordinary people who, left with no choices, launched a brave if desperate attack upon their hijackers in order to keep the plane from crashing. (One of the passengers was a small craft pilot; the apparent idea was to get him into the cockpit in order to land it safely.) Greengrass even shows his hijackers not as moustache-twirling archvillains but as nervous, idealistic young men - in fact, it is the noticeable youth of these terrorists (or at least the actors playing them) that struck me most. Nevertheless, you do grow to hate them, and there is a sense of gut relief when you see the passengers rise up against them. But you can't blame Greengrass if he wants to deliver a little emotional satisfaction right before the inevitable moment of doom; still and all, there remains nothing sentimental or politically-motivated about this film. This isn't about "Why We Fight." There is no propaganda here. Greengrass' goal is just to put you there in the moment, which he does, and that makes United 93 a unique and gut-wrenching film. (Indeed, it's so intense that it may inspire certain audience members to avoid flying for the rest of their lives.) It's not fun, and I don't want to see it again, but it helped put me back in touch with a distinctly human drama that has become all too politicized in the years since it unfolded.

UNKNOWN WHITE MALE (UK, Rupert Murray)
In July 2003, a 35-year-old Englishman named Doug Bruce, living in New York City as a photography student, woke up on the subway one morning with a case of total amnesia. Not knowing his name, where he lived, or any of his friends, he turned himself into the police and wound up in a mental hospital until a girlfriend's mother was finally contacted, thanks to a cryptic number in his notebook. Rupert Murray, an old friend of Bruce's from England, decided to document Bruce's return to life as he reconnected with family, friends and himself, even while his memory failed to return. It's a great concept for a movie, but it's also sort of a one-trick pony. Any of us can imagine what would happen if we'd lost all memory of our previous lives - after his incident, Bruce didn't even know what his favorite sport (cricket) was all about, and had never heard of the Rolling Stones - and while the film depicts this accurately, it doesn't go deep enough. Murray, a first-time filmmaker, made the ill-advised decision to "art up" his documentary with fancy visuals and audio tweaks, leaning in a more cerebral direction rather than an emotional one. Murray keeps asking the question, literally, of how much of our personalities comes from our memories, and what makes us us? This sounds interesting but isn't, really - I mean, I'm all for an exploration of the meaning of identity, if handled deftly, but in Unknown White Male I wound up only wanting to know more about Bruce's emotional state. Cocky and cynical in his pre-amnesia days, the "new" Doug Bruce is quiet and reflective; like Shakepeare's Prince Hal in Henry IV, he's been given the opportunity to reject the people from his reckless youth and enter the next stage of his life as a mature and serious man. The film is most effective when we see the sadness on his old friends' faces, as they realize that the Doug Bruce they knew is essentially dead: the body is the same, the voice is the same, but the character is gone. At one point Murray likens Bruce's state to a computer being rebooted; a better metaphor would have been a complete wipe of its hard drive. All the "software" may be lost, but then so is all the junk, all the fragmentation, all the slow performance. The film suggests more than once that, in some sense, Doug Bruce is a very lucky man, even if the loss of thirty-five years worth of memories is clearly tragic. (There's even the tiniest of hints that somebody like Bruce might make up such a severe case of amnesia as an excuse to start life anew; other people have insisted that Murray's film itself is a hoax, which I doubt.) But I greatly desired to see more of the personal aspects of his condition, and less of the philosophical ones. The "new" Bruce has a girlfriend, so what was it like to fall in love for the "first" time? His girlfriend likely had previous relationships - how does this compare? Murray the intellectual avoids any talk of romance, sex, and other intimacies, and I for one regret that he does.

UP (US, Pete Docter)
Another easy winner from Pixar, the colorful, emotionally charged Up is their tenth feature and shows the studio at the height of its creative powers. Ed Asner provides the voice of Carl, a cranky old man mourning the loss of his wife, Ellie. The film's much-discussed prologue, which includes a dialogue-free montage of Carl and Ellie's life together, is arguably the finest, most moving piece of filmmaking that Pixar has ever done. The momentum continues as Carl decides to evade being whisked off to assisted living by constructing his already iconic "balloon house", determined to float to a secret waterfall in South America in order to fulfill Ellie's lifelong dream. Along the way he picks up - pun intended - an enthusiastic young scout (an indiscriminately Asian American boy voiced by Jordan Nagai) and they set off for adventure. While it's pointless for me to look for faults in such an endearing movie, Pixar's standard breathless chases and zany characters that fill out the rest of the story are almost a letdown after the beautiful and deeply human first act. Luckily, Docter and writer/codirector Bob Peterson know that Carl's relationship with his late wife provides the meat of the story, and they bring it back for powerful impact guaranteed to water the eye of many a moviegoer. In the end, Up's deepest resonance may be with the happily married, for it is a celebration of lifelong devotion between a loving couple. In light of this, the rest of the story, inventive though it may be, is soon forgotten. I wish I could have seen a version of Up in which Carl and his floating house simply wandered the world and interacted with people, although after their aimless Cars, it may be that a Pixar film is not the best venue for pontificating about the vagaries of existence. (Note: I did not see the 3D version of the film, as the local theater charged a whopping $16 per ticket for it!)

UP IN THE AIR (US, Jason Reitman)
Nearly flawless comedy-drama with George Clooney as a "professional firer" who spends over 300 days a year flying around the United States in order to lay off strangers at various downsizing companies. On the one hand, Up in the Air is an extraordinarily timely document of life during these bleak economic times, but that's just a framework for the human drama that is at the core of the story, where the happily noncommittal Clooney, who loathes the nearly-empty apartment that is technically his "home" in Omaha and barely connects with his own two sisters, meets a fellow traveler (Vera Farmiga, with whom he has great chemistry) and starts wondering if maybe there is more to life than collecting frequent flier miles. When Clooney is saddled with a young protege (a wonderful Anna Kendrick) whom he needs to drag around the country as he teaches her how to properly fire somebody, it is the story's only forced moment, but Kendrick plays her stiff, insecure character perfectly. In fact by far the finest aspect of this fine movie is its cast. Clooney has never been more likable, even if we are made to feel ambivalent toward his character, and Farmiga and Kendrick, two talented actresses who happily have not (yet) been overexposed by the media, are perfect foils for him. And of course I must mention my former muse Melanie Lynskey as Clooney's baby sister. She must have gotten a new agent or something, because this is the third prestige picture with a hip director she's been in this year, after Sam Mendes' Away We Go and Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!. Fans of Lynskey will find nothing new in her performance, but she is sweet as usual. And director Reitman hits just the right tone, combining the snappy patter of a 1930s screwball comedy with unsentimental pathos (most of the employees whom Clooney and Kendrick fire on screen are non-actors, chosen from a pool of real Americans who had recently been laid off) and a bittersweet finale. I can't say I loved this film, but that's only because I've become aware that to truly love a movie, there has to be something crazy and inexplicable about it. Up in the Air is an elegantly crafted and totally sane film, and thus cannot engender the adoration that I save for quirkier titles. But I can, and did, like it very much, and I'd recommend it to anybody.