Style will carry a film fairly far. It is, after all, a visual medium. In a genre film it’s especially useful in elevating the expected into more artistic territory. With a photographer-turned-director like first-timer Tyler Shields, style appears to be the home base and comfort zone from which his expression springs. Which makes for a unique looking film debut, but also drives home a very basic film lesson: style is swell, but story is everything. Final Girl (not to be at all confused with The Final Girls, a slasher film spoof slated for October) is Shields’ first film and while every frame exudes the talent of a man who understands lighting, costuming, coloring, and staging, he has managed to make a film that would have made an amazing photography show but is ultimately a frustratingly scarce horror film. The tale of a gorgeous young assassin facing off against four sadistic teenage boys to the death is an intriguing premise for a thriller, and yet Shields proves that premise and style can only take a film so far.

Set in some ambiguous time period where teenage boys own tuxedos and wear them to the local diner, and assassins in training wear cocktail dresses and heels, Final Girl doesn’t offer much in the way of backstory. Character motivation, it’s implied, is up to the viewers interpretation. So when the film opens with Wes Bentley interviewing a young girl and he succinctly mentions the death of his wife and child, that is apparently all the understanding we’re meant to have of why he’s chosen this newly orphaned girl, or who they are meant to work for, or how it is they choose “bad guys” to go after. It’s not much, not much at all. And in the following scenes where Veronica, played by a very blonde Abigail Breslin, goes through a series of training sessions with Wes Bentley’s William she doesn’t think to ask him all the questions that any normal viewer would have only ten minutes into the film.

While always inexplicably training in her fancy dresses and heels, Veronica is led through a series of very specific trainings: she has to exert enough energy in a choke hold to cause her mentor to pass out, she needs to rely less on her gun and more on her physical prowess, and she’s injected with an LSD-like cocktail so that she can simultaneously experience her worst fear (a fear that is sadly irrational for someone supposedly so badass) and experience what her enemy would be going through should she be able to drug him before facing off. It’s all very specific and very leading. Could it be she’ll need to do all these same things in the near future?

In an early scene we meet the four teenage boys who will soon be Veronica’s prey, led by The Hunger Games’s Alexander Ludwig. With nary an introduction its established quickly that these well-tailored gents have a bad habit of picking up pretty blondes, taking them to their hangout in the woods, and engaging in a game of cat and mouse with them before serially killing them. Why has William picked up on these boys’ hobby when local police haven’t seemed to do so? Especially with a noticeably high count of missing females in the area and a presumably easy trace back to the young men? No idea. But when Veronica shows up at the diner, blonde and appealing, the boys take the bait without question. Thus the tables turn and though she feigns fear at the beginning, Veronica uses her (very specific) skills to give the boys the revenge they deserve.

The rest of the film is split into four fight scenes between Veronica and each of the boys. Based on the limited screen time each guy has had, we know approximately one thing about each of them. Perhaps the writer, Adam Prince, thought it would be clever to define each of these young men by one particular trait, either playing with a weakness they have, or a sadistic trait they possess, but because it’s all laid out so clearly in the one shot each boy is given on their own, when those same traits are used against them by Veronica it’s hard to see much cleverness in it. Presumably, we can only work with what we’re given.

Each frame shrouded in a perfect vignette, a pool of light, and the brightest of colors popping amidst the darker backdrops, one gets the sensation after a while that they’ve seen this film before, but as a spread in Vogue. There’s no denying Shields’ photography talent, but if the point in photography is that the visual story told is succinct and intriguing, this method does not translate to a 90-minute film. Stills from the film will undoubtedly lure in viewers, but turn those perfectly staged frames into action and the energy is lost.

The dialog is pithy and unnatural, attempting to keep up that ambiguously old-timey vibe. The ending is expected but no point in searching for character arcs or discovering anything new about any of the characters that wasn’t fed to us within the film’s first 20 minutes. It’s hard to watch a talented cast look so beautiful and perform absolutely nothing of substance.

The cinematography and set design and lighting aside—since they were all performed by someone other than Shields—we can only hope that before his next foray into filmmaking Shields picks up a few tips on the basics: story and directing actors. Even in a genre as forgiving as thrillers where a little action can make up for a lot, there are necessary building blocks. Final Girl is the best-dressed girl at the party with absolutely nothing of interest to say.

Broad and brutal, August: Osage County doesn’t offer much in the way of subtlety, but there’s something satisfying about indulging in the bigness of it all. The all-star cast, headed up by a bitch-mode Meryl Streep and a seething Julia Roberts, put up bombastic, larger-than-life performances. Which makes sense, since it’s based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy Letts (Bug, Killer Joe) stage play. This “home-for-the-holidays” family drama’s (substitute “family tragedy” for “holidays”) transition from theater into the world of cinema isn’t a smooth one (due to director John Wells’ lack of vision), but the venomous dialog delivered by the accomplished, decorated cast make it hugely entertaining.

Streep plays Violet, the cancer-stricken matron of the Weston family. She’s a pill-munching, fire-breathing, queen of cruelty who fancies herself a “truth-teller”, when in reality she’s a mean old witch. Her toxic tendencies have trickled down to her three daughters, effecting them each in different ways. Julianne Nicholson’s Ivy has been rendered uncommonly dependent on Violet, never leaving their Oklahoma family home. Oppositely, ditzy, flighty Karen Weston, played for laughs by Juliette Lewis, has made herself scarce for years. Roberts plays Barbara, who shares a most contentious relationship with Violet and has inherited her mother’s nasty bark. When their father (Sam Shepard, whose screen time is brief and sweet) goes missing, the sisters reconvene at the old Weston house in muggy Osage County, bringing their significant others and heavy baggage (mostly figurative) with them.

The tension between Violet and Barb bubbles, then erupts at the film’s bravura dinner table scene, where deep-cutting insults are flung, egos are eviscerated, and we even get a mother-daughter grappling match. The construction of the scene is excellent; if the basement bar scene in Inglorious Basterds is a slow, steep incline leading to a sudden, furious drop, Letts’ symphony of wicked barbs is a twisty-turny, rickety wooden roller coaster ride full of surprises. There are so many tonal shifts, big laughs, awkward laughs, long silences, explosions of anger, and cuttingly clever jabs that your head will spin (mine almost spun right off my neck).

Streep is as Streep-y as ever as Violet, attacking every syllable of every piece of dialog with full force. Her spiteful glare and inebriated rage are met with a cerebral, sober, but equally deadly antagonism from Roberts, whose performance is raw and stripped-down (she’s usually at her best in this mode). Their scenes together are dynamite across the board, surprising no one. The acting, like the story, is a bit obtuse, but the spectacle of these heavyweight actresses going toe-to-toe, line-for-line, is ridiculously fun to watch.

The two other Julias are excellent as well, and each of the supporting players have wonderful moments. Playing the sisters’ lovers are Ewan McGregor (he still hasn’t gotten that American accent quite right…), Dermot Mulroney (surprisingly funny), and Benedict Cumberbatch (playing a meek, boyish character for once). Abigail Breslin, Chris Cooper, and Margo Martindale also impress.

Wells sits high in the director’s chair, but his filmmaker fingerprint is nowhere to be found. It seems as though he’s gotten Letts to adapt his play, collected some of the strongest actors he could find, and let them all do the heavy lifting while he does little to transform the theater experience into a cinematic one. Aside from moving certain scenes from interiors to exteriors, there’s no effort made to yank the story away from the stage, where its roots are buried deep. Wells does little to nothing interesting with his camera, and there isn’t a memorable shot to be found. It’s visual vanilla.

The film picks up speed as it progresses, with a cascade of earth-shattering revelations in the latter half causing the characters to exit one by one until only Violet and Barb are left. Everyone leaves battered and bruised to the core, but Violet and Barb are left crippled in the wreckage of the family implosion. They’re ugly creatures the both of them, and though Barb is still pretty on the outside, she can see her monstrous future self wasting away right in front of her eyes.

Ender’s Game is Gavin Hood’s (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s popular 1985 sci-fi novel about a gigantic, intergalactic war, the outcome of which relies on our eponymous hero, a pre-teen boy-genius. Hood’s film retains the thoughtfulness (however morally misguided) of the source material, homing in on the internal conflicts of the hero rather than relishing in the spectacle of war (though we’re given a satisfactory helping of that.) Hood’s is a heavy-handed thoughtfulness, though, as his symbolism lacks subtlety and finesse. Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity is this year’s thinking-man’s sci-fi epic; Ender’s Game is best suited for the thinking-boy.

The people of Earth are gathering their forces in preparation for the imminent invasion of an insectoid race of aliens called “Formics”, who fifty years prior had attempted to overtake the planet, killing millions in the process. Humanity endured, barely, all due to the heroic actions of one man: Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley, trying on an awful New Zealand accent.) With the enemy’s return looming, earth is in need of a new hero to command its armies, and it must be a child (apparently, only young minds are capable of commanding the impossibly complex fleets of high-tech spaceships.)

Enter Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield, Hugo), a 12-year-old with a vast intellect and a prodigious gift for tactical dominance. He’s a “Third”, the youngest of three siblings, in a time when parents are only allowed two children, maximum (a clear reference to China’s “one-child policy”.) Kids at school bully him for this, but his intellectual superiority allows him to defend himself with ease. He’s recruited by grisly military commander Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford, who’s less growl-y than usual, surprisingly) to attend Battle School, a military academy meant to groom the next Rackham that rejected both his violently demented brother, Peter (Jimmy Pinchak), and his warm-hearted sister, Valentine (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine herself), who he loves to no end.

We spend most of our time in the futuristic chambers and barracks of the Battle School, which are about as generic as it gets, aesthetically (lots of metal panels, neon lights, inexplicable buttons scattered about randomly). Ender begins, like a lot of us did, as a social outcast in the school halls, but strategically-timed exhibitions of talent (in a quidditch-like laser tag anti-gravity game) and fearlessness (he gives Graff lip, right in front of the others, of course) win his classmates over, inch by inch, making allies out of bullies and adorers out of acquaintances.

Ender’s social maneuverings and foresightful power plays make for the best scenes in the film, and it would have been nice to have seen this interplay receive more attention and time. His classmates Petra (Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit), a sharpshooter quasi love interest, and Bean (Aramis Knight), a pint-sized sidekick, are likable confidants, while his nemesis, Bonzo (Moises Arias), the Napoleonic leader of the bully-brigade, is a one-dimensional, but fun-to-hate villain.

Butterfield fits the role nicely–he’s a believable wunderkind, and while he’s a good looking kid, he’s also not hunky tween-bait. It’s great to see a normal-looking young man leading big-budget series, especially when you consider the film is being distributed by Summit Entertainment, the same folks behind the Twilight series. He acts with his eyes, casting stares that are at once icy and compassionate, and he shows restraint at all times–this is crucial to the role, as Ender is constantly suppressing a war-within.

Despite Ender’s uncanny ability to win his classmates’ respect, Bonzo’s pubescent ego makes his disdain impossible to budge, and he eventually challenges Ender to a fist fight. Ender dispatches of Bonzo physically, in self defense, and hates himself for it. Must he resort to destroying his enemies, like his sinister older brother, Peter? The internal war of humanity versus merciless dominance rages inside Ender throughout the film; Graff’s intent is to wipe all empathy from Ender’s nature, molding him into a cold-hearted commander that’ll do anything to save the human race, while Valentine and his friends keep the kindness in his heart from being hushed.

Card has been criticized for years for the way his novel covets the intentions of the protagonist while excusing his actions, essentially vindicating the violence. Hood makes no attempt to embellish upon Card’s philosophy (or any other part of his story, for that matter), and in fact magnifies his mixed-up morality, constantly bludgeoning us over the head with Ender’s conflict of heart and mind. There are a lot of high-concept ideas swimming around underneath the surface that should be thought-provoking and relevant to our time (training kids for war with video games is a more interesting notion now than it was in the ’80s, when Card’s novel was first published), but Hood’s too enamored with picking apart Ender’s psyche to flesh them out.

The large-scale, shimmering, spaceship battle scenes that bookend the film are spectacular, and will have kids across the country leaping in the air and pumping their fists with excitement at the sci-fi action gloriousness (I’ll admit, my inner video-game-kid was giddy as can be.) The half-baked high-concept ideas floating around Ender’s Game are a tease, but this won’t bother those who just came to see a light show.

It doesn’t take very long for Vincenzo Natali‘s Haunter to get to the point. What starts out as a typical boring Sunday for Lisa (Abigail Breslin) takes a turn when her parents take issue with her weird behaviour. She tells them that every day is the same and, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, she’s stuck in some sort of time loop. It’s only a matter of time before Lisa starts poking around the house to find any explanation for what’s going on, leading to her usual daily routine being interrupted by the arrival of a telephone repairman (Stephen McHattie, one of Canada’s best actors working today). He asks Lisa how long she’s been “awake” and leaves her with a warning: If she keeps investigating and contacts the living, he’ll make sure her entire family will suffer dearly.

The reveal that Lisa and her family are actually dead is where Haunter starts, and the simple act of using this as the jumping off point (think The Others, except with the ending pushed all the way to the start) makes the film a more refreshing take on the old ghost story. Natali, who is best known for messing with genre expectations in films like Cube and Splice, turns his eye toward the horror genre this time. Not much of Haunter is especially tense or scary (it would be best classified as a supernatural mystery/thriller), but it manages to be a fun, yet flawed yarn.

Haunter is fascinated with the idea of the afterlife being some sort of endlessly repeating purgatory. It’s the terror of banality that drives a lot of the horror in the film, with Natali and screenwriter Matthew Brian King cleverly using it as a metaphor for teenage boredom. Abigail Breslin thankfully plays more on Lisa’s vulnerability and fear, making her feel more like an ordinary teenage girl than some sort of bratty adolescent.

As Lisa begins to look deeper into who (or what) is trapping her family, the atmosphere of the first half begins to dissipate. King begins piling on other elements into the film like alternate dimensions, possession and establishing different rules in the film’s universe that make the proceedings feel unnecessarily complicated. A subplot taking place at the house during the present (with a cameo from Natali regular David Hewlett) takes an interesting turn when the plot reveals itself fully, but the inclusion of so many other elements dampen the story’s effectiveness. As the story begins to unravel, the film’s internal logic starts to collapse upon itself. It may be an interesting portrayal of purgatory, but putting more than several seconds of thought into how the film’s afterlife operates will produce plenty of plot holes.

Natali is enough of an expert in genre films to make the script’s weaker elements stick in the background. A brief sequence in the climax, where the screen and soundtrack get warped significantly, is a fun little aside, and the pace keeps things moving along nicely. Haunter is a flawed film with enough heart and ambition to earn some admiration for its efforts.

For a film based upon a dysfunctional family’s struggle across America to enter their daughter into a beauty pageant – Little Miss Sunshine should go down in history as a modern classic; an absolutely wonderful cinematic release. With an outstanding cast, Little Miss Sunshine hit home with an original storyline that delivered humour, real emotions and heartfelt relationships between the characters. By the end of this film you will have laughed and cried, gotten emotionally involved and maybe a little confused – and it’s one of my favourite films.

At the very beginning of the film the family sit down for dinner, Olive (Abigail Breslin) finds out that she has been given a place in this year’s Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant – she lets out a scream of joy and runs around the house getting things together to take with her. Olive’s mom, Sheryl Hoover (Toni Colette) and her dad, Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear) argue how they are to get there due to not being able to afford travel expenses. After a heated discussion they finally settle on driving the 1000 miles in their minivan.

During the course of the family’s road trip the family experiences are both laughable and heartfelt, being comedic yet sometimes sad, you begin to fall in love with each character and relate to them on different levels. Little Miss Sunshine focuses on pushing forth the idea of living the American Dream – with Richard trying hard to become a motivational speaker, but failing – ironically, since his speeches are about winning. Olive is striving to become a beauty queen with the help of her WWII veteran, heroin addicted grandfather. Olive’s brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his dream of becoming a RAF pilot and their uncle, Frank (Steve Carell) is being forced to stay with them whilst he recovers having just attempted suicide.

The inspiration of the story came from an article Michael Ardnt (who wrote the film) read in a newspaper, where Arnold Schwarzenegger was quoted speaking to a group of high school students: “If there’s one thing in this world I hate, it’s losers. I despise them” – Ardnt then began to develop the story for Little Miss Sunshine on this principle: “I thought there’s something so wrong with that attitude…I wanted to…attack that idea that in life you’re going up or you’re going down. So to a degree a child beauty pageant is the epitome of the ultimate stupid meaningless competition people put themselves through”.

Dwayne towards the latter part of the film memorably says, “You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work…fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I’ll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest.” – a speech that Ardnt will have made sure, made its way into the script in order to emphasise the entire meaning behind the film in a very subtle but obvious way.

Little Miss Sunshine was nominated for several Academy Awards, and came home with Best Original Screenplay for Michael Ardnt and Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin. “Grandpa” played by Arkin was well deserving of this award, however all characters played a vital role in the films success, each character being so important to the story and understanding the different relationships between the family.

I love Little Miss Sunshine, it’s a fantastic independent epic that demonstrated not only a shocking realism to dysfunctional family relationships, behaviours and hardships, but demonstrated it in such a way that it wasn’t miserable, it wasn’t depressing – it was moving, smart and very funny.