The astonishing thing about Toy Story 3 [spoiler alert] is that the folks at Pixar actually convinced us, for a good 30 seconds, that Woody, Buzz, and the gang were actually going to be melted alive, turned to plasticky slush in a veritable pit of doom. The movie was made for the whole family, of course, and watching our beloved miniature friends meet such a gruesome demise is something that would never, ever happen under Disney/Pixar’s watch. And yet there we all were, clutching our armrests, tears welling up in our eyes, convinced that this was, in fact, the end.

This variety of audience manipulation has come to define the long-running Mission: Impossible franchise. Each new director and crew in charge of the series is faced with this (dare I say) impossible mission of convincing us that, this time, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt might actually die. Selling us on this idea gets more and more difficult with each film because Ethan has been dodging bullets, falling off motorcycles and hanging off of dangerously high things for almost twenty years now, and he shows no sign of slowing. It’s a tough, tough sell.

So the question is, with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, are Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie good salesman? Does M:I‘s fifth installment keep you on the edge of your seat, worrying that Hunt and his team may never see the light of day again? Impossibly (there I go again), it does. It doesn’t have the same heart or infectious humor of Brad Bird’s Ghost Protocol, but it follows the same winning formula, making it one of the best thrill-rides of the summer.

Hunt and his fellow members in the Impossible Mission Force (a clunky moniker, though its abbreviation, IMF, rolls off of the tongue nicely), a government-funded espionage agency, face an evil they’ve never known in The Syndicate, an international terrorist group whose primary objective is to obliterate the IMF. Taking The Syndicate down head-on proves to be a stiff challenge for Hunt and company when a meddling CIA director (Alec Baldwin) convinces the government to dissolve IMF, forcing Hunt into hiding as he plots his next move.

Left wasting their days away behind desks at the CIA are the straight-laced William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and the klutzy, tech-savvy Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, whose comedic timing makes him an invaluable member of the ensemble), but before long Ethan reaches out to them to help him smoke out The Syndicate. Series veteran Ving Rhames rejoins the team on their mission while series newcomer Rebecca Ferguson dips and twirls around the movie as a deadly double-agent.

Where the movie gives you your money’s worth is in its elaborately staged stunt sequences, all of which are heart-stopping. The movie opens with a shot of Cruise dangling off of the side of an airplane as it lifts off; it was all done for real, with practical effects, and with it Cruise further solidifies his status as the craziest, Evel Knievel MF’er in Hollywood, hands down. To say it’s spectacular is an understatement. But not to be outdone are the handful of other, equally impressive action scenes, which all feel equally distinct and indispensable. A showstopping set piece sees Hunt holding his breath for upwards of two minutes as he infiltrates a futuristic underwater storage unit, while a more intimate moment later in the movie sees Ferguson’s character facing off with a giant thug in a tense nocturnal knife fight. The best of the bunch is a wonderfully orchestrated assassination sequence set in an opera house, paying homage to Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.

These mini-opuses of spy-thriller fun are so well crafted and suspenseful that we do, as I said, genuinely fear for the characters’ lives. But that fear only comes from the baseline fact that we fear for them as human beings; as characters, none of them are so endearing or lovable that we harbor a deep emotional connection. That’s Rogue Nations‘s biggest shortcoming: while the characters say witty things and obviously care for one another, we don’t get to learn much about them on a personal, hopes-and-fears level, outside their world of globe-trotting, car-chasing and evil plan-thwarting.

McQuarrie continues the theme of teamwork-over-tech launched by Bird in Ghost Protocol, though Bird frankly did it better. Again, when the imaginative gadgets and do-dads fail our heroes, they must rely on each other to save their skins. It’s this human element that made Bird’s movie so great, and while it’s still very much at the core of Rogue Nation, the message feels dampened. This is mostly due to the movie’s almost fetishistic fascination with strange-looking spy things; from a sniper rifle disguised as a brass instrument to USB drives disguised as lipstick (that one’s not even that clever), McQuarrie just can’t help but show them off. Best to leave the gadget porn to 007.

Rogue Nation isn’t the best M:I yet, but it’s easily third on the list, if not second (it’s about as good as J.J. Abrams’ M:I3). Cruise is still a nutjob, we still love watching things blow up in glorious global locales, and the cast has never been better, so why not keep the series going? As far as Hollywood cash-cow franchises go, Mission: Impossible is one I’m always happy to see pop back up at the theater. Now, the real question: What the hell are we going to dangle Tom off of next? My vote? Millennium Falcon. Crossover of the ages, right guys?! Guys?

Anthony Baxter’s 2011 documentary You’ve Been Trumped followed everyone’s favorite billionaire, Donald Trump, and his plans to invade a small Scottish town to build the golf course of his dreams for he and his rich club-mates to put around in. The film was shown on BBC and won some awards, but more interestingly, it earned Baxter the ire of Trump, who has since never hesitated to throw not-so-subtle jabs at the filmmaker whenever their paths cross in public.

Baxter continues to pester the presidential hopeful in A Dangerous Game, which follows essentially the same story but expands to the U.S. and Croatia, exploring the hazardous effects of giant golf courses on the natural environment and private lives of locals. This time around, Mr. Trump agrees to have a sit-down interview with Baxter on camera, and the resulting footage should serve as even more fuel for the Trump hate train, which is trucking full steam ahead at the moment. The film features interviews with Alec Baldwin, Robert Kennedy Jr. and more.

I spoke with Baxter about the dangers of this kind of large-scale environmental and community displacement as well as his tense dealings with Mr. Trump.

A Dangerous Game is available on demand now at adangerousgamemovie.com

What motivates you as a filmmaker and/or as an activist? I feel like it takes guts to provoke a grizzly bear like Donald Trump.
I think of myself as a filmmaker and journalist rather than an activist. I was motivated originally by the fact that Donald Trump was going to be building a golf course on a special site of interest and making these ludicrous economic claims about how much business it was going to bring to an area and build an important scientific wilderness area. That was what motivated me to follow the story. I had a lot of struggles along the way in doing that; I had to remortgage the house and use crowdfunding to make the first film. But I felt it was an important story to be told. The motivation for this film came out of showing that first film in communities around the world in which people would say, “We’ve got the same thing going on in our community.” It’s not always Donald Trump by name, but it’s Trump by nature. As Robert Kennedy Jr. says in the film, there are Donald Trumps in every community.

Often there’s a corruption of democracy when it comes to the environment. In Dubrovnik we see that story unfold in the film. I witnessed that in Scotland and the United States as well. There are these golf courses out in the desert that Barack Obama was playing in over the weekend, and in the Palm Springs area, the courses gobble up about 37 billion gallons of water a year in a drought-prone area. I think part of my motivation too is to get the message across that our planet can’t really afford this kind of thing anymore. The gap between the rich and poor is getting greater and the rich are looking for playgrounds to build these resorts for their own sole use. 99 percent of people are squeezed out of those areas, and precious resources like water are put at great risk. If you have a massive golf course in a place like Dubrovnik, it has an impact on ordinary people. Their water supply can’t cope with that kind of thirst the golf course has.

What’s the biggest misconception about the effect of these golf courses on their respective communities?
I think it’s that they somehow boost the community economically. They often end up costing the community because of the amount of infrastructure required to sustain them. In Scotland, Donald Trump promised he’d be bringing in 1.5 billion dollars in investments and creating 6,000 jobs at his golf course. Those were figures the Scottish government ate up and believed, but they were nonsense. We know now that, ten years on since he unveiled his plan, he’s delivered a fraction of what he promised, less than 200 jobs. I think those very flimsy economic arguments are the biggest misconception. There are environmental effects as well. You have a golf course over an aquifer like you do on Long Island, where the aquifer supplies a huge number of people, and nobody understands the effect of the chemicals that filter through the greens have on that water.

Trump’s unnecessary mockery of Michael Forbes’ property and attack on its lack of aesthetic appeal was pretty absurd.
This kind of bullying of ordinary people is a characteristic of his. In Scotland Trump claims he’s a good neighbor, but we’ve seen otherwise. He branded Michael Forbes a “pig.” It’s completely untrue. He builds huge mounds of earth next to people’s houses to stop them from being seen by his golfers. The impact is that people like Susan Monroe’s plants are dying. Trump doesn’t seem to care about that. He doesn’t care about the impact on these people because he wants them out of the way. It’s another dangerous side of this. I know the American media liked the fact that he announced he was running for president, and he was entertaining fodder for late night shows. He not only says alarming things, but does alarming things. He has a great power to manipulate media as he likes.

I interview people a lot, but I could never imagine being in the hot seat you were in. You didn’t look rattled at all sitting feet away from Donald Trump or the mayor of Dubrovnik, both men who view you as harsh opposition. What’s going through your head as you confront these people?
You just have to try to put those natural feelings to the side. You have to remember you’re there to represent the people who don’t have the access Trump does. When you have someone like Michael Forbes and his mother, who’s 90 years old, they don’t have the access to lawyers and airways Trump does. Often the organizations behind these big developments have a relationship with the media, which is very alarming. In Scotland, Trump essentially has access to print whatever he wants in the local newspaper. When we released our film in Scotland, the papers ignored it. That happens time and time again. I have to remember as I sit in front of Donald Trump that I’m there to represent the people. He didn’t give the time of day to them or me, at first at least. He says in the film I’ve become a more important person since the BBC showed my film. It’s a bit of insight into the way he views people. It’s this massive disconnect which is getting even greater between the people like Trump in Trump Tower and the ordinary people on the street. His comments about Mexico were just shocking. It shows that disconnect. The alarming thing is, people listen to what he says.

Trump and his people almost dare you to include what they’re saying in the film. They pre-accuse you of leaving out their statements in their entirety. The funny thing is, they’re saying crazy things. Trump suggests that Forbes’ award as Scot of the Year was rigged. Don’t know why he’d want a statement like that left in.
He accuses that awards ceremony of being rigged, but then rigs his own award ceremony for his golf course. He gives himself an award for “Best Golf Course in the World.” You can’t make this stuff up. The facts are stranger than fiction. What we’ve tried to do is make this film as cinematic as we can. It’s important. We show the beautiful lands of Croatia and Scotland to show what’s at stake. We worked with animators who worked on Searching For Sugarman to get the data across to the audience in an innovative way. We’ve brought the film to digital platforms because we think it’s really important for people to see it at this very important juncture. Trump’s running for president, and people need to see what he’s really like.

What if we took a love triangle between Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, and Rachel McAdams, threw in some John Krasinski, and then situated everything on the island of Hawaii?

Could it indeed get any better than this? The new trailer for Cameron Crowe’s Aloha has just been released and we say, actually, yes. Yes it does. And their names are Bill Murray and Alec Baldwin.

Bradley Cooper plays a disgraced weapons consultant who is called in for a special operation in Hawaii, giving him a chance for redemption, new (or old?) love, and reclaiming the name he had once made for himself there. Emma Stone is the soldier assigned to guide and guard him (from himself, mainly) and Rachel McAdams plays the love-torn ex trying to find contentment in her own reclaimed life as wife of John Krasinski and mother of 2. Bill Murray and Alec Baldwin are the two opposing bosses of said military and contracting companies with vastly dissimilar leadership tactics.

Columbia Pictures’ Aloha is set to be released in theaters on May 29, 2015.

So the groundhog saw his shadow, got scared, and scurried back into his silly little hole declaring that the rest of us miserable creatures need to just deal with the fact that in early February there will just always be at least 6 more weeks of winter. Thank you global warming.

And honestly, who gets scared of their shadow? Do groundhog’s not cast shadows at other times of the year? Are they just perpetually freaked out? So many questions.

At any rate, we’re not afraid of shadows over here at Way Too Indie. In fact, we rather appreciate them.

We can’t do anything about winter lasting as long as it does, but we can certainly counter the bad rep that groundhog is giving shadows. Here’s our list of the Top 8 Movie Shadows. Now if we can get the rodent to watch them, he might chillax and stop hiding.

Nosferatu

Perhaps one of the most ingrained shadows in cinematic history, who could forget the looming shade cast by the vampire Count Orlok? With iffy prosthethics in the early days of cinema who can blame filmmaker F.W. Murnau for utilizing the ever-creepy image cast by the night-dwelling creature? We admit, this one may not help the groundhog with his fears.

Citizen Kane

Orson Welles filled in quite a few chapters of the “How to Make a Great Film” book with his film Citizen Kane but his use of shadow throughout the film is one of the its defining features. Single light sources and half-darkened faces set the mood and give insight into characters. Dark shadows tell the tale in this classic film experience.

Harvey

I’m not admitting anything, but rare is the person who has not jumped at their own shadow now and then. Or thought their shadow might be in fact a man size rabbit with worldly advice and good humor. If only we could glean universal wisdom from all dark corners of the world.

Peter Pan

How many of us can say that we have a shadow with a mind of his own? Not many, I say. Peter Pan, however, has one hell of a spunky character for a dark follower. The groundhog might try and lose his shadow the same way Pan does and stop torturing us all with cold weather.

Jurassic Park

There are a few great shadowy moments in Jurassic Park. One of the most spine tingling moments of the movie, and certainly featuring the most jiggly of jellies, is seeing the raptor’s shadow through the construction screen as the thought-they-were-safe children indulge in some much-deserved sweets. I will never take the safety of an abandoned buffet at face value again.

The Shadow

These people knew what they were doing. They may have been poking fun at the shadows of the noir films of the early ’30s, but this would be a great place to look if one did want to find any of a number of completely good shadows this Groundhog’s day. Spring is practically already here.

Batman Begins

Quite the shadowy figure himself, Batman has never wanted for a shaded companion. Cloaked in darkness already, the man is only ever seen at night for the most part. Heck, he’s a bat. He lives for the night.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space

Shadows are one thing. But shadow puppets that eat their real life victims? There could only be one place these might come from and that’s outer space. We hope the groundhog has enough humor to see these shadowy clowns are way more hilarious than scary.

Like a soaring guitar solo in a mediocre song, Julianne Moore will blow you away in Still Alice, while the rest of the rickety disease movie can barely hold itself together. The movie isn’t a disaster, though; you can’t really divorce Moore’s performance from the rest of the film because the performance intrinsically belongs to the film. But is Moore alone enough to make Still Alice worth watching? The short answer is no, but she does get some help from a young, underrated actress whose effort is just as commendable, but will likely go unnoticed by most. More on that later…

Movies about pressing, important topics like, in this case, Alzheimer’s disease, are fueled by good intentions, though it almost goes without saying that golden statues are always part of the long-term plan as well. Moore’s turn as Alice Howland, a heralded linguistics professor at Colombia who develops a rare case of early-onset Alzheimer’s, is a role every actress in Hollywood would die to play, though few could pull it off as well as Moore does here. But man, is this a dumpy movie. Expect Moore to be showered with praise come Oscar time, and count on Still Alice disappearing into the ether shortly thereafter.

It’s a tragedy of cataclysmic proportions for a woman to have her brain, the very thing she built her long legacy with, deteriorate and slip away at such a young age (50). Moore’s Alice notices small glitches at first: on a routine run around town she suffers a panic attack when, while standing in the middle of the very campus she teaches at, she realizes she has no idea where she is; while giving a lecture she’s given many times before, she loses her place and can’t remember what words come next. She’s got everything to be proud of: a loving family, lots of money, the respect of her colleagues. She’s brilliant, well-liked, and beautiful. But what of that matters when her mind is slipping away by the minute? The irony is just a hair short of ridiculous (writer-director duo Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer’s style is perpetually melodramatic), though the realities of the disease highlighted are sobering to say the least.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, Alice discovers that her condition is hereditary, and there’s a good chance her three children–played by Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, and Hunter Parrish–have inherited the disease themselves. The film focuses on Alice’s relationship with Stewart’s character, Lydia, who’s the least successful of the three kids, as far as Alice is concerned. Lydia wants to be a stage actress, a career choice her mother finds less than ideal, because actresses don’t make a lot of money. (There’s a joke in there somewhere, but it’s not funny.)

Of the three children, Lydia is the one who devotes the most time to caring for her deteriorating mother, despite their contentious relationship. After years of not living up to her mother’s expectations, the tables turn and, as Alice’s need for assistance increases, Lydia’s there to be her rock. Stewart is the young actress I mentioned earlier, and she’s a wonderful screen partner for Moore, much like she is for Juliette Binoche in the upcoming Clouds of Sils Maria. With her signature “bad girl” air and perpetually unimpressed expression, you expect Stewart to be that rebellious child who unleashes years of frustration when Alice’s disappointment becomes too overbearing, but she never becomes that. She remains restrained and wise, and becomes every bit the woman her mother is. When the two meet backstage at one of Lydia’s plays and Alice mistakes her own daughter for a stranger, tears well up in Lydia’s eyes. Instead of breaking down, Stewart conveys the heartbreak in as few moves as possible, never going big. It’s the sign of a great actress.

What makes critiquing this movie so complicated is the disparity between Moore’s performance and her directors’. This movie should be nothing more than a step-by-step, formulaic bore, and in many ways it is, but it’s almost impossible not to be compelled by what Moore does on-screen. She’s a master. Her role is unique in that, while other Oscar-bait-y roles start quiet and build up to a series of loud, bravura scenes at the film’s climax, here Alice’s emotional arc goes up, and then slopes steeply downward: upon being diagnosed her anxiety goes through the roof, but as her mental faculties and memories fade, she becomes more and more emotionally blank.

The key to Moore’s performance lies in her eyes. At the film’s outset, Alice’s eyes look full of big ideas and wit and ambition, but as her mind slips away, her eyes become more confused and vacant. It’s devastating to watch, and the representation of mental decay is beautifully depicted by Moore. The desperation and sorrow is overwhelming as Alice can’t find the bathroom in her own beach house, or introduces herself to her son’s girlfriend twice, or has a breakdown when she can’t find her cell phone. You’re definitely going to cry. There’d be nothing unjust about handing Moore any amount of award statues.

Alice’s biologist husband (a decent Alec Baldwin) is at first in denial about the affliction, but as time marches on and Alice’s condition worsens, his focus shifts to his job. He’s not a louse, or a coward, just a self-absorbed man who isn’t willing to dedicate his life to his ailing wife. Bosworth and Parrish remain mostly in the background, and their characters seem to be there only to provide a stark contrast to Lydia.

Just as it’s hard not to be moved by Moore, it’s hard not to notice how schematic the script is. We’re shoved from moment to moment, each designed specifically to illustrate just how depressing Alice’s condition is without providing much else, dramatically. Despite the title’s message of existential perseverance, Still Alice offers no revelatory perspective on Alice’s condition. Everything that defines her as an individual gets stripped away, and it leaves you feeling empty and sad. Is there anything left of her? That’s a question I wish the filmmakers gave more thought.

Elaine Stritch has one of the most enduring careers of any performer on earth. She’s an irreplaceable Broadway veteran, drawing thousands of eyes and ears with her skyscraper legs and unmistakeable, gaudy vocal delivery. Her television career started in the late ’40s, and chugged on for decades (she had a recurring role on 30 Rock as Alec Baldwin’s mother), and her movie career ain’t too shabby either. At 89-years-old, her immovable swagger hasn’t dwindled a bit: she still performs on stage when she wants to her rabid fan base, preys on poor souls her infamous scathing wit, and struts down the streets of New York like she’s 20 feet tall.

Chiemi Karasawa, a first-time director (though she’s worked on a bevy of other films as a script supervisor or producer), gazes at Stritch from an angle never before seen with Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, a riveting portrait of an American icon vacillating between feeling immortal on stage and fearing for her life in a hospital bed. Karasawa goes beyond the hagiographic (though she clearly adores Stritch), contrasting fun moments of the grande dame at her most flamboyant with sober, more intimate footage in which she penetrates Stritch’s theatricality, revealing her vulnerable side. People have beef familiar with Stritch as a no-bullshit broad for years and years, so to see her express her insecurities and fears, and even show signs of humility and keen self-awareness, makes her an even more fascinating figure than she already was.

It’s clear Karasawa chose her footage carefully, as each scene highlights a different color of Stritch’s personality. (Her sparing use of archival footage, including clips of Stritch’s famous At Liberty show, helps to reinforce that the film is not a career retrospective.) When Stritch begins having trouble remembering the lyrics to a song during a rehearsal, you can see on her face that the doubt washing over her is an unfamiliar–and most importantly, frightening–sensation that she’s fighting to come to terms with. In a brilliant scene, Stritch gets short with the cameraman as she gives him direction as to how to shoot her fiddling with a package of english muffins. She tells him the shot she wants, and she starts the menial task all over again, as if it were a scene in a narrative feature. Save for this instance, none of the film is staged, Karasawa’s inclusion of the footage is invaluable. It’s a perfect illustration of how hard it is for Stritch to shed her Broadway nature, even while doing chores at home.

Clips of Stritch performing a one-woman Sondheim show in a club act as the film’s structural glue: these evenly dispersed bits remind us of her extraordinary talent and ability to draw in an audience, even at her advanced age. Karasawa also includes talking head interviews with former co-stars of Stritch, including the late James Gandolfini, Baldwin, Tina Fey, and Nathan Lane. With a fond smile and a giggle they recall their experiences with Stritch, being at once taken aback and compelled by her larger-than-life attitude. She clearly has fans behind the curtain and camera as well.

The film is at its most somber when we see Stritch struggling with health complications and a lingering alcohol issue. Maintaining her blood sugar levels is a constant concern, she wrestles with whether or not she should ditch her daily habit of drinking a mini bottle of hard liquor, and her memory is fading. She’s coming to terms with the fact that her performer lifestyle is likely coming to an end, and this internal push and pull between her invincible spirit and deteriorating body is Karasawa’s focus. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me is a delight in that we’re able to spend time with as rare a creature as Elaine Stritch, but the film’s human elements elevate it to greater heights.

It’s always felt like everyone’s been waiting for Woody Allen‘s legendary, ultra-prolific career to inevitably begin sputtering out. When he began really losing steam about a decade ago with duds like Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Melinda and Melinda, many speculated that his edge might be dulling for good. Then he knocked us in the head with the brilliant films like Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and Midnight in Paris which proved he was still capable of creating significant cinema.

From another angle, the infrequency of great films in Allen’s late period has been a signal to many that his days as a vital director may be over sooner rather than later. Is Blue Jasmine—a bitter character study starring Cate Blanchett as Jasmine, a Ruth Madoff-like wreck of a woman—substantial enough to quell the fears of his loyal supporters and prove he’s got more left in the tank? The short answer is yes, it is. Blanchett’s unbounded performance should easily earn her an Oscar nod and directorially, Allen is in tip-top shape. And yet, Blue Jasmine falls short of greatness, mostly due to strangely written and casted supporting players and a script that slightly buckles under the weight of Blanchett’s juggernaut performance.

The film opens with Jasmine, a once wealthy New York aristocrat, sitting on a plane, rattling off incessantly about how she met her husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin) to a stranger who becomes less interested with every word. “He met me at a party and swept me off my feet.” They’ve just landed in San Francisco (which Allen photographs as if it were a ghost town), where Jasmine’s forced to stay with her working class sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), since she’s lost “every cent” of her own money—Hal’s orchestration of a failed Ponzi scheme landed him in the slammer, leaving Jasmine drowned in debt. She tries to veil her snobby disgust for her sister’s modest digs, and numbs herself to her surroundings by chugging vodka.

Watching Jasmine plummet from the glamour, Chanel bags, and Hamptons house parties of her previous life (depicted artfully in carefully planted flashbacks) to downing bottles of Stoli, snacking on Xanax, and sleeping on a crummy couch bed, is deliciously tragic and straddles the line between hilarious and depressing. Jasmine is unbelievably self-centered, perpetually complaining about everything, but mostly about the titanic tragedy that is her life, even when no one’s around to hear it (disturbing.) Whenever she’s confronted with a serious dilemma, she mentally checks out and starts reciting her go-to anecdotes from the “Hal” days like a broken record. She repeats the story with a blank stare, “He met me at a party and swept me off my feet.” Shudder. Extreme neurosis and anxiety are eating her alive (Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence comes to mind.) Jasmine’s mental breakdown is both utterly gripping and distressing to watch, like a 20 million dollar jet crashing and burning in slow motion.

The supporting cast is almost comically un-Californian, with Andrew Dice Clay as Hawkins’ bitter ex husband (“She’s movin’ in wit’ yoo?”), Louis C.K. as her frivolous fling (wasted), and Bobby Cannavale playing a lame version of Stanley Kowalski. Speaking of A Streetcar Named Desire (which inspired Allen to make this film), Blanchett channels the tragic romanticism of Blanche DuBois, who she played on-stage in 2009. She never gets too showy, though, and only goes big-time operatic when she knows the scene will be better for it.

Though Allen opted to not endow Blue Jasmine with his travelogue visual flare that I’ve grown fond of, Blanchett provides so much to chew on and gawk at that she single-handedly makes the film a certifiably significant work. The humor never falters and there’s enough of it to balance out Jasmine’s surprisingly dark character arc, but I’d hesitate to classify this as a comedy (as it’s been advertised.) I would, however, classify it as proof that Allen’s still got years of great films left in him.

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011 was Hick, a film directed by Derick Martini about a teenager who aimlessly drifts away from her Nebraska home. Aimlessly drifts are a common theme here because the entire film seems to follow the main characters lead. The film tried to be bizarre and off-beat but ultimately it felt more contrived than anything.

One of the first scenes in Hick is Luli McMullen (Chloe Grace Moretz) having her thirteen year old birthday party at a crappy dive bar in Nebraska. One of the birthday gifts she opens up happens to be a .45 Smith & Wesson. Afterwards her mother and father both drunkenly fight over who is driving her home but both are too drunk to do so. Instead, she gets a ride from a person who works at the bar. That is how this family operates in a nutshell.

The next morning her mother leaves with a real estate agent with Luli witnessing. After telling her father the news, he seems more upset than surprised. After he finishes his breakfast also abandons her. On a whim she gets the idea of going to Las Vegas for no other reason but there is sugar daddy potential there. And that is how the adventure starts and we have little choice to accept this as the plot.

Luli manages to find a ride from a young gentleman named Eddie Kreezer (Eddie Redmayne) but it is not long before she manages to upset him enough to kick her out. After finding shelter to sleep underneath a bridge she is awakened by a woman who pulled over from the highway to urinate, nearly on her. Somehow she convinces the woman to give her a ride.

The woman’s name is Glenda (Blake Lively) who seems to be exactly like Luli in 30 years. Within the first few minutes of meeting each other Glenda offers cocaine to Luli. Her thought process is that Luli will probably doing it with her friends sometime soon anyways so why not let her try it now.

The two stop at a convenience store and form a plan to rob it. Both feeding of each other’s similar personalities, they are a dangerous combination. If there were related they would be a twisted mother and daughter version of Bonnie and Clyde.

It turns out that Eddie, who first picked Luli up for a ride, knows Glenda. Glenda is in some sort of relationship with Eddie’s boss and for no good reason Eddie is put in charge of looking after Luli. Eddie seems to have a sexual connection with Luli that soon becomes dangerous.

I have little doubt that the novel this film was adapted for would be more intriguing then it’s film counterpart. This is one of those cases where the book most likely did not translate well to film, although I have to speculate because I have not read the novel. I felt like the characters in Hick were not developed well enough as they could have and the film only skimmed the subject matters they encounter.

The best part about the film is the performance by Chloe Grace Moretz. She is a fearless teenager who waves guns around like they are nothing and snorts coke when given the chance. She has played in roles ranging from Kick-Ass to Let Me In to Hugo but probably never has had as much on-screen face time as this. When most of the other actors seem to overplay their characters she was the least offender.

What annoyed me the most is when Luli suddenly shows that she does have normal human emotions when she for some reason is mad when Glenda leaves her. She did not seem to bat an eye when her mother did the same thing at the beginning. Now granted, her mother did not seem to care much for her so maybe she saw Glenda as a role model to look up to. But why? Maybe she wanted to believe Glenda was a better person than she really was. Again, lack of character development.

There is more than one scene that will leave you scratching your head. I appreciated the strangeness that was found in the scenes but so many of them felt forced. They really did not seem to fit in or were not needed at all.

To use the film’s own words, Hick is not “worth of note”. The big problem is the film never hooks the viewer in from the beginning. So the story arc never seemed to peak because it never really began. The underdeveloped characters make it nearly impossible to sympathize with them, making you wonder what the film was trying to accomplish.

The Royal Tenenbaums is about a dysfunctional family with each member having their own talents and idiosyncrasies, reunited again under the same roof the child prodigies grew up together. Director Wes Anderson’s style is clearly shown like most of his films, the script is incredibly detailed and the character development is phenomenally well done. Most of it is comprised of quirky characters with deadpan punch lines. Love him or hate him, Anderson remains one of the most original contemporary American filmmakers, this film only reflects that.

The Royal Tenenbaums is written in a style of a book and starts off with a prologue – which is narrated by Alec Baldwin – that gives us a detailed background on the Tenenbaum siblings as children. Each of the three kids is gifted in their own way. The oldest son Chas managed to develop a new breed of mice and close real estate deals in his teens. Margot is an adopted daughter who before the age of 14 produced a $50,000 playwriting grant and a secret smoker since 12. Richie is an international tennis champion. Then you have Eli Cash, who is a neighbor kid who spends enough time with them to be considered an honorary Tenenbaum.

To close out the prologue, we see the father, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), explain to the kids that even though he has made “certain sacrifices” by having children, that he is leaving based on their mother’s, Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston), decision.

The film then jumps 22 years later and we see the children all grown up. At their core, the siblings are falling apart although it is seems like it was not because of being child prodigies or growing up fatherless but simply where life as taken them.

Royal has not spoken to his ex-wife in seven years until one day he pops in to tell her some news. He tells her that he is deadly sick and claims he has six weeks to live. In his own words he “has a pretty bad case of cancer”. However, you do not know if he is telling the truth or not as he is the type of person that walks with a cane but rarely uses it. His last wishes are simple, to get the family back together.

Chas (Ben Stiller) in now permanently in a state of paranoia after losing his wife in a plane crash. The film implies that the late night fire evacuation drills he does with his two children are not rare occurrences. He decides that because there are no sprinklers inside the apartment, he and his kids should live with his mother.

Richie (Luke Wilson) was once a famous tennis player but had choked in a big tournament which ended his career. He blames his failure on his absent father and his love for his adopted sister Margot. Currently, he is cruising around the world on a large ship when he hears the news about his father and decides to go home to visit him.

Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) spends six hours a day in the bathtub of a locked bathroom watching TV and secretly smoking. Her isolation has caused her not to write a play in years. She is married to Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) but leaves him when she decides to go back home.

Royal never has as much as a quarter on him at any time. He constantly has to ask people for money or credit. His own son Chas has sued him twice for taking money from him. That may be pay back from when Royal shot him in the hand with a BB gun as a kid (which actually happened to Owen Wilson’s brother as a kid).

Since moving back home, Margot rekindles a relationship with Eli Cash (Owen Wilson) which is very upsetting to Richie who is in love with her. Richie eventually resorts to suicide as desperate call for attention. Similar drama surrounds Etheline as Royal is trying to get closer to her at the same time his nemesis Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) is.

Henry calls Royal out for not having cancer and he is right. Royal admits to faking it in an effort to try getting back with his ex-wife but realizes the 6 days he spent with his family has actually been one of the best times in his life. And that is something he is not lying about.

A scene towards the end of the film is wonderful, a long continuous scene that captures almost all of the characters showcasing their personality. Henry is still trying to cheat the system by getting the most out of his insurance. Royal finally makes up to Chas by giving him a dog. The doctor who was giving bad medical advice in the beginning is still giving terrible advice. Margot is still getting cigarettes from hiding places and Richie Wilson is still taking care of his bird as he did as a child.

Wes Anderson’s love for the theater shows as this felt more like a play than it did a feature film. His focus on scene decoration and matching of colors on the set are both artfully done. Along with cinematography, another similar theater element is most of the characters are almost always wearing the same clothing throughout. When you watch a Wes Anderson film, you instantly know it by the look and feel of it, which is something I greatly admire of him. His style is identifiably unique.

While both Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson came up with a script that can hold its own to many others, the acting performances help sell it wonderfully. Gene Hackman nails the role perfectly, in what might be the best film he has done. This role landed him a Golden Globe win. Granted, the amount of talented actors Wes Anderson got to work with for this is mesmerizing, but he did get them each to perform their best.

With The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson spends so much time carefully distinguishing each character that it makes the main storyline seem relatively shallow. It is the type of film that becomes more rewarding after each viewing and because of that it has a tremendous cult following. Of course, most films put out by Anderson have a following automatically associated to them.