Cyrus (Jay and Mark Duplass, 2010)

I really wanted to like this movie (and I suppose I did, slightly), especially given how much I enjoyed Baghead (2008) in a completely different manner than I expected going into it. Though devoid of the element of surprise present in the filmmaking and construction of Baghead, there are things to admire here starting with the assured and likable cast. Jonah Hill plays Cyrus who, at 22, still lives with his mother Molly, near-convincingly brought to life by the embodiment of can-do-no-wrong, Marissa Tomei. (If I could take credit for pulling this observation from the mire I would: my wife Melissa pointed out that in Molly, we have a seemingly rational, intelligent, genial person who is so inept at recognizing the co-dependent relationship she has with her son and detecting his devious and parasitic activities that the minute you start questioning how these contradictive qualities can exist in the same person—which is almost immediately—her character, along with the film itself, crumples beneath the weight of it.) And the always excellent John C. Reilly plays divorcée John, the poor sap whose falling in love with Molly (apparent immediately in a well-scripted yet entirely unbelievable post-modern “meet cute”) threatens—at least in Cyrus’s eyes—to decimate the all-encompassing bond between mother and son.

The film has a few other grace notes. One worth mentioning, oddly, is the use of locations, especially the house where Cyrus and his mother live and setting where a pivotal party scene unfolds, which uncannily ground the proceedings in reality, nearly making you believe the goings-on as they unfold. Also, the film’s ending is better than most of its kind, and Cyrus has exactly one great, kinetically giddy scene, where John confronts Cyrus in the middle of the night: the momentum builds to a fever pitch, but rather than capitalizing on this momentum, the film subsequently grinds to a halt without ever regaining its footing.

I admire the gentle nature of the screenplay and that the film never goes for a cheap and easy laugh; say what you will, but Cyrus isn’t lazy. But in the end, it’s either a comedy that’s not particularly funny or a drama that’s a little too quirky to resound with any gravitas. Cyrus is generically sweet like kindergartners’ exchanging valentines that they’ve each scribbled their perfunctory signatures on, because that’s what they do, rather than achingly sweet like a working stiff trying to find the perfect Valentine’s Day present for his lady when he only has $20 in his bank account and doesn’t get paid again until the 15th, because that’s what he has to do. Which is what, I think anyway, the Duplass brothers are aspiring to here.

Inspector Bellamy (Claude Chabrol, 2009)

Terrifically nuanced performances from Gérard Depardieu as Bellamy and Marie Bunel as his impossibly graceful wife propel this strange, laconic crime drama, the last film from Claude Chabrol (1930–2010), who along with contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut wrote for Cahiers du cinéma in the ’50s and went on to found the French New Wave of cinema. The titular character (apparently based on George Simenon’s Inspector Maigret mystery novels, none of which I have read or was even aware of when I watched this film), a famous Parisian inspector, stumbles into a mystery involving a horrific car crash while vacationing with his wife.

It’s a treat to watch Depardieu’s Bellamy as he not so much investigates the mystery as lets it wash over him, almost as if he’s in a perpetually meditative state. And the plot is important, yes, but perhaps less so than the way the characters relate to each other, specifically Bellamy and his wife and Bellamy’s fuck-up brother, who brings a black cloud up for a visit. Their relationships bristle with joie de vivre, jealousy, denial, longing, relapse, and deep-rooted regret, sometimes all at once. Even with a few missteps—some of the point-of-view camerawork seems woefully out of place, especially given its (thankfully) minimal use, and, though the interaction between characters on the whole digs at truth, the day-to-day interactions and reactions of the major characters seems faintly at odds with the naturalistic filmmaking—it’s a beautiful film, with a conclusion that offers up an unexpected bookend that chills to the bone.

Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

It’s funny: film critics used to accuse the genre-defining blockbuster films of Steven Spielberg (starting with Jaws) of bullying the surrender of meaningful cinema in favor of box office receipt-driven bombast and spectacle, and now the critics are calling J.J. Abrams’ homage to these films, Super 8, the antidote to standard summer trash like the Transformers films because of its firm emotional core. Though Super 8 may be a little nastier and harder edged than such films (perhaps reflecting the times we live in), the critics are onto something: the idea of caring one bit about let alone shedding tears the way people did in, say, E.T. over any character’s demise in the Transformers franchise is beyond improbable. But Super 8 is magically burdened with real emotional heft, and it's something to behold. Sure there’s drooling monsters, single-minded villains incapable of summoning an ounce of compassion, and things exploding left and right, but there’s a feeling of there being more at stake than in many summer films of late, because you genuinely care about what happens to the people on the screen. This is because the writing and performances plant these characters firmly in the "reality" created for them. In fact, the fate these characters may suffer due to the travails threatened by the fantastical elements in the films may be bested by those in their everyday existence.

Though much has (deservedly) been written about Elle Fanning's performance, the cast (especially the kids, led by the remarkable Joel Courtney) is uniformly (and unusually) solid. Without giving too much away (the less said the better), a group of misfit, film making kids (you can be forgiven for comparing them to the characters from The Goonies) navigating their way through small-town life in late '70s witness a horrific train crash while filming their latest opus, and find themselves witnesses to something that defies simple explanation.

The film doesn’t transcend the criticisms leveled by Kael and her contemporaries when the summer blockbuster was in its infancy, criticisms that, though they have their detractors who argue that such critics are humorless snoots, impervious to the charms of special effects, certainly hold water. And there are clunky passages, a few plot device missteps here and there, and interweaving themes (film making being the primary one) that never gel 100 percent. But at this point on the trajectory in the lineage of what the summer popcorn film template has become, it’s refreshing (and familiar) to surrender to a film that uses bombast and thrills in a manner that furthers the storytelling, rather than obliterating it to fiery metallic bits.