Friday the 13th (Marcus Nispel, 2009)

You can be forgiven for not knowing that the depraved serial killer Jason Voorhees appeared only peripherally as a deformed young boy in the original Friday the 13th (1980). But fans of the series know that Jason's mother was responsible for the slaughter of the now-standard cabal of generic, sex-crazed teenagers in the original—the entirety of which is summed up in the first few minutes of this version—so this is more an update than it is a remake. The whole thing feels a little paint-by-numbers and designed by committee; you get the feeling that everyone here is unified in their ideology of performing a job-for-hire, strictly because there’s money to be made, the only thing at stake being performing dutifully enough to ensure future employment. But there’s one great moment of invention in Friday the 13th's screenplay when, about 20 minutes in, after Jason has dispatched with what the viewer can be forgiven for thinking is the group whose journey we will follow through to the film’s conclusion, the title is introduced, revealing the preceding sequence to be a foreword. Not only is it impressive in its concept but also in its resourcefulness: by having two groups of teenagers to kill, there’s less time needed for plot development. Which is presumably a good thing, depending on whether your tolerance is higher for watching teens get stalked and mutilated by a madman than it is for excusing flimsy plot construction.

Though screenwriters Damien Shannon and Mark Swift offer a modest improvement over their screenplay for the D.O.A. Freddy vs. Jason—I liked that there were little homages to fans of (or at least those familiar with) the original series, such as Jason wearing as he did in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) a pillow case (or burlap sack, whatever) over his head before finding, as he did in Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982), the hockey mask that would make him (and it) an icon—none of it is scary. Part of this is because all of the sets look constructed, Jason looks and moves like a stuntman, and the score is lousy. The multi-ethnic cast (the presence of which begs the question Is it progressive to allow blacks and Asians to be brutally murdered alongside their white peers? and, strangely, I think it may be) comprises a series of "types," the white kids included. (The most ridiculous and perplexing being the guy obviously meant to look like the screen persona of Seth Rogen, though with none of his awkward charisma or self-effacing sense of humor.)

The Friday the 13th movies have always seemed oddly puritanical and conservative in their values (smoke pot and fuck, you die) given their penchant for employing inventive forms of brutality. This notion is only complicated when you find yourself siding with the killer (a surrogate for imposing these values) due to the brash, obnoxious behavior of the callous teenagers. While it may indeed be brisker (and arguably better) than any of the films of the original series, it’s still pretty thin. And at 97 minutes, it feels way too long. Fairly generic and offering a bit of restraint, given the post-Saw world we live in, it's best not to expect much here, because that’s precisely what you’ll get.

The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)

The Kids Are All Right is certainly well acted, subtly directed, the writing is sharp and focused, and it is overall engaging. But I couldn't help but be a little put off by the story's chosen trajectory, especially in the wake of numerous critics' lamentations about how, even though the parents here are both women, in the end, it's about "family." Because that's not entirely true. It's about a family facing a crisis, which is a different thing altogether. I suppose I was (naively) expecting more Cassavetes, less sensationalism and soap-operaish plotting and gloss. True, it's by no means a product of the branch of Hollywood that produced Transformers, but in ways aside from Annette Bening's involvement it reminded me of American Beauty, with its characters participating in a scandal that betrays their essence, and kind of deflates the whole thing.

The Social Network (David Fincher 2010)

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Margot at the Wedding (2007)

Sure, like all of Noah Baumbach's efforts, there is a required level of class condescension—in this case, of, say Deliverance-sized proportions—but the frenetic in-the-action staging (and, to a lesser degree, pervasive handheld camerawork) create an immediacy and a sort of verite veneer that almost makes you believe that these types of people could exist in the real world. Overly everything, including charming.

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)

If Darren Aronofsky is the filmmaker equivalent of Brandon Flowers of The Killers, then Black Swan is his "When You Were Young," a terrific song (amidst some really horrible ones and a few that almost get it right) where all of the operatic pretension effortlessly rises and tugs you along, away from a well-deserved reservation and hesitance to the other side of the hump where intoxication and sadness reigns. The film is is essentially the collection of seconds born of awaking in the middle of the night, grabbing a baseball bat and slowly creaking down the hallway toward sounds you understand to be consistent with those of a home invasion—only stretched to two TMJ-inducing hours.

Aronofsky is not to be confused with a first-tier contemporary director on par with, say, Paul Thomas Anderson (there's a little too much "arteest" in Aronofsky's blood for my money) but he deserves a lot of credit here for keeping the train on the track; he has certainly matured since the similarly toned Requiem for a Dream, which I found pretty intolerable. But in the end, it's primarily due to Natalie Portman's disciplined, anxiety-drenched and transformative performance that Black Swan is deeply affecting, painfully sad and thrilling, miraculously avoiding the potential for silliness—there's plenty of it—lurking around in the screenplay. Given its fantastical leanings, I can certainly see why someone would find the whole thing to be utterly fucking ridiculous. Me, I was haunted, troubled, in admiration. It's black licorice, black olives; either you like it or you don't.

The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960)

Troubling, simple story forcing you to grapple with complex issues of faith, violence, forgiveness, good, evil, intention, and innocence. Its power is crafty; though you may realize that you're watching something of substance, you'll probably find yourself shocked by the weight and intensity of its emotionally charged and despairing conclusion.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

I resisted watching this for a long time, even though it is a favorite of my friends; I'm not a huge Altman or Warren Beatty fan, and, for the first half, I wasn't convinced that McCabe was anything other than irritating, from the characters' incessant muttering to the Leonard Cohen songs trying to either lull you to sleep or tell you how you're supposed to feel about the characters. But in the second half, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that this is one truly original, otherworldly, sad, and disquieting film. It's not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's lousy with invention and heart.