The truth is often more horrifying than fiction and although Short Term 12 isn’t based on a true story, it unearths a harsh reality of displaced youth, offset from the spotlight but boiling under the surface of society. Replicating the many broken homes in modern American families, director/writer Destin Cretton has sole custody of this project. Thankfully, he takes this responsibility seriously and delivers a masterclass in realism complimented with standout performances from Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., and Keith Stanfield.

His journey is perpendicular to newcomer Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) who fights tooth and nail to be anywhere but here. While Jayden battles to leave and Marcus tries to work through the backlog of his own demons (with a powerful rap offering a raw view into the tattered loss of his youth), we realize just how short term the stay is here.

It may be limbo but it’s not without it’s guardian angel.Larson’s Grace is that angel. She’s a twentysomething running the ins-and-outs of the joint with the infinite patience of Mother Theresa and a thorny soul buried with secrets. Her heart is invested in the pocket of each and every tenant shuffling through the facility, entombing herself in their trauma, becoming a fiber of their tragedy. Grace puts her physical and emotional well being at the bottom of the totem pole and it’s in part because of this that she is so great at dealing with this gang of lost boys…and girls. But her constant need to play the savior hints at something troubled lingering within her – an undead memory that haunts her every breath.

Grace sustains a borderline manipulative relationship with co-worker and underling, Mason (John Gallagher Jr.) who is both her devoted lover and emotional rock. On the flip side, Grace is as hot and cold as the object of a Katy Perry song. Theirs is a shaky boat of love with Grace always maintaining the upper hand, unwilling to let Mason ascend her tower of secrets. Their physical and emotional relationship have obviously parallels to their work positioning with Grace always on top, the solitary king of the castle flanked by skyhigh stone walls.

But to paint Grace as a domineering presence is to misrepresent her. In showing the turbulent nature of this part of her life, Cretton aims to illuminate how broken she is. Her throttling affections are a window into her soul. A key to the realization that doesn’t see herself as even deserving of love. Cretton plants little psychological clues like these throughout the film, prompting our curiosity for what scars these characters are hiding and how, if at all possible, they can be undone. The joy in the film is not the end of the journey but the road to it as Cretton handles his character’s soft-shelled insecurities both gently and honestly instead of putting it in autopilot and expecting the subject to bungle down tear-road.

One of the great rewards of watching the film is seeing how the jigsaw pieces composing Larson and other characters fit together. Unlike lesser films that utilize baggage as a means of emotional manipulation, every reveal, every turn, every batting off or acceptance of affection feels earned. It’s a difficult journey but one that lends credence to the cast’s standup acting ability andCretton‘s talent to skirt past manipulation into a much more rewarding realm of genuineness.

What remains the most fascinating portion of the film is Cretton’s willingness to go someplace dark and stir around in the pot. In doing so, a motif that rises to the top is the idea that people reveal themselves through their art. Grace draws, Marcus raps, Jayden writes stories. In these moments of expression, their deepest sense of self shines through perhaps showing more than they ever could in mere conversation. In creation, there is the capacity to destroy, to move beyond. Almost Nietzschian in effect, creation and destruction are symbiotic here. Two faces of one Janus, two sides of the same coin.

Another, more difficult, thing to take away is Cretton’s interpretation of self-inflicted pain. Many wounded souls hurt themselves not to inflict pain but to make the pain go away. This cathartic nature of destruction helps mask the real trauma stirring within them. The only way to move beyond this cycle of abuse though seems to be in a form of acceptance – a self-imposed yard sale of everything nasty hidden away. And so it is in Short Term 12. Only when we show the darkest parts of ourselves are we able to start moving towards the light.

A-

“Get in, get out” Getaway‘s tagline reads – an obvious parallel to the ideology that went on back in the writer’s room in this fart-and-hairspray fireball of a movie. Repping ADHD filmmaking at its most nauseous and nonchalant, Courtney Solomon (Dungeons and Dragons) directs Getaway like an 11-year old waving around a smart phone, clicking the camera on and off with no intent and no semblance of artistry. Each sequence leapfrogs between an unmeasured amount of angles, demonstrating Solomon’s lack of faith in his framing and making the experience of watching it akin to a scatter-shot montage lingering on for 90 minutes. It’s a grueling slog intent on leaving a wake of smashed-up vehicles – I counted 23 un-inventively totaled police cars, countless wrecked civilian automobiles and five exploding motorcycles – but not much else.

I’ve become an increasingly avid fan of Hawke’s – and found his work in this year’s Before Midnight to be the finest performance of 2013 to date – but he is saddled with some dialogue that’s so clunky that I feel I have to begrudge him simply for not outright refusing to say them at all. A late stage, “I know where she is!” (spoken to himself and no-one else) is the type of wrong-kind-of-laugh-inducing ringer that invites a level 5 face-palming. It’s just embarrassing for everyone involved and it’s nothing short of sad to see such a talented actor stoop to such lows.

I guess this brings us to what would be referred to here as the “plot”. Since about 95% of the film takes place inside a moving Shelby GT500, you can imagine that the plot lacking in both quantity and quality. Hawke is Brent Magna – a retired racecar driver, disgraced from the tracks for his recklessness and a tendency to destroy cars. On Christmas Day in Bulgaria (because where else would a disgraced racer want to spend the holidays?) his wife is nabbed by some faceless baddies and Magna is told that he’s got to drive a car into a bunch of stuff or they’ll kill her. Without a bat of an eye, Magna’s in the car, skidding his car into the midst of crowded parks, missing the mobs of holiday-cheerers by inches and thinking none the less of it.

The screenplay undercutting this vapid turd reads like a cheap, pointless and, worst of all, unasked for mashup of Saw and Fast and Furious. It involves a metric fuck-ton of driving, a heft of smashing, a dastardly villain who we only get to know by his (non-intimidating) voice, and a pinch of walking for good measure. Just kidding. We never once see Hawke move his legs, unless he’s a-shiftin’ with those racey feet of his. Like a road trip to hell with all the relatives we like least, we’re trapped inside the car for what quickly starts to seem like an eternity. The worst part of it all, Selena Gomez somehow snuck herself along for the ride.

But at least one consolation comes from this ten-car pileup of a film –  Gomez’s acting career can officially be swept under the rug once and for all. A young hacker known only as “The Kid”, Gomez is plainly more of a hack than a hacker. Name me one real life hacker whose idea of hacking means jamming their sausage fingers at an iPad with buttons like “Override” on the main screen and I’ll withdrawal my complaint. Perhaps hacking in the 21st century really is that easy but I seriously doubt it.

On the “hack” side of the equation though, there is overwhelming evidence that Gomez couldn’t act her way out of a bologna sandwich. There is not a single second (not the teensiest, tiniest crumb of time) where we believe that Gomez is capable of a tenth of the technological feats her character is supposedly carrying out. I could more easily believe that my friend’s dog Lucy could carve an ice swan than this curmudgeon do anything technical beyond tweeting a rave pic. Perhaps even more offensive are her completely unwarranted personality swings. Shifting on a dime scene-to-scene without any connection to past progress, Gomez can’t seem to keep her character straight. Never has it been so evident that a movie is not made front-to-back as Gomez seems incapable of keeping her arc linear without retreating into territory she’s already supposed to have moved beyond. 

Another character who gets the old writers block treatment is Jon Voight‘s strangely brewed criminal mastermind. With a nonspecific accent about as intimidating as a stale cupcake, and just about as flavorless, Voight’s grin is the only believable thing he’s selling here. Why? Because he’s laughing his way to the bank. His performance calls for so little that he may as well have been sitting in a sound booth and munching on bon-bons. That is the gist of his performance: sitting around, munching on bon-bons and grinning at the idiots handing him money to do it.

Like 70s exploitation without the sly, sarcastic sense of fun, Getaway leaves its trail of half-baked destruction but buries any sense of charmed wit along the way. Instead, this thriller on life support has its excitement pumped in at the rate of dial-up

internet. With only one long-shot in the entirety of the film worth mentioning at all, the result is so watered down that there’s hardly any taste left in it at all. Unfortunate proof that Solomon is a powder keg of a director, Getaway is little more than a generic waste of time and money. It may strike a chord for Shelby enthusiasts with a love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship with Bulgaria, but everyone else: do yourself a favor and steer clear.

D-

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Closed Circuit is a faux-intellectual “thriller” cloaked in paranoia and government conspiracies that we’ve seen done in a more exciting manner many times before. It churns along turgidly, hoping to capitalize on anti-government sentiment but merely stirs up our desire to check our watches. Although there is a somewhat significant message buried in the narrative discourse, the fact that it’s only about one level deep does little to excite the imagination, much less inspire any sort of conversation exiting the film.

In the mix of the scramble to figure out who is who and where trust can be placed, the film flexes a whole lot of beer-belly-tautness. Flabby scenes make for drooping excitement and it isn’t long before we don’t really even care whose life is in danger. All the babbling adds up to narrative fat that should have been trimmed and tidied before it scurried past the cutting room floor. Even with a run-time a touch over an hour and a half, a vacuum of suspense makes it feel like a much longer haul. Feet dragging its way to the finishing line, Closed Circuit doesn’t do enough to keep tensions high, and in doing so, jettisons any audience anxious for excitement.

While Bana was the sole reason I even made an effort to go see this film, as his diverse track record usually winds up more on the “hit” side of the dartboard for me, his effort here is hardly staggering. His portrayal of Rose isn’t a cop out but his character’s arc is just divinely uninteresting. Hardly moving far on the spectrum of character, he’s a man who we have to deal with more than one that we actively cheer for. Between casting concerned glances and trying not to act too concerned, he’s concerned with being concerned. Did I mention his concern? While the ultimate failure of this film can hardly be laid at Bana’s feet, I hope that he was the victim of the editing process and is as disappointed as I am in the final product.

Hall similarly is hardly of interest. Her character is a strong-female type with an upstanding moral code – a rote miscalculation of the empowered woman. She’s a bit of a question mark, albeit the familiar tropes thinly painted on her. We wind up not knowing much more about her than we did when she first appears on screen. Again, an arc is missing – another bit of paramount import thrown to the wind.

Even more frigid than these stoic cutouts is the chemistry between just about every actor sharing the screen. Hall and Bana just don’t seem to be clicking off each other, suggesting that any sort of prior relationship was as steamy as pistachio gelato. Even when they argue, the passion is absent. Dead eyes bounce off one another in scene after scene. Similarly the supporting characters rounding out the cast do little to amp up a sense of fullness.

Julia Stiles enters and exits without making a single impression, Ciarán Hinds tries to round out his unflattering role but his effort proves futile and Jim Broadbent is a shade of intimidation, although perhaps the most interesting performer onscreen just because he has a glint of something lurking behind his eyes other than concern.

Humming along like ants under a microscope, it becomes clear that the characters don’t really matter at all. They are just as much set pieces as the sound studios this was filmed in – scaffolding upon which to build a thinly veiled political message. But this deus-ex-machina doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Even though concerns over surveillance and government corruption are timely positioned with outcry over NSA oversteps, Crowley fails to illuminate the subject in an intriguing light. Accordingly, he’s proved why so many people avoid politics, because not even a movie about the subject could avoid the inevitable yawns.

So Crowley’s greatest crime is that he’s crafted a bore-fest. Political angles wrought with finger pointing are undone by naive filmmaking that supposes politicking can alone triumph over genuine thrills. It’s a cold experience, unlikely to shake up anything but a big “meh” and a feeling that more than a mere hour and a half was wasted.

D+

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Less is more may be a common adage but it’s not one that applies to Ain’t Them Bodies Saint. From the simple old-timey title sequence, this is a film that aims at quiet contemplation but mostly just falls flat. While there are a lot of ideas hinted at throughout, little is ultimately brought to light and we’re left with a soft-gummed mass that asks little of and offers little to its audience.

While starsCasey Affleck and Rooney Mara are certainly on point here, it’s the moustachioed Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma) that offers up the most solid performance of the group. Playing with subtlety and subtext, Foster isn’t your typical police officer but it’s hard to put your finger on why he works as well as he does. He’s lawful good to the T but there is an uncommon complexity to his undeserved adoration of Mara’s Ruth that makes him more intriguing than the morally grey characters surrounding him.

Deep within said moral greyness, Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) continues to give worthwhile performances and here plays with guilt and forgiveness. Burying her guilt rather than confronting it, she is an emotionally stranded character who has built castle-high walls around herself. But through her guarded facade is a woman lost. Even though we only see the initial inklings of her letting her guard down, Mara works the nuance and milks her rather slim character for all she’s worth.

Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone), on the other hand, is fine but I’m still not won over by him. He’s scraggly and pitiable but he lacks the oomph of a leading man, making it all the more difficult to root for such a flatly written character. As the vultures of his past circle closer, there is neither a big reveal nor any character revelation to up the stakes.

Ultimately, mystery can only go so far. When your faceless villains aren’t given any motives, they become bland sketches rather than shadowy demons. They don’t add anything to the picture because they are lifeless and instead just showcase the more hollow aspects of the film. The mystery runs itself dry and we’re left disappointed and unfulfilled.

While director of photography Bradford Young nabs some stunningly desolate imagery, winning him the Cinematography Award at Sundance, the camera work is mostly as wooden as the plot points. Perhaps I’ll never quite understand why this particular brand of dusty film, accented with brown and grey filters, always feels the need to be so restrained and inward peering but this egotistic meditation just serves to hold it back.

Although there are some intriguing themes taking place, none are aptly fleshed out. Even a committed cast can’t make magic out of nothing, especially with a script that’s this bare-bones and sulky. Posing as a film deeper than it is, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is a rare case where the title is more provocative than the work.

Going to see The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is like getting a filing from a dentist whose supply of Novocaine has run dry. It’s a painful eternity of an experience that hacks and saws at our entertainment-guzzling sensibilities, defying each and every lesson culled from filmmaking 101 and spewing formula like a film-school-dropout on Ipecac. The “talent” both in front of and behind the camera is so raw-dogged and askew that it almost seeks to redefine “so bad, it’s good”. Needless to say, it misses that mark by a long shot and winds up in its own realm entirely, almost unknowingly. The result is strangely akin to watching a child play in a turd-peppered litter box, mistaking it for the sandbox he knows and loves, helpless to clue the poor thing in on its brown-handed error. 

Even by teen franchise standards, Zwart’s hyperventilated storytelling is embarrassingly crude and majorly derivative. He’s proven himself to be a more slack jawed character director than Bill Condon with less story assurance than Rupert Sanders. Anytime I’m sitting in a theater daydreaming about  Twilight, a loss has occurred on an epic level.  

At the helm of the cluttered wreckage is Lily Collins as Clary, a plain-Jane teen who discovers that the blood of Shadow Hunters run in her veins when her mom is abruptly kidnapped. Shadow Hunters are age-old crossbreeds between humans and angels, invisible to the normal human eye, sent to Earth as guardians. They are tasked with ridding the world of demons that physically manifest themselves as fiery monsters and tentacle dogs. Also, vampires, because fuck you.

Naturally, werewolves are also in the mix and they’re aligned with the good guys, maintaining a shaky and largely undefined alliance with the Shadow Hunters. But the relational web is so whitewashed and barren that it’s hard to get a read on exactly who is who and what is what and why exactly you’re supposed to care about anyone and anything. Also, a vampire bites a lead character. But don’t worry, none of that will actually matter in terms of the story nor will it ever be addressed again.

The rhyme and reason underlying any one of the scenes seems to be up to your own willingness to accept stupidity at face value. Honestly, I’d be shocked and amazed if anyone who hadn’t read the popular books upon which the movie is based could offer a reasonable plot point to plot point analysis after getting through this genuine nightmare. It is a near impossibility because nothing is ever allowed to breathe; it just charges along completely blind to the wreckage that it calls narrative.

For his part, Zwart can’t even handle the most commonplace of arcs. He chugs along letting the plot holes blow bigger and bigger. Had I been as apparently drunken as the people OKing this 2-hour-(plus!!) brain rape, it probably wouldn’t have been so bad. As it is, I’m already eager to slam it with the title of “Worst Movie of the Year.”

Although Collins (Mirror Mirror, Abduction) is a far cry from good, she does manage to escape more unscathed than her co-stars, who are wholly terrible. The broodingly gaunt Jamie Campbell Bower as Jace mistakes duckface for acting as Kevin Zegers‘s moody Alec is a simple shade of angst, fearfully meek in personifying homosexuality within a family-friendly environment. But none compare to the appallingly untalented Godfrey Gao, a minor character whose limited presence sucks the air right out of the scene. Casting folly notwithstanding, Gao serves as his own executioner. In his debut picture, he’s just acted his way out of a career.

Perhaps this unkempt company isn’t quite to blame though considering the script doesn’t seem to allow for any semblance of good acting, as most of the scripted lines are expository reports rather than genuine colloquial speech. With her debut screenwriting credit, Jessica Postigo has chalked up character motivation as flimsy as toothpicks, bending with the shift of the wind, which share the one-time-use disposable trait. Each and every action and reaction is about as thought through as the choice to sneeze or not. But still the thing sputters along, weaving a miscalculated web of romance, all of which by film’s end wind up being creepy, incestuous or homophobic.

While not shoehorning in love triangles until the skin-tight leather seams are about to burst, Zwart tries to usher in a level of self-awareness that escapes him and his performers. While trying to buddy up to the fan base and poke fun at the film, Zwart is having his cake and eating it too. But this cake is actually a grave, and he’s digging it deeper by the second. Even though it boasts an impressive amount of “laugh at us, not with us” lines, nothing is nearly as satisfying as the long awaited breath of relief when this invasive clunker has finally run its course.

Within the genre norms of trying to razzle-dazzle preteens and generally younger audiences, the film somehow manages to miss yet again. It’s impossible to reconcile the film’s darker, near grotesque creature designs with the flowery teen-sheen of the character relations but they’re all sharing the screen in their misfitted glory. As Zwart turgidly shovels plot points and familiar character beats into a witch’s brew of genre cliches, the only spell he ends up casting is a sleeping spell. Sadly those do not exist in the real world, so parents – be sure to bring along a double dose of Ambien. 

To return to the initial analogy, Zwart’s teenaged musings can really only be compared to the unwelcome discomfort we experience sitting in a dentist’s chair, jaw braced and teeth probed. Mortal Instruments is a grin-and-bear-it slog so relentless in its awful tendencies that the result is a special kind of agitating. As if untrained interns were solely responsible for the shaggy writing and Julienne-chopped editing, the film tries to substitute genuine craft with a stale pump of out-of-date laughing gas and a slopjob of visual flair that doesn’t even hold up to post-2000 standards. In a word, it’s absolutely dreadful…the brand of active, egregious dreadful that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

F