The opening scene of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart provides an effective template for the rest of the film and – it could be said – for the following two decades of his career. It opens with jazz music, a pan across the ceiling of an opulent casino, and the title card “Cape Fear: Somewhere Near the Border of North and South Carolina.” Sailor (Nicolas Cage) walks into frame, kisses Lula (Laura Dern), and then they both walk down a large set of stairs to leave. Another man calls Sailor’s name and they engage in a terse exchange of dialogue. The man accuses Sailor of trying fuck Lula’s mother in the toilet. The man pulls a knife, the jazz stops and is replaced by heavy metal. Sailor smashes the man’s head against a wooden railing and then throws him down the stairs and smashes his head against the marble floor, spilling blood everywhere. The jazz returns. Sailor, covered in blood, lights a cigarette and points a threatening finger at Marietta, Lula’s mother.

Within this two minute scene, the audience witnesses Lynch’s nostalgia for the iconography of 1950s Americana, as well as his penchant to punctuate that nostalgia with deeply unpleasant depictions of violence. The extravagant image of an early 19^th Century casino, the lack of a specific location, and Laura Dern’s hair all suggest an America that no longer exists (with “Cape Fear” possibly acting as a reference to the 1962 film of that name – a noir-esque thriller dealing with rape and sexual predation in a unusually frank manner). This is a technique Lynch will return to many times – the superficial image of the morally upright Production Code era America problematized by moments of violence and sexual depravity.

In Wild at Heart, the iconography at play is that of American road movies – empty desert roads, gas stations manned by genial African-Americans, and an episodic look at the eccentric characters they run into along the way. But the other icon used is that of Elvis Presley. Sailor is a character inspired by Elvis, and Nic Cage lip-syncs not one, but two Presley songs in the film (because it’s awesome, and because Lynch loves moments where characters sing 50s pop songs for no logical reason). In a recent online chat with fans at Empire, Cage had this to say about the role:

Wild At Heart was more my “Andy Warhol performance” than my Elvis performance, and what I mean by that is that – and I have to go back to a book by Stanislavsky called “An Actor Prepares” here – where he put forth the rule that you must never imitate anybody while acting, which I understand, but rules are made to be broken. And I wanted to put this to the test. So I thought about Andy Warhol, and how he in his art would take pop icons and make poster art pieces with these famous faces. Having also been a believer in art synthesis – in other words, what you can do in one form, you can do in another – I was excited by the idea of breaking Stanislavsky’s rule and give an Andy Warhol performance by overlaying Elvis’s aura on the film Wild At Heart.

As it turns out, this interpretation of Sailor is perfect. In one of the most oft-quoted lines of the film, Sailor, referring to the unique snake skin jacket he wears throughout the film, asks Lula “Did I ever tell you that this here jacket represents a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom?” He talks and acts with the swagger of a distinctly American individual, yet that individual is an icon of another era. Sailor’s individuality and personal freedom realizes itself not through originality, but through pastiche. Further problematizing his supposedly rebellious spirit is his longing to settle down with Lula and make a family, a surprisingly conformist attitude for someone like Sailor.

Wild at Heart is a film that attempts to explore the problems of social individuality and conformity. In his previous feature, he explored the characteristics of small town America, and pushed inward through cracks to find rampant sexual repression and misogyny hidden within the facade of a peaceful conservative community. In Wild at Heart, Lynch explores the Hollywood-created mythology of the romantic outsider and reveals that in certain ways, Sailor is just like everyone else.

Espionage thrillers have gone through some weird metamorphoses over the years. What started as cold black and white post-war pictures of malaise turned into stylized widescreen glob-trotting romps. But ever since Paul Greengrass’ Bourne Identity sequels, these movies have been about terrorism and government cover-ups, set in third world countries and filmed with shaky handheld cameras and blown out colour schemes. Safe House falls firmly into this camp, loaded with nods to dirty dealings and water boarding. It’s a fairly entertaining movie, just one that definitely feels like it’s coming out a few years too late. The Bourne sequels grabbed onto current events and scandals and spun them into blockbuster action flicks. Five years later, it feels a bit like dipping back into a well. Decent or not, we’ve seen all this stuff before and it’s not quite as exciting anymore.

Ryan Reynolds plays Matt Weston, an unproven CIA agent whittling away his time in a dead end assignment monitoring a US safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. He spends most of his time counting down the hours on the clock until he can hang out with his attractive French girlfriend. Then one day, it all goes to hell as tends to happen in these sorts of movies. A legendary ex-CIA agent Tobin Frost shows up in shackles, played by Denzel Washington in scenery-chewing mode. Frost used to be a top agent, but became disgusted by the practices of the organization and went rogue, determined to uncover their corruption. He’s managed to get ahold of a microchip detailing all of the dirty dealings of American and British special agents on the take and that lands him in the safe house. Within minutes a team of apparent terrorists show up to try and kill Frost, so Matt cuffs him and takes him on the run. The only problem is that now the inexperienced agent doesn’t know if he can trust his superiors with this sensitive information and his supposed enemy starts talking much more sense than the CIA.

It’s all pretty simple espionage stuff filled with double agents, dirty secrets, sudden bursts of violence, and an underlying sense of post 9/11 government skepticism. Swedish director Daniel Espinosa (Snabba Cash) tries to out shaky-cam Greengrass at his own game, staging elaborate shootouts, car chases, and fistfights with that special brand of hard-to-see verite styled intimacy. In theory, that should lead to an action packed thriller with a brain, and I suppose in a certain sense that’s the case. The problem is that these flicks are quickly becoming generic. Seeing a movie star get waterboarded in a blockbuster doesn’t feel subversive anymore. It’s almost as familiar as an elaborate Bond villain deathtrap. The filmmakers get points for effort, but are a few years too late to qualify for originality or relevancy.

The performances are definitely strong across the board. Reynolds is a good actor and does the struggling hero thing well, even if it’s still hard to distance him from his comedic persona. Washington knows how to play a bad guy with a conscience and is almost incapable of delivering a bad performance. On the supporting front, Robert Patrick gets to play government tough guy for the first time in years, while Vera Farmiga, Sam Shepard, and Brendan Gleeson (sporting a distracting American accent) play top CIA officers in a control room who take turns acting suspiciously like the film’s secret villain. The actors all do what they were hired to do (except for Nora Arnezeder’s painfully generic girlfriend who is mercifully only in a few scenes), and David Guggenheim’s script offers a nice balance of paranoid suspense and bone crunching action.

As an entertainment machine, the movie’s ok. It just never transcends into something special or even memorable. Everything the filmmakers do well has just been done before and better.. This is cookie cutter studio genre filmmaking that takes a successful formula and repackages it with new faces. I guess if you haven’t seen a politically charged action movie from the last 10 years, it will seem exciting. Otherwise, Safe House is best suited to watch hungover on cable to a rousing response of “Oh, that was better than I thought it would be.”

When considering whether or not you want to watch Journey 2, the only question you have to ask yourself is: “Do I desperately need to see The Rock play a ukulele and bounce berries off his pecs in 3D?” As far as I can tell, those two scenes are the only reason for the film’s existence. The rest is a hodgepodge of half-baked sci-fi ideas, cartoony CGI spectacle and sickly sweet family sentiment that should have even the most forgiving children on a sugar-high rolling their eyes in disbelief. The whole thing smacks of desperation with the filmmakers struggling to stretch a forgettable blockbuster into a franchise and a cast of recognizable actors barely trying to conceal the fact that they signed up for a well-paid tropical vacation that just happened to involve a film shoot. It feels more like a souped-up direct-to-DVD sequel than a marquee studio release.

Now, Journey to the Center of the Earth was never a great movie, but at least it delivered some breezy entertainment. With the new-fangled 3D still in it’s infancy when that flick came out, it played more like a 90-minute theme park attraction than a movie, showing off the fancy pop-out-of-the-screen technology with an seemingly endless series of set pieces that never got bogged down with concerns like telling a story or crafting memorable characters. It wasn’t great, but it was a good showcase for 3D when it was still a novelty and that’s all the movie had to be. But it’s sequel time now, and with audiences already tiring of 3D, that isn’t enough to carry a movie anymore. Nope, 3D flicks have to work on their own merits now and sadly the folks in charge somehow dreamed up an even less compelling story this time.

The movie opens John Hutcherson’s teen protagonist Sean from the last movie escaping from cops on a dirt bike clutching a stolen broadcast that he hopes is from his grandfather. You see, Sean is a Vernian, a special breed of people convinced that everything Jules Verne wrote about was fact. Given his last adventure, he has good reason to feel that way and is convinced his grandfather is stuck on Verne’s Mysterious Island. Thankfully, he’s got a new stepfather played by The Rock whose navy training gives him the necessary skills to decode the message and kick some mythical creature ass. They head off to the coordinates they were sent and meet up with Luis Guzman and teen love interest Vanessa Hudgens as the father/daughter team who takes them there via a rickety helicopter. Shockingly, they end up trapped on the island with Sean’s grandpappy Michael Caine as their guide. Cue a series of CGI set pieces involving volcanoes of gold, riding giant bees, learning lessons about connecting with parents, and for some reason finding the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

Right off the bat, the 3D in this movie is fairly lackluster. While Journey 1 featured scenes with characters spitting into the camera every few minutes to take advantage of the new dimension, in Journey 2 it almost feels like an afterthought. Sure there are plenty of perfunctory action scenes, but they never really take advantage of 3D, which kind of seemed like the whole point of this franchise. The giant lizards and tiny elephants that populate the island are kind of fun, but honestly the trailer gives away every expensive sequence, so you can’t even count of getting some sort of minor joy or surprise there.

The cast is good in theory, they just have nothing to work with. The Rock knows how to charm and beat things up, but he’s grasping at straws with a boring, caring stepfather character. He does get to play the ukulele though, which is weird as hell to see, but it might be best to wait until the inevitable and numerous YouTube videos that will arise from the scene to catch it. Luis Guzman flails around and pulls pratfalls like a silent movie clown, while Hutcherson and Hudgens are stuck with drab pretty teen archetypes with little to no personality. Then there’s Michael Caine. You might be asking yourself, “What the shit is Michael Caine doing in Journey 2?” Well, he claims it’s for his grandkids, but this movie was shot in Hawaii and I’m sure that Caine had a nice relaxing time because he certainly wasn’t burdened with much acting to worry about.

So, as you probably worked out by now, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a bad movie. There’s really nothing in here you haven’t seen done better before and even Dwayne Johnson has a healthy list of movies on his resume that are better than this (and yes, that includes The Tooth Fairy). To be fair, this movie is for children and I suppose that if you’re taking along a youngster who hasn’t seen many adventure movies or isn’t exhausted with 3D, the little tike could have a good time. The kid would probably have a better time with 80s family cheese like The Goonies, but that wouldn’t get him out of the house, so I can sympathize. Just bring along a pillow for yourself. You’re going to need it.

It’s simultaneously mind-boggling and easy to see why director Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin was snubbed and shut out of so many potential accolades this awards season. Despite having a stellar lead performance from actress Tilda Swinton as a mother at the end of her wits, Ramsay’s film might be looked down upon as just another genre film with a high gloss. That’s sad, since it’s one of the best and most outright terrifying bits of familial horror from last year.

Swinton stars as Eva Khatchadourian, a broken down, gaunt looking mother of a monster. Her son Kevin (Ezra Miller) has been imprisoned and awaits trial for a heinous crime that he feels no remorse for. The film looks back at the events in Eva and Kevin’s lives that lead to the present, where Eva at times seems completely put off by the fact that her son ruined her life long dreams of travelling the world. Then again, Kevin (also played by Jasper Newell as a younger child) seems to be almost pure evil; cold, calculating, manipulative and uncaring. It doesn’t help that Kevin’s father (John C. Reilly) acts completely oblivious to anything potentially being wrong, and prefers to act more like a best friend to Kevin than an actual father.

Cinematic provocateur extraordinaire Ramsay returns to feature filmmaking after nearly a full decade away, but she hasn’t lost a single step. Every shot and camera angle in Kevin is immaculate and expertly crafted with a fine attention to detail and a sometimes overzealous eye for symbolic imagery. The film’s almost over-the-top eye for art direction, speaks to Ramsay’s firm grasp on the material in Lionel Shriver’s best selling novel. By not following her admittedly somewhat overrated source material to the letter, Ramsay frees herself to tell a chilling story with real emotional weight to it.

Swinton gives another strong performance in an already stacked career as Eva. A lot can be said about actors forgoing make-up and losing weight for a more “natural” appearance, but even in flashback sequences Swinton uses her looks and mannerisms to show just how taxed Eva feels before she realizes her son is crazy and he hates her. In the sequences staged in the present, she plays Eva as a shell of her former self and someone still so deeply shocked by what her son did that she’s had no time at all for any sort of personal introspection. Eva is the same person in the present as she was in the past, but now she simply acts out of instinct to fend off becoming catatonic.

Miller and Newell also do great jobs of playing a purely evil little shit devoid of feeling. Their performances do belong up there with similar performances in The Bad Seed and The Omen films. John C. Reilly also turns in a pitch perfect performance because there are few people more adept at conveying someone as oblivious as Eva’s husband. It’s a great case of hiring the perfect person for the job.

While the film probably aspires to be a higher form of art than it really is, Kevin stands out as a shining example of a horror sub-genre that sometimes manages to rub people the wrong way. People will gladly read about atrocities committed by children and teenagers, but few audiences ever seem to want to watch how these things ultimately play out. Kudos to Ramsay for not flinching when it comes to the uncomfortable nature of her pulpy material. It feels like a film that couldn’t have been made by anyone else.

Lady and the Tramp (1955, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, & Hamilton Luske) – While Lady and the Tramp has languished somewhat as one of Walt Disney’s most slept on animated features, the stunning Blu-ray transfer of this simple, heart-warming classic reasserts the film as the game changer it truly was at the time. The first ever animated film to be presented in the CinemaScope aspect ratio (2:55, even more than the standard Scope ratio of 2:35) and more than 18 years in the making by the time of its release, this was the project Disney was overseeing at the same time he was watching Disneyland being built. The hard work shows through and Walt’s fingerprints are all over this one despite what must have been constant distraction and numerous long days.

The story of a young female dog of means befriending and falling for a street mutt that always stays one step ahead of the pound keeps things simple, but Lady and the Tramp actually comes across as one of Disney’s most adult features. Themes of animal and child endangerment and a potentially failing marriage are all out in the open for audiences to see, but it’s all tempered by a sweet story full of love, warmth, and most importantly a message of kindness and respect towards every living creature.

The picture quality on the Diamond Edition Blu-ray (which comes with DVD and Digital copies of the film) looks better than anything Disney has attempted with their catalogue titles thus far. The streets and backgrounds pop and the old school hand drawn animation doesn’t look cheap even when blown up onto a huge screen, a common problem with some older titles finding their way to Blu. The 7.1 sound mix doesn’t really add a heck of a lot and might be slight overkill, but it’s still sharp and crisp.

Much like with Disney’s recent release of Real Steel, Lady and the Tramp makes use of the Second Screen feature which allows users with a laptop or portable device to view conceptual drawings and 360 degree looks through the Disney archives while watching the film uninterrupted on their television, but the real treat to the Second Screen this time around is a branching feature that allows viewer to actually hear and see what the story meetings for the film were like. It’s a treat almost unprecedented for Disney completists and animation fans. Also included are all of the special features from the original DVD release, which include numerous featurettes, trailers, and assorted goodies. It’s a must have for fans of the film and definitely worth a look to the passing consumer.

Texas Killing Fields (2011, Ami Canaan Mann) – Coming direct to DVD in Canada following a limited release in US cinemas last fall, Mann (daughter of famed director Michael Mann, who produces here) delivers a heartily reliable crime procedural about a real life case involving an extremely inhospitable bit of land just outside of a small Texas town.

Former New York City detective Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) has recently moved to Texas City, Texas with his family and finds himself partnered with hard-nosed local homicide detective Mike Souder (Sam Worthington). While in the middle of investigating a homicide and dealing with a young girl from a rough family that’s constantly wandering the streets at night (played by Chloe Grace Moretz), the partners receive a call from a detective in a neighbouring community (Jessica Chastain) about something that will eventually bring them all face to face with the same people, the same problems, and a notorious dumping ground for bodies where even the cops fear to tread.

While the film gets off to a fast and almost disorienting start that makes it hard to keep the relationships between the characters straight, it settles into a more conventional and even handed groove, with Mann deftly sublimating a lot of genre clichés in the process. The NYC cop is the religious one, while the local is the devout atheist, and the female cop is smarter and stronger than both of the males in many respects. The cast all rises to the material with Worthington and Moretz delivering capable and engaging performances. Chastain is still as great as ever, and she even gets to throttle as many people here as she did in The Debt. The real standout here, however, is Morgan who gives the best performance of his career as a man becoming not so much corrupted by the case, but just increasingly burnt out and aggravated. The camera loves Morgan here and it’s almost impossible to take one’s eyes off him for any reason while he’s on screen.

Not a lot to talk about on the technical side of this one. No special features aside from an interesting director’s commentary, and the picture and sound quality are as good as one would expect from someone who started learning filmmaking at the hands of Michael Mann.

Anonymous (2011, Roland Emmerich) – The idea that famed disaster film auteur Roland Emmerich would make a competent film about the controversy behind the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Sure, it isn’t the most historically accurate thing in the world and he still manages to work explosions into his film, but regardless of the name truly behind the world’s most famous plays, Shakespeare was a populist in an oddly similar way to how Emmerich is perceived today.

Pulling one story from a myriad of possible conspiracy theories surrounding the true identity of the Bard from Stratford, Emmerich and writer John Orloff settle upon telling the tale of Edward DeVere (Rhys Ifan), who because of his nobility as the Earl of Oxford and a past sexual relationship with Queen Victoria (Joley Richardson as a younger woman and Vanessa Redgrave in old age) found himself unable to stage and take credit for his written works. Instead DeVere delegated to perceived firebrand and local enfant terrible Ben Johnson (Sebastien Armesto), who then put the name of a drunken, borderline illiterate actor (Rafe Spall, having a ball as the “real” Shakespeare) to the works to avoid jail time of his own.

Emmerich and Orloff craft a unique and compulsively watchable tale of intrigue and deception, but it’s hard not to shake how hokey it all comes across at times. Emmerich doesn’t do subtle well (then again, neither did Shakespeare), but no matter what side of the scholarly debate one comes down on, they can all agree that it’s a bit much by today’s standards. Orloff’s script has the melodramatic drive that would’ve made this a smash hit on the big screen fifty years ago, but I actually mean that as a compliment. It’s a very “old timey” sort of over the top to the point where it almost feels classical by default.

There aren’t a lot of extras on the stand alone Blu-ray, but there are a few deleted and extended scenes and some nifty featurettes about the film’s casting and visual effects. The commentary track from Emmerich and Orloff is mostly self-congratulatory back slapping, but at times Orloff is able to get the usually reticent and distracted Emmerich to give a few nice tidbits of information. A featurette featuring the cast and crew chiming in on their thoughts regarding Shakespeare holds more useful insight than the commentary does. The disc also has a glorious transfer that really brings out the gorgeous production design and natural lighting of the film, with even the dirt and grime coming across crystal clear.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas (2011, Todd Strauss-Schulson) – One would think that it shouldn’t be very hard to make a good looking Blu-ray out of a film that was shot digitally and was only in theatres three months ago, but apparently not. Forgoing the usual “wait until next year to put a Christmas movie on video” philosophy, the latest adventures of cinemas new favourite stoners arrives in a cheap, dispiriting package in the middle of February. It’s a severe shame because the movie itself is quite good and far better than the treatment it’s being given here.

After six years apart and after finding new best friends, Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are brought together again at Christmas by a package addressed to Harold mistakenly delivered to his former roommate. The present, a giant joint, ends up accidentally burning down the prized Christmas tree of Harold’s overbearing and threatening future father-in-law (Danny Trejo), leading the duo to team up on an all night run through New York City to find an exact replacement before Harold’s future family comes back from midnight mass. In their travels they run afoul of a Ukranian mob boss (Elias Koteas), get drugged by some teenagers, get a baby hooked on cocaine, turn into claymation characters, inherit a creepy waffle making robot from their old, cracked out friend Neil Patrick Harris, and they shoot Santa out of the sky.

It should do without saying that the film doesn’t play as well at home to begin with unless you have a 3-D television and grab the 3-D Blu-ray, since a lot of the gags rely quite heavily on the technology. Subplots involving Harold and Kumar’s new best friends (Amir Blumenfeld and Thomas Lennon) aren’t very funny in comparison to what the stars normally do on their own, but the best parts of the film involving the Wafflebot, NPH, and the generally sweet and believable interactions between Harold and Kumar remain intact. It doesn’t match the original film, but it’s still a considerable improvement over the duo’s second outing.

However, despite how decent the film remains, this package doesn’t do the film the slightest bit of justice. The sound is just fine, but the digital transfer is inexplicably abominable. Occasionally the film will seem slightly pixelated or fuzzy for no good reason even in scenes that didn’t utilize the 3D gimmick. It’s a Blu-ray that looks almost like bootleg quality, and the bigger the screen the more noticeable and maddening the flaws will seem. As for the extras, the “Extra Dope Edition” Blu-ray houses an extended cut of the movie running seven minutes longer that the theatrical cut, but it’s all just added dialog and extensions to the claymation sequence and a bit more with NPH in heaven pissing off Jesus after seemingly dying in the previous film. The added scenes are noticeable even to those who haven’t seen the film since there’s a noticeable difference in audio quality between them and the rest of the film. The special features aren’t all that special. There’s three go-nowhere deleted scenes, a bunch of fake, unfunny rants from Thomas Lennon, and a whole three minutes devoted to talking about the claymation sequence that says nothing more than “Whoa guys, we made a claymation sequence!”. This one probably should’ve waiting until the holidays to be released and maybe it will get cleaned up before then, but in this condition there’s nothing particularly jolly about it.

Also out this week: Look guys, I know Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part I gets released this week. I know that’s the star attraction, but the truth is that I couldn’t procure a review copy of the film before the column had to go up. If you guys really want me to do Twilight, leave a comment and I’ll consider throwing it in for next week if I can get a copy.

I remember a day, back in the late 90s, when I bought a VHS copy of The Rock for my brother’s birthday. It was his favourite movie, if I remember correctly. But I inevitably ended up watching it multiple times. Each time, I gained a little more understanding regarding John Mason’s (Sean Connery) claim, in Scottish burr, that he spent his time in prison “reading philosophy, avoiding gang rape in the showers… though, it’s less of a problem these days. Maybe I’m losing my sex appeal.”

But rewatching The Rock in 2012, a lot struck me about what we expect from a blockbuster. The plotline – a group of elite rogue Marines (led by Ed Harris!) take hostages at Alcatraz prison and threaten to kill hundreds of thousands with stolen chemical weapons unless millions are handed over to them from a Pentagon slush fund that comes from illegal weapons sales – is pretty contained for an action film. If this were made in 2012, it wouldn’t be directed by Michael Bay, it would be directed by Joe Carnahan, it wouldn’t cost $75 million (in 1996 dollars, the actual budget), it would probably cost around $40 million (in 2012 dollars), it wouldn’t run a bloated 136 minutes, it would run a slim 100, and it wouldn’t star Nicolas Cage… actually, it would probably star Nicolas Cage, but he wouldn’t hop in a Ferrari and chase Sean Connery (in a Hummer) through San Francisco in a Ferrari.

But let’s be thankful that he did, because that shit rules.

Yes. Nicolas Cage rules. In 1995, Cage made Leaving Las Vegas with experimental director Mike Figgis. In hindsight, Cage’s performance in Las Vegas is a truly horrifying descent into addiction and the idea of suicide by substance abuse, and people recognized. He was an eccentric actor willing to work with weirdo auteurs – the Coen Brothers, David Lynch – and also make weird movies with less well-known filmmakers – like Vampire’s Kiss and Red Rock West. In 1995, he paid his dues and gave one of the performances of his life. For Leaving Las Vegas, he won an award which would give him the freedom to do whatever he wanted. He could be anyone. What did he do?

He said “FUCK YOU, NERDS” and made The Rock. Explosions! Physics-defying action scenes! A Ra-Ra celebration of militarism! Jerry Bruckheimer! Michael Bay! Boom! Pow! Bam! Whoosh! The chance to ask a question “in the name of Zeus’s Butthole!” The chance to call himself a “chemical superfreak!” Nicolas Cage is superfreaky! Little green balls of poisonous gas that melt people’s faces! Bizarrely placed references to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Pulp Fiction! Money! Lots and lots of money!

How the fuck else is Nic Cage gonna afford them dinosaur heads and Bavarian castles that he so sorely needed to inspire him for his craft? But more than that, Nic Cage gets to be AWESOME on screen. He gets to sit in a chair shirtless with a guitar playing along (badly) to the Beatles before he tells his girlfriend that it would suck if she got pregnant. How else is he gonna get lessons in Badass from James “fucking” Bond himself? How else is he gonna shove a green ball of highly dangerous poison into some crazy Marine’s face before saving himself by stabbing himself in the heart with a giant syringe and then saving 81 hostages by holding garish green flares up as five planes fly by while awesome guitar-laced elevator music plays?

Some people might criticize Cage for choosing to become fucking movie star, but really, even if I like to watch art films and read philosophy, if someone gave me the choice to gain weight and play a fat neurotic writer, or to go to the gym and become an action star who gets laid and kicks ass on screen,  what do you think I would choose? Sure, it’s regrettable that Bay’s style of action is really dated 16 years later, and it kinda sucks that Bay can’t represent a minority without resorting to some offensive comedic stereotype (unless he’s making a Bad Boys movie, and even then…)

The morale of the story is: Cage is a badass. Cage made a badass movie. And if you don’t like it, you’re a hater. Shut up. Also, Quentin Tarantino apparently did a re-write on this film, and that really awkward Elton John “Rocket Man” joke is sooooo his. Just sayin’.

If I had to sum up what most stories are about in one word, it would be “underdogs.” Ultimately we go to the movies for a chance to see the unlikely succeed, as this is a fantasy rarely realized in real life. As far as real life underdogs go, they don’t get much lower than the Canadian feature film. This is why anytime one manages to get financed, completed and then actually distributed, those of us concerned with this kind of thing watch with trepidation because we know that a Canadian film getting a second week in theatres is like an amateur boxer making it to round two against the champ. This makes Moon Point an underdog story in every sense, and while it struggles in places, it ultimately succeeds, at least on the fluffy entertainment level.

Our protagonist is Darryl, a 23 year-old underachiever with the meanest family on earth. Determined to prove he can get a date for his cousin’s wedding, Darryl sees a call for extras in a B-horror film starring his childhood crush as a chance at redemption. To do this he has to travel several towns over to a place called Moon Point, and with no other mode of transportation, Darryl literally hitches his wagon to his only friend’s electric wheelchair.  Perhaps my favourite aspect of this film is the idea of it being about the world’s slowest road trip, as it takes them days to cover what somebody with a car could have done in a couple hours. They quickly acquire the damsel in distress from the side of the road whom we know will ultimately come between them at some point.

While these three fresh faces do an acceptable job throughout the film, particularly Nick McKinlay in the lead, it’s the crazies they meet along the way that provide most of the laughs. The supporting cast is made up of an ensemble of Canadian talent whose names you likely wouldn’t recognize, (Art Hindle, Jayne Eastwood, Linda Kash, Laurie Elliott, Jessica Holmes, Christian Potenza, James Hartnett, anyone? Bueller?), their faces however have become familiar from dozens of commercials and comedy specials.

The writer commented that he was trying to capture the feeling of some of the John Hughes films he loved as a teenager, but I didn’t really get that vibe from Moon Point. The road trip aspect of it combined with the sometimes-too-broad humour reminded me more of a Farrelly brothers film, while the sugary ‘twee’ touches over-sentimentalized other parts. Needless to say there were several uneven tonal shifts, primarily caused by too much make-up/ break-up drama between the three main characters.

Unfortunately, like most real-life underdogs, this film will not overcome the odds and break into the mainstream, but at least first time distributor IndieCan is giving it a chance to be seen by some, most of whom I’m sure will get a kick out of at least a few parts, and that puts this one in the plus category of Canadian movies. It’s cuteness and romantic elements are well timed for Valentine’s Day and the holiday’s imagery is sprinkled throughout, let’s just hope Moon Point can still be seen by the time February 14^th comes around, otherwise all of the above becomes a moot point.

Just one month after The Devil Inside seemingly ruined the found footage film for everyone, along comes Chronicle, a sci-fi tinged powerhouse of a movie that single-handedly saves the sub-genre to stand as quite possibly the best example of the format. Even more than the iconic Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, Chronicle dares to tell a dark and bold story that actually feels painfully real and heartbreaking despite being somewhat of a superhero origin story.

The film opens as unflinchingly as possible. Shy and emotionally damaged Seattle teenager Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) has recently bought a video camera to document attacks by his abusive, drunken father and the final days of his mother, who’s in the final stages of terminal cancer. Andrew brings the camera everywhere he goes almost as if it’s a security blanket for him to inoculate himself from the outside world. His only real “friend” is his pseudo-intellectual cousin Matt (Alex Russell), who seemingly thinks everything “cool” is beneath him.

One night outside a rave where Andrew nearly gets the crap beaten out of him for accidentally filming some drunken bro’s girlfriend, Matt and the coolest kid in school/future shoe-in for class president Steve (Friday Night Lights’ Michael B. Jordan), force a worried Andrew into using his camera to document a mysterious cavern deep in the woods that houses a giant glowing crystal. After coming in contact with the crystal, the boys begin to develop telekinetic powers allowing them to move and manipulate matter. At first, they strengthen their powers with an escalating series of silly dares and childish pranks (as teenagers are naturally wont to do even without superpowers), but when the more mature Andrew begins to question his friends commitment to doing something with these powers, fissures in their close friendship quickly begin to develop leaving Steve and Matt to question Andrew’s very sanity.

First time feature director and co-writer Josh Trank and writer Max Landis (son of Blues Brothers director John) have crafted the best thought out found footage movie ever created. They know the scope of their film is bigger than simply having one camera statically shoot everything, so they take the time of creating other ways for footage to be incorporated into a film. Unlike many film of this nature, the question of who actually edited the footage for this film becomes refreshingly vague and something that a satisfying debate can actually be made from. The film beautifully incorporates digital video, cell phones, security cameras, military cameras, and in the bravura finale every camera type known to man floating all around the main characters.

The technical specs of Chronicle are marvellous considering how little the film probably cost to make. Most of the budget seems saved up to mount one of the most dazzling, show-stopping endings to a film in recent memory, but even simple sequences where the boys discover they can fly and they use their power to goof off and play football in the clouds are just as gorgeously rendered. The concept that Andrew can also let the camera float in mid-air and move it leads to some stunning cinematography and the most shocking and subtle payoff in a found footage film ever.

While the technical merits of Chronicle could be doted on for days, Landis and Trank’s script delivers the much needed emotion that a thousand camera tricks could never cover up. While not exactly a “slow burn,” things escalate quite quickly and suddenly down the stretch of the film’s taut 84 minute running time. The pacing works beautifully since the character the film is based around (Andrew) lives a life of constant torment at home and bullying at school. Andrew only finds fleeting moments of reprieve from his daily life before something brings him crashing down to Earth. As Andrew’s personal life gets worse and worse, the movie takes on a vastly different, but wholly appropriate tone.

The three leads all sell the tone extremely well. Jones does the whole “sympathetic jock and consummate politician” routine with real, unforced sympathy. Steve might very well be the most genuine human being of the three. Russell fills the role of “put upon best friend” nicely, and gets to show some real range when he’s unwillingly forced into taking action against Andrew. The movie, however, belongs to DeHaan for making Andrew one of the most sympathetic and occasionally frightening characters to grace the screen in some time. The movie’s effort to show the full arc of DeHaan’s character in almost painful detail – especially from a format meant to show only brief moments in the lives of people – allows the actor to commit fully to his performance. It’s easily the best performance ever in a found footage film.

Chronicle works because it makes the uncanny feel like it’s actually happening in front of the viewer’s eyes. Even the film’s more cinematic moments come after viewers have been eased into an escalating situation. The characters are lush without being Hollywood constructs of teenagers. Despite having more familiar faces than most found footage film, one forgets they are watching actors. These feel like real people, with real problems, and extraordinary powers. These are people any of us could know, and by the end of the film that feeling will be both a comfort and a curse. In short, there’s too much great about this movie to spoil it any further and really nothing at all that can be said against it.

If The Woman in Black is any indication, Daniel Radcliffe will be very savvy when it comes to choosing his post-boy wizard roles. A pitch perfect bit of period horror with menace to spare, this is exactly the kind of film that Harry Potter fans who grew up with the actor would just be starting to get into at their point in their lives. While not reinventing the wheel in any way, director James Watkins has crafted a thoroughly efficient and thrilling genre exercise that evokes favourable comparisons to the works of Wes Craven and Sam Raimi.

At first, it might be a little surprising to see just how much Radcliffe has grown up in the role of Arthur Kipps. Radcliffe not only plays an adult here, but a young, widowed father of a young boy. Arthur is an early 1900s legal aide forced by his boss into getting back to work by sending him from London to the coastal countryside to go over the paperwork of an estate currently up for sale. Upon his arrival in the village where he intends to stay, the locals do everything in his power to send Arthur away before he even makes it to the secluded former estate of Alice Drablow. Driven by the desire to provide for his son and to keep his currently tenuous job, Arthur presses on and learns the hard way the tragedy that befell the residents of Marsh House.

All great horror forces the audience to pay extremely close attention to the frame. No one wants to be made a fool of and knowing audiences will be quick to spot exactly where the film’s requisite scares will come. Watkins (who previously directed the little seen, but hard to watch gem Eden Lake) gets his Craven on by knowing exactly what the audience is looking for. Much like Craven with his Scream films, Watkins plays into the viewers’ expectations only for so long. When Arthur looks around a corner to see there’s nothing there, Watkins gives the audience what they want by not having anything there and by not immediately following it up with a scare or shock effect. He’ll give it a few moments before the real scare comes. Watkins’ sense of pacing borders on uncanny as this might be one of the most well crafted haunted house movies in quite some time. His attention to period detail and an incredible art department also deserve a special nod of merit.

The echoes of Raimi come in via writer Jane Goldman’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel, which was previously a stage play and a 1989 BBC made-for-television production. The story gains favourable comparisons to Raimi’s well-liked Drag Me to Hell. This is another tale of someone forced into taking a job for the sake of monetary gain that is then drawn into the world of the occult. As the events of the film become more and more intense, the comparisons to Raimi’s work intensify, but whereas Drag Me to Hell was ostensibly a comedy, Woman in Black is deadly serious, making for a more satisfying viewing experience.

As for Radcliffe, large parts of the film require him to be stranded at the Marsh House by himself for long periods with no one to play off of. While his soulful performance as Arthur serves him well playing opposite the townspeople (especially a terrific Ciaran Hinds as the town’s sole skeptic and Arthur’s only ally), it’s the scenes of relative solitude that makes the performance come together. Hardly speaking, he has nothing to do but actually create an entire character arc for the middle part of the film simply with actions and glances.

It’s a no-brainer for Radcliffe to take such a difficult role in a relatively safe genre. The film aims for the older audience that made him a star, and certainly not the younger crowd. Without spoiling some of the film’s best scares, anyone who brings a young child to see this film is clearly out of their mind. Then again, this is the stuff teenage nightmares are made of. It’s the kind of movie that it feels just slightly naughty to be watching in someone’s basement or sneaking into after buying a ticket for something else. Mainstream horror audiences have been craving something original for quite some time, and Radcliffe and Watkins are more than happy to give it to them.

In 2009, Ti West directed Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, a direct-to-DVD, unnecessary beat horse sequel which embodied the huge plague upon the horror genre where even original ideas are strung out into irrelevancy. Ti West disowned it, and even requested his name be swapped with an Alan Smithee. So, in that same year, West also released House of the Devil, a character driven, style-drenched, brooding paranoia picture, showing what amazing things can be still be done in a genre that’s seen it all. If West was looking for a way to be disassociated from Spring Fever, he found a way, and if horror fans were looking for a fresh new talent, they had certainly found him. As his first film since The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is Ti West’s opportunity to show a winning streak, or at least an uncanny corridor. It also happens to be a chance for star Sara Paxton, often cast as that pretty blonde in really forgettable roles, to earn a new start, not unlike West himself.

The Yankee Pedlar is a slow hotel in a small, even slower town. On its last weekend of business, slacker part-timers Claire (Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy) have one last marathon shift before moving on to whatever’s next. Luke’s brought a generous amount of beer, but Claire’s brought an excess of curiosity about the Pedlar’s rumoured haunted reputation, something they had both taken casual interest in during their employment. Luke, a proud dropout and pessimist, is confident his rusty, amateur, GeoCities-level web design will carry his future career, while Claire has literally never thought about the next step until provoked by sitcom-actress-come-spiritualist-come-inn-patron Leanne Rease-Jones (Top Gun and Stake Land’s Kelly McGillis.)

Claire begins to seek Leanne’s guidance, despite being turned off by her drinking habits and snappy tone, which pummels her self confidence but inspires her sense of adventure. Leanne warns Claire that the Pedlar’s spirits are not only real, but very dangerous. During her shifts, Claire can’t help but push her luck, sitting alone in the humming empty spaces of the hotel, trying to record the sounds of spectres as her work-hour hobby evolves into a deadly obsession.

A far more modestly produced feature than House of the Devil, The Innkeepers is much more interesting in terms of its identity. While House was lush with homage and slow-built dread, Innkeepers is a craftier, more cautious film. It is as much a horror film, as things are horrifying, as it is a character study or a drama with comedic freckles. The quirkiness that surrounds The Yankee Pedlar and the cast within it makes our heroes more likeable, though Lucas’ web flavoured cynicism edges on the stock side. The terror that lurks above Claire is less about fearing a grotesque, shocking sight ahead as it is you fearing for her safety and well being.

West is accomplished in this cinematic chemistry. There is horror and then there is comedy and they are not things that soil each other while simultaneously overlapping. The horror is never made slapstick or farce, and the humour is either dramatic folly or dopey witticisms from our two leads. Sara Paxton truly is Claire; a spunky, raspy ragdoll girl who walks into doors more than opens them. Paxton is unrecognizable from the deer in headlights in The Last House on the Left remake. Sara Paxton makes Claire likable, someone you’ll care about and want to pluck out of the calamity before it’s too late. While, like Luke, she can veer close to being a cropped concept of youthful kookiness, Paxton tampers it down with fragility, and discomfort. She plays up her attitude to compensate for her unshakable anxieties, she’s rattled by a loss of innocence and playfulness when she confirms to herself that the ghosts are real.

The Innkeepers has unconventional priorities for a horror film, using scares as a feature instead of the purpose of the movie. You can almost talk about the film without talking about ghosts at all. There’s uncertainty in the air; there may or may not be something in the dark, making you more vulnerable to attack. There’s a general unrest as the camera floats about the musty old in inn with its humble halls and muted carpets. There are times when a jumpy scare could have been cheesy in any other film, a moment when Claire gets a bedside visitor comes to mind, but because this fear is something banked off the characters that “yeah right”-ness almost plays directly into the atmosphere. There’s also a circular motion with a lot of the frights, almost like the second half of the film is haunted by very slight foreshadowing in the first. The development of these characters dictate the fear, and in turn will be what scares you.

The Innkeepers is good, eerie and frightening, but I didn’t feel frightened afterwards. I did feel another strong emotion, one that was hard to shake and one that will remain anonymous so I don’t spoil anything. To horror addicts, The Innkeepers may not gratify in the same way The House of the Devil did, as there’s a very hard line straight down the film that lets the audience decide whether there was any paranormal activity or if it is really a horror at all. To more flexible filmgoers, The Innkeepers is a strange, interesting atmosphere-driven blend that pushes through styles, tones and genres. It doesn’t astonish elegance quite as boldly as The House of the Devil, but it does strut West’s versatility within and outside of horror. Most importantly, it shows Ti West has absolutely no desire to create stale, routine horror films, the like you’ve seen in the last decade. So he can stay as long as he likes.

Drive (2011, Nicolas Winding Refn) – Hailed by many as the rebirth of the American crime drama and derided by a vocal contingent as a soulless exercise in style over substance, Drive arrives on DVD and gorgeous looking Blu-ray as a sleek, sparse, entertaining, and assuredly overrated genre exercise. This package isn’t going to win any new converts or make its supporters suddenly think it wasn’t robbed of some Oscar nominations, but the film itself is fun enough.

Winding Refn and screenwriter Hossein Amini spin this mid-80s styled brooder about a nameless stunt driver of few words (Ryan Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver. When he gets sweet on a young mother who lives in his building (Carey Mulligan), he gets caught up in a rapidly escalating “job gone wrong” involving the woman’s fresh out of prison husband (Oscar Issac) and two mob heavies (Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks) with ties to his primary employer (Bryan Cranston).

My opinion of the film hasn’t changed much since I viewed it at TIFF last year. Drive gets most of its entertainment value from Refn’s clever direction and solid performances from Gosling, Cranston, and Brooks. The main problem with the film lies in Amini and Refn’s conceit that their film is somehow operatic and meaningful when really it’s a slight movie that would probably be forgotten even if William Friedkin had made it. It’s a greasy spoon hamburger served on $2,000 china. I could care less about Drive’s far too artsy aesthetic, but it gave me what I wanted.

The disc will also really only appeals to the film’s hardcore fans as the four behind the scenes featurettes are woefully repetitive, devoid of any interesting insight, and none of which have any input at all from Gosling. In each one someone uses phrases like “Biblically simple” or “cooked down to bare essentials” at least three times, which is enough to give detractors all the ammunition they need against the film’s alleged pretensions. There’s also a painfully dull 25 minute sit down with Refn that says nothing, goes nowhere, and he sounds oddly out of it. Granted this slight packaging might be due to the Criterion release of the film that’s allegedly in the works, but it’s hard to imagine there’s really anything else to be said about a film this “Biblically simple.”

The Double (2011, Michael Brandt) – Foregoing a Canadian theatrical release after a brief run in the states last fall, the directorial debut of Wanted and 3:10 to Yuma co-scribe Brandt lands with an illogical thud on DVD. While it’s infamy from last year as “that movie that gives away the big twist in the trailer” is unfounded, this thriller tells the story of a retired CIA operative (Richard Gere) brought back to tracking down a long dormant Russian assassin believed to be behind the killing of a Senator. The veteran is teamed with a keener FBI analyst (Topher Grace, woefully miscast) that wrote his thesis paper on the newly resurfaced killer.

The film’s trailer gives away a twist that comes 30 minutes into the film, so not too much is lost in that respect, but Brandt and co-writer Derek Haas’ screenplay holds zero logical weight and the characters are as wooden as can be. It’s almost worth a look for a few fleeting scenes at the beginning with Gere and Martin Sheen as the CIA director, and the ending does pick up in terms of watchability (despite a ludicrous final twist), but it’s easy to see why this one didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

The Blu-ray includes a DVD copy of the film, interviews with Gere, Grace, Sheen, the writers, and Stephen Moyer (who shows up briefly as an imprisoned former protégé of the assassin), and a humble, self-effacing audio commentary from Brandt and Haas. Don’t watch the interviews before watching the movie, as it includes clips and discussion about the big twist ending.

Dream House (2011, Jim Sheridan) – Everything that I said about The Double’s trailer holds almost equally true for Dream House, except the big twist here happens 45 minutes in. While that’s marginally better (or possibly worse) in terms of timing, it’s still a fairly decent but poorly assembled movie.

Daniel Craig stars as Will, a writer who quits his copy editing job to spend more time with his wife (Rachel Weisz) and kids as they move into a fixer upper in a small New England town. As often happens in such movies, a horrific homicide involving the past tenants has local residents skeptical of the new owners.

While it would be all too easy to say that such a film is beneath the once great Sheridan, who started his career with My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father before eventually slumming it all the way down to making Get Rich or Die Trying, its comforting to say that Sheridan and his cast of real pros (including Naomi Watts as a sympathetic neighbour) all put in great work, but the film really reeks of studio recutting to a great degree. When the big twist comes to light, the film becomes vastly more satisfying to watch, but those opening 45 minutes are so protracted. It’s like someone in the editing room wanted to speed through and get to the “good stuff”.

It’s pretty obvious that Sheridan had very little say in the editing of the film, and that’s a shame because he was really onto something pretty interesting here. While there aren’t a heck of a lot of extras on the Blu-ray or DVD, the cast interviews and featurettes hint at a movie that was not only a tough sell from the start (just watch Craig struggle valiantly to not give away too much), but something that was also set up to be more of a domestic drama/mystery/romance than the horror film the studio probably demanded.

Grand Canyon (1991, Lawrence Kasdan) – Now available on a featureless, but nicely converted Blu-Ray, director Kasdan’s peudo-follow up to The Big Chill, focusing on the interconnected lives of mostly well-to-do Los Angeles residents instead of Southerners, serves as more of a well acted historical document than it does as a well made film.

The film primarily deals with the relationship between the white, married and wealthy Mack (Kevin Kline) and black, divorced tow truck driver Simon (Danny Glover) and how their unlikely friendship affects other people in their lives without them fully realizing it at first. It’s pretty much the same template that Paul Haggis would use for Crash almost fifteen years later only without the same “gritty” approach, and with more narrative focus and better characters (including Steve Martin in one of his first real dramatic performance as a movie producer).

While Kasdan might be one of the least subtle filmmakers aside from, well, Paul Haggis, in terms of directing ability, his writing skills are generally pretty flawless, and the fact that the film was crafted only one year before Los Angeles would become torn apart by the verdicts in the Rodney King trial, Grand Canyon actually serves as a sort of historical document of a city about to give in to long brewing racial tensions. Parts of the film will still come across as dated and cheesy, and Kasdan doesn’t do his material any favours with his hamfisted approach to shooting a film, but it’s still a must watch for people interested in how films act as a product of their time.

Monkeybone (2001, Henry Selick) – Finally, I feel I would be somewhat remiss if I didn’t include a word about the bare bones Blu-ray release of one of the strangest Hollywood studio projects of all time. The live action debut of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline director Henry Selick cost 20th Century Fox a reported $85 million dollars, spent an eternity on the shelf, and was released to a piddling $5 million take over its entire run. Maybe audiences just weren’t ready for a pitch black comedy about a cartoon monkey sent from purgatory to give nightmares to people.

Brendan Fraser stars as absurdist cartoonist Stu Miley, creator of a double entendre loving character named Monkeybone (voice by John Turturo, seemingly doing his best Scorsese impression) that’s poised to become the next big thing in animated television. After lapsing into a coma following a bizarre car accident, Stu is sent to the limbo land of nightmares known as Down Town, where his own creation is a living entity and a star attraction. Stu becomes part of a plot designed to send Monkeybone to Earth in Stu’s body to create more nightmares for the amusement of the sleep God Hypnos (Giancarlo Esposito). And yes, this is that film where Chris Kattan (in honestly his best performance) shows up as a rotting corpse that literally can’t keep his head on straight.

While the tone of the film isn’t exactly consistent (probably due to the combination of a first time live action feature director and a panicked studio), Monkeybone is a dazzling and shockingly literate movie for a film whose main plotline hinges on “nightmare juice” being farted out of plush dolls. Deeply rooted in classical mythology and modern artwork (especially the works of Mark Ryden), Selick creates a unique vision of that space where art and commerce sometimes clash. Entire thesis papers can be written on everything going on within the film, but critical interpretation and audience reevaluation depends on how much the viewer is willing to buy into the film’s erratic tonal shifts. It might not be perfect, but at least it’s actually about something instead of being just a bunch of elaborately constructed set pieces strung together.

Also out this week: Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried star in Gattaca director Andrew Niccol’s mostly laughable sci-fi “time is money” parable In Time. Owen Wilson, Jack Black, and Steve Martin all go head to head in the cut throat world of competitive bird watching in the slight, but not awful time waster The Big Year. Nick Stahl follows Trailer Park Boys creator Mike Clattenburg to the poppy fields in the wonky journalist comedy Afghan Luke. And Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton go head-to-whatever with The Thing in the decent, but wholly unnecessary prequel to the John Carpenter classic.

While the wonderful and tense Iranian film A Separation has been gaining a lot of buzz South of the Border as the front runner for this year’s Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, Canadians have been abuzz that one of their own has made its way to a nomination on film’s grandest stage, and rightfully so. Director Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar takes the well worn template of an inspirational teacher movie and creates something far grander out of a type of film that often lends itself to grandstanding and speeches. It’s a heartrending look at a community struggling with a great loss where the man with the will to help happens to be in over his head.

Following the tragic and horrific suicide of a Montreal elementary school teacher during recess, the staff are struggling with not only how to grieve, but also questions of blame, the degree to which they need to coddle the shell shocked children, and ultimately, replacement, not just of the teacher, but of pretty much everything in the room that could bring about mournful thoughts. Into the school’s life comes Bachir (Fellag), an Algerian refugee who claims to have a teaching background and who knows all too well what it feels like to lose a loved one. Taking on an already tenuous role as a substitute teacher, Bachir at times seems out of place amidst his surroundings by assigning them homework far above their reading levels, but it’s his past that allows him to connect to the class and especially the two children most affected by their teacher’s passing.

Based on a one-man stage play by Evelyne de la Cheneliere, Falardeau crafts an elegiac, yet hopeful look at the healing process. Set against a beautifully realized Montreal winter, the location is certainly idyllic to look at, but Falardeau makes it known from the early going that no amount of snow or fresh paint can cover up sadness. Taking posters down in a classroom and relegating them to the boiler room only adds to the feeling that the school harbours a dark secret.

As Bachir, Fellag displays not a quiet intensity, but a nurtured understanding combined with a different cultural upbringing. Through his interactions with colleagues, some disastrous parent-teacher conferences, and his head butting with the school’s chief administrator (a powerful Danielle Proulx, matching her masterful work in Jean-Marc Vallee’s C.R.A.Z.Y.), Fellag struggles to show Bachir’s affable understanding of his new culture through forced smiles and curt body language. It’s a far more physical performance that it probably reads on paper.

The heart of the film, however, belongs to young Alice and Simon (Sophie Nellisse and Emilien Neron) as the two classmates and former best friends that now argue constantly because of the role Simon seemingly played in their teacher’s suicide. It’s through these wonderful child actors (directed with extreme care by Falardeau to make sure they never come across as precocious “little adults”), that the film dares to look at the selfish nature of suicide and the scarring it can leave behind. This B-plot manages to be every bit as engrossing and emotional as Bachir’s soul searching. When they plots converge at the end, the film becomes a real thing of beauty.

Monsieur Lazhar is every bit worthy of its Academy nod as it’s one of the year’s most humanist tales. There isn’t a single false note to be found and not a single unbelievable moment. It’s the rare film that’s as uncomfortable as watching a real life tragedy and as nurturing as hug. Not only is this a great film, it’s a great experience.