‘Everybody Wants Some!!’

An escape from escapism — it’s strange, but this is the best way I can think to describe writer/director Richard Linklater’s “Everybody Wants Some!!”

There are a lot of superheroes and big-budget blockbusters oversaturating our multiplexes right now, and as much as I enjoy the circus of it all, I can’t help but relish the opportunity to spend some time in the universe of someone like Linklater. His humanist approach to filmmaking brings such welcome joy, clarity and coolness to the big screen sans gratuitous CGI destruction and heartless motivations — I’m looking at you, “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

A refreshingly laid back, perceptive and hilarious first cousin to “Dazed and Confused,” Linklater’s 1993 hangout movie for the ages set during the last day of high school in 1976 Austin, TX, “Everybody Wants Some!!” takes place in 1980 in the few days prior to the first day of college, again in Southeast Texas.

Soon after arriving at his freshman college housing, star high school baseball pitcher Jake (Blake Jenner) meets his new college teammates and housemates. These include would-be smooth talker Finnegan (Glen Powell), laid-back Roper (Ryan Guzman), Alpha-male Glen (Tyler Hoechlin), thick-headed Plummer (Temple Baker), and Dale (Quinton Johnson), who ends up as a sort of guide to Jake through this strange new world. Over the course of three days, Jake gets to know all of these guys, as well as his cowboy roommate Billy (Will Brittain), fellow freshman Brumley (Tanner Kalina), and two older transfer students: the hot-headed Jay (Juston Street), and an eternally stoned philosopher named Willoughby (Wyatt Russell).

We get to know them too, and soon realize that what on the surface appears to just be a movie about a bunch of baseball bros hanging out and partying is actually a subtly crafted meditation on growing up and exploring your own identity. Jake and the guys party and dance at a disco, stomp around to “Cotton Eye Joe” at a cowboy bar, mosh at a punk rock club, and do a bad job blending in at a costume party thrown by the theater, dance and visual arts students.

One of these students, a theater major named Beverly (Zoey Deuth,) develops a crush on Jake, whom she nicknames the cute, quiet one of the bunch. She is surprised at Jake’s association with what she views as a bunch of dumb jocks, and finds herself questioning her own prejudices while embracing that growth in her perspective.

Throughout “Everybody Wants Some!!” we see people who have always thought about themselves and others in a certain way completely flip and evolve, painting their thoughts in less broad strokes and focusing more on the individual. What’s really great about this film is that in the midst of the partying, flirting, dancing and shameless displays of masculinity flows a strong but subtle undercurrent of anxiety concerning one question: What comes next? These guys have always lived in the moment, but even as each character tries his best to keep that momentum going, adulthood lurks and beckons, “right this way.”

The setting and subject matter of this film, as well as “Dazed and Confused” and “Boyhood,” marks its autobiographical nature, as Linklater, a forever resident of Southeast Texas, shades parts of his history and experience into his story and characters. This allows for him to think out loud his own self-exploration, but also achieves a kind of universality from which we’re able to better understand how we ourselves grow and change, and how we experience and deal with change that occurs around us over time.

About half way into “Everybody Wants Some!!” which cheekily takes its title and double exclamation points from the 1980 Van Halen song, the depth of Linklater’s writing and achieved ambition finally hit me like a ton of bricks. Jake and Finnegan are standing next to one another a safe distance away from the mosh pit at a punk rock club, and Jake takes a moment to voice his concern about where they are and whether or not they belong there. Finnegan chalks it up adaptability, in that they’re able to mold themselves to whatever scene they happen to be in — my thoughts on Jake’s somewhat cloaked existential question? Who knows? Either way, life’s a hell of a ride!!

★★★½ (out of 4)

My Top 10 Films of 2015

1.

Mad Max: Fury Road (★★★★)

Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris

Bold, ingenious, and completely bonkers all the way through, George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” is a visual masterpiece with a story so concisely drawn out and to the point, full of convincing characters with curtly explained backstories that it elevates an already brilliant film to the level of near-perfection.

The story is so concisely drawn out and to the point, and full of convincing characters with curtly explained backstories that it elevates an already brilliant film to the level of near-perfection. Furiosa, simply put, is one of the coolest characters ever created, her face smeared with black engine grease serving as her war paint, the fire in her eyes. There is a real passion to Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa that drives the story forward, as she strives for hope in a hopeless land, and carries scorn for those who have scorned her, but not malice.

It helps that she is paired with an engaging band of characters, including five excellent actresses as the wives, the oft-silent Max, played by Hardy with subtle brilliance in a performance that is a lot of physicality, but also a lot of expressions and eyes, and wasteland tyrant Immortan Joe’s sickly soldier, Nux, played by Nicholas Hoult in a revelatory performance full of humor and sadness.

It’s remarkable to notice this in a film with so few quiet scenes, but I emphasize that “Fury Road” is not your run of the mill summer blockbuster. I wish this was the standard, as opposed to soulless, dull and dead-eyed stuff like the “Transformers” franchise or  even movies that are playing it safe with formula and repetition, like many (not all) of the Marvel universe movies. Maintaining the sensibility and atmosphere of the previous “Mad Max” movies, but cranking the energy up exponentially, Miller realizes the full potential of this universe with “Fury Road” in a way that unsurprisingly took more than a decade to complete.

“Fury Road” establishes such an exciting new era of filmmaking for Miller, and proves promising for the modern action genre by indicating that there’s still hope to be foraged in what was starting to look like a hopeless genre. It’s the best film of the year.

 

2.

Anomalisa (★★★★)

Directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson

Written by Charlie Kaufman

Leave it to writer/director Charlie Kaufman to give us the most human, soul-piercing film of the year and to do it entirely with stop motion miniatures, and the voice talents of only three actors.

“Anomalisa” introduces us to Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a renowned self-help author who is visiting Cincinnati to speak at a customer service convention. We follow him as he arrives in town, takes a Taxi to the hotel where the convention will take place and where he will be staying. We also come to realize that everyone he meets has the same voice — that would be the great Tom Noon, who is credited for this film as playing “everyone else.”

That is Michael’s affliction, or perhaps it could just be Kaufman’s fascinating way of presenting a person’s perception of his or her life as having become completely mundane and passionless. Either way, what we experience with “Anomalisa” is a man caught in a strange, Kafkaesque state of mind where he no longer enjoys any kind of modulation among the people he meets — everyone is the essentially the same person with the same voice, even in the music that he hears through his ear buds and in the hotel lounge.

This monotony of spirit is brought to a sudden, startling halt when Michael, from his hotel bathroom, hears someone outside in the hallway… someone whose voice is different than all of the others — that would be the great Jennifer Jason Leigh, who creates a fully fleshed out and complex character here and helps us to forget for a time that these are just miniatures, and that we aren’t actual watching living, breathing actors on screen.

While “Mad Max: Fury Road” is certainly the finest crafted BIG movie of 2015, it goes without saying that “Anomalisa” is the most beautifully and meticulously crafted miniature movie. So much work went into making this small world a reality, and all efforts have led to this final masterwork of human communication, heartache, pettiness and hope.

Kaufman is the man who brought us such cerebral masterpieces as “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and “Synecdoche, New York,” all four-star films in my book, and as with all of his previous work, “Anomalisa” reflects the serious questions, anxieties, feelings and observations about life, death, love and existence that are caught and sifted out of the fascinating filter of their writer’s mind, and what a mind it is.

 

3.

The Hateful Eight (★★★★)

Written/Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Funny, violent, mean, but certainly not lean, Quentin Tarantino’s 8^th movie is his longest (nearly 3 hours for the wide theatrical release, well over 3 hours for the 70mm roadshow presentation), and darkest cinematic outburst — I think outburst is just the right word for what Tarantino does. As with his previous work, “The Hateful Eight” feels like an erupting surge of ideas, a culmination of story, ideas and characters straight out of the B-cinema that Tarantino treasures so much.

This time channeling Sergio Leone, Agatha Christie and John Carpenter, Tarantino creates eight of his most dastardly characters yet, shoves them all into a haberdashery to wait out a blizzard, and blends in elements of a Leone western, a Christie locked-room mystery, and Carpenter’s “The Thing.” Paranoia, festering grudges and racism pervade this small space, where in a post-Civil War Wyoming we see the threads of Tarantino’s quirky, quixotic style intertwine with a dark and complex history.

What’s really great is the way in which Tarantino takes his grandiose ideas about the United States then and now, and fleshes them out on a small scale. These ideas are personified by the eight main characters, including Tarantino regulars Tim Roth (as Oswaldo Mobray – the little man), Michael Madsen (as Joe Gage – the cow puncher), Samuel L. Jackson (as Major Marquis Warren – the bounty hunter), Kurt Russell (as John Ruth – the hangman), and Walton Goggins (as Sheriff Chris Mannix – the Sheriff).

Among all of these revved up, larger-than-life performances is that of Jennifer Jason Leigh (as Daisy Domergue – the prisoner), who is a newcomer to the Tarantino universe along with Bruce Dern (as General Sandy Smithers – the Confederate), and Demian Bichir (as Bob – the Mexican). Leigh gives the most nuanced performance and nearly steals the show away from the others, although to do so in a Tarantino movie when Jackson is involved is not a task to be taken lightly.

It must be said that “The Hateful Eight” is not Tarantino at his very best – that would be “Jackie Brown,” a film that displays both his complete control as a filmmaker and his ability to pay homage to past cinema, while also paving an entirely new way for himself. It also shows a balance of violence and depth of character and startling sensitivity that this, his eighth and most brutal film, lacks — although it serves up plenty of terrific plot twists and turns, abundant cutthroat, vengeance-fueled brutality, and still proves, yet again, that Tarantino is a filmmaker to be reckoned with.

 

4.

The Stanford Prison Experiment  (★★★★)

Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez

Written by Tim Talbott

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” is a film of chilling relevance and brutal realism, in which director Kyle Patrick Alvarez weaves a disturbingly familiar portrait of how the power structures that we ourselves design can ultimately lead to a break down in our humanity in favor of something more animalistic, and more frightening.

What is perhaps most dramatic, upsetting, and infuriating about the results of the Zimbardo’s experiment is that although it featured only a mockup of these environments, and a simulation of the structure of power that exists in reality, between those who are trusted with the job of maintaining peace and order, and those who live behind bars, there is an undeniable and harsh reality that bleeds from that experiment and stains us as a society.

A rivalry that develops between the “guards” and the “prisoners,” all students who happen to be pursuing degrees at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. The question that the study poses is if these Stanford students will resort to this kind of behavior when placed within these circumstances, what does that suggest for actual correctional officers and prisoners who have to face conditions like this on an everyday basis, and for real? And how do these structures of power affect situations outside of the prison system?

Everyone’s performance in this film is incredible, and like so many great films, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” echoes the time and place in which it has been made. We see the everlasting significance of Zimbardo’s study, and the sweeping relevance of Alvarez’s film, which, with its impeccable timing, strikes a serious nerve and stays with you long after it’s over.

 

5.

Beasts of No Nation (★★★★)

Written/Directed by Cary Fukunaga

There is a tremendous sense of clarity and confidence built into Cary Fukunaga’s “Beasts of No Nation,” an incredible narrative and technical achievement featuring a powerful, ethereal score by Dan Romer, graceful writing, direction and cinematography by Fukunaga, and restrained, sincere performances all around.

Perhaps the most interesting observation I can make about this extraordinary film is how poetically the story is told. Fukunaga served as cinematographer on this film, as well as writer and director, and his visual style and fluid approach to storytelling calls to mind the transcendental work of filmmakers David Gordon Green (“George Washington,” “Joe”), Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter,” “Mud”), and Terrence Malick (“The Thin Red Line,” “The New World”).

Fukunaga also has a way off taking more “showy” shots and blending them into the story without distracting us from it. There is one particularly amazing sequence that shows the fractured passing of time, and is communicates both Agu’s moral deterioration, and his lost perception of time and place, as the violence becomes such a frequent part of his everyday life that it actually begins to lose its impact on him.

The anonymity of the film’s setting enhances the urgency of the story and steers it out of the way of being a preachy, political sermon. This allows the film and us to focus on the real journey, where we witness a young boy’s loss of innocence as he is abandoned, and then rediscovered in a war-torn land. “Beasts of No Nation” above all is a human story, not one chiefly fixated on placing the blame, and who better than Fukunaga to guide us through the dark and find humanity living among the shadows?

 

6.

Entertainment (★★★★)

Directed by Rick Alverson

Written by Rick Alverson, Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker

When viewed shallowly, from a distance and with slightly squinted eyes, the very premise of Rick Alverson’s “Entertainment,” which he co-wrote with star Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker, is not an unfamiliar one. The idea here is that Alverson and company are taking something we have seen before in more conventional films about aging entertainers, and deconstructing it in order to get a fuller grasp, not on the story arc itself exactly, but more on what about this kind of story makes sense in a naturalistic sort of way, one that is not blurred or sweetened saccharine by clean resolutions or sentimental revelations.

Alverson’s film doesn’t contain a single disposable scene, or a scene out of place. It is refreshingly efficient in its storytelling, and proves Alverson to be one of the most focused, confident and uncompromising directors working today. He makes confrontational movies about confrontational people, and there’s something both unsettling and somehow completely brilliant and refreshing about his approach.

Turkington as a truly strange and fascinating to watch as he re-interprets his own real-life character for the film, which has been digested and reinterpreted by Heidecker, Alverson and himself, and then switches it off and becomes the hollow shell of a man. As the film progresses, the comedian struggles to communicate with others, both through his belligerent stage character (based on “Neil Hamburger,” a character that Turkington performs as in real life),  whose act is made up of subversive, carefully constructed hacky jokes of misogyny, homophobia and overall distaste, and in his life off-stage.

That inability to communicate builds, driving the always restrained and subtly affecting story into increasingly surreal territory that paints the American Southwest as somewhat of a wasteland of washed up opportunity and spent talent. There is a lot of humor, but none of it comes without a little bit of a sting. That’s the kind of film Alverson is interested in making.

 

7.

Spotlight (★★★★)

Directed by Tom McCarthy

Written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer

“Spotlight” is a quietly harrowing thriller based on the 2003 Boston Globe investigation of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The Globe’s “Spotlight” team of investigative journalists published a story that year that revealed a staggering statistic, that 6% of Catholic priests have been guilty of pedophilia, and that the church itself has done everything in its power to conceal this fact from the public.

As we watch the true story of the investigation unfold, and witness the slow uncovering of this massive scandal by the Boston Globe journalists, the tension builds and builds. So does the characters’ (and our) exasperation with how far the corruption spans, within the church and beyond. There are scenes where victims are interviewed about their experiences of abuse that are completely devastating, and then there are scenes of rage where we see the lies and moral decay of the abusers and their allies.

There is also triumph, as the “Spotlight” team, with the publication of the story, at last reveals this issue to the world, and by extension provides a new avenue for hundreds of victims of abuse to come forward with their stories.

The best ensemble cast of 2015, including brilliant performance from Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Live Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup, Brian d’Arcy James and Mark Ruffalo, and a slow-burning and emotionally searing screenplay by Josh Singer and director Tom McCarthy, make “Spotlight” one of the great investigative journalism films — “All the President’s Men” and “Zodiac” are perfectly fair comparisons.

 

8.

The Revenant (★★★★)

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Written by Mark L. Smith and Alejandro González Iñárritu

Last year, mad-scientist Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu managed to grab 3 of the big Oscars for Best Picture, directing and writing for “Birdman,” a razor-sharp take on acting, theater, blockbuster movies and… well, whatever else “Birdman” was about, it was a wild ride, shot and cut to appear as though the entire thing was done in one single shot — this was, I think, used to great effect, and helped to earn another Oscar for Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography, which will again be noticed in Iñárritu and Lubezki’s new collaboration, the equally insane and technically breathtaking frontier film, “The Revenant.”

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as fur trapper Hugh Glass in this blisteringly cold but beautifully savage story of suffering and revenge. Glass was a real person who, in the 1820s, was abandoned by his men after being mauled within an inch of his life by a grizzly bear while on a fur expedition. In “The Revenant,” we act as witness to this harrowing and prolonged attack, and then watch as his team of hunters, led by Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) attempt to resuscitate him and carry him onward back to camp.

Henry decides to lead all but two of the men back, and leaves the cutthroat John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), the younger and more naïve Bridger (Will Poulter), and Glass’ half-native American son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) to watch over Glass and see to it that if he is given a proper burial should he perish from his wounds. Fitzgerald is a true snake who decides he’s had enough, and after killing Glass’ son, convinces Bridger that they must leave Glass to die in order to escape an impending attack by supposedly nearby hostile natives.

Glass survives once they’ve left, and film then follows him as he journeys through a frozen hell, returned from the dead, and fueled by a thirst for retribution against those who abandoned him.

“The Revenant” is a technical marvel, and features some of the most brilliantly framed and captured photography we have seen on screen. The production was shot in staggeringly cold conditions, in entirely natural light, and in geographical locations that are so isolated and unlivable that many cast and crew have come back with utter horror stories of working on this.

All of these touches and sweeping decisions layered in have made “The Revenant” a truly remarkable experience. With a sad, sometimes eerie and often atmospheric score by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, and brilliant work by both DiCaprio and Hardy, as well as Gleeson and Poulter who are great young actors working among giants and holding their own just fine.

Iñárritu is a treasure in the world of cinema, and carries onward a great legacy of films, from “Babel” and “21 Grams,” to “Birdman” and “The Revenant,” he has tirelessly delivered striking works of art that challenge, thrill and make us feel deeply.

 

9.

Sicario (★★★½ )

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Written by Taylor Sheridan

Haunting: That is the word to describe “Sicario,” director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s descent into the dark world of Mexican drug cartels and CIA intrigue.

Hold tight for the first quarter of this film, as it’s a slow burn in which we are pulled gradually into an increasingly disquieting realm of secrecy, drug trade and unimaginable atrocities via our avatar, FBI SWAT agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt, never better), whose relatively naïve and innocent point of view — despite having helped discover dozens of decaying corpses hidden in the walls of a house, all victims of the cartel — matches ours. We know there are gruesome things going on, but are less aware perhaps of the extent to which the cartels are in charge. We also come to discover, as Kate does, the extent of our own country’s culpability for the drug-trade crimes being committed, and that is where the haunting really begins.

There are touches of Alfred Hitchcock and David Cronenberg here, as Kate is left in the dark about her involvement with the CIA task force led by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), and for an inordinate amount of time knows close to nothing about why she is being assigned to join Graver and his mysterious partner Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro) on a Cartel-related mission in Mexico. She eventually discovers the truth, as we do, and her reality spins faster and faster out of control until everything she though she understood about right and wrong, good and evil, and who she can trust is tested.

Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson delivers a brooding score that further enhances our sense of foreboding, and cinematographer great Roger Deakins captures some of the most striking and strange overhead shots of the Mexican desert I’ve seen, framing it almost as an alien place that could stand in for another planet in another galaxy. This adds to the out-of-place out-of-time anxiety that Kate begins to experience as she realizes she is way over her head.

Villeneuve, whose previous work includes “Prisoners” and “Enemy,” once again reveals as he did with those films his fascination with the fragile morality of man — this time, he layers it further into genre than ever before, weaving his themes into a story that is both a taught, nerve-shattering crime thriller, and a relevant web of horror that exists just south of the border.

 

10.

Krampus (★★★½ )

Directed by Michael Dougherty

Written by Todd Casey, Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields

Writer/director Michael Dougherty’s “Krampus” is perhaps one of the most unlikely and surprising genre masterworks in years. With his family cooped up in a house in the midst of a sinister winter maelstrom, 12-year-old Max Engel (Emjay Anthony) is teased and tortured by his visiting cousins, and angry about his parent’s looming separation, and so loses his temper, rips up his carefully composed letter to Santa Claus, tosses the shreds of paper to the wind, and unknowingly summons Krampus, the mythical demonic shadow of Father Christmas himself.

What follows is a tour de force of filmmaking, with creature and sound design that will rival any movie of its kind that has been released in the past decade. Drawing from a more practical bag of tricks than audiences are used to seeing these days (George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” notwithstanding), Dougherty crafts a truly masterful series of set pieces in which we witness the wrath of Krampus and his minions — these include demonic Gingerbread cookies, man-eating toys, and eerie elves wearing elaborate masquerade masks. Krampus himself is saved for the final course, and trust me on this: he’s a doozy.

As with Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” series, though, there is a great deal of humor cut with the cries of terror and bewilderment. Dougherty manages to establish a solid tone throughout the film, from the confidant set up of the family quarrels, to the sinister snowstorm that drifts in and turns the neighborhood into a claustrophobic winter wasteland, a nightmare reminiscent of Frank Darabont’s world in his screen adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Mist.”

Dougherty’s film takes a well-earned place beside Joe Dante’s “Gremlins” and Ron Underwood’s “Tremors” as one of the great horror-comedies. It offers real scares and real laughs, often times simultaneously, and with a pitch-perfect ending, invigorating practical effects and sincere performances that seriously invest in the material rather than treating it with a wink and a nod, “Krampus” has true potential to reach holiday-tradition status — families hopefully will try to squeeze a movie about a Christmas demon somewhere in between “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Elf” and “A Christmas Story.”

 

HONORABLE MENTION:

“Chi-Raq”

“Creep”

“Crimson Peak”

“Ex Machina”

“Inside Out”

“It Follows”

“Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens”

“What We Do in the Shadows”

‘Krampus’ (2015)

These are exciting times that we live in when Michael Dougherty’s “Krampus” exists.

The writer/director’s follow-up to his Halloween horror-anthology and cult hit “Trick ‘r Treat,” opens with a superbly bitingly satirical montage in which we witness hordes of people stampeding through a shopping mall to take advantage of holiday sales, and then begins in earnest when we are introduced to the Engels, a suburban family awaiting their considerably obnoxious relatives who are coming to visit for the holidays.

12-year-old Max Engel (Emjay Anthony) recognizes that his parents, Tom and Sarah (Adam Scott and Toni Collette) have drifted somewhat apart over the years, and feels sad that the holiday season and its spirit haven’t managed to pull him closer to them and his big sister, Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen). The only person Max feels he can talk to and confide in his German grandmother, Omi (Krista Sadler). Their relationship is something special in this film — they speak German to each other, and for those brief moments they share a private connection, sharing wisdom and compassion with each other in a way Max has trouble doing with the rest of his family.

When Max’s Aunt Linda and Uncle Howard (Allison Tolman and David Koechner) show up with their bratty, brutish twin daughters, their oafish son, and Linda and Sarah’s eternally unimpressed Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell), the adults bicker like children, and the children tease Max to his breaking point. Just when the family tensions and rivalries have begun to reach critical mass, Max loses his temper, and rips up his carefully composed letter to Santa Claus, tosses the shreds of paper to the wind, and unknowingly summons the eponymous Krampus, the mythical demonic shadow of Father Christmas himself.

What follows is a tour de force of filmmaking, with creature and sound design that will rival any movie of its kind that has been released in the past decade. Drawing from a more practical bag of tricks than audiences are used to seeing these days (George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” notwithstanding), Dougherty crafts a truly masterful series of set pieces in which we witness the wrath of Krampus and his minions — these include demonic Gingerbread cookies, man-eating toys, and eerie elves wearing elaborate masquerade masks. Krampus himself is saved for the final course, and trust me on this: he’s a doozy.

“Krampus” is perhaps one of the most unlikely and surprising genre masterworks in years. There is actual danger here, as the film gives every character a fair shot at survival and demise. As with Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” series, though, there is a great deal of humor cut with the cries of terror and bewilderment. Dougherty manages to establish a solid tone throughout the film, from the confidant set up of the family quarrels, to the sinister snowstorm that drifts in and turns the neighborhood into a claustrophobic winter wasteland, a nightmare reminiscent of Frank Darabont’s world in his screen adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Mist.” Frightening creatures lie beyond the relentless white maelstrom, as it threatens to envelope and hungrily consume everything in poor Max’s world.

Dougherty’s film takes a well-earned place beside Joe Dante’s “Gremlins” and Ron Underwood’s “Tremors” as one of the great horror-comedies. It offers real scares and real laughs, often times simultaneously, and with a pitch-perfect ending, invigorating practical effects and sincere performances that seriously invest in the material rather than treating it with a wink and a nod, “Krampus” has true potential to reach holiday-tradition status — families hopefully will try to squeeze a movie about a Christmas demon somewhere in between “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Elf” and “A Christmas Story.”

★★★½  (out of 4)

‘Tusk’

“Tusk” is not so much a movie as it is a companion piece to “Smodcast,” a podcast created by writer/director Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Chasing Amy”) and his producer and longtime friend Scott Mosier. The two of them met in their twenties, shared a love for filmmaking, scraped together $27,000 and made their first movie, “Clerks.”

20 years later, Smith has essentially moved on from filmmaking and waded more into podcasting, an outlet that perfectly suits his verbose tendencies and relentlessly graphic, pop culture-laced humor. The podcast also has spawned an endless stream of entertainment and creativity, including the root idea of Smith’s latest film, “Tusk,” which blossomed from a personal ad, of all things, that a listener discovered and sent in for the “Smodcasters” enjoyment and dissection.

The plot of “Tusk” sums up the content of the personal ad. Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) is a podcaster (!) whose shtick is to travel around the country, meet strange or unusual people and report their stories back to his co-host, Teddy (Haley Joel Osment). When an arranged meeting in Canada with an internet sensation falls through, Wallace ends up discovering a letter on a bulletin board in a bar bathroom.

It starts: “Hello. I am an old man who has enjoyed a long and storied life. And after eons of oceanic adventure, I know I do not wish to spend my remaining years alone while I have some stories to share… “

Wallace is intrigued, and so for the sake of the podcast travels far off the grid to meet the writer of the letter, an old, wheelchair-bound man named Howard Howe (Michael Parks). It doesn’t take long for Wallace to realize that something isn’t quite right with Howe, and by the time he figures this out for sure, Wallace blacks out from poisoned tea, courtesy of Howe himself, one of the strangest and most memorable (albeit undeveloped) movie villains in recent years.

That Howe remains in my memory is a tribute the great Michael Parks, an actor who, even when given silly, shallow material such as this, still manages to go all the way with his character. In this case, his character is a man who is physically, emotionally and psychologically obsessed (too tame a word) with walruses due to being saved by one once when he was lost at sea. His solution to this yearning is to turn Wallace into a walrus.

Yes… you read that correctly.

I will go no further with that, for with “Tusk,” Smith unfolds for us a truly strange tragedy of madness and obsession that falters constantly but, for a fan of Smodcast such as myself, also pays off in spades. It is for that reason that I cannot quite recommend “Tusk” to a wider audience, because although I enjoyed it the first, second and third time I watched it, it’s simply not made for everyone; it exists for the listeners of “Smodcast.”

“Tusk” is wildly uneven, often breaking its own established tone apart before reassembling it again in a completely different way, and then repeating — much the same way Howe treats Wallace in the movie. There is a parallel plot to Wallace’s plight, involving his girlfriend Ally (Genesis Rodriguez) and his buddy Teddy joining forces with a rogue French-Canadian detective named Guy LaPointe (disingenuously and hilariously credited as himself at the end… it’s an A-list actor who actually gives an excellent performance, who everyone will recognize despite the wig and prosthetic nose).

This stuff almost feels like it belongs in another movie, and highlights the overall stitched-together feel of “Tusk.” I laughed at lot, and became appropriately unsettled at Howard Howe’s Walrus monster-formerly-known-as-Wallace. But the movie is too self-referential and uneven for me to say, “go out and see it!” I will, however, recommend “Smodcast” to anyone who doesn’t mind some explicit language and pop-culture buffoonery. There is a certain genius to that podcast that doesn’t quite translate here. Neither are for everyone, but if you enjoy the podcast, odds are you’ll have something to appreciate about “Tusk,” just like I do. I’d say start there, then decide whether you want to take this bizarre journey.

★★1/2 (out of four)

‘This is the End’

What do you end up with when you put Seth Rogan, James Franco, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill and Craig Robinson under one roof while the Rapture is going on outside, turning the Hollywood Hills and (presumably) the rest of the world into ashes and hellfire? Fortunately, you get what is undoubtedly one of the funniest movies of the year, nay, of the past decade.

“This is the End” features a truly ingenious cast in an equally ingenious premise: All of the above mentioned celebrities play obnoxious, cantankerous, whiney versions of themselves trapped inside James Franco’s luxurious Hollywood home — definitely not the worst place you could hold up during the apocalypse.

All of them are there to begin with because they are partying with all of their famous friends, including, but not limited to: a perverted, coked-up Michael Cera who is hitting on Rihanna, Jason Segel, who laments the predictability of working on a network show like “How I Met Your Mother,” Emma “Hermoine Granger” Watson, who scores some of the biggest laughs in the film, and Paul Rudd, who accidentally steps on and crushes a girl’s skull once the chaos begins.

And once it begins, things get very bad and uproariously funny very quickly, with a bunch of hilarious actors lampooning their own careers, and their ineptitude and spoiled lifestyles in the face of such apocalyptic challenges as food and water shortages, lack of masturbation privacy, demonic possession, and loss of humanity.

That last one is important in this film, because the very reason why none of these guys has been Raptured, or saved, is because they are not worthy. So of course, throughout the movie they figure out they need to correct that and do good things in order to be allowed into the light. Doing good things, selfless things: that ends up being the most daunting task, especially for McBride, who revels in the darkness of his devilish end-of-the-world persona.

“This is the End” is the directorial debut of writing partners Rogan and Evan Goldberg (“Superbad,” “Pineapple Express”), and they nail it. From scene to scene, the film never slows an inch and is incredibly consistent in its timing and laughs. I laughed so hard so many times that I’m sure I missed a number of jokes slipped in there in the dynamite script, which must have left a lot of room, too, for improv — I dare anyone not to lose it when Franco and McBride argue passionately about the overabundance of a particular bodily fluid that Franco has noticed around the house.

In a way, “This is the End” represents everything that last year’s “The Watch,” also co-written by Rogan and Goldberg, should and could have been. Fortunately, now we have a thoroughly funny and successfully mediation on similar ideas, featuring one of the best comedy ensembles I’ve seen and a surprisingly effective and emotional penultimate sequence featuring a certain famous Whitney Houston song I won’t mention by name, but I’m sure you know what it is already.

★★★ 1/2 (out of 4)

‘Dark Horse’

Todd Solondz’s “Dark Horse” continues the writer/director’s fascination with sad, damaged characters searching for happiness, whose suffering we empathize with at times and relish in at others. All the while, Solondz dares us to look away, perhaps into the closest mirror, from the frightening sincerity on screen. As a filmmaker, he is fearless and pushes so far over the edge of what P.C. is these days that he circles back again and reminds us of the importance of breaking the laws and blurring the lines between the tolerable and the taboo.

Jordan Gelber is dynamite in this movie as Abe, an overly confident and confrontational toy collector who is in his thirties and living with his parents. Neither his emotionally distant father, Jackie (a stellar, subdued Christopher Walken), nor his coddling mother, Phyllis (Mia Farrow), expects much of him. His brother, Richard (Justin Bartha) is a successful medical doctor.

Abe works for his father at his real estate office, but Jackie’s secretary, Marie (Donna Murphy) does all of Abe’s work while he spends his time scoping out rare collector’s editions of toys on eBay on his computer.

In the opening scene of “Dark Horse,” Abe is at a wedding sitting at a table beside Miranda (Selma Blair). They are not together, and as he leans in and coolly tells her he doesn’t usually dance, she appears unsettled and uninterested. Later, he finds her again and, in a scene as painful, funny and awkward as Solondz has ever filmed, asks for her phone number.

On their first date, another painful scene where Abe rambles on about fate to a lethargic Miranda, he proposes to her.

Miranda, an emotionally troubled, depressed and medicated woman, at first refuses Abe’s marriage proposal sending him into a spiral of aggression in which he quits his job and curses everyone on the planet. Miranda soon after develops a sense of guilt and changes her mind. She wants to rebound from her passive, morose lifestyle and decides to settle for Abe, telling him as they embrace that “it could have been worse… so much worse.”

We come to understand Abe as a pretty delusional guy. Even from the opening scenes, as we see him pursue a girl who is the farthest thing from interested, and then drive home in his big, bright yellow eye-sore of a hummer while jamming to pre-teen pop music, what Solondz has referred to as “‘American Idol’ music,” we get the sense that Abe is hopelessly holding on to something that is long gone and never to be seen again.

As the film gradual evolves from its more straightforward first half into a kind of surreal series of events punctuated by Abe’s dreams and visions of interactions with Marie, his father’s secretary, we learn that Miranda has hepatitis B and will survive. But Abe is troubled by this and comes to question everything that has come before, and even argues with his mother and brother in one imaginary scene where he wants to know why Richard was the favored son.

With “Dark Horse,” the ever-subversive Solondz twists the “boy meets girl” story to its breaking point, and then in a truly unexpected finale, reveals the underlying sweetness of the whole damn thing. Although it is far from his darkest film, “Dark Horse” feels completely “Solondz” in its approach to telling a story in the age of the man-child. His film is darkly comic and moving without ever feeling sentimental.

Solondz tells a great story, and after his somewhat cold, distant “Life During Wartime,” an interesting but redundant continuation of his masterpiece “Happiness,” “Dark Horse” reveals that he still has a lot more stories to tell.

★★★ 1/2 (out of 4)

‘This is 40’

I am a great admirer of Judd Apatow and his work. From his work on two of the best television shows ever to air, “The Larry Sanders Show” and “Freaks and Geeks,” to “Funny People,” one of the funniest and sincere films of 2009, the writer/producer/director has been consistent and honest in his work, and has yet to make something I haven’t been able to enjoy in some way.

Unfortunately, I now have to draw a line in the sand when it comes to his newest film, “This is 40,” his least cohesive work to date and a semi-autobiographical reflection on middle-age and dealing with the troubles and inevitable obstacles that come with getting older and raising children.

Advertised as a “sort-of-sequel” to Apatow’s brilliant 2007 comedy “Knocked Up” starring Seth Rogan, “This is 40” catches us up with two of the supporting characters from that film, Pete and Debbie (played again by Paul Rudd and Apatow’s real-life wife, Leslie Mann) and their children, Sadie and Charlotte (played again by Apatow’s real-life children, Maude and Iris). The movie begins with Debbie’s “38^th” birthday party, what actually is her 40^th birthday party, but she wants to avoid that awful number as much as she can.

Throughout the rest of “This is 40,” Debbie and Pete argue and make up several times, and try to take control of their lives as they feel things slipping away. There is no way to explain the story without being vague because one of the biggest problems with the movie is that it is made up of a lot of nice moments, some laughs but ultimately nothing sticks and nothing comes together. The parts don’t add up to any memorable whole.

Until now, Apatow has written movies featuring scenes of raunchy but organic laugh-out-loud humor interwoven with scenes of painfully sincere conversations and confessions among deeply explored, human characters. The problem this time around could be a number of things, but the first that comes to mind is the lack of structure in “This is 40.” Apatow tends to allow for improvisation in his films, but this movie comes off as a loosely strung together series of potentially funny ideas, underdeveloped and rushed into an undercooked end product.

There are some terrific cameos by Jason Segel and Charlyne Yi, both returning as their characters from “Knocked Up,” and Melissa McCarthy, who unsurprisingly manages to steal all of the big laughs as an unstable mother to school bully (Ryan Lee, the pyromaniac from J.J. Abrams’ “Super 8).

Rudd and Mann are okay, but almost on autopilot for most of the movie, and Apatow’s kids are sincere enough. But “This is 40” lacks the scene-to-scene laughs that his previous work always had. It’s all too soupy and forgettable

One of the biggest disappoints of the year for me, “This is 40” marks a regrettable decline in substance for Apatow, who usually is brilliant and on point in his story and characters. Maybe because this is a continuation of characters from another story, and maybe it’s because Apatow’s formula has become tired. Funny People broke the mold from “Knocked Up,” but this returns to painfully familiar ground.

★★ (out of 4)

‘The Five-Year Engagement’

I am thankful to the comedy gods 2012 is a Judd Apatow year. That means a thoughtful, gut-busting comedy like “The Five-Year Engagement,” produced by Apatow and written by Jason Siegel and Nicholas Stoller (the team behind 2008’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) will bring with it the laughs and clarity lacking in at least 90 percent of the other comedies being released this year.

Like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “The Five-Year Engagement” centers on a good, clean premise on which a slew of superbly executed comedic vegetation can grow wildly.

Tom  (Jason Segal) and Violet (Emily Blunt) are in love and decide after just a year of dating it is time to get married. Tom is a successful sous chef and Violet is a graduate of psychology who receives news of her acceptance into a post-doctorate program at the University of Michigan. The program lasts two years, so Tom agrees to move to Michigan so Violet can pursue this career opportunity. In the process, they decide to delay the wedding a few years.

Before they know it, more and more obstacles pile up, delaying Tom and Violet’s marriage to the point where some of the more elderly relatives start dying off, to the utter dismay of Violet’s British mother, Sylvia (Jacki Weaver). Tom’s best friend, Alex (Chris Pratt), even ends up impregnating and marrying Violet’s sister, Suzie (Alison Brie), but for a number of reasons, the wedding just cannot seem to come to fruition. A long engagement it is.

As always, Segal and Blunt truly shine on screen, and they each bring a sincere comic appeal to the film. They are surrounded by a sizable array of equally talented actors including Brie, Pratt and scene-stealer Chris Parnell, whose sweater-knitting hunter is one of the funniest characters in the movie. The only character who doesn’t quite ring true is Violet’s professor, Winton Childs, played by Rhys Ifans. There is a point in the film where I just couldn’t buy what was happening with this character, but aside from that, this is a terrific ensemble film.

With “The Five-Year Engagement,” Segal and Stoller shift from the agony of a breakup to focus on the fear of finally taking that big step into marriage, and the challenges that come with making the decision to spend the rest of your life with another person.

What is interesting about the writers’ approach to the subject is the way by which they subvert this issue beneath so many layers of excuses, denials and betrayals, so that Tom and Violet’s fear of advancing to the next stage in their relationship — the ultimate step — becomes lost amongst a series of somewhat superficial, and hilarious events that should not really delay a marriage from taking place.

Many of critics have claimed this to be the flaw of the movie, and to some extent it might be. Unlike Siegel and Stoller’s previous effort, not everything works this time around. A few scenes could have used a sharper re-write, and the story meanders a bit more than “Sarah Marshall.” But it is still safe to say once again they have crafted a memorable, funny comedy amongst a sea of forgettables.

★★★ (out of 4)

‘Cabin in the Woods’

Probably the most fun I have had at the movies since . . . I don’t know when, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods” plays around with all the familiar, clichéd elements of the horror genre, molding them like clay into easily recognizable shapes before rolling over them with five hundred steam-rollers and, in the process, transcending the genre in a more creative and outrageous fashion than horror master Wes Craven was able to do back in 1996 with his postmodern-postmortem slasher flick, “Scream.”

What do five college students off for a sexed-up weekend getaway in a remote cabin in the middle of the woods have to do with two middle-aged government employees working in some kind of top-secret industrial facility for top-secret operations? Well, it is no spoiler to readers that the two technicians are monitoring the students through many hidden cameras for the newest top-secret project, and that the cabin itself is not meant for a relaxing weekend away from it all.

What is the project? To start off, each of the five students happens to fit nicely into a stereotypical kind of horror movie victim. There is Kurt the jock (Curt), Jules the slut (Anna Hutchinson), Dana the virgin (Kristin Connolly), Holden the nice guy (Jessie Williams) and Marty the pothead (Fran Kranz).

Meanwhile, the technicians (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) are manipulating their decisions, thought and even their sex-drives, all for the purposes of getting them down into the cabin cellar, where a crucial decision lies that will determine the eventual outcome of the operation.

I dare not say more, plot wise, for fear of robbing future viewers of the experience of watching writers Whedon and Goddard aggressively tear down every single wall that horror filmmakers have built over the years. I will say the final third of “The Cabin in the Woods” is a showstopper, both a monumental black eye and a sweet embrace of the horror genre by two guys who love it to pieces — literally. Some bloodshed certainly is not out of the question.

Although a lover of great horror — I’m perpetually in the middle of a Stephen King novel — there most likely are many references and inside jokes I missed, but horror fans must gather round for this exciting and refreshing deconstruction of the genre.

★★★ 1/2 (out of 4)