X-Men Origins: Wolverine

It doesn't take much to make a film that is simply bad. A weak story, poor direction and bad acting aren't uncommon. On the other hand, it takes some kind of perverse talent to make a film that is completely and utterly useless in every single way. If the performances are good, they must be wasted, if the director has talent, he must be far over his head, if the writers know what they're doing, well, then it probably wouldn't be completely useless. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a completely useless film. It's entire 100-minute run-time is devoted to useless exposition and bad action scenes expanding on the backstory in the far superior X2: X-Men United, which is probably my favorite non-Batman, non-Hellboy superhero movie. The actors are fine, even if some seem to phone it in and director Gavin Hood has proven to be at least somewhat talented as a filmmaker with the Oscar-winning Tsotsi, so I'm placing a lot of the blame here on the writers and the studio. The writers because, well, it's Skip Woods, whose previous credits include Swordfish and Hitman, and David Benioff, who wrote Troy and The Kite Runner. I shouldn't have expected much out of that. The studio because, well, it's Fox. When a workprint version of the film leaked a month ago, they immediately came out and said that it was incomplete, that, along with unfinished effects and musical cues, scenes were missing. This was, of course, a blatant lie. I watched the workprint, and I actually enjoyed it a bit more, because at least we could see into the process of designing special effects, although given the godawful effects in Wolverine, maybe it wasn't the best place to learn (if anyone is wondering why I saw it again after disliking the workprint, I wanted to take a break from studying for finals, a friend asked me to go and I figured the updated effects may help). Here's a little hint for Fox: incomplete effects cannot make up for shallow, dull characters, complete failure in terms of emotional connection and an idiotic plot that spends large portions of time trying to retcon with the first X-Men film and ends with giving its character amnesia, just to make sure.
In a laughably bad (more so than the rest of the film), opening sequence, we discover that James (Wolverine) and Victor (Sabertooth) are brothers who grew up in 1860s Canada. Somehow they move to America and stop growing at arbitrary ages (apparently those of Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber), fight in all our wars and eventually join a team of other mutants (one of the only things I liked about this film was seeing Dominic Monaghan and Kevin Durand, who, played Charlie and Keamy respectively on Lost, on a team together). The team does bad things and James leaves and decides to call himself Logan. He works as a lumberjack in Canada for a few years and lives with his girlfriend. They seem happy, but the dialogue between them is so cliche and uninteresting that I just didn't care. Victor starts killing old members of the team because, shocker, he is working for the obviously evil colonel who was directing the team in the past. Victor kills Logan's girlfriend, they fight and Logan loses, but Col. Stryker (remember, he was also the bad guy in X2) gets Wolverine to allow himself to be injected with metal to become stronger and kill Victor (we don't know that Stryker is evil yet). This is a ruse, which Logan figures out, and he escapes. While in hiding on a farm, he meets a nice old couple who give him life advice, and are then killed at the start of one of the most idiotic, cliche-riddled action sequences I've ever seen. I didn't think there were actually movies any more where people walked away from explosions without turning around or showing any reactions. Didn't that go out of style with Bad Boys? If a movie does that in a clever, self-aware or parodic way, I'm OK with it, but Wolverine is none of those things. This begins a cross-country chase, where Wolverine meets up with another former member of the team, played miserably by Will.i.am, but, no worries, he is soon killed by Victor. Logan meets with Gambit, a mutant who had been held by Stryker at his headquarters on 3-mile island (yes, it is that stupid). I think they want us to care about Gambit, but, like everyone in this film except Logan, Stryker and Victor, he only has two or three minutes of dull, wasted screentime. Somewhere in there, Victor and Stryker capture Cyclops when he is still a child (they don't even attempt to retcon this). Logan gets to the island, there is more dull action and exposition, including what is apparently a complete bastardization of the character Deadpool (I haven't read the comics, but I can imagine the fanboys being rather angry about such a dull villain taking the place of the popular character). Eventually, Stryker shoots Wolverine in the head with an Adamantium bullet, which apparently erases his memory of everything that happened in the film. Oh, also, Charles Xavier (an unintentionally hilarious de-aged Patrick Stewart) shows up in a cameo to rescue young Cyclops and the other mutants from the island.
I guess I should mention the one...not bad thing about this film (I really don't want to use the word "good" in relation to this garbage). The actors, especially Jackman and Schreiber are fine. Their roles are awful, but that's more of a script thing than anything. Otherwise, there really isn't a single way in which this film succeeds. The plot is idiotic and useless (I think I'm going to watch X2 right now, just so I can remember that this story can be told well), none of the supporting characters are given more than five minutes of screentime and whatever attempts at development go on in that time invariably fail. The dialogue is cliched and obvious beyond belief and the film's attempts at emotional connection (Logan and his girlfriend, the old couple on the farm and Logan and Victor's eventual, inexplicable reconciliation) are beyond laughable. Last, and arguably most important in a film like this (a superhero film without aspirations to be something more, like Dark Knight and Watchmen), is just how fucking dull the action scenes are. Seriously, the exposition in between was pointless and kind of stupid, but the action sequences range from boring (the fight between Logan and Gambit) to purely idiotic (the chase scene after Logan's escape). I wasn't expecting Dark Knight, X2 or Hellboy 2 levels of greatness, but I also wasn't expecting Ghost Rider, Fantastic 4 or Catwoman levels of trash, and that's what this is.
Rating (out of ****): *1/2

State Of Play

Let's go back eight years. Imagine that, in April 2001, Russel Crowe and Ben Affleck had opened a well-received political thriller with an impeccable source material and a popular, talented supporting cast featuring multiple recent Oscar nominees. It would have opened at number one and people would be talking about it for a while. Crowe was coming off of his Oscar win for the wildly successful Gladiator, and he was quickly becoming one of the most popular and respected leading men in Hollywood and Affleck was still a super star. Unfortunately for director Kevin MacDonald, Universal and the stars, State Of Play is not being released in 2001. Since then, Crowe has one more Oscar, but a series of personal mishaps and mediocre films (plus an added forty or fifty pounds) have taken away from his stardom, although he remains a very good actor. For Affleck, April 2001 would be a month before the wreck that was Pearl Harbor and two years before Gigli was unleashed on an unsuspecting public, effectively killing his career for a while. Since then, he has managed to calm down his personal life and regain some respect in Hollywood, both as an actor and director, but he is nowhere near the powerhouse he was at the beginning of the decade. I say all of this because, while watching this film, I couldn't help but think about the cycle of power in Hollywood, and how odd it was that these former titans were staring in a pretty good film that not many people will see (hopefully I'm wrong and it does well).
Crowe plays Cal McAffrey, a Washington Globe (I assume they couldn't use a real paper) reporter lost in the digital age. After a quick look at a seemingly unconnected murder, he hears about the apparent suicide of Sonia Baker, an aid to his college roommate, Congressman Collins, played by Affleck (never mind the fact that Crowe looks at least ten years older than his costar). Despite some objection from his editor, Cameron Lynn (played wonderfully by Helen Mirren), he begins working with young Blog writer Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) and starts to fit the pieces together (in here, he meets a medical examiner played by Viola Davis, presumably before her breakout role in Doubt). It begins to look like Sonia's murder was planned by PointCorp, a private military corporation that Collins has been investigating (unfortunately, here the plot really resembles the latest season of 24). In there is a somewhat unnecessary side plot about Cal's affair with Collins' wife, played by Robin Wright Penn. Despite the abilities of the actors, it just doesn't feel right in the film and could easily have been cut. As everything begins to come together, Cal and Della visit with Dominic Foy, a PR man played by Jason Batemen, who proves that he can excel in the right role. There are two twists ahead, one painfully obvious one involving the congressman played by Jeff Daniels (sure he's a good actor, but he doesn't really need to be here) and the second, only slightly less obvious one, involving a shadowy character we've seen a few times throughout.
Getting back to my question at the beginning, I should probably note that this is not a film that could have come out in 2001. There are three main issues at work here that are a huge part of our world today. Two are very much in the public eye and one is well known in certain circles. First is the line of journalistic integrity. There are multiple scenes questioning the morality of the interactions between journalists and police. These scenes are rather obvious in their nature, and I assume they played a stronger role in the beloved original BBC miniseries, which I have not seen. Next is the issue of Blackwater-style private armies. The issue is more of a MacGuffin in the context of the film, but it does exist. once again, it is somewhat heavy-handed, and I've been watching the same thing on 24 for weeks. The third issue, and the one that resonates most with me as a communications student, is that of the changing nature of the news industry. At the very beginning, we see a new "Mediacorp" ownership sign in the paper. The corporate masters control what prints in the paper, and the bloggers are seen to be more powerful and in vogue. Cal's Woodward and Bernstein-style reporting is seen as archaic and slow in the modern world (Woodward, along with other well-known news figures, appears in a cameo as a background reporter during a press conference).
As for the film itself, it isn't perfect. Neither twist is particularly unique or unexpected and some scenes fall flat, but the tension is there when it has to be and it makes a pretty good point about the news industry. The performances are all pretty good (especially Crowe, McAdams and Mirren) and the script is interesting when it needs to be. It looks a bit too slick at moments, but the direction is certainly competent, and there are a few really good shots (a certain sequence in a parking garage and the final confrontation come to mind). It's not a great film, but it's a good thriller that's elevated by its great cast.
Rating (out of ****): ***

Tokyo!

The trailer for Tokyo! asks us the film's essential question: "Do we shape cities, or do cities shape us?" The three parts of the film, each by a different director, all answer the question in their own way. The three sections all take place in a very modern Tokyo and, aside from the aforementioned question, deal with transformation, anarchy and rebirth, respectively. The first (and best) segment is "Interior Design," directed by Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine fame. The second, Merde, is directed by Leos Carax, who also made Lovers On The Bridge and Pola X. The final segment, Shaking Tokyo, was created by Bong Joon-ho, most famous for The Host. I think I have to rate the films on their own, but as an overall experience, Tokyo is a must-see. Everything comes together to form a beautiful portrait of the city, and a far more authentic one than the type allowed by an anthology like Paris je t'aime.
Gondry's opening segment, Interior Design, is about a young couple who move to Tokyo for their careers. The husband is an aspiring filmmaker, but his work is extremely dense and comically overwrought (the sequences of his film that we do see are probably the funniest moments in the film), and it only plays in a porn theater. His wife is even less assured. She can't find work and she loses the car. They are staying with a friend, but she wants to get rid of them, even though it's impossible to find suitable housing. The husband seems happy, and people are seeing his film. Eventually, the wife begins to disappear in the city, between the walls. Then she turns into a chair. I'm sorry if that's a bit spoilery, but I rarely get to write "then she turns into a chair." It vaguely reminds me of my last paper on The Metamorphosis. This film shows a more restrained Gondry than normal (yes, even with the chair thing). His wild, innovative visuals made Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind an instant classic, but they didn't work as well on or The Science Of Sleep or Be Kind Rewind. Until the end, this is simply a very good looking film (although not the best looking of the three). Even the effects showing her transformation aren't the focus. Interior Design is the lightest of the three films, and it makes a great introduction to the tone of the film and to the city itself.
Leos Carax's Merde is the strangest part of Tokyo by a fairly large margin (yes, that includes the chair thing and the robot pizza man in the third one). I haven't seen any of Carax's other work. I assume they don't all concentrate on sewer-people running around cities terrorizing people. You probably couldn't maintain a respected career on that premise. Merde opens with a fantastic tracking shot showing the main character (eventually named Merde) running down the sidewalk and just generally bothering people. He pushes them, steals their money and cigarettes, eats their flowers and just generally makes them uncomfortable. He is hideous and mumbling in an incoherent language. Next we see him running through the sewers where he finds some grenades, which lead to another fantastic sequence. After this, the film goes down a bit in terms of quality. A lawyer who looks exactly like him and speaks the language flies in from France to represent him at his eventual trial, and the rest of the segment deals with his trial and sentencing while the rest of the country riots in his support and defense. Some of these moments have a rather unpleasant feel to them. I can't think of a good way to describe them aside from that, but they just felt a bit off. The word that it is tagged with is anarchy, but I think it deals more with language barriers, Japanese nationalism and parodying Godzilla (especially in the opening and closing moments). The Godzilla stuff probably works best, but overall it's still a fun time, just not so much in the second half.
The final segment, Bong Joon-ho's Shaking Tokyo, is far less funny than the others, but is also the best looking of the three. I have not seen Bong's extremely successful film The Host, but his 2003 film Memories of Murder is one of the best procedurals I've ever seen (it's better than the very similar Zodiac) and helped kick off what has been a brilliant decade for Korean cinema. The film is about a Hikkomori (a type of shut-in that has become a large issue in recent years in Japan) who has not left his home in ten years. His father sends him money and he subsists off of delivery food, especially pizza. One day, as his pizza is being delivered, an earthquake strikes, and the beautiful delivery girl falls unconscious. He tries to help her without contact, but eventually he sees a tattoo of a power button (like on an X-box) that says coma. He presses it and she wakes up and observes the odd perfection of his OCD-like collections of pizza boxes. This causes her to become a shut-in as well. The man decides that he has to find her and ventures outside for the first time in years. When he gets outside, he discovers that everyone else has gone inside. The only thing he sees is a pizza-delivery robot. After another quake, everyone runs outside and he finds her, and another button makes her stay. This segment is about rebirth. The story is the most conventional, but it's simply a beautiful film. Every shot is well-framed and carefully considered, creating a fascinating beauty in the clutter of the man's home.
So, do we shape cities, or do they shape us? Well, Interior Design, seems to come down on them shaping us. The characters change (in many ways) when they get to Tokyo, and the wife is "shaped" into something completely different. Merde's lead character certainly shapes his city. A cult forms around him and parts of Tokyo descend into anarchy. Shaking Tokyo is somewhere in between. Hikkomoris are a trend in Tokyo, and the stresses of the city are probably to blame, but the man certainly shapes the world around him. I think that's why it was shown last, even though the tonal shift seems a bit off when they go from two comedies to a drama. Overall, while it may not be completely consistent, Tokyo! is a wonderful look at the city and the people that make it.
Rating (out of ****) ***1/2

Hunger

It's been a pretty decent couple of years for Ireland in film. First came the palm d'or winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley (a very good film, although it was the only English language film I've ever needed subtitles for), the the delightful musical Once and now, the best of the three, Steve McQueen's Hunger. This is the story of Bobby Sands and the hunger strike he organized at HM prison Maze in order to get IRA members treated as political prisoners. This is a brutal, uncompromising look at the strike, its causes and its effects. McQueen (I can't believe this is his real name) is a well-known, award-winning visual artist making his feature film debut here. The fact that the director is an actual artist is something you should keep in mind during this film. The framing on nearly every shot is clearly the work of a meticulous worker (while he doesn't take this to Kubrickesque levels, there are a couple shots, especially in the hallways of the prison that remind me of Kubrick). Playing Sands is Michael Fassbender, who has had a few small roles in the past, but nothing of this magnitude.
As the film opens, we see a man look into a mirror and wash off his bloody knuckles. We don't know who he is at the time, but we later find out that he is a guard at the prison. He isn't a terrible guy, but we see him do bad things. His final scene is one of the most disturbing I've seen in recent years, but that doesn't come for a while. After we see him go through his day, a new prisoner comes in and refuses to wear his uniform. He is marked as insubordinate, and is forced to strip naked (this movie is not at all shy about nudity) before putting on a blanket (it was part of an ongoing protest). He gets to his cell and discovers that his cellmate had been smearing his shit on the walls as part of another ongoing protest. He doesn't seem to mind, and eventually joins in, but soon the guards come to wash them off. This is where we first meet Bobby. They drag him, kicking and screaming, from his cell, cut his hair and make him into a bloody mess. Even though he is the main character, this doesn't happen until thirty minutes into the film, although nearly no dialogue had been spoken through that point. Next, we get a virtuoso sequence in which, following a small riot, the guards march the prisoners out, send them through a gauntlet of baton-wielding riot police and then have them cavity searched, on-by-one, by a guy who never takes off his gloves. A large part of this is done in one take. Bobby is brutally beaten for not allowing the guards to search him, and we see the psychological effects of this on the guard who is forced to hit him. We don't really sympathize, but it's something. Next, after another moment of shocking violence, we get the film's centerpiece. Bobby has decided to organize a hunger strike, but unlike failed ones of the past, he organizes it so that they will die if their demands aren't met. Bobby lays all of this out in a seventeen minute conversation with a priest played by Liam Cunningham. What makes this conversation so notable is that the entire 17 minutes is done in a single take where the camera never moves. This is supposedly the longest single take in any feature film. After this, we flash to a few weeks later, and we see Bobby whithering down. There is little dialogue near the end, but the physical transformation is tremendous. Fassbender does a fantastic job of expressing every little emotion and pain that he must go through. We know from the outset that Bobby dies, but the brutality of the whole thing is shocking. Did he really accomplish anything? Was he a martyr or a rabble-rouser just trying to start a civil war?
I don't know Bela Tarr's viewing habits, but if he watched this film I'm sure he was proud. The master of the long take's old joke that the 12 minute reel is a form of censorship seems to have been disproved (I'm not entirely sure how they did it). The 17 minute conversation, despite simply being a static camera focused on two men is one of the most charged and tense in recent years. it speaks mainly to the immense talents of the two actors, but also to the film around it. Before this take, there had been very little dialogue. In fact, I'd say at least 75% of the dialogue in the 90 minute film comes in this one take. It's so new and unexpected that we get dragged in and we never leave. The conversation switches between comic statements on the nature of the priesthood to questions of the morality of Bobby's actions with ease, and we completely buy it. Fassbender and Cunningham lived together for weeks, rehearsing 15-20 times a day, to be able to get everything just right, and its worth it.
Like The Wind That Shakes The Barley, this film may be a little to obvious in its politics. The use of Margret Thatcher sound-clips may be a bit over the top, but that film's biggest failing was its complete lack of humanization of the British. here' we know that the guard at the beginning probably isn't a bad guy, and the guard who beats Sands is distraught over it. It isn't much, but acknowledging the humanity of the other side is an important step to avoid seeming to flat and one-sided. The film's final moments have also drawn some criticism, with some saying that the final moments make him too much of a Christ-like figure, but that was set up from the beginning (his long hair and beard at the beginning are very reminiscent of The Passion), so I don't really mind. This film sets up McQueen as a filmmaker to watch and will hopefully draw attention to the issues in Ireland. Whatever side you're on, they aren't finished yet.
Rating (Out of ****): ****

Made in USA

Has any other director ever had a burst of creativity like Jean-Luc Godard in the sixties? Starting with Breathless, moving through Vivre Sa Vie, Bande a Part, Alphaville (his masterpiece in my opinion), Contempt, Masculin Feminin and ending with Week End (with eight or nine other films mixed in there for good measure), this burst of creativity forever changed cinema across the world. A film from that period which has always been lost in the shuffle is 1966's Made in USA. It was never released in America because Godard never paid for the rights to adapt the book it was based on, he just did it, and, due to the subsequent legal action, Made in USA never came to the USA. Thankfully, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts decided to include it in their ongoing series on Godard in the 60's and I was able to go. I hope this means the legal issues have been resolved and Criterion can get their hands on this, because this is a film that deserves a wider audience. It is just as deserving of high praise as any other film on that list.

Godard's muse/wife Anna Karina plays Paula Nelson, who travels to Atlantic City (which, for the sake of this film, is in France) to visit her lover Richard, only to discover that he has died under mysterious circumstances. She runs into an old associate of theirs named Typhus, who she quickly knocks out and dumps in his own room, which allows her to meet his nephew David, who is a very strange writer, and his Japanese fiance. As she investigates Richard's death, the police discover that someone has killed Typhus, and things begin to spin out of control. I'm going to stop the plot description here because it would be utterly pointless to go on. Like The Big Sleep, which was a heavy influence on this film, the plot becomes too much to actually explain. I know it is a political thriller has something to to with communism, but that's pretty irrelevant aside from the fact that, at this point, Godard sure loved his communism. They never really explain why most of the things that happen happen, so you're best off just going along for the ride.

Godard was famous for saying that all he needed to make a movie was "a girl and a gun." Karina is the perfect girl for him. Taking on a rather Bogart-esque role, she looks perfect in the requisite trench-coat and the wear and tear of starring in so many films in such a short period of time gives her the perfect look for someone in her line of work, whatever that may be. She also delivers the film's best line "we were in a political movie-Walt Disney with blood" with a perfect amount of irony and anger in her voice. As that line implies, this film is almost comically self-aware, although it stops before it hits pure comedy, which would just seem out of place in a Godard film. The other aspects you'd expect are also there. We get characters named after American pop-culture icons (two henchmen named Richard Nixon and Robert MacNamara), wonderfully jarring mid-scene edits and tons of guns and trench coats. Although, in some ways it is different from the traditional Godard-fare. It was only his third color feature, and the cinematography from Raoul Coutard, who worked on many of Goadard's films is just fantastic.

There is a fascinating paradox inherent to this work. Godard spends much of the film decrying the spread of western culture, calling advertising a form of fascism, but he is obsessed with that same culture. Would he exist without American gangsters? I'm not sure. It may not even matter, but it is something to think about. Hopefully you'll think about it while watching this film.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Coraline

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the recent proliferation of 3D films. I think many of the films using it are too gimmicky and use it to make up for lack of a story. Henry Selick's Coraline thankfully manages to avoid this. Selick, who was previously best known as the answer to the trivia question, "who really directed The Nightmare Before Christmas?" does a good job of adapting the popular Neil Gaiman novella, and he uses the power of 3D technology to perfection, creating what is bound to be remembered one of the most beautiful films of the year. Selick and his team combined the stop-motion animation of Nightmare and Corpse Bride with some CGI to create two very unique worlds. The film is not perfect, but it is probably the best 3D film in recent years.
In the beginning, a young girl named Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) moves into a very boring new house that is filled with intriguing characters. There is Wyborn, a young boy who follows her around with his cat, two retired actresses who read her fortune and a crazed Russian who trains mice for a circus (voiced by Ian Mcshane). After fighting with her parents, Coraline finds a small door that leads into a parallel version of her world. In it, her parents are extremely nice, the actresses are still beautiful, Wyborn doesn't stalk her and the Russian is completely sane. Most importantly, everything appears to be magical. The garden in this world is probably the most visually stunning part of the film, and everything just pops out wonderfully in 3D. However, she soon realizes that all of it is a trap, and her "other mother" intends to keep her there forever. After escaping back to the real world, she finds out that her "other mother" has kidnapped her real parents, and she must go back and save them, along with the souls of other children that she had kidnapped. This if the film's weakest point. It plays out like a mission from a cheap video game, and the suspense never really works.

It's difficult to look at this film and not compare it to Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. Aside from the obvious use of stop-motion, they tell similar stories of looking for happiness in alternate worlds. Coraline lacks the pure magic of those two, although it may be even more aesthetically pleasing. I guess it may be the fault of the original story, but the end is pretty weak, and it really offers nothing new. Still, with absolutely nothing in the pipeline until the long-awaited release of Watchmen next month, Coraline should be good enough to hold you over.

Rating (out of ****): ***

Wendy and Lucy

My next post was going to be my top twenty of 2008, but then I discovered that Kelly Reichardt's new minimalist film Wendy and Lucy opened in Boston for one week, and I decided that I should try to see as many of last year's highly acclaimed films as possible before I made any list. This film can, at least in terms of plot, be compared to Sean Penn's Into The Wild. Unlike that film, Wendy and Lucy does not seek to create a martyr for our times out of it's lead. Into The Wild did succeed, but that was because of the supporting characters and the performance of Emile Hirsch. Wendy and Lucy succeeds because we're not asked to bow to it's main character and because of the performance of Michelle Williams. Williams plays Wendy Carroll, a young woman driving from Indiana to Alaska with her beloved dog Lucy in search of work and a new start. We never learn much about her life before we see her, just a quick conversation with her brother-in-law. As the film picks up, Wendy and Lucy walk through the woods, taking a break from their long journey, only to meet a group of similar lost souls. Later that night, she stops her car in a Walgreen's parking lot and in the morning, after being woken up by a kind security guard, she finds that it won't start. The mechanic is closed, so she decides to go pick up some food for Lucy. Running low on cash, she has to steal and is caught by a self-righteous grocery store employee. It becomes clear that he is an evangelical Christian, and with his warped, evil view of religion, he convinces his manager that he must call the cops. When she is released, she runs back to the store where she'd tied up Lucy and discovers that the dog is gone. Despite help from the pound, she can't seem to find her, and she discovers that her car repairs will cost much more than expected. One night, while sleeping in the woods, a man comes to her and talks about the people he's killed. He doesn't do anything, and in all likelihood, he may be lying, but it helps clarify her situation. As her economic situation falls deeper into despair, Wendy realizes that she has lost control, and no longer has any idea what she must do, before coming to an extraordinarily difficult decision regarding her future.

Many reviews have discussed the film's political message about the plight of the marginalized people in today's society, but it's moral message is far more important. Outside of Wendy, there are only two good characters in this film, the woman at the dog pound (who is really just doing her job) and the security guard who helps her when he can, and even his flaws appear at the end. The religious grocery store worker, the cops, the mechanic and the insane man who speaks to Wendy may occasionally do her or someone else a favor, but they are not good people. The real question of this film is what do we owe each other as human beings? The film's answer is that we should give what we can. Even the difficult decision that Wendy must make at the end fits into this answer.

The film's strongest point is Michelle Williams' inexplicably snubbed performance as Wendy. She appears in nearly every frame of this eighty minute film, and her performance is the dominant feature of all of them. Wendy is not street smart, and she does not completely understand the world around her, and Williams perfectly captures that idea. A film portraying the outsiders in our modern world just works better if shot in a more natural minimalist style, which made Reichardt, who also directed the critically acclaimed Old Joy a perfect director for this piece. Instead of the sweeping vista's we'd normally expect from this sort of film, we get smaller shots of the real west, of the people who inhabit it and the emptiness around them. If the film has one flaw, it's that the story itself really isn't that great. The film gets by on style and character, but it has a rather standard story that we've all seen before. This alone could leave some people feeling underwhelmed, but they should not feel that way. Wendy and Lucy may not be the classic that some are calling it, but it is one of the better films of 2008.

Rating (out of ****): ***1/2