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Am I hard-hearted and cynical if I failed to be moved by Finding Neverland? A lot of critics are assuring me this is the case what with the year-end accolades and Golden Globes nominating it as one of the year’s best. I really, really wanted to love it. Though the previews articulated a sugary brand of heart-warming I ordinarily avoid, I felt sure that there would be something darker, more complex about it given the lead presences of Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, both of whom I worship. It’s funny, because with their good looks, they’ve managed to confuse the entire world into thinking they’re merely stars when in reality they’re great character actors. The fact that both have taken on a quirky variety of roles both inside and outside the mainstream, eschewing adherence to the unspoken rule that once you make it big you stop dabbling in the indies that helped get you there and start substituting repetitive star shtick for real acting (especially since they’re both beautiful enough to get away with this), reveals how true they are to their art rather than the trappings of it, and for this alone, you’ve gotta respect them.

While Depp was excellent in Pirates of the Caribbean (and it almost seems, in Finding Neverland, that he’s quoting that performance in a scene where, dressed like a pirate and searching for the Llewlyn boys in the woods, he swaggers, subtly evocative), turning that bland summer flick into something imminently watchable, and though I know he’ll be equally awesome as Willy Wonka in next year’s remake of (I’m so excited) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, part of me is afraid he’s losing his edge in his respectable, though cinematically lamentable, desire to star in films suitable for his children to watch. Granted, he’s the perfect boy-child to depict James Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, but I yearn for the R-rating-friendly Johnny Depp of Dead Man (which I don’t really get, but find inexplicably mesmerizing nonetheless) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Winslet initially seemed poised, after breaking out in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, to become the next Helena Bonham-Carter, her period good looks being utilized in the literary likes of the consecutively-released Sense and Sensibility, Jude, and Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (in which she, like Bonham-Carter before her in Mel Gibson’s adaptation, plays Ophelia), before exploding into worldwide fame with Titanic. But immediately after that colossal success irrevocably altered the course of her career, she forever earned my admiration by hop-skipping into two small, lovely films with nary a box office hope, Hideous Kinky and Holy Smoke (which I also don’t really get, but find inexplicably mesmerizing nonetheless). She keeps getting better too, and it’s amazing to track her progress, from perfectly- polished English rose to punky east coaster Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (if I was giving out the awards, she’d tie with Julie Delpy of Before Sunset for best actress of 2004). Which is why I have no idea what Winslet’s doing in Finding Neverland. She’s luminous and natural as ever, but in the thankless role of pretty, doomed widow Sylvia Llewlyn Davies, she takes on a generic role, the type more suitable for sleepwalking big-name actresses, which she has built her career on adamantly not-being.

On the other hand, Radha Mitchell, as Barries’ wife, Mary, is gives-you-goosebumps good. From the moment she appears onscreen and you’re made aware of her relationship to Barrie, you know it’s an unhappy marriage. Mitchell conveys this not so much through dialogue (perfunctory), but rather emanates it from her body, in the tense way she carries herself, with her consistently pursed lips. Still, underneath it, you sense her smoldering, and can’t help the sneaking suspicion that all she needs, in order to save the marriage, is a good shag.

Which brings up a nagging point. How is it that one of the world’s sexiest men is here rendered absolutely asexual? The fact that Depp avoids intimacies with his wife, and that the love he shares with Winslet is painted platonically, comes off as peculiar. When two madly sensuous, billed-before-the-title stars are in a movie together, it’s practically guaranteed they’ll fall in love. When Hollywood ditches the romantic subplot, which is so, to the point of maddening superfluousness, integral to the conventional norm of a film’s unfolding, it’s generally symptomatic of an underground issue which isn’t being properly dealt with. Examples of this can be found, for instance, in any feature where a white female teams up with an African-American male (as in the Ashley Judd/Morgan Freeman pairings or the Julia Roberts/Denzel Washington combination of The Pelican Brief), where a few paltry going-through-the-motions flirtations may be incorporated, but never result in so much as a kiss. The notable absence of romantic plotlines in these movies evince the embarrassing truth that for all the progress society has supposedly made, for all the assumed liberalism of Hollywood, the social taboo against a black man kissing a white woman is still very much in order within the confines of the dominant cinema.

In this case, the nonexistence of a romantic strand indicates something even more sinister. In a story about a man’s rapturous fascination with the innocence of childhood, perhaps the thinking goes that to have him express any kind of sexuality whatsoever would be problematic. But though the filmmakers try to skirt around the issue, in a movie called Finding Neverland, in a world where Michael Jackson’s personal playground for children bears the same name, and in a time when the Catholic Church is still sorting out its mess, the whisperings of pedophilia, brought up once in veiled terms and then quickly disavowed, creeps around the borders of the movie. And because of the sexualized nature of the shot-reverse-shot given its typical deployment in the Hollywood cinema (as laid out so significantly by Laura Mulvey), the scenes where Barrie watches the boys in idyllically-coded scenes (such as when they all jump up and down in their beds before lights-out), rather than simply illustrating, as the film intends, the inspirational moments which fire Barrie’s imagination, take on a more troubling edge. 21st century eyes can’t help but seeing the elephant on the screen.

I noticed recently that I often won’t know how I really feel about a film until a few days after I’ve seen it, later, when it’s had a chance to percolate, to settle into the corners of my mind, and my experience with this movie is a prime example. Though I left the theater thinking Finding Neverland was quite sweet, if a bit too manipulative at times - I’ll admit it, I came close to tears - the longer it sits, the more uncomfortable I am retrospectively, until what’s left is a sort of vague ickiness.

- km

What a crazy zany lark of a film. For a lengthy spell of Ocean’s Twelve, expecting more of the same in the line of its predecessor - that is, classy entertainment with scads of beautiful people set to a brisk pace – I kept waiting for it to make up its mind and choose a direction, to start gaining that reliable heist-movie momentum. Silly me, for underestimating the inestimable Steven Soderbergh. He tricks you into thinking you’re going to see a rerun of Ocean’s 11 and instead what you get is a revamping, a reveling, meandering, for-the-fun-of-it romp.

I’m starting to come around to the fact that sequels, at least in the case of movies that weren’t that special to begin with, are not always worthless occurrences despite canonized common knowledge to the contrary. Oftentimes, dispensing with exposition frees up its successor from certain boring conventions, and makes for a faster, cooler, livelier time, as in the case of such amped-up flicks as Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life.

So it is with Ocean’s 12. It’s a heist film, in the sense that it tangentially involves a heist, but that’s where the predictability ends. While the genre usually shaves off any details extraneous to the business at hand, this incarnation heads in the exact opposite direction, including only perfunctory glimpses of the thieving activities in order to refocus attention on the daily, quirky, interpersonal exchanges amongst the motley crew, as they slowly get their act together. It’s in the spaces between the action that it lights up. Whether it’s the fact that Brad Pitt, dressed in his sleekly shiny Euro-trashy clothes, is always munching on chips or popcorn, or how endearingly geeky and self-conscious Matt Damon’s perplexed expressions and thumbs up gestures, it’s all about the little things.

The movie is so good it even makes Julia Roberts useful as Tess, allowing her to play off her star persona by, in a brilliant meta-twist of plot, coercing her character into portraying none other than herself. Since, for me, her annoying presence is the biggest liability to the success of Ocean’s 12, my main gripe being that she only ever plays minutely-tweaked versions of herself (to be fair, this is an affliction from which most massive movie stars suffer), this is the perfect solution. And though I’m not as big a George Clooney fan as some of my friends (NYC fellow cinephile, Ilana, held a small ‘12 days of Cloon’ event, which I unfortunately couldn’t attend, this December in her West Village apartment, each day leading up to the release of Ocean’s 12 featuring a dose of cinematic Clooney coupled with a complimenting meal - i.e., Mexican food to go with From Dusk Till Dawn), his old-school debonair charm suits the elegance of the movie to a tee.

The smallness of the film’s scope, given that it’s such a trumpeted, star-filled, multi-location-set (take me back to Lake Como!), gala affair, makes Ocean’s 12 almost radical. Its complete lack of actual pomp is as charming as an Italian village.

- km

I didn’t see Bad Santa when it came out in theaters, but it raised such a ruckus I couldn’t help but be intrigued. Word on the street (at least whatever random street in the world I happened to be walking along at that point) was that it was total trash, but a few dissenting voices defended its worthiness. I always take it as a good sign when a film is divisive – it’s indicative of a project that takes a stand and goes against the grain (think Fight Club). While it doesn’t immediately follow that it will be good, it’s guaranteed to at least be interesting (because who objects to the usual toothless fodder)?

After renting Bad(der) Santa (the longer, naughtier, unrated version on DVD), I’m happy to report that its supporters are absolutely right - it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in ages. Though it’s easy to see why so many were up in arms about it, – it’s definitely not one for the kids – don’t adults deserve a good Xmas (I’m using the ‘X’ rather than ‘Christ’ in order to distinguish between the faith-based implications of the holiday and the more consumerist way it tends to be celebrated in reality in the U.S., and in which vein the movie firmly positions itself) flick now and then? Possibly the only other of the species I’ve loved besides it is It’s a Wonderful Life. And seriously, how that superbly subversive classic, which peeks over the brink at the depths of darkness and despair, slipped under the radar to become the seasonal must-see religiously played on major channels, astonishes me no end as a weird pop cultural anomaly. It was high time for another quality holiday romp (though I harbor no illusions that Bad Santa will be kicking out that Frank Capra tradition from its customary slot anytime soon). Just reading the reviews for Surviving Christmas and Christmas with the Kranks left me agitated, likewise The Polar Express.

Hollywood’s got the schmaltzy, child-friendly stuff more than covered, so why not a little diversity? Throw a bone to a niche audience. A swearing, alcoholic, sex maniac taking on the task of mall Santa in order to rip it off as directed by the man (Terry Zwigoff) who gave us the film version of Daniel Clowes’ Ghostworld, as well as the tantalizing documentary Crumb? Brilliant. It starts off with a pointedly bland veneer of tastefulness, classical music playing as the camera moves along a polished-wood bar, white-collar workers sipping drinks and talking in appropriate, low tones. The scene ends with Billy Bob Thornton puking in the garbage outside.

As the titular Santa, Thornton is truly pathetic, in both the pejorative (loser connotations) and denotative (from ‘pathos’ - arous[ing] feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow”) sense of the word. It’s to Thornton’s credit that he bears this description out to its fullest, unapologetically inhabiting this sad sack without a backward glance, deadpanning endless streams of profanities and looking out through glazed eyes, while still managing to make us feel sorry for him. His desperation is that pronounced. The supporting cast complements him well: Tony Cox as Marcus, his sidekick elf, spars nicely; the latter’s nail-filing, indoor visor-wearing wife (Lauren Tom) does amazing things with very little dialogue; Bernie Mac splendidly plays Bernie Mac; the Gilmore Girls goody-goody Lauren Graham as a woman with a Santa fetish is an inspired story stroke; and every beautifully-realized quirk on John Ritter’s overly-P.C. department store manager’s face made me miss him more. Hallelujah, a movie whose multiculturalism is true rather than token, unlike another holiday offering from the same year, Love Actually (not that I’m immune to the feel-goodness of this and others of its ilk, but while I fell under its insidious spell for the duration, it left me with a bad aftertaste I still can’t shake a year later), which, unsurprisingly, found more widespread appeal though its pretensions towards inclusivity are largely belied by the lack of romantic storylines for its ethnic characters (despite the fact that the lovely actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor, from Dirty Pretty Things, is newly-married to Keira Knightly in the movie, that narrative really belongs to his white best friend), and its barely-concealed sizist derision of the ever-so-slightly plump, pretty, Martine McCutcheon, apple of Prime Minister Hugh Grant’s eye (you wish writer/director Richard Curtis would just get over it and stop his offensive apologizing - in the form of having the character constantly make derogatory remarks about her weight - for not casting yet another anorexic-looking actress). But I digress.

For a film with such rancor in its bones, Bad Santa gradually reveals an unexpected tenderness, all the more rewarding because Thornton’s been such a miserable asshole throughout. His enlightenment in the form of baby steps, as he comes to realize he can help a child (the wonderfully cast Brett Kelly as the cruelly-named Thurman Merman) in his ill-advised way (the best line in the movie is when he declares, “I beat up some kids today . . . but it had a purpose”), is not exactly the punk rock move you’d expect from a movie which has defied the conventions in all its other particulars, but it’s good enough to deliver a small (if occasionally vile) dose of the warm fuzzies by the end (because let’s face it – if it allowed its nihilism to completely soak through, it would’ve never been released – though there was a shining, flickering moment when it could’ve ended on a thrillingly depressing note, before it somewhat wistfully revives itself), which is really what Xmas flicks are all about anyway. Besides, you can’t not love a film where the kid gives the father figure a hand-made, blood-stained (his) wooden pickle as a present, especially not when said gift is the catalyst that begins Bad Santa’s long-overdue thaw.

- km