Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
We tend to treat fables somewhat like Freud regarded dreams, as containers of psychic material with serious, real-life consequences presented to us in a decidedly unrealistic, often fantastic form. These stories may initially appear quite disconnected from our everyday life, even featuring talking animals or supernatural forces, but as the story goes on, we sense a deeper meaning, unshakeable despite the obvious artificiality of its medium. The odd thing about Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, a feature-length adaptation of the children’s book of the same name, is how it reverses this structure. The film begins in a realistic mode, so quickly and easily evoking the vulnerable and tender state of mind of its nine year old protagonist that something is lost when it tips over into its more allegorical main plot. There’s something unsatisfying about this transition, perceptive and sensitive realism replaced by the blaring and overstuffed world of the Wild Things, a world we are content, contrary to how fables usually work, to keep separate from our own. What an interesting film it would have been had the stylistic approach to depicting these two world been switched. – Trevor Link
Heaven’s Gate (1981)
Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate has such an air of disaster around it that it’s easy to forget there are so many good things about the film, which starts off promisingly, before collapsing under its own enormous weight. The kind of insane excess the ill-fated shoot was famous for, like the director spending an entire day trying to nail a tracking shot of a puff of locomotive smoke, actually translates well to the screen, resulting in grandly sumptuous set pieces, like a barn dance sequence played out on roller skates. But the four hour film sags beneath its directors of control aspirations, serving as a reminder that a few great elements alone can’t make for a satisfying movie. - Jesse Cataldo
Independence Day (1996)
OK, look, I know it’s not meant to be an intellectual film. All I really wanted was to watch our nation’s best loved monuments get zapped to smithereens, the kind of stuff always makes me feel giddy/queasy in that confusing, at-the-peak-of-the-rollercoaster kind of way. So I dutifully turned my brain off when I saw Independence Day on the big screen, bracing for a YIPPEE-KI-YAY AMERICA RULEZ cinematic experience. But my suspension of disbelief only stretches so far, and it totally snapped when scientists (Jeff Goldblum, natch) manage to crush the alien invasion by infecting their ships with a computer virus. Wait, so this alien race of superior beings can be brought down with, like, a predatory email attachment? Wouldn’t they, I don’t know, have an entirely different, non-comprehensible-to-earthlings sort of technology? I know the ole US of A has gotta find a way to win, but why not do it the old fashioned way, with bombs and braggadocio? – Stacey Pavlick
Training Day (2001)
Thanks to Denzel Washington’s magnetic, controlled villainy and screenwriter David Ayer’s cleverly serpentine plotting, Training Day begins as an incredibly exciting revitalization of the cop thriller. It’s a damn shame that the third act spirals into such clichéd, overheated bullshit, where shootouts and explosions take precedence over the subtle and disturbing character work the film had been building. When Denzel, having submitted to the movie’s sudden over-the-top impulses, shouts what unfortunately became the film’s signature line — “King Kong ain’t got nothin’ on me” — he’s kicking a good movie while it’s down. – Brian Wolowitz
The Last Exorcism (2010)
Exorcism horror has become a crowded subgenre of late. You can’t swing a dead black cat without hitting a flick about demonic possession, and these derivative films seem to grow more hackneyed with each new installment. The same can be said about the found-footage gimmick. Yet, somehow the combination of the two managed to work for a good portion of 2010’s The Last Exorcism. As a “documentary crew” follows charlatan exorcist Cotton Marcus on his final demon-expelling tour before he decides to give up the ruse, there’s commentary on faith and the more smoke-in-mirrors theatrics of religion. Even after Marcus predictably meets his match with the first potentially real demonic possession he’s encountered, there’s still the intrigue of the psychological versus the metaphysical that transcends well-worn body horror (cinematic demons are nothing if not fixated on mortification). But the ending pulls the rug out from under the whole film with a tacky occult twist and a demon birth, the film crew meeting their contrived doom in a manner that once again mimics that of The Blair Witch Project. After such a solid buildup, the over-the-top climax to this exorcism picture is enough to induce projectile vomit. - Josh Goller
