Eugene weekly., February 21, 2013, Page 15, Image 15

7. Chronicle
4. Seven Psychopaths
If you have yet to see Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s debut fi lm, In Bruges (2008),
and if you have yet to behold the raw genius of actor Sam Rockwell’s recent performance
in Moon (2009), don’t bother with McDonagh’s latest, an extremely weird, cartoonishly
violent meta-fable about Hollywood, hit men, insanity and the pains of creativity. If, how-
ever, you’re already acquainted — and are ready for another whoop-de-doo performance by
Christopher Walken and another queasy eye-popper by Tom Waits — then, by all means, let
yourself fall into the surreal ghastliness of McDonagh’s sick existential humor. Seven Psy-
chopaths is a peyote trip into the darkest corners of American hell. Hip fi lmsters and high
college kids will be quoting this free-wheeling movie for years to come.
The superhero fl ick is turned topsy-turvy, upside-down and inside-out by fi rst-time director
Josh Trank in this wicked little story about a trio of high-school friends who stumble upon a
glowing blue meteorite. It’s the archetypal comic origin myth, presented from the hackneyed
perspective of the most troubled teen’s (Dane DeHaan) video footage of his life. But, unlike
most Blair Witch derivatives, Chronicle leans strongly on its narrative, which combines the
searing myth of Icarus with the Shakespearean tragedy of absolute power’s corrupting spark.
8. Looper
One of the most satisfying sci-fi /speculative mind-bogglers in a long while, Looper —
about criminal assassins who are sent targets from the future, where time-travel is feasible
but simple killing is not — transcended the merely clever to become a queasily existential
fable reminiscent of temporally twisted thrillers like 12 Monkeys or Memento. Emily Blunt,
as usual, is fantastic, but this fi lm belongs to Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, who, as
younger/older versions of the main “looper,” maintain a dark, often funny symbiosis that be-
comes a fi ne kind of Christ complex, with the tick-tock clock playing Holy Ghost. Written and
craftily directed by Rian Johnson, whose debut fi lm was 2005’s indie sleeper Brick.
5. Moonrise Kingdom
Like W.D. Griffi th, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam before him,
writer/director Wes Anderson is forging a body of work so idiosyncratic and stylized
that it is becoming a kind of hermetic cinematic universe. And in Moonrise Kingdom, a
prosaic adventure story-cum-romance that pairs a precocious geek who defects from his
scout troop and an emotionally distanced girl who could be an adolescent Margot Tenen-
baum, Anderson has created a latter day Oz — or perhaps anti-Oz, where the dreamers
remain wide awake.
9. The Raid
Swift, economical and fi lthy violent, The Raid: Redemption is a police procedural martial-
arts action movie set on the edge of madness. Written and helmed by Welsh director Gareth
Evans, this lean, brutal story of a SWAT-like raid on a high rise held by a Jakarta drug lord
plays out like an adrenalized nightmare by the young John Woo: The movie is unrepentant in
its depiction of a Hobbesian world where survival is moot and death is dealt out at the speed
of eye-blinks. And yet, thanks to an excellent cast (led by Iko Uwais) and the excellent bird’s-
eye cinematography of Matt Flannery, The Raid is redeemed from pure nihilism by a gritty
adherence to violence as a last-ditch moral code that harkens back to the hellish humanity of
John Ford and Sam Peckinpah.
6. Magic Mike
By now, we shouldn’t be surprised that director Steven Soderbergh — the guy who
practically kick-started modern indie fi lms with 1989’s sex, lies and videotape — can
pull off any and all cinematic sleights-of-hand. And yet, this year he expertly tackled
the outwardly ghetto-rifi c subject of a homoerotic/heterocentric conglomerate of young
bucks working a Tampa strip club whose maverick proprietor, Dallas (Matthew McCo-
naughey), has empiric aspirations extending toward Miami. Hoo-ya! And just behind the
low-rent glamour and fantastic dance routines runs a really sweet, really funny po-mo
rom-com centered on the oddly melodic waltz between the characters nicely played by
Channing Tatum and Cody Horn.
10. The Avengers
At fi rst, director Joss Whedon’s genre offering to the comic-book universe feels a tad
bloated and logy, like an idea whose time has come, overfed, overstayed its welcome and then
unionized its component parts. But we’re talking Whedon, here, and what at fi rst seems sleepy
is simply the wind-up for one ass-kicking punch of transcendent superhero fun, leading to a
balls-to-the-vortex fi nale that is unimprovably impressive. Yes, Robert Downey Jr. is marvel-
ous, but it’s Mark Ruffalo who really takes the cake as the good Dr. Bruce Banner gone green
under the subatomic gills.
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