I’d argue that Alexander Payne is one of the best directors making movies today, but his latest effort Nebraska failed to live up to expectations. The film stars Bruce Dern as Woody Grant, an aging senile father whose son David Grant, played by Will Forte, accompanies him on a journey from Montana to Nebraska to claim a million dollar prize. Along the way, they reconnect with old friends and extended family members. Old business demands to be taken care of while David tries to hold his family of loose cannons together. As interesting as it sound, the lackluster screenplay by first-timer Bob Nelson fails to carry the film despite Payne’s superb direction. Nebraska is a movie meant to be appreciated rather than enjoyed.

First, the movie does some things right. Bruce Dern and Will Forte are stunning. Their relationship is the emotional core of this movie and while I don’t believe it was enough to make this a good movie, they still have some powerful father-son moments throughout. Woody Grant is the focus of the film and Dern’s equally subdued and outlandish performance make this character work on screen. For Forte, this isn’t simply a comedian’s try at a serious role for a change. In Nebraska, there is a side of him that I hope to see much more of in the coming years.  The movie is shot in beautiful black-and-white by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, who shot Payne’s three most recent movies. Nebraska often breaks from the action to highlight some midwestern scenery, making the flyover states look the best they’ve looked onscreen in years. I was looking forward to a homey feel to the film, something that would remind me of being with my own family for an extended trip back home, and visually, it succeeded. Nebraska takes place in many different small-town locales: a cozy home, a small bar, a local restaurant, lots of long country roads. It illustrates this notion of the close-knit community that the film seems to value so much, but when the characters are as lackluster as they are, it simply doesn’t work.

The film has the same kind of visual style and great performances that Payne is known for, but there’s not enough substance in the script to carry the movie. There are some great character moments, but it’s a relatively small payoff for how long the movie drags, especially in the second act. When we are introduced to Will Forte’s extended family, the movie grinds to a halt. The dialogue from here on in is not entertaining or colorful enough to make for a compelling story. Most of the script in the latter half of the movie feels very forced and unnatural. Bob Odenkirk, who plays David’s brother, was disappointing in this film, delivering lines without any of the color and emotion of Forte. Then there comes a point about two-thirds into the movie where the script becomes a lot more funny than heartfelt. As the movie draws to its predictable conclusion, one could make the argument that it’s more about the journey than the destination, but the journey back through the family’s history is nowhere near compelling enough to be the core of the movie.

I had high hopes for Nebraska. I loved all of Alexander Payne’s other films to the point where I enjoy spending time with the characters while watching, making dense and difficult movies such as The Descendants and Election infinitely re-watchable to me. However, in this film, I couldn’t wait for it to end. Its unnecessarily long second act was its fatal flaw, with characters that were simply unpleasant and boring. The movie is saved by Payne’s style and the two lead performances, but there simply isn’t enough substance for Nebraska to be an enjoyable experience.

Rating: C+

Philomena is heart-wrenching story about an Irish woman who looks for her son many years after he was adopted into an American family. Between nuns, journalists and all other types of people spinning stories, we see not only the worst, but the best in people. Director Stephen Frears teams up with Judi Dench again (Mrs Henderson Presents) for what will hopefully be another Oscar-nominated performance.   

We start with Martin, played by Steve Coogan, who was recently laid off from the British government. He decides to pursue journalism, through a human interest story. Through him, we find out how Philomena was born and raised by nuns, how she got pregnant and what she had to go through to keep the baby. After all that pain, the nuns take her son away without any warning. Martin begins this story as a cynical atheist, but by the end, he better understands those of religious faith by seeing the power of forgiveness.  

Judi Dench strays from her more common robust character and plays the role of an uneducated, goofy, warm-hearted woman. To my surprise, there was no difficulty accepting Dench as Philomena. The rest of the cast was great as well, but Dench really steals the show. 

The movie has religious themes to it, however I would say that people is the real focus of the film. Philomena is not one for the kids, but if you are really looking for an amazing story with high quality performances, this is definitely a film to see during the holidays!  

Grade: A

Let me begin by saying that I am a big Jason Statham fan. But when I got out of the multiplex after the movie, to my surprise, I was the only one of my friends who wasn’t elated after the one and half hour experience. After wasting my precious time on thinking about this and losing a few assignment marks, I came to the conclusion that there are two types of people who showed up for the movie, those who wanted more of Statham, and those who wanted more from Statham. Clearly I am from the second category.

Homefront is a movie that packs a punch when it comes to action. It has some really well-crafted fight sequences. Yes, you can’t get that wrong with Statham, as there are some scenes that literally make you jump from your seat. It has an interesting cast with Franco and Statham together. Izabela Vidovic flawlessly plays her part as the young daughter of Phil Broker (Statham).  

Despite this, the story let me down. An undercover cop moves to laidback town with his daughter after a stint of his with Narco-Biker gang goes askew. The gang leader, who gets arrested, wants Phil dead. Meanwhile in the town Phil manages to build a bad reputation for himself and catches the attention of Gator (Franco). Gator is the local meth cook wants to go the “Heisenberg way” by expanding his distribution. He plans to offer the location of Phil to the gang leader in turn for a favor. What seems like a possibly interesting plot turns out to be thin. The movie droops at moments when you start guessing what will happen next. The second problem is the length. If the movie is riding on the action scenes, it’d be great to not lose interest in between.

So to sum it up, the movie doesn’t leave a lasting impact or prove to be on par with Statham’s earlier movies (like Transporter, which easily translated into series). But there are bits and pieces of it that will satisfy your craving for some action. Watch it for Statham/Franco if you are a fan, or for the action scenes, but do not keep your expectations high or you shall come out the hall with a feeling of emptiness like me.

Grade: B

Directed by Gary Fleder and written by Sylvester Stallone, Homefront is an action film that focuses on Phil Broker (Jason Statham), a former DEA agent who becomes entangled with a drug cartel led by kingpin Gator Bodine (James Franco). Two years after leaving the DEA, the recently widowed Broker and his 10-year-old daughter Maddy (Izabela Vidovic) move to the sleepy backwater town of Rayville, Louisiana, where they hope to start a new life. However, an altercation between Maddy and a bully in the schoolyard ultimately leads to Broker taking down the bully’s father in the parking lot. Cassie (Kate Bosworth), the bully’s mother, then enlists the help of Gator, her brother-in-law, to make Broker pay for humiliating her family.

Much of the movie focuses on the relationship between Broker and his daughter, and the need he feels to protect her as they both mourn the loss of their wife and mother. Much of the dialogue is uninspired, and I never truly felt for either of the characters because they lacked chemistry. Despite this, Izabela Vidovic, in her feature film debut, definitely exhibits potential as an actress. She simultaneously presents her character as strong and capable, taking after her father, but still frightened and vulnerable. I wish that Stallone’s script had given her more to work with.

James Franco once again proves his versatility as an actor, as he makes a menacing Gator. After discovering Broker’s true identity, he decides to turn him over to Danny T, a fellow meth dealer Broker busted years ago, in exchange for access to Danny T’s drug distribution network. To do so, he enlists the help of his girlfriend Sheryl Mott, played convincingly by Winona Ryder. Gator and fellow members of his drug ring stop will stop at nothing to get to Broker--even if that means putting his daughter in harm’s way. I never really felt a true sense of danger for either Broker or Maddy. There never seems to be any doubt that Statham’s character will be able to take down any of these “bad guys”--in fact, he does it so easily that the movie lacks a certain element of suspense.

While the movie is well cast and visually impressive, there’s not much else here to separate it from any other action movie. It suffers from a weak script that often leaves the relationships among the characters feeling one-dimensional. If you’re a fan of mindless, violent, good-guy-takes-down-bad-guy fare, then this is for you. But if you’re looking for something with a little more suspense or real emotional substance, I’d suggest looking elsewhere.

Grade: C+

Frozen is the new animated film from Disney about two princess sisters. The older sister, Elsa, has a strange power of creating ice, which she has little control over. Then there are unusual magical creatures, gorgeous shots of ice, romantic sub-plots and a sibling conflict. There’s little need to detail the plot—that’s not why you would go see Frozen.

The animation in Frozen is stunningly beautiful, especially when Elsa is creating with ice. The 3D is also very good, being properly used as a tool for fun, beauty, and visual depth. The morality is fairly typical of Disney, with a penchant for familial support, however there are some surprises in there I won’t spoil. Unfortunately, the writing felt a little half-baked. Transitions don’t always feel quite right, and certain moments felt rushed. An early sequence involving Elsa and her parents felt like something the filmmakers “had” to do but didn’t enjoy for a second. It reminded me of how UP was able to accomplish a deeply emotional opening sequence in the same amount of screen time, but Frozen seems to lack UP’s care and intense feelings. I get the vibe that they didn’t take enough time with this film, but the seeds of something very good are there.

If you like Disney, this one is worth seeing. If Disney is not your thing, I wouldn’t bother.

Grade: B/B-

Note: This review reflects on the differences between this version of Oldboy and the original.  Given the nature of the movie, I felt that comparisons between the two were impossible to ignore. I’ve tried my hardest to be as vague as possible, but there are some spoilers. If you care about those spoilers, go watch the original Oldboy on Netflix. It’s worth your while. Otherwise, read on.

Oldboy tells the story of a man who is kidnapped and imprisoned for 20 years for seemingly no reason. One day, he is suddenly released, again with no explanation, only to find that he has five days to discover whom his captor is or his daughter will be killed. I heard some people saying this remake was unwarranted, since the original already-considered-to-be-a-classic South Korean version was released a mere ten years ago. I wasn’t among that camp; I went in excited to see Spike Lee’s take on a disturbing, harrowing, and deeply profound revenge story.

For those of you who have seen the South Korean original, it does, indeed, follow the same overall narrative arc. There were some rumors that this version doesn’t include the craziness at the end, but it does. You know what I’m talking about. It’s still there. And fans of the original will appreciate subtle homages to the original film. At a Chinese restaurant, an octopus is attached to the inside of an aquarium tank, squirming about. The woman selling tchotchkes in the beginning wears a pair of angel wings. There are more little references to the original film, which are inherently spoilers, but you’ll catch them when you get to them.

Most noticeably, there are a million small changes from the original throughout. Joe is imprisoned for 20 years instead of 15. Maria is a volunteer nurse instead of a waitress. Adrian Price’s henchman is a henchwoman. It seems like every tiny detail about the story has been changed from the original, while still keeping it undeniably Oldboy. And most critically, the story is brought into the present day, so the shock of being completely isolated from society is even greater, what with the advent of smartphones and the Internet. Having the film set in 2013 is initially a cool change—in a brief moment of comedy, Joe is confused by the simplicity of Google. But with all the world’s information a few clicks away, a number of plot holes and downright stupid flaws in logic arise. The movie also features the most blatant product placement I’ve seen in a long, long time. Holy shit. It took me out of the experience completely.

So those minor changes are… it. Almost everything else is nearly identical to the original film. It’s almost as if Spike Lee wanted to change as many tiny details as possible to make it his own creative work. It’s like he’s saying, “Hey, look at this! It’s different! See?” but without making any real changes to the story. A perfect example is the iconic hammer fight scene. Don’t worry, it’s still fucking awesome—and still one continuous take—but halfway through, Joe climbs down a level to fight the rest of his enemies. It doesn’t change the fight in any way, other than differentiating it from the original for the sake of differentiating it from the original. That’s what most of Oldboy feels like—being different for the sake of being different, but without being different at all. All the tiny little changes don’t amount to anything meaningful, so they’re hard to justify.

We run into a big problem, however, when one very key element of the story is changed: the antagonist’s motivation for imprisoning Joe. Adrian Price (played by Sharlto Copley, who really does do his best) is too much a villain. He’s too far gone. In the original film, the antagonist, Woo-jin, initially seems like this faceless, immoral entity that does an unspeakably terrible thing to another person for seemingly no reason. But as the audience learns more about his backstory, we start to see Woo-jin in a different light—still bad, but we begin to understand that him and the Dae-su aren’t that different. They both had wrongs done to them, terrible wrongs, and both went to try to take revenge. And the reason for the antagonist’s vengeance is painful and believable. Woo-jin takes revenge because revenge is rightfully his to take.

In this version, however, Adrian Price’s motivation is—for lack of a better phrase—really, really fucked up. So fucked up we don’t resonate with him like we should. He becomes this cartoonish villain, evil for the sake of being evil, so past the point of having any moral center. Even at the climax, when all is revealed, we still see Price as this unredeemable monster, someone beyond any hope of redemption, let alone the audience’s sympathies.

But what’s most disappointing is that it just isn’t thought provoking, like the original film. What makes the original such a fantastic movie is that on the surface it’s a kick-ass revenge movie, but it also delves into the nature of revenge and the human heart—what we do for revenge, why we do it, what it does to us as human beings. And this level of profundity is what makes the film’s climax so harrowing. Here, though, the film spends too much time on Joe’s actual imprisonment and not enough time following his path to vengeance. Adrian as a villain is too cartoonish and is too evil for us to sympathize with him as a person. All the building blocks are there, but it just doesn’t add up to something really meaningful the way the South Korean version does.

Oldboy never has the guts to stand up and be its own thing. It desperately wants to distance itself from its source material by changing seemingly every small detail about the narrative, but it never fully commits to being its own work. And the few big changes that are made take away more than they add. Watch the original.

Grade: C+

(500) Days of Summer could be classified as a romantic comedy. It could also be called a drama, maybe even a tragedy. It’s definitely a story of boy-meets-girl. And it is not, as we are told upfront, a love story.

We know from the beginning that things don’t work out between Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), our hopelessly romantic protagonist, and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), the mysterious Manic Pixie Dream Girl-type he sets his sights on. The film’s title is a reference to the 500 days that Summer is in Tom’s life--but we don’t start at Day 1. In fact, we begin on Day 488, and then jump back to Day 290. Why? Because that is how Tom--and most people, really--remember things, especially something as tumultuous, exciting and baffling as his relationship with Summer. The film is very conscious of the ways in which people think and remember--resulting in its highly unusual but perfectly executed structure. These jumps in time are executed seamlessly, and somehow never manage to make less than perfect sense.

Ever since childhood, Tom has been convinced that he’ll never be truly happy until he finds “the one.” Summer, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in love as a result of her parents’ divorce. Tom knows from the beginning that Summer isn’t looking for anything serious, but that doesn’t stop him from pursuing her, endlessly hoping he can convince her to change her mind because he believes they are soul mates. As I watched, I almost forgot that I already knew how things would end up between the two of them, and I began hoping alongside Tom. But what is so unusual--and brilliant--about this film is its refusal to play by the rules. Summer never caves, and the two don’t live happily ever after. We have come to expect a certain reassurance from Hollywood movies--that there are true romances and happy endings out there. That’s not what we’re given here, though. Instead, we get reality.

This is one of those movies that warrant repeated viewings, with different ideas and questions being raised each time. Yes, Summer breaks Tom’s heart, but whose fault is it really? She never lied to Tom, and told him from the beginning she didn’t want a serious relationship. Was Tom in love with Summer, or the idea of being in love? In one scene, as Tom attends a party at Summer’s house, the film employs a split screen that shows Tom’s expectations versus reality. Needless to say, the two don’t quite match up. This makes me wonder: since Tom has been perfecting and reimagining this fantasy his entire life, is Summer just the final missing piece of the puzzle? Would any pretty girl that “likes the same bizarro crap he does” (as Tom’s younger sister puts it) do? And as a glimmer of hope shines for Tom at the film’s end, we are left wondering: has he learned his lesson as he is given a second chance at real love, or is he bound to make the same mistakes all over again? One line in particular, I think, encompasses the film’s main theme: when asked if his longtime girlfriend is really the girl of his dreams, Tom’s best friend replies, “She’s better than the girl of my dreams. She’s real.” If only Tom had such a mindset, he might fare better in love.

This is a movie that, rather than merely show us what happens, tells us upfront how it ends and then explores the how and why. Thought-provoking, perfectly cast, and brilliantly written, (500) Days of Summer is consistently honest, funny, and unique, making it one of the best films of 2009.

After a string of less than stellar films (The Internship, The Watch, The Dilemma, Couples Retreat), Delivery Man proves to be Vince Vaughn's best movie in years.  While still not in the league of, say, Wedding Crashers, it has its charms.   

Vaughn plays David Wozniak, a harmless but likable underachiever mildly dissatisfied with his life and searching for something more. His wish is granted when a representative from the sperm bank to which he donated a “sample” 20+ years earlier approaches him with the unexpected news that due to a clerical error, he is the biological father of 533 now-grown children. This oversight comes to light because 142 of those children are suing the company to discover their father’s identity. Given profiles of each member of his extensive brood (conveniently, as part of the lawsuit) David’s curiosity takes hold, and he starts to anonymously visit each of his kids.

The comedic elements in the first act are hit-and-miss; the audience isn't given much opportunity to sympathize with David, watching him make bad choices to solve problems created by other bad decisions. As the movie shifts into its second and third acts and the kids are introduced, though, Vaughn's character gains emotional and intellectual perspective and reflects on his past choices; as a result, his character grows and matures more than is commonly seen in contemporary comedies.  

By the end, the film proves to be a fun, at times heartwarming, tale with many solid comedic moments. What makes it more enjoyable, though, is that it is not a one-note show: the tone becomes surprisingly serious at times as David surreptitiously enters the lives of his many, many children. Though some of the twenty-somethings are one-dimensional, iPhone-wielding caricatures, others have had darker lives and appear lost and emotionally damaged. It is this welcome acknowledgement of reality that makes the film stand out as not just another one-off easy comedy. 

Vince Vaughn is better than he has been in a long time, if not quite meeting the height of his comedic turns in Dodgeball, Old School, and, of course, Wedding Crashers. He pushes himself to inhabit the dramatic moments as much as the lighter ones, and he does a respectable, if not spectacular job.  The lovable Chris Pratt is entertaining as the stay-at-home dad/ex-lawyer and Vaughn's best friend, providing more laughs than Vaughn himself.  Cobie Smulders, who plays Vaughn’s sometime girlfriend, gives an excellent performance that feels full and developed despite not having a great deal of screen time. However, the real stars of the film are the actors and actresses playing David’s biological offspring. The film delights in showing snippets of many of the kids’ lives.

Delivery Man starts off rocky, but it grows stronger as the “kids” are introduced and explored.  It may not have as much of a comedy focus as you might expect given Vaughn's career path, but it’s strengthened by the more dramatic moments.  Ultimately, it's hard not to walk out of the theater satisfied with a fun, heartwarming feeling.  Though not perfect, Delivery Man proves to be an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.

Grade: B-

I was lucky enough to be part of a round-table interview with actor Dave Patten, who plays Adam, one of the many children.  Adam is a street musician who leads his brothers and sisters in their legal pursuit of gaining information about their father. Both in and outside of the film, Patten is an impressive individual: 25 years old with two released music albums, a published author, an actor, producer and filmmaker. He carries himself in a laid-back and humble fashion, but you can tell he’s traveled a long road to get to this point in his career, and it doesn't sound like he's slowing down anytime soon. Given his range of interests and his incredible work ethic, I expect we’ll be hearing his name again (in some capacity) before too long.  

During the interview, he said working with Vince Vaughn was a whole lot of fun, that Vaughn is a very funny, easy-going, and generous person.  He reports that on several occasions, Vaughn took many of the actors playing his kids out for drinks. Patten also mentioned that Vaughn was very serious about his role and took his time to get into character before shooting.

For those of you who are interested, you can find some of Dave Patten’s songs, with some pretty cool music videos, on his YouTube channel.

I worshipped Lance Armstrong more than most people did. My father is an avid cyclist, and every year without fail we watched the Tour de France, rooting for Armstrong and the United States Postal Service Team. We knew his teammates, his rivals, which stages he would excel in and which ones would be a struggle. I read his autobiography and loved every page of it. I followed his career closely and supported the LiveStrong foundation—I remember wearing the yellow bracelet far before the rest of my friends did, before it became a fashion statement. I wore the yellow bracelet because I really believed in everything that Lance Armstrong stood for, that you could succeed in the face of insurmountable odds. If this man could go from suffering on a hospital bed from late-stage cancer to dominating the most physically demanding race in the world, my own dreams and ambitions were nothing.

So when the story broke that Lance Armstrong was banned from cycling for life and stripped of his seven consecutive Tour de France titles, I suppose I was more incredulous to the allegations against him than most people were. I held out hope, false hope, that it was all an elaborate plot to bring him down, to set an example for the rest of the cycling world that was drowning in performance-enhancers. There was no way he was involved, let alone the evil ringmaster that the authorities were making him out to be. I went in to The Armstrong Lie with a certain amount of those personal reservations intact. And I watched, half dumbfounded, half furious, as everything I thought I knew about the mythic figure of Lance Armstrong was systematically dismantled and destroyed.

To fully appreciate The Armstrong Lie, a little background is in order. Director Alex Gibney, the man behind the critically-acclaimed exposé docs Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, originally sought to make a documentary about Lance Armstrong’s triumphant return to the world of cycling with the 2009 Tour de France. He was granted unprecedented access to Armstrong and his team and filmed a great deal of material tracking Armstrong before and during the Tour. Then everything about Lance Armstrong went to shit, so Gibney abandoned the project, which some were calling an unnecessary puff piece. But after the full extent of his cheating was known, Gibney picked the project back up, this time to really, fully explain what Lance Armstrong did. He felt that Armstrong owed him, and the rest of the world, an explanation.

As a result, a lot of the documentary focuses on the actual 2009 Tour, with gorgeous shots of the peloton riding through the Pyrenees and endless fields of sunflowers. Gibney himself acts as the narrator, taking us through Armstrong’s childhood, early career, cancer diagnosis, rise to fame, and subsequent fall from grace. Having him audibly present is necessary given the nature of the project; he discusses how the movie itself morphed over time. He also plays somewhat of an unreliable narrator. On the one hand, he spent a year immersed in Armstrong’s life, and he came to know Armstrong quite well as an athlete and a person. But on the other hand, Armstrong straight-up lied to him for that entire time. The narrative tone might be inconsistent at parts, but that’s only reflective of Gibney’s own dissonant, conflicting views about his subject. Gibney isn’t entirely sure how to process the massive, mythic saga that is the Lance Armstrong story, and as a result, neither are we. And that’s not a bad thing.

The Armstrong Lie plays out less like a two-hour exposé of an evil mastermind and more like an in-depth analysis of not only how he cheated the entire world but why. The film paints Armstrong as an almost Napoleonic figure in his ambition and calculating control of his own story. Armstrong wanted to be viewed as a self-made man, a fearless champion who conquered cancer and the world’s most difficult athletic competition. Deftly balancing new interviews and archival footage, Gibney chronicles Lance’s methodical cheating of the system and the press, using his massive celebrity status to ensure his legacy. Importantly, the film also emphasizes the systematic nature of the use of performance enhancing drugs in cycling. Armstrong was not an isolated incident; the entire sport of professional cycling has become rotten to the core with performance enhancers, as we hear from Lance’s teammates and other experts.

But the most compelling issue the film brings up is the question of why Lance decided to return at all. He had already won a record-shattering seven consecutive Tour titles. He had successfully fooled everybody into thinking he had raced clean, and the voices of dissent against him were largely quiet. So why did he stir up all those accusations again? What else did he have to prove? Was it to silence his critics once and for all? Was it to prove something to himself, that he could really race clean and still be the best? Or was it just sheer hubris? Gibney presents convincing arguments for all of these explanations, and it’s that aspect of the story that has lingered with me long after the credits rolled.

As I walked out of the theater, I felt something I haven’t felt after a movie in a long time. I was angry. I was angry with Armstrong for deceiving the entire world and cheating his way into history. I was angry at the entire sport of cycling for letting itself become so corrupt. But most of all, I was angry with myself, for so eagerly and so completely believing Armstrong's carefully fabricated story when all the clues were right before my eyes the entire time. It’s clear that Alex Gibney is angry too, and his strong feelings towards his subject come across in the final product. The Armstrong Lie was not an easy film for me to sit through because it so completely shook a core foundation of my childhood, but it helped me come to terms with the fact that we were all cheated. We all were duped by the miracle of Lance Armstrong, and The Armstrong Lie is a vital part of the healing process.

Grade: A-

I’ve run out of adjectives to describe The Act of Killing. It is paralyzing. Terrifying. Intimate. Humorous. Depressing. Horrifying. Shocking. Awe-inspiring. Mind-bending. Awful. Unbelievable.

To understand this film (or even this review) in its entirety, a good deal of background knowledge is necessary. In 1965, the Indonesian military overthrew its democratically elected government. Using gangsters and paramilitaries, they attempted to wipe out all who opposed them and anyone accused of being a communist or a communist sympathizer. Between 500,000 and one million people were killed. Many of the thousands of gangsters and paramilitaries who actually carried out these killings are still in power.

Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer went to Indonesia to talk to a few of these men, focusing on one aging gangster named Anwar Congo. Since these men are still in power, they don’t see the need to try to deny or apologize for the atrocities they committed. Instead, they boast about them. They detail how many people they’ve killed, where they killed them, how they killed them, even the easiest and most efficient ways to do so.

Here’s where it gets crazy. Oppenheimer asked Congo and a few others to—get this—reenact the things they did in whatever cinematic style they chose. And they agreed. Happily.

The result is one of the most unsettling, bone-chilling, unforgettably disturbing pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen.

The premise alone raises a million different questions. Why would these men, who committed unthinkable atrocities to thousands of people, choose to revisit these awful things? Why are these men still in power? What does that mean for Indonesia? Could this happen again? The film analyzes such an awful, awful event in a nation’s history on a lot of different levels. He looks at Indonesia on a macro level, showing how no aspect of government or economy has really survived unscathed. He looks at the average Indonesian villager, applauding the very people who carried out the genocide only five decades ago.

As the film progresses, the line begins to blur between what’s real and what’s an act. The man being interrogated and accused of being a communist, shivering in fear, with tears and snot pouring down his face—it’s just for the film, right? Or is he genuinely terrified to be reenacting a scene his family must actually have been through 50 years earlier? The little girl, still crying after the cameras have stopped filming the scene of fires and destruction deep in the jungle with hundreds of villagers—what could she possibly be thinking?

Then things get weird. Like, really, really weird. Anwar starts to act out his nightmares revolving around the things he’s done. His friend, in a dress and fabulous makeup, cuts off his head and licks the blood from the stump where his neck was. They delve deep into their memories, their emotions. They put themselves in the place of their victims. A grand musical number in front of a waterfall, a gritty noir-style detective investigation…these things take on a different meaning. And the grand irony is that by acting these situations out, these scenarios that they really went through in real life—by making them fictional, they become more real. I won’t say if Anwar and the others realize what they’ve done, because I legitimately didn’t know if they would. But I will say this: the last 20 minutes are some of the most haunting I’ve ever witnessed. They left me reeling. I don’t wish to watch them again.

What makes The Act of Killing so powerful is that there is no narration, no talking heads explaining the characters’ motivations. Everything we see is the product of Anwar and his friends. There’s next to no involvement from Oppenheimer on-screen. We’re watching these men explain what they did, how they’re dealing with it, and what they choose to do about it. We don’t need any interviews with outside experts to realize what monsters these men are, and watching their transformation as the film progresses is fascinating and mesmerizing.

The Act of Killing is a difficult film to talk about just because nothing like it has ever been done before. It’s a documentary, yes, but it feels bigger than that. It is not a film one enjoys watching, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s one of the most powerfully affecting films in existence. It is not just the most audacious film of 2013. It’s this year’s best documentary, and one of the best ever made.

Grade: A+