MoMA’s annual Kino! film festival is a venue for modern German films to be seen and often receive their premieres in the U.S. This year, I got to see Es kommt der Tag, which is a film exploring karma and its personal and weighty effects on relationships among loved ones. The first twenty minutes side step a lot of clarity in favor of mystery, which is a bit of a mistake given how ultimately familiar the story is. While we have fun speculating on possible political motivations for the terrorist posters and the dossier of information the girl carries reluctantly into the struggling bed & breakfast/vineyard of Judith and Jean-Marc — why is she standing over Judith in the middle of the night, for example — it ultimately becomes clear what connects these disparate people together, and at this point the film loses a bit of its bite and saunters into expected territory (the grandparents stew in pleasantries and are arriving for saturday brunch, how awkward the meal will be!).

The actresses portraying Judith and the mystery woman, Alice, are both compelling and anchor what could be an interminably long third act with some raw emotion. It’s enough to distract you from the fact that you’ve seen this before, but not enough to be entirely riveting, just because once all the cards are on the table they have so little to work with. The central argument that Alice and Judith spar over is one of guilt – Judith is a former terrorist, and her actions gave Alice an irreparable childhood, so now that terrorist Judith has been discovered 25 years on, with a new unsuspecting family, should she still be forced to pay due diligence? Alice thinks so, and persists – at first terrorizing the family by posting Judith’s wanted poster all over their grape fields, and being an all around menacing presence. But it’s the more emotional appeal to Judith’s family members that cause her to finally confess the truth of the matter – it was an accident, and while she accepts responsibility for the action – it keeps her up at night – she feels as though she is no longer responsible.

The film’s ultimate position is betrayed by the end of the first act, when we discover what is in the little tin. If family is so important to Judith, why does she think there is a time-lapse on personal responsibility, particularly to the family members that you choose to protect. For those that you don’t, well, the title kind of tells you about them, doesn’t it? It’s unfortunate that the film gives Alice a brief view outside of her shell at the end, where she offers a way out for Judith other than the one that we expect. She’s already too much of a deus ex machina, here, persisting and persisting for the sake of it. The actress, Katharina Schüttler, is able to give these scenes where she is earnest (and So Germany, as Judith’s new husband, observes of Alice and his wife) a real gravitas, but even still by the time we’ve heard the argument put out in the same terms over and over again, we kind of feel like throwing out the lamb shank with all those champagne bottles, too.

Alice in Wonderland was pretty trashy, and so continues Tim Burton’s slide into creating things to look at but not much else. Sweeney Todd worked pretty well for me on the whole (apart from H.B.C.’s singing – it’s still ringing in my ears), but Alice in Wonderland returns to the spectacle without girders. Granted, I think this film would be a lot more enjoyable in 2D – the 3D here gave me an insane headache and I constantly was aware of the technology, whereas with Avatar I at least had the feeling I was seeing something new (irony!). Johnny Depp acts weird in weird make-up again, and everything around him looks great. Actually, after trashing Helena for Sweeney, I have to say she’s fantastic here, as the petulant over-browing evil Red Queen. And then there’s a big fight at the end, and hooray, the flighty weird White Queen rules again and the Jabberwock on Frabjous Day has been slain. With all the news lately about Alice being such a success that it’s justifying raised ticket prices for 3D movies, I can only hope that this technology dies a sudden and unmelodious death. Keep it to the IMAX theaters for things that were made for it, because when they magically process it into 3D after the fact, it looks like shit. (My company paid for my ticket – NYC charges upwards of 18$ for a single movie ticket to a 3D movie. Are you insane? Wait a couple months, buy it on Blu-Ray (it’ll look better and your floors won’t be sticky*), and then sell it afterward. Or rent it from Netflix. There is absolutely no excuse for charging such exorbitant ticket prices.

*no judgments

A couple of things strike me: I hadn’t updated my blog in half a year, and I have been working on Bartlett The Bear for over a year now. It started as a short story, but seems to have exploded underneath my feet. Bartlett comes to mind, of course, because of the adorable clay puppets in Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was “pretty fantastic,” if you’ll take the word of Mrs. Fox. . One has to wonder what kind of an effect it would have on children–is it fast moving enough? The theater I saw this in seemed to be nothing but Wes Anderson’s core-demographic, which makes you wonder if the film wouldn’t have done better had they opened a theater in Williamsburg with an exclusive showing. (I’ve told Eugene several times as of late, but this new hipster thing where they’re wearing glasses-frames without the glass has got to stop). And yet, I wish I’d seen this movie when I was little, if only to have the word “Cluster-Cuss” as part of my vocabulary.

It struck me that this seems to be the best venue for Wes Anderson’s attention to detail, which lately has become a little ingratiating. (Can anyone watch The Royal Tenenbaums and simply not be annoyed? There’s so much little stuff, so little big stuff.) And yet here – perhaps because of the actual scale of the puppets – this constant, goofy presence is completely charming. “Cuss” graffiti? Granted, I’ve never read Roald Dahl’s original story so I’m not sure what fits where, but this certainly felt through-and-through from the brain of Wes Anderson. And it was so fantastic to finally see Jason Schwartzman’s whispery voice fit somewhere so properly. Eugene and I watched a few minutes of Marie Antoinette and he seemed hilariously out of place, and at least he raises his voice a little in Bored to Death. But here, the whispery thing fit the bill in total, with the enigmatic and constantly disappointing (dare I dah?) differénce of adolescence.

It’s a real shame that kid’s movies can’t always be bursting at the seems with this level of creativity. Hayao Miyazaki is another where you just constantly marvel at the kinds of things he’s able to conjure and throw up on the screen. And while I haven’t seen Disney’s latest, The Princess and the Frog, I can’t help but have the nagging feeling that while it’s probably a fantastic piece of drawn art, you can’t just help the notion that you’ve really seen this all before. Yes, Hayao always has those philosophically convenient blob people, but after seeing this Disney video, I even recognized some of these repetitions in the trailer for The Princess. Which okay, it’s not like they’re scamming us, but you can’t help but feel just a little disappointed.

So: see The Fantastic Mr. Fox, if not because you’re a kid, then because you’re an adult. Not doing so would be nothing short of a full-scale clustercuss.

Cranky old racist man learns to love and respect the little ones next door? Eugene latched onto the Clint Eastwood perennial Dirty Harry performance, and much of the undeniably awkward performances/writing. “Oscar?! This??,” he kept asking, incredulously.

It’s a pretty clunky movie, but I find Clint Eastwood’s movies to be interesting in a way that recalls one of my professor’s explanation of his transition from Hamlet to King Lear as his favorite Shakespeare play. They’re ruminations on getting old, which isn’t to say I fully relate to that, but I can appreciate the conviction. And there probably isn’t anyone who could called a shy, reserved (submissive[!]) boy “Zipper head” repeatedly with any ounce of conviction other than Clint Eastwood.