Blog Posts by Jonathan Crow

This is an old magazine ad for Smirnoff vodka. Really. Esquire.comOn Wednesday and Thursday of this week, we saw five movies. That's kind of awesome: That's like being at a film festival. As we near liftoff, it is encouraging to note that it is starting to flow more smoothly, that we feel a little bit less like we're pretending. We're not as good as Grierson yet, but he has a decade of experience on us. We are sure we'll catch him by 2018, or when we launch, whichever comes second.

Here are things that happened this week:

*** The director of "Hanna" does not like the director of "Sucker Punch."

*** The newest Snow White is Phil Collins' daughter, which is kind of funny.

*** M. Night and Will Smith, Philly bros.

*** Look, new stooge!

*** Movie theater food: Very bad.

*** The new Gotham is Pittsburgh.

*** The "Human Centipede" musical, finally.

*** Settle down, "Hangover 2" trailer.

*** Some Tina Fey love.

*** No, Affleck, no!

Reviews: "Arthur" | "Your Highness" | "Hanna" | "Soul Surfer" | "Meek's Cutoff"

That'll do it for us, kids. We're coming on a

Greta Gerwig Warner Bros. PicturesFew were surprised when Warner Brothers cast Russell Brand as the lead in the remake of the 1981 classic "Arthur." After all, Dudley Moore's lovable drunk is only a stone's throw from Brand's entire persona.

Helen Mirren being cast as Arthur's long-suffering servant Hobson was also not especially surprising. The part was originally played by Sir John Gielgud, who won an Oscar for his effort. In this new version, the gender switch does add a little Oedipal frisson to Hobson's relationship to her charge. Yet in many ways, Mirren is Gielgud's later-day equivalent, tapped whenever Hollywood needs to evoke the British upper crust.

But the real surprise in the movie is Greta Gerwig, who fills in for Liza Minelli as Arthur's love interest. Her performance in the movie is -- and I mean this in the best possible way -- so affectless that she comes off as bracingly real and utterly disarming. She provides a welcome counterpoint to Brand's antics and ends up walking away with the movie.  Her

This week's roundup of independent and foreign movies includes an Oscar winner, an ultraviolent masked vigilante movie, and a movie that would give the Michelin man nightmares.

In a Better World
Danish director Susanne Bier's "In A Better World" traces the story of two Danish families. Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a doctor who divides his time between Denmark and a refugee camp in a nameless African country, where he treats not just the victims of war crimes but also their perpetrators. Meanwhile, his son's struggle with a schoolyard bully soon devolves horrifically. The original Danish title is "Revenge," to give you an idea of where the plot goes from there. This movie won the best foreign movie at the 83rd Academy Awards and has been earning rave reviews on the film fest circuit. See it just to decide for yourself if it's more worthy of Oscar gold than fantastically weird fellow-nominee "Dogtooth."

Super
James Gunn's last feature, the comedy horror flick "Slither" was about a town

Director Duncan Jones is, in the parlance of Hollywood, hot. His movie "Moon," which earned raves at Sundance and won a BAFTA Award, put him on the radar of just about every agent and executive in town. This weekend, Jones' star will likely rise even higher with the release of the big budget sci-fi thriller "Source Code," starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Of course, Jones is no stranger to the limelight. His father is David Bowie. Yes, Mr. Ziggy Stardust himself. Born Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, he was the only child from Bowie's first marriage with the American model Angela Barnett. His father famously dubbed him Zowie Bowie, a moniker that Jones quietly shed in his teens.

As a youth, Bowie, who made it a point of reading to his son two hours a night, turned him on science fiction novels. Soon Jones was devouring the works of such mind-bending authors as J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick. "My upbringing was pretty weird, anyway," Jones told the New York Times, "so it was maybe less of a jump

This week's roundup of independent and foreign movies

includes three movies from internationally renowned directors from around the
world. There's a controversial movie about the struggle between the
Palestinians and the Israelis, a frothy comedy about the struggle between the
sexes, and an exceptionally bloody movie about the struggle between samurais.

Miral
Artist turned director Julian Schnabel has only made four
feature films, but those movies have racked up a total of five Oscar
nominations. His last movie, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,"
received near-universal acclaim and wound up on Yahoo! Movies' Modern Classics
list. All his movies have moments of
intense, almost hallucinatory beauty that only a painter's eye could bring to
the screen. For his latest movie, "Miral," Schnabel tells the tale of a
Palestinian girl, Miral (Frieda Pinto), who struggles between the indignation
over the Israeli army's actions against her people during the first Intifada
and her longing for

Derek Cianfrance Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com"I think I have an allergy to fake moments on a

movie screen," said Derek Cianfrance, director of the Oscar-nominated

movie "Blue Valentine."

The movie, which details the heady early days of a

relationship between two blue-collar 20-somethings, intercut with moments from

its painful dissolution, feels unnervingly, exhilaratingly real. Few films have

captured the subtle grace notes of falling in love and the ugly ambiguities of

falling out.

This isn't by accident. The movie was a passion project

for Cianfrance and he went to some extreme lengths to get on-screen cinematic

moments that didn't feel fake. That included having leads Michelle Williams and

Ryan Gosling live in their on-screen house during a month-long production

hiatus. During that time, they did all the mundane domestic activities a real

couple might do: wash dishes, prepare a household budget, buy groceries, and

even do the Jane Fonda workout together. And this was all before the camera

started to roll.

The resulting

Director Chris Morris and the Honey Monster. Drafthouse FilmsMaking a comedy about a cell of suicide bombers

might seem like an unlikely prospect, but it's all par for the course

with filmmaker Chris Morris.

That name might draw blank stares on this side of the pond, but

in Britain he's something of a legend. Part satirist, part surrealist

prankster, part deadly serious media critic, Morris first made his name

as the writer and star of the landmark TV show "The Day Today" -- a

spot-on parody of the nightly news that predated "The Daily Show" and

Stephen Colbert by a half decade.

He followed that with the fake newsmagazine series, "The Brass

Eye." Taking the guise of a self-important TV reporter, Morris managed

to inveigle gullible celebrities, including singer Phil Collins, into

making PSAs about the dangers of a fictitious drug called Cake. He even

managed to convince one hapless MP into making a speech on the

Parliament about the fake substance. But Morris gained true notoriety

with his show's lacerating take on the media's hysteria over

'Win Win' Fox Searchlight PicturesThis week's roundup of independent movies includes a

Sundance fave and a psychological thriller directed by someone with a familiar

name.

Win Win

Tom McCarthy has had one of those careers you can't help

but envy. While making a name for himself as an actor, McCarthy has appeared in

blockbusters like "2012" and "Little Fockers" along with more critically

acclaimed work in "The Wire" (he played the weaselly journalist Scott Templeton

in the fifth season). McCarthy has also

built a reputation as a first-rate writer-director, making such movies as "The

Station Agent" (2003) and the Oscar-nominated "The Visitor." This week,

McCarthy releases "Win Win," one of the clear breakout hits of this year's

Sundance Film Fest. The movie centers on Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti), a

lawyer whose practice is failing, though he can't quite admit this to his wife

Jackie (Amy Ryan). When Mike makes an unethical decision to become the legal

guardian of a senile client, the plan goes awry when the client's