Brightest Young Things

written by: Alan Zilberman, Logan Donaldson, Zach Goldbaum, Jeff Spross and Svetlana Legetic

WELCOME TO BYT WINTER GUIDE WEEK! After a fruitful fall, we're full speed ahead into the winter cinematic season. Spielberg is seemingly everywhere. Meryl Streep tackles Margaret Thatcher. The children are seemingly not alright at all. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. So, we gathered the BYT film team and tackled: new releases, good and bad, DVDs and instant netflix you should look forward to this winter + DC Film events.....

ENJOY, and follow us on facebook and twitter (@BYT) for ongoing updates. (MORE WINTER GUIDES COMING RIGHT UP TOO.)

• We Bought A Zoo (December 23) - Have a palette cleanser. Cameron Crowe offers another warm slice of sentiment in this film starring Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, and Thomas Haden Church about a family that salvages a run-down zoo that harbors over 200 exotic animals. What's got me hot and bothered for this film is Jónsi, frontman of Sigur Ros, is composing its score. If a movie by Crowe about fuzzy animals scored by Jónsi doesn't pluck the weepy notes of your heartstrings then I probably should have written this in binary, you goddamn robot. - Logan

• War Horse (December 25, 2011) - Steven Spielberg directs War Horse, a film about a young man’s friendship with a member of the taxonomic family Equidae, and how their fellowship is put through the apocalyptic test of World War I.  So have here a male protagonist who still sees the world through the awe-inducing lens of youth, a central friendship of the most innocent and archetypal variety, a virtual guarantee of heartrending loss and pathos amidst the blood and anarchy of total war, and the whole thing is being helmed by the guy that gave us Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Empire of the Sun, and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. His source material is a play which has become one of the most celebrated productions of the last few years, he’s got David Thewlis and Emily Watson in his cast, and his old reliable maestro John Williams is doing the score. Seriously people, what more do you need to know? Go see it. - Jeff

• In the Land of Blood and Honey (January 6, 2012) - Somehow, someone somewhere died and made Angelina Jolie think she was God. Or so I felt when I read about Jolie making her directorial and screenwriting debut with a movie about a very recent, wildly polarizing war that I just happened to have been there for. My first reaction was (pardon my French Serbian): "FUCK YOU" shortly followed by "God, I really need to see this"--especially after discovering that it will be acted out by some of the finest actors of former Yugoslavia. While I don't trust Jolie as far as I can throw her (has anyone seen The Tourist or SALT lately?), I want to trust MY people in this story about MY country, and so until December 23rd proves me wrong, I'm staying cautiously optimistic. - Svetlana

• Carnage (January 13, 2012) - Theater has it rough. A film can jump through time and space at will, but a play is confined to the space in which it's performed. So it's always a joy to see a film take on theater's great challenge, and when it's done right, the results are wildly rewarding (think: Reservoir Dogs, My Dinner With Andre, Rope). Roman Polanski's Carnage (an adaptation of the acclaimed French play God of Carnage) has the potential to take on that challenge with gusto. Carnage's four person cast of heavy hitters -- Kate Winslet, Christopher Waltz, John C. Reilly, and Jodie Foster-- are relegated to a house in Brooklyn for the entirety of the film, and what appears to ensue based on the trailer is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf levels of hysteria. - Zach

• The Iron Lady (January 13, 2012) - Margaret Thatcher is one of the most striking figures in modern western politics. As Prime Minister of Britain from 1979 to 1990, she broke precedents and expectations as one of the earliest women to achieve the highest executive office of a nation. And as an arch-conservative, Thatcher’s program of low taxation, deregulation, union-busting and confrontational foreign policy re-oriented British politics to the right in much the same way Reagan reshaped America – and made her some bitter enemies amongst the liberals and leftist who would otherwise have rejoiced at such a shattering of the glass ceiling. So as someone who’s hopelessly steeped in politics both personally and professionally, I’m totally down to see The Iron Lady, and more than confident Meryl Streep is up to the task of bringing Thatcher to life. (See Doubt if you question me in this regard.) I will be curious whether an honest moral grappling with Thatcher’s record will survive Hollywood’s general unwillingness to tolerate complications in its trail-blazing heroines during Oscar season, or whether the industry’s silly belief that film is a poor medium for the conceptualization of ideological issues will deracinate the narrative down to mere personality conflicts. We’ll find out shortly. - Jeff

• Haywire (January 20, 2012). I understand the premises of Haywire and Ghost Protocol are really, really similar. Both involve covert agents who, after being betrayed, fight their way toward justice. But instead of Brad Bird and Tom Cruise, Haywire features Steven Soderbergh and MMA star Gina Carano. With The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh proved that he can elicit strong performances from non-actors, so I’m curious to see how Carano handles the lead role. Also, as other critics have exhaustively noted, Soderbergh remains a director worth celebrating. He has never made a straight action film before, so I can’t wait to see how he takes a time-tested genre and makes it his own. - Alan

• Albert Nobbs (January 27, 2012)- While Glenn Close has been killing it on TV for the past few years, I've been silently hoping for her triumphant return to the silver screen. The time has come. Close has settled into her Emmy-winning role as an powerful lawyer on Damages, so it'll be nice to see her switch gears as the subdued titular character in Albert Nobbs (another theatrical adaptation), in which she plays a woman who has donned mans clothing for the past 30 years. Speaking of thirty years, this film has been in the making for nearly that long. Close played Nobbs on stage in 1982 and has been trying to adapt it ever since. - Zach

• Pina (January 27, 2012) - If you haven't seen Wings of Desire or Paris, TX do yourself a favor. Not only are Wim Wenders' features great, but he's also a skilled documentary filmmaker, evidenced by Tokyo-Ga and Buena Vista Social Club. With Pina, Wenders notches another documentary – an examination of acclaimed choreographer Pina Bausch. Not only is the portrait of a passionate and successful dancer an intriguing hook, but adding to its drama is the fact that Bausch died during its filming, rattling Wenders and her peers. Most of all, Pina is an exciting prospect because it employs 3D technology as a method to study the rhythm and movements of human form in choreographed sequences. Rather than offering cheap thrills, its 3D is an intimate look at the elegance of dance. - Logan

• We Need To Talk About Kevin (January 27 2012) - Why don't you have a seat. Shit's about to get super real. We Need To Talk About Kevin chronicles the grief of a mother after her son goes on a high school killing spree. What elevates this way above a perceived Lifetime melodrama is that it stars the nearly infallible Tilda Swinton, and it inspired significant amounts of Cannes buzz. Touted for its red-heavy imagery (without the overuse of blood; not referring to Swinton's hair) and deft handling of difficult a subject, it's sure to be an unnerving but memorable film. - Logan

• Harold and Maude - What's your favorite holiday/winter theme? Mine's death. Harold, the lead in this '70s cult classic, is fixated on dying, staging creative suicides and modeling his car into a hearse. In the middle of his hilarious, morbid  fantasies he stumbles into a romantic relationship with the grandmotherly Maude to the horror of his family. Maude, with her own eccentricities (nude modeling, collector of odd baubles), creates a bizarre but charming relationship with Harold. The movie originally bombed at the 1971 Christmas box office but was later revitalized by college audiences, lifting it to cult status. Something like a proto-Wes Anderson effort, Harold and Maude is a neurotic charmer of a film. - Logan

• Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence - David Bowie (...are you sold yet?...) stars in a WWII prison camp drama where a cruel Japanese militi abuses their British prisoners. Bowie, as Major Jack Cellier, seems enigmatic and intellectual as he effortlessly repels the psychic and physical damage leveled by the guards. The camp commandant Ryuichi Sakomoto and Cellier battle one another in escalating moments of psychological tension to create an interesting portrait of culture clash as well as a detailed look at the captor/prisoner dynamic. Bowie delivers a fine performance throughout, and the film's score, featuring David Sylvain's "Forbidden Colours" (Mishima reference!), elicits some fine melodies. - Logan

• A Christmas Tale. Capra-esque Christmas sentiment has never rung true with me. Around the holidays, I’m more likely to watch Bad Santa and Die Hard, not Miracle on 34^th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life. So for me, Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale strikes that perfect middle ground of a holiday film with a wicked heart. It tells the story a dysfunctional family – each member neurotic in a unique way – and how they come together when the matriarch has terminal cancer. Their problems and reconciliations are plausible thanks to eccentric-yet-realistic dialogue, as well as terrific performances from the likes of Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Amalric. The movie veers from heartfelt to cold, so it’s always weird but never boring, and even includes a direct homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo. For the Scrooges among us who have a distaste for Holiday classics, this movie is a good, stiff drink. - Alan

• Die Hard - Is there any better way to spend the holidays than with John McClane and Hans Gruber? If you answered no, then you (a) don't have a family or (b) love Die Hard way too much. Either way, you're in luck. Die Hard is streaming on Netflix, and if you're looking for vengeance, fear not. Die Hard 2 is on there...2. And if you're looking to Die Harder? Well, then you should probably just buy the DVD's because it's starting to seem like you're obsessed with Die Hard. - Zach

• The Trip. Michael Winterbottom is another director who never makes the same movie twice, and The Trip is his take on the road trip movie. Rob Brydon and Steven Coogan star as themselves: actors and old friends who go on tour of restaurants in the English countryside. Their interactions are civil, but soon become high-stakes demonstrations of comic bravado. You may have seen the YouTube hit where Brydon and Coogan do their best Michael Caine impression, but the movie only gets better from there (for my money, Coogan’s is better). Along the way, Winterbottom finds a way to make his unlikely travel saga into a touching story about friendship and family. This Christmas, you should watch The Trip with your dad: he may not recognize everyone, but the impressions and passive-aggressive behavior will have him reeling. - Alan

• Heathers - You're one of two kinds of people: a Heather or a Veronica. And with "YOUNG ADULT" (see above) perfectly depicting what may happen to a HEATHER if you let her survive high school, it is only fitting that this ultimate movie about levelling the popularity playing field has a resurgence on instant netflix. Added bonuses: a very dangerous Christian Slater, Shannon Doherty in her pre-90210 prime and some of the best games of croquet ever committed to the silver screen. What are you waiting for? Motor! - Svetlana

• TrollHunter- Thanks to Cloverfield, the gimmick of using "found" handheld footage to piece together a story of humans encountering fantastical situations or creatures via well-deployed CGI is by now pretty firmly established. So TrollHunter, about a group of film students following Hans (Otto Jespersen), a hunter and game warden for a population of, yes, trolls in the Norwegian wilderness breaks no new ground in that regard. What it does do is create a subtly moving portrait of a man disillusioned with work he considers morally dubious, and who is seeking some form of absolution or endgame through his erstwhile documentarians. As creative as some of the sequences are – luring a troll out from under a bridge with Christian blood, turning a troll to stone with a UV light rig and then jack hammering it into manageable pieces in the morning – what really stands out is the poetic sense of melancholy it builds by viewing its titular creatures as lost and limited animals rather than personifications of evil. - Jeff

• A Knight’s Tale - In my experience, A Knight’s Tale gets a lot of flack for being anachronistic and silly, which is sort of like criticizing Star Wars for its over-emphasis on special effects. While William (Heath Ledger) is not a terribly deep character, Ledger nonetheless imbues him with a charm and dignity of genuine depth, hinting at both the greater accomplishments to come and everything that might have been and was lost with his death in 2008. Alan Tudyk and Paul Bettany both put in stand out turns as some of Will’s sidekicks, and Rufus Sewell is appropriately reptilian as the villain. Along with the humor and adventure there is also a touch of roughhewn working class political defiance, and some genuine pathos as a son realizes his father’s hope that he grow into a good and worthy man. The film sports a free-wheeling, anachronistic soundtrack of modern pop and rock tunes, with an especially whimsical opening sequence featuring a joust audience pounding their seats along to Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Honestly, if that doesn’t make you smile, then you’re beyond my aid. - Jeff

• CQ - In the general spectrum of movies made by the Coppola family, this meta 2001 nugget directed by Roman Coppola often gets overlooked (and probably rightfully so, considering the company it's keeping) but it is GREAT to look at (the cast features everyone from Jeremy Davies to Angella Lindvall to Elodie Bouchez and Jason Schwartzman), full of knowing winks at glamorous sci-fi debacles of yore and with it's 1960s Paris setting it is a perfect combination of style and slight substance for a Saturday afternoon with your girlfriends and some well shaken cocktails. Taking something on face value alone was not quite this rewarding in a while. - Svetlana

• THE FUTURE (Out now). What we wrote in our original review: just as you expected/feared, Miranda July's glorious little jewel box of art masquerading as cinema and you're either going to love it SO HARD or be annoyed by it SO HARD. As you can imagine, I am (proudly and self-awarely) on the former side of the spectrum.

• MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (December 20, 2011). What we wrote in our original review: As a young Woody Allen fan, I hope that Midnight in Paris's likable cast and critical buzz bring a new generation of movie-goers to this filmmaker‘s latest, an achievement that may inspire exploration of his his old films. Longtime Woody Allen fans are in for a treat. The film's message is clear: don't dwell on the past; instead, embrace and enjoy the present. But thanks to the success of Midnight in Paris, we can now do both.

• MONEYBALL (January 10, 2012). What we wrote in our original review: a baseball movie that will appeal those who are bored by the sport. It does not romanticize athletes. In fact, it is overtly critical of how the sport functions...the film embraces an outsider’s perspective, showing us how intelligent player analysis can overcome misguided intuition. Moneyball's star may look a little like Robert Redford, but this ain’t The Natural.

• 50/50 (January 24, 2012). What we wrote in our original review: With seemingly effortless power, this is the rare dramedy that earns every chuckle and tear it strives for.

• DRIVE (January 31, 2012). What we wrote in our original review: Blood is spilled by the gallon, and executions are carried out in novel fashion. Mitigating the violence are lyrical scenes where Refn states his case as a music video director should feature filmmaking fall through. With cerebral song selections – usually analog synth washes and downbeat dance tunes – slowmo scenes are infused with an elegance that draws deep upon wells of dreamy nostalgia. The linking of music and violence recalls the ecstatic discomfort of the sacred and profane that David Lynch marries so well.

• MELANCHOLIA (February 2012). What we wrote in our original review:  I won't insult your intelligence trying to explain it all (what do I know, after all?) and I'm not sure it all can even be explained, but I urge you to see this movie so when we're at a dinner party together, we can talk about it for hours. That conversation, just like the movie itself, will be glorious, I promise.

• The Films of Alexander Payne @ AFI Silver Spring (December 11-21): - Nobody has captured the plight of the white, middle-aged, suburban male better than Alexander Payne (#firstworldproblems). To commemorate The Descendants, Payne's first film in seven years, AFI will be running his films from December 11th-21st. I remember seeing Sideways in theaters with my dad, and I probably would not have enjoyed it if I hadn't been able to experience it vicariously through him. The disillusionment, loneliness, and maligned passion of Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church were lost on my teenage self, but I saw a pieces of my father (and uncles) in those characters which made the film stick. His other works mimic the same dark humor and humanism and are well worth a trip to Silver Spring. - Zach

• Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, December 30 at 12:30PM @ National Gallery of Art, East Building Concourse, Auditorium - The incredible career of superstar Candy Darling (James Lawrence Slattery) is brought to life in vintage interviews, archival video, photographs, and clips of former Warhol regulars. Actress Chloë Sevigny embodies Darling's voice, reading from letters and diaries. And for free to boot. Don't miss.- Svetlana

• Global Glimpses Series- The Best Foreign Film Oscar is a strange beast. Its rules are archaic and exclusionary (e.g. each country may submit only one film). Few movie-lovers have seen the winner by Oscar Night, so usually feel gypped. Thankfully, every winter National Geographic does its best to ameliorate that problem. For one week in February, they show all five Best Foreign Film nominees, back to back. The event provides a rare glimpse into what, precisely, members of the Academy are smoking, and it’s inexpensive to boot. Go to this so when you’re at your Oscar party next year, your foreign film shit-talking can be much more informed. - Alan

• Washington Psychotronic Society Is Back - Mondays @ McFadden's - No matter how hard DC tries to murder the Washington Pyschotronic Society, the Psychotronics keep rising like some awesome, crazy phoenix from Z movie ashes. So now, after a brief hiatus, you can again spend your Monday nights (granted, now @ McFadden's as opposed to the Warehouse theatre or The Passenger) watching the weirdest, creepiest, most hilarious movies you never even knew got made. If anyone's gonna keep DC even a little weird, it's these guys. And for that-we should all be thankful.

Please feel free to let us know in the comments if we missed something. And stay tuned for more fall guides (music, food, comedy, the works).

Previously in BYT Guides:

• 5/4: The Bourgey Guide to Guacamole
• 4/9: What to Wear to Work - Spring Edition
• 3/30: BYT STYLE GUIDE: SPRING/SUMMER 2012!!!
• 3/26: ARTS Guide: Spring/ Summer 2012
• 3/23: Creative Cocktailwear: BYT + Corcoran ARTINI 2012
• 3/22: Theatre Guide: SPRING/ SUMMER 2012
• 3/21: Food Guide: Spring/ Summer 2012
• 3/20: MUSIC GUIDE: SPRING/SUMMER 2012
• 3/19: FILM GUIDE: SPRING/SUMMER 2012
• 2/29: I Spy: A Movie Marathon