The other night, I saw one of the most widely acclaimed movies of the year, “The Descendants.” It’s got a 90% “fresh” rating from Top Critics on rottentomatoes.com. It’s been hailed by most of the major critics, and The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern calls it “the movie of the year.” And I hated every minute of it.

I am not alone in my opinion — two friends, whose informed opinions I trust, agree with me — but we are vastly outnumbered by the people on the bandwagon. I’ve been on the smaller side of critical opinion plenty of times, but I honestly can’t understand the praise for this film, not for the writing, the direction, the acting — none of it. Here are a few key points I feel compelled to make:

1. Theoretically, George Clooney’s character has drifted from his wife and family because he’s been so wrapped up in his business. I see no evidence of this in the movie. There is exactly one scene of him at his office. Here’s what we see:  He’s eating his lunch out of a Tupperware container at this desk. Yes, there are papers on his desk — but the phone doesn’t ring, no one is on hold, there are no clients waiting, and there’s no general clamor of industry. How does a dramatist signal “busy”? By showing such things. Instead, he’s just eating, and reading. The rest of the movie he seems similarly unrushed. If he’s been so busy, and we don’t see anyone else but an assistant at his legal practice, what’s going on with all those cases while he takes days at a time off to handle whatever business seems to — slowly — unfold in this movie? I don’t believe anything about George Clooney’s character, because I don’t see any evidence of reality behind it.
2. The young actor Nick Krause has gotten praise for his portrayal of a character named Sid, a guy who is some sort of surfer dude who tags along with the Clooney character’s daughter. Sid is not a character; he is an agglomeration of cute bits. At first he seems a clueless stoner — laughing at the old lady with Alzheimer’s — but in the middle of the night, when Clooney conveniently needs someone to talk to, we find that Sid is a sensitive young man whose father just died. The character flits between being Sean Penn in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and the too-earnest high schoolers in “The Breakfast Club,” mixed in with what passes for wisdom by supporting characters in feature films.
3. Here’s a dead giveaway about how clumsily the film is made. The first third of the film is heavy-handedly narrated by George Clooney, as he mopingly reads some excruciatingly on-the-nose voiceover that tells you more than you’d ever want to know. Mentally, I kept crossing all this out and recasting those early scenes with a new, invented friend for Clooney — someone he can, y’know, discuss things with. I guess the director and his screenwriters finally latched upon the same idea, because as other characters enter the film, the voiceover ends. Abruptly. Like the door on a steel cage slamming shut. So:  first third of the movie is narrated; last two-thirds have no narration. That’s clumsy, bad storytelling. Either we’re being told the story, or we aren’t. Instead, we’re in two movies:  one narrated (badly), and the other depicted (uninterestingly).
4. The trailer has been edited to make you believe this is a comedy. It isn’t a comedy. Or, if it is a comedy, it’s a comedy with no humor. Here’s how you know a comedy:  people in the theatre laughing. When I saw it, there was none of that.
5. The film is lacking in urgency, in story, and in high stakes. Part of the action deals with a large family land trust that must be dissolved; what will Clooney’s character and his family do with all that land, and that potential wealth? I don’t know, because the situation is remarkably lacking in facts. Instead, we get an endless long shot of the cay that will soon house condos and a golf course. That’s no substitution for people pressing their agendas.

I could go on about this — and have, in person, with other people (and, at times, with myself, narrating in my head Clooneyesque, but with a stronger sense of urgency) — but why would I do that? It’s because I’m still trying to figure two things out:  1) why all the acclaim; and 2) what has happened to Alexander Payne? “Sideways” and “Election” were terrific small-life movies, completely the opposite of this film. It’s difficult to reconcile those two satisfyingly funny and wrenching movies with this dud. Yes, everyone has an off day, but judging from “The Descendants” it’s difficult to believe that this writer-director once had an on day.

I do have one more thing to say:  Not every novel should be a movie. I haven’t read the novel, but I know that Payne did, and that he tries to be as faithful in his adaptations to the source novel as possible. In this case, I’m betting that that’s the key mistake. If the narration was lifted from that novel, it shouldn’t have been, and if Clooney’s character has no friends in that section of the novel — to show how isolated he is — then either we needed a different way to show that, or he needed to gain a friend for the movie.

If you see “The Descendants” and are with the critical mainstream on this, please comment. I’m curious to see your reply. If you haven’t seen it… you’ve been warned.

Hendrik Hertzberg on the political biopic we unfortunately didn’t get:  Alexander Hamilton, as shown by Francis Ford Coppola. I’d really like to see that.

The only portrayal of Hamilton I recall seeing in a film was of Rufus Sewell, in the HBO miniseries “John Adams.” Ron Chernow’s recent biography of Hamilton was unputdownable, largely because, as Hertzberg notes in the piece above, Hamilton’s life was filled with incident — discrimination; war; a sex scandal; a duel — and his legacy is large. (Including essentially founding American free enterprise.) But somehow Adams gets a miniseries and all Hamilton rates is one scene in that miniseries. Go figure.

Werner Herzog’s new documentary concerns capital punishment, and specifically two men on death row. I haven’t seen it yet — and passed up an opportunity Saturday night to see a screening of it followed by a Q&A with Herzog because I’m hoping to see the film with my son this weekend while I’m in San Francisco — but I’m eager to. Patrick Goldstein gives us a profile of Herzog and this new film. Best quote from it:

Being a journalist myself, I wanted to better understand Herzog’s own very public refusal to embrace capital punishment. He has repeatedly said that, as much as he loves living in America, he will not become a U.S. citizen as long as the country puts people to death.

“It is not a statement just about America,” he reminds me. “I cannot become a Chinese, Japanese, Russian or Egyptian citizen either, since they practice capital punishment too. I am from Germany, a country, in the time of the Nazis, that conducted an enormous campaign of capital punishment against its own citizens, and on top of that, carried out genocide against 6 million Jews. So from my standpoint, no state should be allowed to kill its citizens.”

I saw the new “Planet of the Apes” movie last night (“Rise of the…”) and absolutely loved it. (But then, I love all the “Apes” movies… with the exception of the execrable Tim Burton version.) One of the many delights of the movie were all the references to the classic film series, which many members of this Los Angeles cinema audience got. (When one of the characters cried out “Take your stinkin’ paw off me you damn dirty ape!” the audience broke out in applause.) The LA Times has helpfully compiled a list of all the new movie’s tips-of-the-hat  to its forebears. Here it is.

 I’m an admirer of Herzog’s films (see here and here and many other posts on this blog), and his documentaries are special treats. Like the Bush administration, Herzog never allows himself to be held back by the facts:  every insight is a product of his distinct imagination, delivered in his doomy Deutschland monotone. Herzog can imagine things we can’t; in his vision, nature is chaotic and insane, and to look animals in the eye is to address our continual war with them. (He also seems to think they are winning, or will win.)

For those interested in Herzog’s dystopian view and its mordant delivery, Slate has done us all a favor. They’ve compiled some of the choicest great moments in Werner Herzog voiceovers. (Although I’m sad that they couldn’t find a place for “Lessons of Darkness,” Herzog’s extraterrestrial look at the Kuwaiti oil fires set by Saddam Hussein, a film that’s an enormous shudder-inducing accomplishment.) But if you’re looking for a primer into the Herzog documentary method, Slate’s overview fills that function nicely.

Last Saturday, my friend Larry and I went to Silent Movie for an evening of the month-long John Cassavetes film fest. (The Silent Movie Theatre is still called Silent Movie, but it’s programmed by a group called The Cinefamily. They run Silents on Wednesdays and occasional other nights, and special programming the rest of the time.) I’m not a great fan of John Cassavetes’ work, but I was willing to see “Husbands,” starring Cassavetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara, if it afforded me the opportunity to see Gazzara live in person for a Q&A beforehand. I’ve always enjoyed Gazzara’s work, especially in “Buffalo ’66” and “Tales of Ordinary Madness.”

I was glad to have bought tickets in advance, because the event was sold out. Waiting in line in front of me was Danger Mouse, this generation’s answer to Brian Eno. My feeling is this:  You know you’re at a cool event when Danger Mouse is there too. And sitting next to me in the house was an actor from”Fringe” (who lit up when I told him, after I heard him bring up the Jersey Devil, that the creature was my distant cousin). One of the delights of living in Los Angeles is such memorable unexpected encounters.

Ben Gazzara was  terrific. I would say his advancing years have freed him to say anything, but I suspect he never censored himself much anyway. At age 80, his gruff macho persona is intact. When asked about shooting “Tales of Ordinary Madness,” which was derived from Charles Bukowski’s writing, he said Bukowski was “a pussy. The whole movie, I’m drinking Thunderbird, and he shows up with French wine.” He also impatiently waved off any number of the poor interviewer’s questions, making sour faces over the titles of various projects he clearly did just for the money and didn’t want to discuss. At other times, he just roared “No, no, you got it wrong.” The crowd loved him, but Gazzara also knows how to work a crowd, and how to get a laugh. After more than an hour, he said, “Awright, that’s enough,” and got up to go. Another example of good timing.

Unfortunately, what followed this was the movie. I’ve tried to like these Cassavetes films that have so many film-school acolytes, but I’m always left thinking they must think they have to like them, and therefore decide to like them, because there isn’t much in them to recommend them. My old playwriting teacher David Scott Milton (who, coincidentally, wrote a one-man show on Broadway that earned Ben Gazzara a Tony Award) knew the Cassavetes crowd and said he felt the problem with the films was editing — they needed some. I agree with that. I also think they would benefit from stories. “Husbands” is two hours and 11 minutes of Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara gassing around — first in New York, then in London. Sometimes they stumble onto something amusing, but nothing builds, and for much of the movie we wait while they search for inspiration. One extended near-rape scene in a London hotel is indicative of the problem:  Cassavetes’ character has picked up a blonde and they’re tussling around on the bed; it’s unclear whether she’s enjoying it or not — it seems mostly not — and the actress, unsure what she’s playing, winds up playing nothing, swinging between tears and laughter, playfulness and panic. Like the rest of the movie, there’s nothing we can make of it. Finally, and not one minute too soon, the movie ends with Cassavetes and Falk returning home, Gazzara’s character having decided to abandon his family to stay in London. I think it would’ve been good to see the scene where he struggles over that decision, or at least informs his friends of it. Instead, we find out when the two men get out of a taxi, without him, and discuss it. It’s always nice to miss the conflict.

I’ve seen most of the movies John Cassavetes wrote and directed, and really, only one is worth seeing: “Gloria.” Yes, Gena Rowlands plays the hell out of that role. But, importantly, there’s a story:  Rowlands plays the former mistress of a mobster, who now must shield an orphaned little boy from the mob that wants to kill him because of what he knows. It’s got one great scene after another, made great by the high stakes. Nobody has any time to gas around.  “Husbands” is all gas. Further proof that Danger Mouse is a genius:  He left before the movie started. Wish I had thought of that.

This Sunday at the much-loved (and rightly so) Steve Allen Theatre:  The Club Foot Orchestra plays live accompaniment to two silent-film masterpieces:  Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock, Jr.” and the classic German Expressionist tale “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”

About 15 years ago, I saw The Club Foot Orchestra perform their own score to that very same Keaton film — my favorite Keaton film, the one of which I have a framed poster facing me right this very minute — and they were fantastic. It was great, enormous fun, and I bought their CD. They also played alongside some “Felix the Cat” shorts — just as they promise to do this Sunday. I haven’t heard their score to “Caligari” — but I will on Sunday. I snapped up four tickets the moment this was announced. If you’d like to do the same, here’s the link.

A friend emailed me tonight to let me know that the television show “Rubicon” had been canceled. He said he knew it seemed silly, but he was a little down about it, as though he’d lost a friend. Why did he email me? Because he knew I’d feel the same way. We were the only two people we knew who were watching it.

“Rubicon” dealt with a group of government analysts tasked with sifting through reams of data, usually in the form of stacks of reports, to find clues about terrorist strikes. Ultimately, the team finds the source of terrorism against the U.S. — and it turns out to be their own organization. The first (and now last) season ended with the group having perpetrated a terrorist attack of enormous proportions, scuttling U.S. access to oil from the Gulf of Mexico and deeply wounding the U.S. economy. What would have happened next, we’ll never know.

What drew me to the show was its deliberate pacing, and its layers of meaning and characterization. In an age where it’s expected that everyone will be distracted at all times, “Rubicon” insisted that you pay attention. Midway through the season it occurred to me that some of the characters’ odd names must have been anagrams, or clues — and, indeed, I unscrambled “Kale Ingram” into Leak Margin — because he was a leak, and he played the margins. That sort of exploration provided superficial fun; what was more exciting was deciding that Mr. Ingram, who by all evidence could not be trusted, needed to be trusted by the main character, Will Travers, because Travers had nowhere else to turn. And so we were vicariously put into the position of all the characters — making alliances with unfit allies, just as players on the world stage do every day.

I did my bit advocating for the show, and I did manage to get one new person to watch it. “Rubicon”‘s finale claimed just over one million viewers. “Mad Men,” a show that has descended into ludicrousness, netted two-and-a-half million people for its own season finale. In a nation of 300 million people, that’s not that great a difference. While “Mad Men,” somehow, is in the zeitgeist, it didn’t start there; most people climbed onto the show via DVD prior to the second season. I think something similar would have, or could have, happened with “Rubicon.” At the least, I wish AMC had invested in one more season to find out.

I’m not the only one who will miss the show. (Here is Vanity Fair’s Mike Ryan bemoaning the show’s demise.) “Rubicon” was the only show I ever wanted to have a water-cooler conversation about. The problem was that no one else was at the water cooler yet.

Werner Herzog has a new movie out, “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?” Here’s Roger Ebert’s review. He likes it enormously — and makes it sound similar in tone and style to Herzog’s smashing (to me!) film of last year, “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.” (Or however that’s punctuated.) Which means I’ll be seeing this movie too. Eagerly. Ebert’s lede about the new film provides a thrilling reminder of why I adored the previous one:

Werner Herzog’s “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done” is a splendid example of a movie not on autopilot. I bore my readers by complaining about how bored I am by formula movies that recycle the same moronic elements. Now here is a film where Udo Kier’s eyeglasses are snatched from his pocket by an ostrich, has them yanked from the ostrich’s throat by a farmhand, gets them back all covered with ostrich mucus, and tells the ostrich, “Don’t you do that again!”

I too am tired of formula, and cheer Herzog for violating it. Or ignoring it. Or misunderstanding it. Or all three.

Earlier in the week, Ebert also supplied this sublime appreciation of Herzog and, specifically, “Aguirre, Wrath of God.” And it now occurs to me that it was watching Siskel & Ebert, 28 years ago, that turned me onto “Fitzcarraldo,” and therefore Werner Herzog. Siskel didn’t like it, but Ebert’s passion for it, accompanied by the sort of strange but compelling clip so typical of Herzog,  compelled me to see it. I owe Mr. Ebert a debt of gratitude.

Watch this, and then just try to take the Academy Awards seriously. I’ll be outside somewhere.