Matt Ruff’s The Mirage (2012) brilliantly realizes its high concept premise, but ultimately it feels like less than the sum of its parts.  This one takes place in a geopolitical mirror universe.  Here, the War on Terror begins on 11/9, when Christian terrorists fly jetliners into Baghdad skyscrapers, and the “United Arab States” retaliates by invading a fragmented North America in search of the extremists responsible.  The novel’s heroes are agents of Arabian Homeland Security:  Mustafa, Amal, and Samir.  This trio of friends is assigned by the president of the UAS. to investigate a mystery:  artifacts are turning up from an alternative universe, one in which the UAS is not the world superpower and North America is not comprised of troubled, warring smaller nations.  Their investigation of this “myth” leads them across the states of the Middle East, then over the ocean to North America, and back again.

The Mirage starts like a house on fire, and it’s a triumph of clever and entertaining world-building.  Ruff’s reverso-world is rich and inventive, a fascinating reimagining of the world order, with the United Arab States painted as an Islam-influenced version of the USA, tormented by backwater religious extremists from across the Atlantic.  The UAS’s version of Wikipedia, the “Library of Alexandria,” serves as a nifty device for fleshing out the world.  And Ruff’s protagonists are likeable and well realized, heroes caught in the switches of complicated political maneuverings.

But what does it add up to?  With its high concept, post-9/11 premise, the novel is inherently political, and its consistent, unwavering message is a bit  obvious.  Both sides are awful, the book suggests; both sides are complicit in the tragic world conflicts of the 21st century.   If fortunes were reversed, the bin Ladens and Husseins of the world would be powerful politicians and organized crime bosses, cloaking their evils in the exploitation of a flawed legal system.  Meanwhile, the Dick Cheneys and Donald Rumsfelds of the world, removed of their socioeconomic privilege, would be warlords and international criminals, pursuing their power by different means.

It’s a potent concept, and Ruff pursues it with his characteristic audacity, but in the end I’m not sure it entirely sustains the pages.  There’s an implicit promise, once the groundwork is laid, that broader insights will be revealed as the alternate universe mystery is solved.  To me, those broader insights never arrive, though, and the solution to the mystery isn’t satisfying.  Once the initial rush of world-discovery wears off, the novel lives or dies on the strength of its narrative alone, and while my investment in the world and characters kept me reading, ultimately the payoff was minimal.  It’s definitely an interesting work, worthwhile for its vivid world-building and stirring opening, but it winds down disappointingly.

Rachel Weisz is quickly becoming one of those actresses who compels me to see whatever she does.  She’s proven consistently that she can carry a film, but even better, she seems to have good taste, and a knack for landing strong roles.  The Whistleblower (2010) is a bleak, powerful piece of of work, often hard to watch, but Weisz makes it worth the struggle.

She stars as Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska police officer who’s in a bind:  her ex-husband is relocating to Georgia, and he’s taking her daughter with him.  Unable to manage a transfer but not wanting to leave her career, she lands a temporary opportunity that will bankroll her move:  a job as a peacekeeper for the U.N. in Bosnia, helping train local police as the country attempts to rebuild in the wake of devastating war.  As it turns out, she attacks the work with considerably more zeal than her counterparts, and is quickly singled out to head the Gender Affairs department.  But there, her investigation into a sex trafficking operation leads her into dark, ugly places, where her politically minded superiors don’t necessarily want her to go.

Based on a true story, The Whistleblower is hard-hitting, heavy stuff, and its depiction of widespead brutality and corruption rings tragically authentic.  The only thing that makes viewing such systemic injustice bearable is Weisz, whose character — with only a handful of allies — serves as a beacon of hope in a dark, unforgiving landscape.  A well made film worth watching, but be forewarned:  thick skin required.

Black Book (2006) is one of the first films I saw in the theater after moving to Los Angeles, and I remember quite enjoying it, but the intervening years have taken some of the shine off the apple.  It’s still a beautifully produced film, and Carice van Houten is still superb in it, but perhaps bombarding myself with similar fare since then has somewhat inured me to its strengths.  Or, perhaps on a second viewing, it just felt more like a Paul Verhoeven film.

Black Book tells the story of Rachel Stein (van Houten), a Jewish singer in occupied Holland during the latter stages of World War II.  When a stray bomb takes out her hiding place, she’s forced to make a run for it, and joins a group of fugitives headed for Belgium.  But a German patrol boat ambushes them, killing everyone but her.  She’s rescued by, and comes to work for, the Dutch Resistance — and proves to be a natural at it, particularly when, by chance, she meets and charms the local Gestapo chief, Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch).  Under a new alias, she poses as a collaborator to facilitate Resistance operations against the Nazis, but her romantic entanglement with Müntze and the unpredictability of war send her on an even more treacherous journey than she was anticipating.

It’s compelling, and very attractively produced.  The period is convincingly realized, and particularly in the early stages, the plot is nicely structured, as Rachel’s simple, quiet life in hiding gradually propels her into intrigue and violence.  But far and away the best reason to watch the film is van Houten, who is scintillating in a gutsy performance as a woman who throws herself headlong into a cause with horrific personal consequences.

That said, Verhoeven’s proclivity for exploitation does rear its ugly head, with gratuitous nudity and glamorized violence heightening reality.  These elements combine uncomfortably with its old fashioned atmosphere and music to make it something of a tonal muddle.  Is this a serious and harrowing look at the ugly sacrifices of war, or a slick, glossy piece of romantic entertainment?   Awkwardly, it’s both.  The film winds down with a few brutally dark twists too many, so that when van Houten — in a heart-breakingly raw delivery that really should be her finest moment — says “Will it never end?,” the impact is rather mitigated by the meta-thought it conjures.  Will the film ever end?  Definitely worth watching, but with some reservations. (And, side note:  an interesting film to compare against another list selection, Lust, Caution, a thematically similar film that is both more and less satisfying.)

While I enjoyed the run-up of Marvel solo movies, for me the characters involved — especially Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor — were Avengers first and individual heroes second.  Finally, The Avengers (2012) brings them all together, and better, they’re brought together by Joss Whedon, who handles superhero group dynamics as well, if not better, than anybody.  The result is laugh-out-loud funny, visually stunning, and wildly entertaining.  Two and half hours has never blazed past so quickly.

The plot is a typical Marvel universe kludge of threats from other dimensions, pseudoscience run amok, and larger-than-life characters exchanging blows and banter.  The spy organization SHIELD, led by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), is investigating an artifact called the Tesseract — which, it is believed, could be a source of limitless clean energy.  The Tesseract is stolen by the trickster god Loki (Tom Hiddleston), whose plan is to unleash an alien army on the Earth and take over.  To counter the threat, Fury convinces the World Security Council to re-start the abandoned Avengers Initiative, bringing together a team of extraordinary individuals to combat the threat.  Not that they assemble all that cooperatively; only the duty-driven Captain America (Chris Evans) joins without complaint.  A reluctant Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is recruited by SHIELD superspy Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) to help track the Tesseract.  Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) reports, but deeply suspicious of SHIELD’s hidden agenda, and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) only shows up to settle a score with his brother Loki.  From these scattered beginnings, this disorganized band of individuals must come together as a team to hold off the invading alien army and defeat Loki.

Of course, you don’t really see Marvel films for the plots.  You see them for the eyeball kicks, the witty quips and intense action sequences.  And while The Avengers has these attributes in spades, it also has Joss Whedon, who’s a master of created family ensemble dynamics, and he manages to throw his iconic arsenal of heroes together in endlessly entertaining combinations.  On the character level — especially for those of us steeped in Marvel lore, watching familiar figures leap to life on the screen — The Avengers is a smashing success.  In the flesh, Cap, Thor, and Iron Man are much more likeable than my impressions of them from my comic book days.  Mark Ruffalo frequently steals the show with his amusing performance as Bruce Banner, while The Hulk’s rampages have never been realized quite so effectively on screen.  Whedon also gives plenty of heroic moments to his SHIELD roster:  Fury, Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), and especially Black Widow, whose deviousness and acrobatics are nicely realized.  My only real disappointment on this score was Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who — primarily for reasons of plot — didn’t quite capture the smiling, brash wiseass of my memory.  Which isn’t to say Renner isn’t the right man for the job, but I think my standards are higher for this character, who’s pretty much always been my favorite Avenger.  (At any rate, I came away from this one hoping that the quietly rumored Agents of SHIELD film comes to pass.  Although frankly, if another solo movie comes out of The Avengers, I hope it goes to Black Widow.)

On the downside, there are some sketchy story transitions — hmm, why did this or that character suddenly start cooperating? — but for the most part I think Whedon does a great job drawing all the threads together from the various lead-in films.  In a sense, the script — like the production, I expect — is a triumph of logistics, cramming in so many characters and subplots in a limited space, meanwhile mining the lore to make it ring true for old-timers.  But ultimately this isn’t a film that begs critical deconstruction…it’s mainly just a vastly entertaining romp of a good time, and probably moreso for folks who are already fans of The Avengers or Joss Whedon.  For a fan of both, like me, this film almost sounds to good to be true.  But wow:  it’s true!

For all the iffy, “talking-point” entries on the Spy 100 list, there are at least as many obscure, unjustly overlooked gems like 5 Fingers (1952).  A classy, twisty tale of historical intrigue — evidently based on a true story — this one is clever, smart, and thoroughly satisfying.  Set in neutral Turkey during World War II, it’s the story of Ulysses Diello (the great James Mason), valet for the British Ambassador in Ankara.  Diello, exhausted with his servile and thankless role in life, starts selling top secret documents to the Germans, his plan to bankroll a change of identity and buy a new life.  As an accomplice, he recruits the exiled Polish countess Anna Staviska (Danielle Darrieux), now destitute and aimless, but ambitious for a return to wealth.  Diello’s risky plan sets both German and British intelligence services in frantic motion, as the Germans try to determine whether Diello is a genuine or fake traitor, and the Brits struggle to identify the source of their intelligence leak.

The plot of 5 Fingers is impressively convoluted and engaging, like a multifaceted, black-and-white Mission: Impossible episode where the schemes and objectives of each side — and there are many sides — intersect and influence each other unpredictably.  For all the chaos, though, there’s precision to the structure, and it all resolves quite neatly.  The sharp dialogue is well performed, with Darrieux making for an unconventional love interest, low-key and sardonic.  (When asked why she left Warsaw:  “Bombs were falling.  I felt I was in the way.”)  But the film belongs to Mason, who walks the line brilliantly as the controlled and subservient valet, whose intelligence and class resentment lead him down treacherous paths in pursuit of a new life.  He is both hero and villain simultaneously, both sympathetic and deplorable as the film’s complicated protagonist.  His performance alone is worth the price of admission, but there’s plenty of other assets to sweeten the pot, not the least of which is a terrific score from the great Bernard Herrmann.  This one is unjustly obscure, well  worth tracking down.

An interesting little indie drama from Norway, Hawaii, Oslo (2004) is perhaps over-serious, but  carries off its premise and style confidently.  During a rare Scandinavian heatwave, the troubled lives of various people intersect and interconnect, revolving around a curious man named Vidar (Trond Espen Seim).  A worker at a psychiatric hospital, Vidar is cursed with precognitive dreams, wherein he often witnesses horrible, tragic events before they happen.  When his latest dream shows one of his charges at the hospital, Leon (Jan Gunnar Roise), run down and killed by an ambulance, he races out onto the streets of Oslo to track down his friend and try to change fate.

This is one of those ambitious ensemble dramas that sends a vast cast of characters into complex, fatalistic motion, ricocheting with clever coincidence into one and others’ paths – for some reason the perfect antecedent escapes me, but I know I’ve seen this kind of film before and tend to enjoy it.  (Magnolia, perhaps? Or 13 Conversations About One Thing?)  Unfortunately the twist that intrigued me the most – Vidar’s essential omniscience – could probably have been played up more.  Vidar’s dream knowledge leads to interesting encounters, as he reveals information he shouldn’t know to the characters he interrogates during his search.  Alas, the film doesn’t milk this idea for much, focusing instead on the more standard dramatic problems of its ensemble:  births and deaths, shattered and forming relationships, etc.  But even if it doesn’t play up its nifty genre aspects enough for my liking, it’s still a deft undertaking, well performed and winningly produced.  Good stuff.

Tobias S. Buckell’s Arctic Rising (2012) is a swift, smart, and thought-provoking future thriller that wrestles with the consequences of global warming on the arctic north.  Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the United Nations Polar Guard, her job to monitor shipping traffic in the newly opened, ice-free waterways of the Northwest Passage.  When sensors detect radiation on a vessel passing through their area, Anika hails the crew, only to come under fire. The incident draws her inexorably into a dangerous mystery, leading her across the dramatically transformed northern landscape in pursuit of terrorists hellbent on realizing a world-shaping hidden agenda.

It’s a speedy, thoroughly engaging read from start to finish, propulsively paced and filled with well realized characters and timely, interesting speculation on what the opening of the Arctic might mean in the greater scheme of world affairs.  Anika, a tough-nosed Nigerian expat with a checkered past, makes for a likeable and engaging hero, and the plot is compelling, but most captivating for me was the world-building. Buckell’s depiction of the new northern settlements – from towns in the northern Canadian islands to the polar glacier settlement Thule – are evocative, filled with memorable imagery and driven by interesting sociopolitical speculation.  At times the narrative stumbles a little under the weight of exposition, but I generally found the odd infodump forgiveable in light of the fascinating subject matter and streamlined action structure.  It’s an exciting ride, both entertaining and enlightening, that grapples interestingly with imminent global concerns.

I’m woefully underfamiliar with the work of Hayao Miyazaki – I did see a few of his films many, many years ago, but I don’t think I was in the right place to appreciate them then.  Now that I’ve seen My Neighbor Totoro  (1988), I have a feeling I’m going to see more.  This is a wonderful, wonderful movie, beautifully animated and refreshingly uncynical.

It’s the story of two young girls who move to an old, run-down house in the country with their father.  Big sister Satsuki and little sister Mei joyously explore their new surroundings, meanwhile constantly catching glimpses of magical beings around them (which the adults in their midst, naturally, never quite see).  Among these sightings:  a giant, fiercely cute nature spirit they come to know as Totoro.

My Neighbor Totoro is an atmospheric, touching and amusing celebration of childhood imagination.  Gorgeously animated, the film creates a palpable sense of youthful fascination with discovery, each new magical find triggering a sense of wide-eyed wonder in the children, both exciting and frightening.  There’s not much plot to it, but there’s sentiment, sense of wonder, and cuteness to burn, all of it impressively artful.  A unique viewing experience, upbeat and utterly charming.

I’ve long ago dispensed with the notion that the Spy 100 list constitutes the genre’s best films; like most lists, clearly it’s more about generating discussion than gauging absolute quality.  Our Man Flint (1966) provides more evidence to back this idea.   A colorful Bond spoof, this one is noteworthy – perhaps – as an early (groundbreaking?) example of the comedy spinoffs that followed in the wake of 007’s debut.  Beyond that, it’s pretty avoidable.

The plot, such as it is:  a trio of mad scientists are holding the world hostage with a weather control device.  The world government organization ZOWIE  (Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage – yep, you heard me), led by the blustering Cramden (Lee J. Cobb), needs to shut down the dastardly scientists, but none of their regular agents are up to the task.  Enter dashing superspy Derek Flint (James Coburn), a wealthy womanizing playboy hero who’s selected – much to Cramden’s dismay – by the ZOWIE computers as the perfect man for the job.  Flint’s globetrotting adventure takes him all across Europe before eventually depositing him, for the final confrontation, on the vocalnic island paradise of the criminal organization Galaxy.

Our Man Flint was probably an inevitable reaction to the 007 phenomenon:  a much deserved send-up of the fantasy-adventure wish-fulfillment nature of the James Bond universe.  Unfortunately it’s not really funny or clever enough to vindicate its concept, and anyway to me it feels too much of a piece with the franchise it’s lampooning, rather than a subversion of it.  Fatally, the humor misses the mark far more than it hits; the only high concept laugh (“spoiler” alert) comes when Flint learns that the villains are actually trying to create a utopia, which only inspires him — rather sociopathically — to destroy them anyway.  Past that it’s little more than a poorly paced, unfunny comic-book spy travelogue – full of lovely ladies and flashy visuals, but ultimately tedious.  It’s not entirely without camp value, but if you’re in the mood for this kind of thing, you’re much better off watching the OSS 117 movies.

After the trauma of Antichrist, I went into my next Lars von Trier experience with reluctance, but Melancholia (2011) definitely rewarded my “bravery.”  Like most von Trier films, it’s moody, atmospheric, and decidedly bleak, but it’s also a meticulous, beautifully composed film, and a rather astonishing science fictional metaphor for coping with depression.

It’s a tale of two sisters, told in two chapters.  The first belongs to Justine (Kirsten Dunst), an advertising copywriter who comes to her brother-in-law’s country club to marry an earnest young coworker named Michael (Alexander Skarsgaard).  The outrageously lavish wedding reception, organized by her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), turns out to be an awkward, protracted affair thanks to Justine, who underneath an outwardly cheerful façade is battling a positively crippling sense of despair.  The aftermath of this event is touched on later in Claire’s chapter, which occurs in the shadow of a looming cosmic event:  another planet, Melancholia, is passing close to the Earth.  Despite the reassurances of her business-minded husband John (Kiefer Sutherland), Claire worries about a collision:  an apocalyptic fear made worse by the return of Justine, whose depression has taken another, even more intense turn.

Melancholia won’t be for everyone — it’s heavy, slow, and dark to be sure — but for me it really resonated, a psychological study with a clever science fictional spin.  Anyone who’s wrestled with depression is probably familiar with that desperate feeling of everything being the end of the world.  Von Trier literalizes this metaphor brilliantly, helped considerably by gorgeous cintematography and raw, moving performances from his leads, particularly Dunst, who is exquisite.  Like most von Trier films, occasional perverse decisions sometimes raise an eyebrow, but for the most part it’s a polished narrative, slow but assured, that cleverly integrates the personal emotional crises of its characters with a true global apocalypse.  A remarkable film.