At the movies: Observe and Report.

Seth Rogen is one of the country's most reliable comic actors, and he luxuriates in the emotional mess that is mall guard Ronnie Barnhardt. Though the part screams out for writer/director Jody Hill's muse Danny McBride (who has a brief and glorious cameo), Rogen's affability helps lead the audience into dark and beautifully-messed up paths. McBride is one of the more intriguing screen personas of recent years, and between his remarkable screen debut as Bust-Ass in David Gordon Green's All The Real Girls and last summer's Pineapple Express, he's crafted a fascinating body of work. But he can't really bring across empathy, and that's one of the reason that Rogen works so well in the role.

Look no further than enduring treasure Celia Weston as Ronnie's long-suffering mother to find this film's glorious blend of the meaningful, the misconceived, and the monstrous; her scenes with Rogen are remarkable acheivements in taking the grotesque and making them sweet. Weston is like a Flannery O'Connor character, a female Harry Dean Stanton, and she (and Collette Wolf as the crippled baristress Nell) provide the first truly iconic female characters to Hill's cinematic universe.

Barnhardt (Seth Rogen) is a bipolar mall security guard longing for an unattainable blonde (comic goddess Anna Faris) who decides to clean up the filth of the mall by any means necessary, while also defending a young, put-upon woman from exploitative management scum. So we pretty much have Taxi Driver as a screwball comedy, with the added glistening layer of pharmacology that operates in symbiosis with mental illness. Also, it may have the funniest use of heroin I've yet seen in a film.

Regarding this film's more transgressive moments, I have this to say: Observe and Report does not endorse date rape any more than it endorses going off one's prescription medications or beating up children. It's a messed-up film that depicts messed-up behavior, and it's rightly R-rated. It's also a fascinating portrait/indictment of our national fascination with the 'loner who does good' archetype, because Ronnie Barnhardt is emotionally disturbed, and his actions are disturbed. Does the end justify the means? Certainly not, but like Taxi Driver, society seems to think so if all loose ends get tidied up. So where are this film's arrows targeted?

Hill's last film was the near-unwatchable The Foot Fist Way. But in the interim, he and his North Carolina associates have upped their game, giving us the exceptional HBO series Eastbound and Down. And now, with Observe and Report, he's given us the first great major motion picture of 2009. Acerbic, open-hearted, deeply troubled, and walking a fine line between madness and glory, if it starred Nicole Kidman or Bryce Dallas Howard, it could beautifully conclude Lars Von Trier's USA Trilogy. Your friends who'll hate it aren't really your friends.

At the movies: Monsters vs Aliens.

Continuing to build on the strength of their underrated Kung-Fu Panda, Dreamworks Animation sets it aim high with this delightful throwback to the SciFi films of the 50s and 60s. Taking icons of those films, then tweaking them just a little, we get some remarkable characters: Seth Rogen’s take on The Blob (here, just called Bob) is breezily funny, and Will Arnett (Arrested Development, 30 Rock) gets at the existential heart of The Missing Link, a monster who just wants a tropical island full of Spring Breakers to terrify. Hugh Laurie’s Vincent Price/The Fly/mad scientist tribute, Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D., is a personal favorite, and Reese Witherspoon, as the 49’11” Ginormica (and the piece’s primary heroine), does well with the film’s message of empowerment and open-heartedness.

But all of them, I tell you, pale in comparison to Insectosaurus. A grub accidentally afflicted by a nuclear explosion, Insectosaurus is 350 feet tall and quite possibly the most adorable movie monster ever. Sort of a friendly collision between Godzilla, Mothra, and Gossamer from the Looney Tunes, Insectosaurus made me laugh just by being in the frame.

So our team of monsters finds itself the only hope for the nation that shunned and imprisoned them when an impending alien invasion threatens the world as we know it. And what distinguishes Monsters vs Aliens most from its predecessors of Cold War SciFi is its willingness to embrace the other rather than rattling paranoid cages. Its 3-D effects (which, ideally, is the way to experience it) are subtle and immersive, but they up the excitement level considerably, and the diverse audience of families and critics I saw it with had a great time, excepting the itty bitty children who just couldn’t wrap their little heads around the concept of a friendly monster.

At the movies: Pineapple Express

Director David Gordon Green has been making great films since his 2000 debut George Washington, and he’s been crafting a thoughtful and distinctive career making smaller, contemplative films about American lives that we don’t often see. So it’s intriguing to see what happens when he, having already hewn out a distinctive approach to character and visual mood, joins forces with the armies of current comedy godhead Judd Apatow. The end result is a scruffy and beautiful stoner amble through genres past, capable of combining bleary-eyed 70s guffaws with car-chasing, property-exploding 80s-styled thrills.

It’s a remarkable achievement as a film, if for nothing else than letting James Franco be funny again. Everything since Freaks and Geeks has found our man James stuck in brooding mode (one of the pleasures of the overly-maligned Spiderman 3 being Franco’s turn during Harry Osborne’s goofy amnesiac scenes), so to find him let loose with comedic gold like drug dealer/future civil engineer Saul Silver is pure pleasure. Star Seth Rogen gets to work his flusterable everydude thing, and that’s all well and good, but the film belongs to Franco and costar Danny McBride. As Red, a middleman who ties Saul to shot caller/murderer Ted Jones (Gary Cole, looking like he’s ready to file some TPS reports on the world’s ass), McBride hearkens back to his bigscreen debut (as Bust-Ass in Green’s 2001 masterpiece All The Real Girls) and banishes all memory of his near-unwatchable ‘comedy’ The Foot Fist Way from earlier this summer.


Pineapple Express is literally the specific strain of marijuana that ties process server Dale Denton (Rogen) to the scene of a murder. The plot, courtesy of Rogen and writing partner Evan Goldberg (who wrote last year’s Superbad) is a meandering thing that spans seventy or so years, a lazy-assed conspiracy, and a small-scale drug war, but one that nevertheless ranks with 2003’s Shaun of the Dead in its insights into the vicissitudes of male friendships. The ace in the hole with this film, though, is the visual grace that Green and his ace cinematographer Tim Orr bring to the proceedings- this is easily the best-looking film that has ever emerged from Apatow Productions. Here’s to more fruitful collaborations along this line, and much respect to all involved parties for maintaining their respective integrities.