The Grey

You wouldn't think, based on the film's rather bland and inoffensive trailer, that it would be possible for The Grey to generate any sort of controversy whatsoever. You'd be wrong. According to animal rights activists, the film viciously slanders wolves, a species which only attacks humans under extremely rare conditions, has never been known to hunt humans in packs, and certainly never picks off stranded oil rig workers one by one like the alien in Predator. 

But wait, isn't The Grey just a silly B-movie that no one will remember in two weeks? Nope...it's apparently an incitement to commit wolf-genocide that needs to be boycotted ASAP. Because if it's not, who knows? Audiences might storm out of the theatre, head to the nearest forrest, and go on a massive wolf-killing spree or something.

An anti-Grey online petition has already been started. The goal is to collect 10,000 signatures. So far, 256 signatures have been collected.

Not surprisingly, film critics have been a bit more generous in their assessment. The consensus seems to be that while the story follows the same template as other survival-in-the-wilderness movies like Alive and The Way Back and The Edge, the presence of Liam Neeson and the impressively bleak Smithers, BC locations (subbing in for Alaska) more than compensate.

Encouragingly, there haven't been any cases of movie critics killing wolves following The Grey press screenings.

Current Rotten Tomatoes fresh rating: 79%

One For the Money

There are at least three reasons to suspect that One For the Money, an adaptation of the Janet Evanovich novel of the same name, might not be very good: 1) it wasn't screened in advance for critics, 2) the trailer is awful, and 3) it stars Katherine Heigl, an actress renowned for choosing terrible movie roles.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about One For the Money is that it co-stars Daniel Sunjata, an actor who believes that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by the U.S. government and that the mainstream media helps cover this up by constantly churning out frivolous, vacuous entertainment that turns people into sheep. Other celebrities who believe that 9/11 was an inside job have chosen to act on this knowledge by starring in Two and a Half Men (Charlie Sheen), Friends With Benefits (Woody Harrelson), and Nip/Tuck (Rosie O'Donnell).

Current Rotten Tomatoes fresh rating: No score yet.

A Separation

Most of the commentary following Tuesday's Oscar announcements focused on the snubbing of Michael Fassbender, Albert Brooks, Andy Serkis, and Stephen Spielberg, but perhaps the biggest surprise of the morning was the inclusion of A Separation in the best original screenplay category. This was surprising not just because foreign language films rarely ever break through into the major categories (especially when they originate from Iran), but also because A Separation is the type of movie that doesn't feel like it had been written. Indeed, you'd be forgiven for thinking halfway through that you were watching a great courtroom documentary. Except A Separation is actually more documentary-like than most documentaries. 

According to writer/director Asghar Farhadi, "Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we'll still be heartbroken." And heartbroken we are. The characters in A Separation are all good, complicated people who are put in bad, complicated situations, and watching them trying to extricate themselves from these situations is as riveting as it is painful. In this regard, the movie is a bit like 24, only with lengthy legal procedures in lieu of torture and machine gun fights. That it manages to make lengthy legal procedures just as exciting as machine gun fights is one of the movie's many great accomplishments.

Had I seen it in 2011, A Separation almost certainly would have taken the top spot on my best of year list.