It’s a fertile time for cinematic apocalypses, with movies such as Melancholia, Take Shelter, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes all presenting wildly different takes on what happens at The End. Whatever the reasons for this sudden doomsday boom (the end of the Mayan Calendar, our current economic woes, the existence of a reality show starring Steven Seagal), it’s hard to deny the strange catharsis that can occur from watching a worst case scenario acted out. After seeing the Earth overrun by an army of super-intelligent monkeys or smushed by another planet, that late car payment and long-promised trip to the gym may suddenly seem a bit less weighty.

The unusually intimate Perfect Sense eschews most of the standard disaster movie tropes for a small scale look at individuals coping with unimaginable loss. While its storytelling style occasionally verges on the flowery, it benefits mightily both from the novelty of its central dilemma — here, a virus that systematically wipes out the population’s methods of sensory input — and from the realistically jagged relationship of its main characters, superbly played by Eva Green and Ewan McGregor. In lieu of gigantic special effects and thunderingly dramatic proclamations, it instead quietly focuses on how it can sometimes take the worst to bring out the best in people.

Beginning with a bracingly matter-of-fact bit of voiceover about human fragility, the film wastes little time getting into its narrative: As a mysterious virus causes the world to lose control of its senses (first smell, then taste, then hearing, and so forth), a chef (McGregor) and immunologist (Green) in Scotland find themselves increasingly drawn to each other, even as their ability to interact continually dwindles. Kim Fupz Aakeson’s script wisely keeps the sci-fi hows and whys of the premise in the background, focusing instead on the way that the characters adapt to the cataclysmic changes both within and without, with results that range from the blackly humorous (how does a restaurant critic survive in this new reality, anyway?) to the deeply poignant. When McGregor laments that he should have paid more attention to Green’s perfume when he had the chance, the tragedy of the situation is brought home in ways that the genre rarely allows.

Director David Mackenzie, who previously worked with McGregor on the superb Young Adam, generally keeps the tension at a slow roil, which makes the moments of overt hysteria all the more vivid. (A montage sequence where people across the globe suffer a sudden, simultaneous loss of their tastebuds is shuddery and wild.) If Perfect Sense sometimes veers into the arty preciousness that the too-on-the-nose title suggests (beware the scenes featuring a mime), Green and Macgregor’s mournful chemistry, to say nothing of an absolutely perfect final shot, ensures that it will linger long in the memory, warts and all. Who said the end of the world should be tidy, anyway?

For a further look at this new wave of disaster movies (including a lengthy digression by Yours Truly about my favorite film of last year, Melancholia), check out The Frye Museum’s 2011 Critics Wrap.

Thoughts? Questions? Favorite lines from The Omega Man? Let me know at alwright@gmail.com.

Margaret, Dir. Kenneth Lonergan
Now Playing at SIFF Cinema

You Can Count on Me, the Oscar-nominated 2000 directorial debut of playwright Kenneth Lonergan, was a marvel in miniature:  a brilliantly acted, acutely rendered character study that displayed a firm grasp of what to leave unsaid. Margaret, Lonergan’s follow-up, unfortunately accrued some legendarily bad mojo on its way to the screen. Originally shot in 2006, the footage collected dust on the shelf as the director and producer waged a legal war over the length of the final cut, with various running times reportedly ranging from 90 minutes to over four hours. Now finally granted release in 150 minute form (Martin Scorsese apparently lent an uncredited editorial hand), the resulting film is a truly odd experience: a sweepingly expansive post 9-11 reflection that is beautiful and frustrating and insightful and unfocused, sometimes all in the very same scene. I can’t stop thinking about it.

The story follows the wobbly trajectory of Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin), a privileged Upper West Side teenager whose combination of calculated disdain and vulnerability serve to flummox both her mother (J. Smith Cameron, Lonergan’s real-life wife) and teachers (including a still-dewy Matt Damon).  After she inadvertently contributes to a horrific traffic accident, Lisa finds her carefully constructed universe imploding, with her guilt leading her on a self-serving crusade against the bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) involved in the crash. Any capsule plot description, though, is really only scratching the surface of the filmmaker’s ambition, which combines pungent observations about education and art and performing and racism and the absurdities of the legal system into a heady, sometimes baffling stew. (The title of the film, taken from a Gerard Manly Hopkins poem, should serve as an indicator that the movie is aiming for the intellectual upper decks.)

Great movies are rarely perfect movies, to steal a line from Pauline Kael, and Margaret certainly qualifies for at least the latter category. Not to sympathize too much with the studio folks, but there are some notable flaws present here — most notably some shaky staging, and the relative unlikeability of the majority of the characters — that would rankle regardless of the film’s length. For all of its problems, however, Lonergan’s crazily overstuffed vision contains so many moments that feel just so perfectly, dead-solid right that it makes virtually everything else out there seem safe and toothless in comparison.  Grand folly, or unjustly truncated masterpiece? Both, maybe.

Also opening this week: Liam Neeson dukes it out with wolves in the existential action movie The Grey (Check out my review for the Portland Mercury), and the dopey but fun thriller Man on a Ledge, which I wrote up for Amazon.com.

Questions? Comments? Gerard Manly Hopkins knock knock jokes? Let me know at alwright@gmail.com

Director Steven Soderbergh has long made a habit of polishing up some pretty dusty genres, with results as varied as the glitzy heist movie (Ocean’s 11), the weepily inspirational true story (Erin Brockovich), and the all-star disaster flick (Contagion). Although a certain ironic humor pulses through all of his projects, the director crucially never looks down at his material, rather finding ways to bring what once connected with audiences back up to code.

The beauty of Haywire, Soderbergh’s astonished ode to the physical prowess of former American Gladiator Gina Carano, is how it genuinely feels like the type of movie you’d see at 3am starring Brian Bosworth, only, you know, good. Sporting a ridiculously overqualified cast and with all the non-essential elements jazzed into abstraction, it’s a pleasure without the slightest bit of guilt attached. If Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy brought back the joy of movies that respect and test the intelligence of the audience, then Soderbergh and Co. here rekindle the basic visceral pleasure of watching good-looking people duke it out, without a million disorienting cuts. This is not a small thing.

Soderbergh and writer Lem Dobbs, who previously collaborated on the brilliant The Limey, bring the same fractured (yet easily followed) style into play here, telling the story of Mallory Kane (Carano), a gloweringly lethal covert agent who gets left out to dry after a mission involving a fellow spy (Michael Fassbender) goes wrong. As she hunts down her weasel of an ex-boss (Ewan McGregor), actors such as Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, and Antonio Banderas all frantically try to stay out of range of her fists and feet. That’s all there is to it, really, but the intentional narrative simplicity is more than balanced by the deliciously straight-faced performances, some implausible-not-impossible action sequences (particularly a terrifically staged rooftop chase where the roving camera just always manages to be at exactly the right spot), and the way the music drops out during the brutally efficient fight scenes, all the better to appreciate the various thwacks, grunts, and thuds of the actors. Still, all of the filmmaking razzle-dazzle wouldn’t amount to much if the center didn’t hold, and Carano handily gets the job done. If her lack of experience makes her register more as a presence than an actor at this point, she brings a determination and no-fooling physicality to the movie that a more seasoned star would be lucky to muster. In a time of incomprehensible editing and waif-models beating up entire CGI armies , an extended shot of her determinedly hoofing it down an alleyway is the visual effect of the season.

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Also playing this week is SIFF Cinema’s terrific lineup of some of 2010’s best documentaries, featuring such worthy contenders as the heart wrenching man and monkey story Project Nim, Werner Herzog’s probing and brilliantly pointed death row saga Into the Abyss, and the fantastic musical reunion Thunder Soul, which manages to be feel-good without leaving any cloying aftertaste. (Click on the links for my reviews elsewhere.) Go to them all, or just wander into the theater at random; you can’t go wrong, really.

Questions? Comments? Pictures of the Boz? Let me have ‘em at alwright@gmail.com

Next Week: The long, long, long delayed Margaret (Note: don’t Google it unless you have some free time.)

The closest thing Hollywood has to a literal definition of Oscar Bait, the biopic genre has long held to a strict blueprint: Find an actor with a slight resemblance to a historical figure, focus on a plot element that reductively informs all of that subject’s accomplishments and stumbles (Johnny Cash’s older brother, J. Edgar Hoover’s taste in clothing, etc.), and sit back and start writing your awards speech. While an engaging anomaly does occasionally make it through the system (personal favorite: Michael Mann’s expressionistic Ali), the prefab nature of the majority of these films makes their viewing seem more dutiful than entertaining: walking out of the theater, it’s hard to feel like history has been properly served.

Taken strictly as an example of the genre, the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady feels clunkier than most: an examination of a fascinatingly divisive figure that never really settles on its own point of view. The thing is, however, is that it also has Meryl Streep, who delivers a performance that somehow manages to rise above her own estimable watermark. Whatever the failings of the film, she strides through, fantastic and untouched.

Told in a jumbled, hopscotchy fashion, the script by Abi Morgan (Shame) begins with the former British Prime Minister in her later years, facing both public obscurity and some worrying signs of mental instability. (The symptoms of which include the continued presence of her deceased husband, played by the always welcome Jim Broadbent.) As she reflects on her life, the flashbacks start flying. Director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) displays a nice touch for period detail (many valiant cans of Aquanet gave their lives for this film), but stumbles badly when it comes to capturing the tonal shifts that made her subject both a hero and villain of the people. Whether dealing with the Falkland Islands or showing Thatcher giving her daughter a driving lesson, the film trodges along at the same unvaried, strangely incurious pace.

Man alive, though, does Streep ever bring it. While her impersonations have always been technically flawless (her capturing of her subject’s flutey upper vocal register is a marvel to behold) , the actress’s particular genius lies in understanding and evoking what’s going on inside the familiar mannerisms, with seemingly every small gesture and inflection working to evoke a complete 3D portrait. Although the filmmakers behind The Iron Lady never really show a grasp of how their central character can be both beloved and reviled, Streep brilliantly captures how strength can become weakness, and back again.

Also at local theaters: Roman Polanski’s fantastically nasty Carnage, based on the Tony-award winning play. (My review for Amazon.com can be found here.)

Even among such strong showings from Streep and Polanski, though, the theatrical event of the week undoubtedly comes courtesy of the folks at SIFF Cinema, who have put together a seven-day dip into the mind of one of cinema’s most brilliant and idiosyncratic artists. In Dreams: The Films of David Lynch serves as a comprehensive primer into the filmmaker’s funny and terrifying exercises in dream logic, with results ranging from the early undiluted weirdness of Eraserhead, the fascinatingly odd would-be blockbuster Dune, Blue Velvet’s demonic Hardy Boys antics, and finishing up with what may be his finest achievement, the savage and tender Hollywood nightmare Mulholland Dr. (Lynch’s most recent film, the hallucinatory-even-for-him Inland Empire, is noticeably absent from the lineup, most likely because SIFF doesn’t want to be held liable for people dazedly walking into trees and striking up conversations with squirrels after a viewing.) Highly recommended for die-hard fans, newbies, and anyone looking to take up insomnia. (Click here for my earlier appreciation of Lynch’s short films for The Stranger.)

Thoughts? Comments? Favorite Frank Booth lines? Let me know at alwright@gmail.com, and thanks for stopping by.

Coming up next week: Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; and some of the past year’s best documentaries. Note: One of them stars a monkey.