Limitless: Money never sleeps

Nothing nails the hyperconsciousness of Neil Burger's Limitless like its opening credits, a Google Street View constantly zooming ahead, not thinking about the next step but the next forty. Limitless casts Bradley Cooper as an Ozymandias figure—Watchmen, not Shelley—sitting in front of his 80 television screens as he sorts through all the information to make connections about what’s going on in the world, and Cooper makes a winning hero as he transforms from a self-hating schlub without any of the depression to a cocky genius begging to be taken down a peg to a paranoid addict who will drink anything for another hit. There are shades of “Be careful what you wish for” on top of the obvious addiction stuff (which offers a few chilling surprises), but it’s mostly an illustration of every man for himself, a vicious strain of capitalism taking increasing hold in America. It gets lost a bit in the middle, but Leslie Dixon’s screenplay nails not just the violence of selfishness but the hypocrisy: nobody gets ahead on their own.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: Childish things

As half-films go, David Yates' Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Film 8: Abbott and Costello Meet Voldemort lurches from scene to setpiece like it’s Daniel Radcliffe’s awkwardly effortful performance. Every phrase of dialogue between Harry and Griphook the Goblin. No matter how connected. Is perforated by so much gravitas the whole thing collapses in on itself like an unpracticed spell. Luckily we’re almost immediately watching Helena Bonham Carter’s hilarious Hermione seek Nazi gold deep in some glorious vault of a Swiss bank housing all the danger and splendor of JK Rowling’s imagination, the fantasy elements dependably invigorating the film. There’s not much there, if you catch my meaning, but for a series that prides itself on hard-won morality tales (e.g. the Cedric Diggory lesson) despite its black/white morality, any complexity is a step forward, and the World War II overtones, however cheap, at least introduce some gray between the happy, decent good guys and the racist authoritarian bad guys.

Meek's Cutoff: State of the union

“Is he ignorant, or is he just plain evil?” Michelle Williams’ pioneer asks of hapless guide Stephen Meek as their wagon train of three loosely tied families winds up lost in the wasteland with depleting resources and a native prisoner in Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff. Constantly hidden between his cowboy hat and his macho man beard, the only thing Bruce Greenwood’s Meek does better than self-mythologize is insist he’s right in the face of facts that beg to differ. Soon Will Patton as Williams’ husband assumes de facto leadership, but his pragmatism is just as dangerously heartless as Meek’s stubbornness, and it’s too unwilling to break with tradition to straighten the course, Reichardt brilliantly framing the wagons as ever so slightly listing in their hazy panoramas. It’s up to Williams as the increasingly assertive godmother of liberal internationalism to save their society, and then only if the others haven’t caused enough damage. Reichardt doesn’t pretend to know if charity is enough, but she nails Bush, Obama, and their ideological guardians in this gripping, heartfelt state of the union address.

2011 Dream Emmy Ballot: Drama

In a few hours are the nominations for the Sedgwick Cryer Awards Charade, but for now we can still pretend like Terriers is an Emmy candidate with our dream ballots. There are two points to keep in mind: 1) I have as much interest in assessing probability as I do in watching Hot in Cleveland, which it turns out is a likely contender. These are just the nominees I would pick from the submissions were I hundreds of balding west coast liberals brainwashing your children. 2) A show cannot be chopped into pieces to be judged individually and arbitrarily. How good Denis Leary was in his arc can only be evaluated by how well his performance contributes to the whole of the show, which I think we can all agree is too drunk to realize we stopped listening hours ago.

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop: I'm still here

The great joke of the title Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop is that I was wondering the whole time when he was going to start. It takes fifteen minutes for Rodman Flender’s topical documentary to find a funny scene, this one a staff meeting for the upcoming, taxonomically misfiled comedy tour, when after making his minions speak into a banana Conan O’Brien jokingly says, “I’m sick of people saying I’m drunk with power and I’ve lost perspective.” Thing is, the film presents a guy who’s just this side of a Lucasian moat of yes-men, constantly joke-punching his staff in a display of humor unmatched by anyone since Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and as for perspective, everyone signs off on Conan parodying Willie Nelson with the pity party hit of summer “My Own Show Again.” It’s that kind of scintillating wit you expect from the staid late night variety trust Conan O’Brien is perceived to have busted. “I’m the least entitled person you’ll meet in the world,” he says with brass ball humility. Speaking of people who no longer have television shows, Andy Richter may as well have an applause button because his sparing appearances are very funny, and somehow he never once frames himself as a recession-era victim.

Midnight in Paris: L'Age d'Or

Speaking of pseudointellectuals, I’ve never—not even at Shakespeare in Love—seen a movie with an audience more vigorously engaged in the signaling to everyone else that, yes, old sport, they got the reference, they’re very smart, they had The Exterminating Angel over for dinner the other night, and this spiderweb of nods to books they read in high school is the funniest thing since that blistering New Yorker piece about parents who don’t get their kids vaccinated. Needless to say, it’s all very Stuff White People Like, which you can tell by their secret handshake, pedantic laughing. The thing is, saying the name Gertrude Stein isn’t funny. It’s just a reference, and like X-Men: First Class winking at its characters’ well-established fates, Midnight in Paris mistakes allusion for comedy far too often. So some of the jokes and most of the non-jokes aren’t particularly funny, in spite of the incessant ovation, but it’s the special determination of Woody Allen that the seventh set-up for Michael Sheen to parade his expertise on some hovel of the humanities is lazier than the film around him yet the smash cut earns a laugh anyway.