“Shame”
Directed by: Steve McQueen
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Saturday 1/21/2012 with my wife at the Regal Manchester in Fresno

It’s not every day that an art-house film rated NC-17 plays at a major multiplex in Fresno, California. In fact, in the 10+ years of my adult life that I’ve lived in this town, I cannot remember going to see a single one. That changed for me recently when the critical darling “Shame” made a one-week Central Valley run, just ahead of the Academy Award nominations being released. The film didn’t end up earning any Oscar nods, but the buzz was enough to give a handful of people here a chance to see it. After reading a glowing review by local tough-cookie movie critic Donald Munro of The Fresno Bee, my wife and I decided to see it.

“Shame” is directed by British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen— not to be confused with the late American actor of the same name, whom I remember best from his turn in “The Blob.” McQueen delivers a bleak script for star Michael Fassbender, who unflinchingly plays a protagonist that’s addicted to sex and also addicted to self-hate. Most critics call Fassbender’s performance a powerful, honest achievement. But I couldn’t help but feel there was some missing ingredient.

My wife said that some films do a great job of plopping us down into the lives of their characters without any context, and we can understand them by the performances or the writing alone. For “Shame,” however, it didn’t feel to me like this was the case. The epiphanies didn’t add up, and I couldn’t understand the motivations of the characters to do some of the ugly things they were doing to themselves. I’m glad that we saw the movie, but I can’t say that I liked it. Without a hint of backstory or feeling, “Shame” felt gratuitously ugly.

“Somewhere”
Directed by: Sofia Coppola
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Monday 1/02/2012 with my wife at home

A lot of American movie lovers will never forgive Sofia Coppola for her acting debut as Mary Corleone in the ill-fated “Godfather III” sequel. That film came out in 1990, but I didn’t see it until more than 15 years later. By then, I had already fallen in love with Coppola for her languid and hazy directorial debut, “The Virgin Suicides,” and for her gorgeously ambiguous second film, “Lost in Translation,” which starred one of my favorite actors of all time, Bill Murray, in a role that he should’ve won an Academy Award for. (The Oscar instead went to Sean “Is That My Daughter In There?” Penn for his overwrought role in the overwrought “Mystic River.”)

Twenty years after her Mary Corleone days, Coppola in 2010 delivered “Somewhere,” a minimalist and slow-paced film that gives an unsentimental snapshot of the life of a B-list actor. I’d never really thought of Stephen Dorff as a leading man, instead relegating him to his Deacon Frost moment in “Blade” or in many other straight-to-video type movies. But I think his real-life background places Dorff in exactly the kind of prolific-but-nowhere place that Coppola aims to access. In every description of “Somewhere” that exists on the Internet, writers describe the film as a meditation on celebrity ennui. Dorff plays the fictional Johnny Marco so perfectly that he absolutely personifies ennui– right down to his blank enjoyment of two pole-dancing twins awkwardly gyrating their same old moves while an old Foo Fighters hit blares like molasses out of a boombox. It doesn’t get any more listless than that, and Coppola serves it cold.

“Beginners”
Directed by: Mike Mills
Format: DVD from Redbox
Viewed: Saturday 12/31/2011 with my wife at home

In the mid- to late 1990s, I went through a serious Ewan McGregor phase. Most people think of him as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels. I’ve never seen those, and I don’t want to. Instead, I always think of Ewan McGregor as the hooligan in “Trainspotting,” as the naive love interest in “Brassed Off,” or as the karaoke crooner in “A Life Less Ordinary.” His early movies will always be my favorites, because he was growing up as a young actor at the same time I was growing up as a young indie film watcher.

McGregor plays a grieving son and awkward boyfriend quite beautifully in “Beginners,” a quirky and heartbreaking movie that co-stars Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent. In a series of snapshot flashbacks, McGregor’s character deals with the death of his gay father in the present day, mixed with the lifelong fallout of watching his parents play their roles for 40 years in a sexless marriage. The film is directed by Mike Mills — who made striking music videos for the early work of Air and Blonde Redhead, among others — as an uncomfortable meditation on getting older, understanding family secrets, and forging your way in adult relationships. McGregor is just a couple years older than I am, and it felt to me like watching an older sibling take a difficult, real step toward a future that’s just starting.

“Urbanized”
Directed by: Gary Hustwit
Format: Big screen
Viewed: Friday 1/13/2012 with my wife and our friend Gosia at the Tower Theatre in Fresno

It’s pretty rare that I walk away from a documentary film feeling genuinely uplifted. But the first Fresno Filmworks screening of 2012, the Gary Hustwit documentary “Urbanized,” was truly inspiring. I enjoyed watching the first movie in Hustwit’s design trilogy, “Helvetica,” a few weeks ago as a primer. But the beautiful cinematography and moving stories of “Urbanized” turned urban planning into real art for me, and I came away from the film quite moved at human ingenuity and people’s passion for the public spaces they love.

Three segments in the movie stuck with me the most. The first was the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, who was credited with being a pioneer in building a public light rail system and public bike trails in the early 2000s. He said that there was no universal human right to parking, and he insisted that if you take away parking spaces in a city center that you will then take away cars and pollution. “Parking is not a government problem,” the former mayor said, inciting many giggles from the car-happy Fresno audience.

The second part I loved was the revitalization of The High Line in New York City, a massive transformation of a historic elevated rail line in the heart of the city from weed-pocked and abandoned eyesore into a glorious urban park. The dedication of the Friends of The High Line to preserve a piece of history by transforming it instead of demolishing it made me think of all the little places in Fresno that might benefit from a similar innovative commitment.

The third part I loved was the story of the bike paths in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the city boasts that nearly 40 percent of its daily commuter traffic is done by bicycle. The city spent years taking away lanes from cars and one-by-one converting them to safe bike lines. Most notably, they put the bike lanes to the right of the lane for parked cars, to add a buffer between cyclists and automobile traffic. Such a simple safety move drew great cheers and laughter from the Fresno crowd, which has watched for decades as our city’s bumbling planners and politicians fumble to add a bike lane here or there, but then nobody wants to ride in them for fear of constantly being run over by an SUV. Hustwit’s documentary should be required viewing for all Central Valley mayors, city council members, and planning commissioners.