One glance at the cover image for The Grey (2012), directed by Joe Carnahan, and you’ll have good idea of the film’s storyline: It is going to be in brutally cold terrain, protagonist Ottoway will likely persevere because he’s played by Liam Neeson, who’s remembered for his tough as nails characters, and of course, the colors in film will mostly be variations of grey. On these points, The Grey  does deliver, but unfortunately it fails to deliver much else.

Ottoway's on the brink of suicide before he falls into no man’s land, Alaska with a small group of men from a plane crash. They quickly discover they aren’t only facing extreme elements as there’s also a pack of wolves that are trying to kill them off, one by one.

Luckily, Ottoway makes his living killing wolves. There’s no heartwarming kinship between man and wolf here, sorry to say. It’s ten below, it’s windy, there isn’t shelter or much food, and the wolves are lurking. While all of this makes for a perilous scenario, the lack of character development makes it pretty easy to tolerate all of the death that ensues.

Though Ottoway seems like he ought to have profound thoughts, like McCandless in Into the Wild or experience constant thrills on his trek through the frozen Alaskan wilderness, it’s rather void of transcendental ideas or excitement, even though Ottoway is fighting to stay alive. He does repeat lines from a poem that was penned by the director, “Once more into the fray … Live and die on this day,” which echo throughout the film from beginning to end like a moot point. As noted, this fact is pretty clear from the cover image.

 While it’s evident Ottoway discovers an animalistic drive to fight for his life, which may have been more interesting to watch had it felt like his character actually changed, he’s portrayed like a grown-up Eagle Scout right off the bat. As the other men die around him, one can’t help but think it’s because they were inept in crucial outdoor knowledge, while our hero, Ottoway, possessed all skills needed to survive freezing temperatures and killer wolves.

Aside from the slow and expected storyline, The Grey does have its moments. The cinematography balances an ambiance that skillfully straddles harsh and exquisite, and there’s a riveting scene toward the end, where the last men alive are backed into the edge of a cliff and one free-jumps into trees to create a line for the others to cross.

The Grey is a subdued snow-scape of one man’s efforts to survive, but it’s not just any man, it’s a man played by Liam Neeson, which we all know changes everything.

In the cinematic realization of Killer Joe (2011), both stage and screenplay versions written by Tracy Letts, director William Friedkin’s impeccable attention to pacing unfolds a gothic and subtly humorous tale in a suburb of Dallas, Texas.  The trouble starts right away, when sometimes-abusive drug dealer, Chris, has to scramble for his life after his girlfriend blows his stash of coke to fix her car. 

There’s a biting tinge of comic relief throughout the film, such as when Sharla (Gina Gershon), Chris’ step mom, opens the front door to her trailer in the first scene, mostly naked with no underwear on because “she didn’t know” who was knocking at the door. Chris wakes his father and brings him to a strip club where he reveals his dilemma and reasons that his best move is to hire hit man Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaghey) to kill his mother for her life insurance policy. Without much nudging, his dad and little sister, Dottie, are on-board with the plan, and neither Chris nor his dad initially mind using Dottie as a retainer, since Chris doesn’t have cash to pay Killer Joe up front.

This element of distorted logic that allows the Smiths to rationalize murder and prostitution permeates most of the film and actually drives a sense of bizarre authenticity because the characters are so utterly believable, even if the Smiths seem like a less goofy and more malicious version of the Bundy’s in Married with Children.

McConaughey’s performance is riveting; both here and in Magic Mike he’s displayed an intensity that’s both convincing and funny. Forget the charming heartthrob of all those romcoms, he shines in roles of characters that are menacing and corrupt.

The Smith’s plan goes awry when the beneficiary of the deceased turns out to be someone other than Dottie, leaving Joe to figure out what’s really going on and determined to hang on to his retainer, Dottie, since he wasn’t paid for his service of killing Chris’ mother.

The truth of who was really going to end up with the insurance money is revealed in the last, and most powerful scene of the film, where every family member plays his or her part and a piece of fried chicken is used in ways one never thought possible. Killer Joe is a must see for film buffs or anyone who enjoys dark comedy or wants to see McConaghey in what’s arguably the role of his career, but it is not for the faint of heart.

Tony Kaye's flick, Detachment (2011), is a glowing mix of confused cinematography, brilliant acting, heavy-handed themes, and poignant story telling.

The film starts off on shaky footing with an opening akin to a civil service announcement, advocating the importance of teachers, an unnecessary dose of propaganda to preface a film that could have managed to get the idea across without it. Hang in there though, it is much better than those first few minutes would make it seem.

In Kaye's drama, Adrian Brody portrays Henry Barthes, a dedicated, substitute English high school teacher who tries to keep his students in line with steady resolve and chooses his noncommittal job-post in order to maintain distance from the kids he teaches.

Barthes and his colleagues, Christina Hendrickson and Lucy Liu are cast among them, seem as broken as their students. The kids seethe with anger and sadness, and the teachers are spat upon and cursed at every day and go home to lonely personal lives. For Barthes this includes: watching over his dying grandfather, remembering his mother’s suicide, trying to save a teenage prostitute (an unforgettable performance by Sami Gayle) as well as a deeply depressed artsy student--all the while barely keeping his head above water.

At points the cinematography emphasizes the emotional impact of the story, especially in the numerous scenes with theater-esque mise en scène which depict stark and simple back drops with long shots of characters talking that effectively dramatize subtle moments the story. However, Director Kaye missteps in juxtaposing too many techniques as if he just figured out how to use Final Cut Pro, as demonstrated by black and white stills of a barbed wire fence followed with low-lit, color shots of Barthes giving short close-up monologues in an attempt to create an intimacy between his character and the audience. The problem is, the editing of the film makes these effects clash, and consequently the story has a jolted resonance.

There have been a string of films similar to Detachment, like Half Nelson (2006) with Ryan Gosling or the French film The Class (2008), about empathic young men trying to make a difference in the lives of the kids they’re teaching while barely hanging on to their own sanity. 

So what does Kaye’s Detachment offer that those don’t? Despite Brody and Gayle’s excellent performances, not a whole lot, other than the added hooker plotline. It is essentially the same kind of story about the same kind of people--but even though it keeps being told, until our education system is improved it’s a story we can’t afford to forget.  

Screenwriter and director Pascal Laugier’s meekly compelling, recent thriller, The Tall Man (2012) unfolds in a predictable pattern that twists its way into meaning at the very end. The story begins in a destitute town, Coldwater, cast in an eerie grey hue, just to remind watchers something really is amiss, despite protagonist Julia’s (Jessica Biel) friendly stoicism as she makes her rounds as the town nurse and do-gooder.

*Spoiler Alert*

The Tall Man is quickly revealed as a local myth used to explain how young children keep disappearing, and though some claim to have caught glimpses of the mystery man, no one has been able to identify him. Inhabitants of the former mining-town are down on their luck since industry went bust and appear worn, uninspired and glum. One is left wondering if it’s because their children have disappeared, or if it's because they’re poor.

The initial story presented, that of Julia the pleasant, widowed mother who loses her child to The Tall Man a quarter way into the film, morphs into a different one--as promised by the foreboding music and lighting that set the tone from the beginning—Julia the demented, barren woman who’s taken to stealing children, and then killing them because she “couldn’t keep them all,” or so she says, with teary eyes to a woman whose child she captured.

Julia’s attachment to the latest boy in her captivity, the only one we see her with who’s introduced as her son, comes across as extreme for someone who has no relation to him, and though Julia demonstrates, at this point in the film, that she’s crazy, she recognizes he is not actually hers. Still, she dangles off the back of a moving van in to get him back and pulls herself out of a car accident with shards of glass in her face to keep after whomever it is stole ‘her’ boy.

It seems the story has run its course with Julia behind bars when she’s crying, talking about the numerous children she nabbed, and how she was just trying to save them from the harsh world of Coldwater. 

That’s where things get interesting, for a little while at least. Numerous children were taken, but they were siphoned into different lives, with new identities and new parents. Julia had been roping kids from impoverished families, and likely from dead-end, impoverished lives and giving them to wealthy parents who take them to lush parks for play dates and have the means to send them to private schools, and they’re young enough to accept this shift in their lives rather easily. This leaves the audience to contemplate not so much the obvious question of whether this is wrong--yes, stealing kids from loving families is clearly not morally correct--but the trickier question of why. 

While The Tall Man is thin on suspense, it at least has something to say, but by the time it gets around to saying it, you may not care. Most movie-goers will enjoy the small shocks and surprises it delivers in a familiar package, and just might have something to talk about after the film other than Jessica Biel.