I have a strict personal policy that I don’t walk out of movies. Most of the time, it’s really easy to adhere to this policy, but occasionally I’ll encounter a movie so bad that it’s a challenge to stick it out. But John Carter may be the first to put my will power to the test within the first two minutes, and then repeatedly thereafter for the next two hours.

To be fair, I usually try to avoid learning about a movie before I go to see it, so I really didn’t know much about John Carter except that it was set on Mars. But I really wasn’t expecting the absolute stupidity of the opening sequence, nor of the remainder of the film. That shot featured a flying ship setting down and unloading a whole bunch of gladiators to attack their enemies with swords. These people (or I guess technically Martians, but you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish them from Roman soldiers during the time of Christ) have the technology to make ships that fly on light and yet their weapons haven’t progressed beyond the Iron Age.

Things don’t get much better when we meet John Carter (played by Taylor Kitsch) for the first time and he is magically transported to Mars from late 1860s Arizona by a mysterious amulet he found in a cave. Before long, he finds himself in the middle of a three-way battle between the original human-looking Martians, a whole different set of human-looking Martians (with a really hot princess, played by Lynn Collins), and a third set of Martians who mostly look like humans except they’re green and they have tusks and four arms instead of two (one of whom is played by Willem Dafoe). The future of the planet is at stake, and that’s a big deal to all the Martians, but John just wants to get home to try to find his gold-filled cave.

It’s pretty clear that John Carter really wants to be Star Wars. Like Luke Skywalker, John returned home to find his family dead and house burned to the ground. Like Han Solo, John doesn’t care about the plight of those in the fight but just wants to get his gold, although he ultimately falls for the princess. Like young Anakin, he gets into a dangerous, high-speed pod race. There’s a magical force called the 9th ray. There are some poorly-conceived CGI creatures which will only have any appeal to children (or those with child-like intelligence). And yet I don’t think that even George Lucas in his most insane fever-driven bouts of revisionist madness would come up with something this lame.

The problems with the story of John Carter reach well beyond its poor choice of weapons and lack of originality. It’s made exceptionally clear in the film that they’re on Mars (when they could have just as easily made it a fictional location), and yet that world bears little resemblance to what we know about the planet, including its breathable atmosphere and healthy supply of water. John has the unique ability to jump incredible differences when no one else can, and this is a subject of quite a bit of fascination among the others, but only a halfhearted “maybe he has greater bone density” explanation was offered. The Martians were all initially speaking some alien language, and then all of a sudden everyone’s speaking English with nothing more than an “oh, I can understand you now” comment, and yet even after they’re all able to communicate they still can’t seem to get his name right. Wood and fabric are plentiful in the world, and yet vegetation is nonexistent.

I can appreciate trying to remain faithful to the source material, but in this case the source is literally a century old (published as a set of short stories in 1912). Our knowledge of Mars and flight and science fiction screenwriting has made dramatic strides since then, and it’s lazy and careless to ignore obvious problems. Even the work of a master like Jules Verne needs some updating on its way to the big screen, and Edgar Rice Burroughs is no Jules Verne.

There are tons of movies out there which point out the ways in which mankind is destroying (or has destroyed) the environment. Most of them are all doom-and-gloom and go really heavy on the guilt, and very few of them have vibrant colors and animals that sing and dance. But Dr. Seuss, and those who turned his book into this most recent version of the movie, apparently realize the value of trying to catch flies with honey (or bears with marshmallows, as the case may be).

The town of Thneedville is a pretty nice place to live, if you don’t mind thick smog and radioactive water and battery-operated trees. But it’s been that way for so long that most people don’t know any other way of life. But Audrey (voiced by Taylor Swift) has somehow learned about how things used to be and has become obsessed with seeing the kind of tree that runs on light and dirt rather than Duracell. She just happens to live next door to Ted (Zac Efron) who’s got a serious crush on her and just happens to be in the mood to get wood. His wise Grandma Norma (Betty White) tells him he needs to go see a man called the Once-ler (Ed Helms), and so he makes cautiously ventures out of the city and into the wasteland that is the larger world.

It doesn’t take Ted long to find the Once-ler’s house, but he’s not given a particularly warm welcome. It seems the Once-ler is a recluse and not much of a people person, but he perks up when Ted mentions his quest to find a tree. That’s enough to get the Once-ler to overcome his shyness and start talking, but rather than just tell Ted what he wants to know, he’s intent on telling his whole life story. He talks about how he’d set out into the world to seek his fortune and encountered a natural paradise, full of musical wildlife and beautiful fuzzy trees. He goes on to tell of a creature called the Lorax (Danny DeVito) who is the guardian of the forest and wants to ensure the trees are protected. And eventually we learn how that forest was destroyed and how the world that is came about.

The Lorax really is a film that should be fun for all ages. It’s so light and quick-moving that even the most hardened hippie-hater might be caught off guard and manage a smile or two. It’s not particularly deep, and perhaps its very cartoonish nature allows its eco-message to float by without sinking in (if you’re not already saturated with that message from the countless other attempts to hammer it in), but you’re not likely to get bored or offended by the content.

The movie has a handful of songs that are good enough while you’re watching them, but that aren’t so catchy that you can remember them after the film is over. With The Muppets, I was belting out the songs in my car on the way home, but with The Lorax I can barely remember the topics for the songs, let alone their tunes or lyrics. In fact, fun but forgettable is kind of a good summary for the entire movie.

Cartoons are for kids. Sure, there are edgy ones like The Simpsons or South Park which are more targeted at older audiences, but even then when kids watch them behind their parents’ backs, they’ll find plenty to like beyond just the forbidden fruit aspect. But with Chico & Rita, the Spanish have created an animated feature that is completely devoid of interest for young viewers. Probably because it’s completely devoid of interest for everyone, except apparently the handful of idiots who can get things nominated for Academy Awards.

In 1940s Cuba, Chico was good at two things: playing jazz piano and discarding women after one-night stands. Most of the time, the women are young, drunk American tourists (and this was before the revolution that turned Cuba into an island of Communists and imprisoned terrorists), but one night he met a Cuban woman so beautiful and intriguing that he dumped his American hotties even before sleeping with them. Rita had an amazing voice and loose morals, so the night ended with them in bed together (complete with animated nudity), and it may have been a long and happy life together if Chico’s girlfriend hadn’t barged in and thrown Rita out.

What follows is a story better suited to the pages of craigslist missed connections than the big screen. As Chico pursues, Rita shies away. And when Rita decides she wants Chico, he dismisses her. Their entertainment careers begin to take off (separately, of course), and as they find the professional success they so desperately want, it only becomes harder for them to find each other.

It’s a tragic love story, but the vast majority of the tragedy comes from their own selfishness, stubbornness, and stupidness than from external forces beyond their control, so the tragedy doesn’t really create a whole lot of conflict. And when a bigger obstacle finally does present itself, the nature of that obstacle is so out of proportion with the inciting incident that it’s hard to take seriously. All this makes for a pretty boring story about a couple of people in which there is no emotional investment, and I started looking at my watch as early as 30 minutes into the film.

If there isn’t much enjoyment to be had from the story, then one would hope to be able to extract some entertainment value from the quality of the animation. Unfortunately, Chico & Rita disappoints there, too. It’s functional enough that you’ll be able to understand what’s going on, but it’s just not exciting. The images are largely flat, non-shaded, and fairly minimalist, so that’s a refreshing departure from the computer-rendered 3D crap Hollywood animation studios put out, but it still lacks something that other recent films (like fellow Oscar nominees A Cat in Paris from 2011 and The Illusionist from 2010) manage to capture. Whereas some people find hands hard to draw, the Chico & Rita animators can’t seem to get lips right — they’re all abnormally large and oddly colored, and it only serves to distract from what little story the film manages to provide.

Without a good story or pretty eye candy, I’m really not sure what appeal Chico & Rita is supposed to have. Apparently someone felt differently than I did in order to give it a nomination for best animated feature, but these are the same people who considered Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a real contender for best picture and only managed to find two candidates for best song, so perhaps we should just stop giving any consideration to what they have to say.

There are some medical conditions that are so embarrassing or uncomfortable to talk about that they are commonly just referenced by their initials. I think that some movies deserve that treatment, so I will henceforth only refer to Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie as BDM. And unfortunately that’s not the only thing it has in common with IBS.

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (playing the same version of themselves as on their self-referential TV show) have decided to try their hand at filmmaking, and they signed up with the Schlaaaang Corporation, led by Tommy Schlaaang (played by Robert Loggia), to finance the film. After blowing through an exorbitant amount of money, and it’s not hard to guess how much, they managed to produce only three minutes of content and some livid investors. But being the financial geniuses that they are, the contract they had signed with Schlaaang left them on the hook for repaying the costs of the film if it failed to be a financial success. And in this case, that’s the whole billion.

But fortunately they didn’t have to despair long because they soon saw a late-night television commercial featuring Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell) offering a billion dollars to anyone who would come to S’wallow Valley (and yes, there is an unexplained apostrophe) and run his shopping mall. Naturally, Tim and Eric jump at the chance and arrive to find something resembling an indoor version of Detroit on a bad day. The floors are littered with trash and homeless people, the food court with the rotting remains of what they had once served, and a lone wolf roams the halls. And yet at least one store (a sword shop run by a character played by Will Forte) is open for business. Whipping this mall into shape wouldn’t be an easy task for someone of even above-average intelligence, so the odds are pretty stacked against these idiots.

BDM is definitely the kind of movie that isn’t for everyone, and that seems to be supported by the high walkout rate that at least some theaters are seeing for the movie. It does seem that the film is better received by people who have watched and enjoyed their television show, although even that is not universally the case. I’ve never seen an actual episode of their show, but I have seen clips, some of which were genuinely funny, so they at least have the capacity for humor even if they don’t display that anywhere in this movie.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about BDM is its ability to take some funny people (and the cast also includes John C. Reilly, Zack Galifianakis, and Jeff Goldblum) and some fairly funny premises and produce something which is actively unfunny. There was not a single joke or occurrence in the film that even broke into the realm of amusing. The sparsely-populated theater in which I watched the movie did have some people laughing, but I think that is more at the suggestion of what could have been rather than what actually was presented. In many film genres, it may be a good thing to avoid explicitly spelling out what you’re trying to say, but it’s probably not a good idea to require your audience to complete the jokes in a comedy for themselves because there’s a good chance they’ll do it aloud. But honestly, there’s not much room for the experience to get any less enjoyable, so this may be a rare film in which the audience could help make it better. But I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re already a die-hard fan of their other stuff.

Comedy trailers are tough because it’s important to make the movie look funny without giving away all the best jokes. Unfortunately, the trailer for Wanderlust fails on both counts.

George and Linda (Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston) are happy New Yorkers who have just bought their first apartment, perhaps living at the edge of their means. But when George and Linda both find themselves out of work at the same time, they can no longer afford their exorbitant mortgage and they’re out on the street. George’s brother Rick (Ken Marino) makes a pretty good living in Atlanta, so they head down to stay with them until they can get things sorted out. But it’s a long trip, and when they need to stop for the night, they use their GPS to find a nearby hotel and are directed to the Elysium Bed and Breakfast. This particular B&B just happened to be co-located with a hippie commune, and George and Linda are taken aback when they’re greeted by a nudist. But they find themselves there for the night, and with the help of a little music and marijuana, they actually kind of enjoy it.

The next morning, they’re on their way again and soon find themselves at Rick’s house. Rick has no qualms about making it clear how well things are going for him, or about berating George for his current situation. It doesn’t take long with George working for Rick, and Linda hanging out with his wife Marissa (Michaela Watkins), for them to realize that this is not going to be a pleasant arrangement. They’re soon back at the commune, and although they have immediate regrets, they agree to give it a couple of weeks to see how things go.

If Wanderlust was better than I anticipated, it was only because I went in with very low expectations. It is purportedly a comedy, but most of the time it’s just mildly amusing. Most of the best gags are given away in the trailer, so it wasn’t until about two thirds of the way through the film that it actually managed to get a laugh out of me (although to be fair, it was a good one). Nearly all of the jokes they use are grossly overused, so something that appears even a little funny initially quickly loses any entertainment value, and most of these aren’t the kind of thing that become funny again after a while and only serve to make the film utterly predictable near the end. The brief sequence of outtakes that appear during the end credits is funnier than just about everything else in the film, so if you see the movie, make sure to stay for them.

The quality of the overall story is also suspect. It’s not hard to accept that someone would have second thoughts about moving to a commune, but the speed with which George and Linda change their minds isn’t completely believable. There’s also a rather contrived subplot about rich people trying to take over the land in order to build a casino which doesn’t stand up to any degree of scrutiny. This isn’t a movie that you see for its logic and reason, but it seems like that entire story line could have been removed without any harm done to the overall plot.

If you’re in the mood for something that doesn’t require any thought and might make you laugh a few times, then perhaps Wanderlust is for you. It’s probably quite a bit better if you haven’t seen the trailer, which seems to have been the case for most of the audience at the screening I attended.

Police officers have a tough job. They’re hated by criminals, for obvious reasons, but they’re also often disliked by the general law-abiding public because at least the perception is that they abuse the power they’ve been given. Certainly the majority of them are better than planting evidence or beating someone mercilessly, but if you’ve ever seen a police car turn on its lights and siren just to blow through a red light, or breaking the speed limit in a non-emergency situation, or worse yet driving below the speed limit and impeding the flow of traffic because people are afraid to pass them, then you’ve probably at least been frustrated by this. And when a truly corrupt cop is depicted, like in Rampart, it’s not hard to buy the story.

Officer David Brown (played by Woody Harrelson) is a real piece of work. He has two daughters who are both sisters and first cousins because their mothers are sisters. He has a drinking problem, an eating disorder, and may be a sex addict. He’s also a police officer who doesn’t feel bound by the law himself, but has no problem taking down bad guys, and often uses what he knows to blackmail them into giving him stuff or to give him information about other criminal activities that may be going down. He earned the nickname “date rape” when he allegedly killed an alleged serial rapist 15 years ago, but since he studied law before becoming a police officer, he’s able to make the legal system work for him and he always manages to stay out of trouble.

It’s 1999 in Los Angeles, and the city has been rocked by the Rodney King beatings. The district attorney’s office is out for blood, and it seems that someone in the police department thinks that David will make a good scapegoat. While he’s out on patrol one day, his car is T-boned at an intersection, and when he goes to check on the other driver, he’s knocked down by the car’s door when the driver starts to flee the scene. David gives chase and catches him easily, and then begins beating him with his baton. There just happens to be a camera pointed in his direction, and the footage makes the evening news.

The film invests a lot of effort into making David an absolutely abhorrent and unlikeable person, and every turn seems to make him just a little bit more despicable. However, it’s also surprisingly easy to sympathize with him at the same time because he’s a bad guy, but he’s mostly bad to other bad guys. His family (including the sisters that were his former wives, played by Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche, and especially their daughters played by an almost unrecognizable Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky) are the real victims in all of this because they don’t get the kind of attention they want, but they have to deal with the mess that is his life. His youngest daughter has been sheltered from this all her life, but even she is starting to see the truth about him.

There is a surprising amount of star power in the film. In addition to those already mentioned, Rampart features Sigourney Weaver (as a lawyer for the police department), Steve Buscemi (as a district attorney), Robin Wright (as a lawyer in the DA’s office and occasional sex partner for David), Ned Beatty (as a former cop who serves as a confidant for David), and Ice Cube (as an investigator for the district attorney). There are also other faces you’ll recognize even if the names aren’t familiar. It’s a surprising cast for a second-time director (Owen Moverman, whose only other film is The Messenger, which also starred Harrelson), but he pulls it off well.

I think that some people will be put off by the overall tone of the film, and others will be disappointed with its ending. It’s not as satisfying as I would have liked, but with the events that led up to it, it’s hard to see how it could have ended in any other way.

Almost without exception, I find foreign films which have the voices dubbed in English to be much less enjoyable than those in which we hear the original actors speaking in the original language and have English subtitles. I say “almost”, though, because there are exceptions, and Disney’s dubbing of the films of Studio Ghibli (including Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Castle in the Sky) is usually quite good. That tradition continues with The Secret World of Arrietty, which has surprisingly been dubbed in English twice — once for the UK and again with different voice actors for the US.

Shawn (voiced by David Henrie) has recently developed a heart condition and needs to rest before an upcoming surgery. His recently-divorced parents are both too busy to take care of him, so he’s been shipped off to live with his Aunt Jessica (Gracie Poletti) and her housekeeper Hara (Carol Burnett). Understandably, he’s feeling pretty sorry for himself, but his curiosity is piqued just a few minutes after his arrival because he’s sure that he saw the cat stalking a tiny little girl.

That girl was Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler), and she lives with her parents Homily and Pod (Amy Poehler and Will Arnett) underneath Jessica’s house. They’re called “borrowers” because they survive in large part by taking little things like sugar and crackers and whatever else they can scrounge from the humans (even though they never seem to give anything back, so it’s not really borrowing). Although they depend on the humans for their survival, they’re constantly frightened of being discovered because humans have historically not been kind to them, and if they’re seen, then it’s safest to just move away. And now they’ve just been seen.

Although The Secret World of Arrietty is cute, has a light, fun story, and is well animated, it deviates from other Studio Ghibli films (and their Disney adaptations) in a couple of ways. First, with a runtime of just over 90 minutes, it’s a full half hour shorter than most of the studio’s other films. I don’t think that this is a bad thing at all, since it’s able to fit everything it needs to into that runtime, it doesn’t feel either rushed or drawn out, and it’s a more kid-friendly length. Second, this is the first Studio Ghibli film in which I had any problem at all with the dubbing, with Will Arnett’s voice not seeming like a great fit for the animated character for which it was used. Although it was noticeable, it didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the film in any meaningful way.

I was also surprised by the degree to which Hara’s character had an irrational hatred of the little people, which had apparently been a life-long feeling even though she’d previously only heard stories about them. She characterized them as thieves, which is certainly accurate and perhaps they stole things they could have done without, but the borrowers’ extreme resemblance to humans made Hara’s persistent desire to eliminate them feel a lot like aspirations of genocide. But fortunately even if the film has somewhat dark themes, it never really reaches a point at which parents would have significant concern about whether it’s appropriate for their children.

Although my review of it may seem to have a largely negative tone, that’s probably because I had very high expectations for it going in based on my experience with many of the studio’s other films. I do think that it doesn’t quite stack up against the best of those, but it’s nevertheless a generally fun and well-produced film that should be enjoyable to people of nearly any age.

There are apparently three important rules that you should follow if you’re communicating with a spirit using a Ouija (pronounced wee-gee) board:

1. Don’t ask the spirit how it died, because it will likely upset the spirit.
2. Don’t ask the spirit how you’re going to die, because it will likely upset you.
3. Don’t walk away from the Ouija board without saying goodbye, because it’s a portal to the spirit world and leaving it open could allow the spirits to enter our world.

Any guesses as to which of these rules was broken (repeatedly) in The Ouija Experiment?

We begin with Brandon, a film student with his camera on and recording, in a car with classmate Shay on their way to meet Shay’s boyfriend Calvin, Calvin’s sister La’nette, and Calvin’s best friend Michael. Michael is interested in using a Ouija board to interact with the dead, but he’s less interested in having it filmed because he’s not sure whether the spirits will be camera shy. But of course Brandon leaves the camera rolling, and he captures what appears to be a conversation with a young girl named Gracie and later her 35-year-old mother Lisa. They soon learn that Gracie died by drowning (because it’s apparently OK to ask one spirit how another died, even when asking a mother about her child), and that both are afraid of another spirit who goes by the name of Joseph.

Their first Ouija experience having been a success, they decide to repeat the process. As before, they contact Gracie and Lisa, but when the questions start to become more personal (e.g., whether Calvin is cheating on Shay and with whom), arguments arise and in the confusion the board is left open. Shortly after that, they begin having unusual, and frightening, experiences.

According to the filmmakers, the “experiment” of The Ouija Experiment was in the challenge of creating a credible film on a micro-budget (about $1000), with only a rough outline and heavy improvisation, and using self-distribution and social media to try to create buzz (like the despicable practice of Twitter spamming). Although they have undeniably had a measure of success because they did make the film and I did see it in the theater, there were also numerous failures. It’s not a very good movie, there are certainly cases in which you can tell that it needed a better script, and the only way I knew anything about it was that it showed up on the Drafthouse calendar.

In many ways, The Ouija Experiment is very similar to Paranormal Activity. It relies on the found footage gimmick and people filming every aspect of their lives (including at one point, recording themselves watching footage they had previously recorded, although in The Ouija Experiment with a significant inconsistency in this regard), but there is one key scene which isn’t found footage and isn’t from the perspective of anyone in the story. Our first experience with spirits in the real world comes first through minor things like pictures knocked over or upside down, then by hearing noises and seeing things move, and finally we see the spirits themselves. It really does very little to distinguish itself from Paranormal Activity, or from other films of that ilk, and it has a lot of problems that can’t be overlooked.

Director Israel Luna mentioned that this film was essentially a remake of a film called Is Anybody There? he had made about ten years earlier. Had the film been released then when the idea was still relatively new, and had it not unnecessarily relied on the extremely over-used found footage gimmick, then perhaps it would have been better received. But it isn’t well suited to the current market, where a tiny budget doesn’t excuse an unremarkable film.

Dimanche (Canada) — A very crudely-drawn look at a boy living in a world that is not his own. He lives with a couple of elderly people, perhaps his grandparents, who don’t pay a whole lot of attention to him and don’t have much to offer in the way of entertainment. About the only pastime he enjoys is placing coins on the nearby tracks and watching them be flattened by passing trains. It’s pretty lacking in both depth of story and quality of animation, and it’s surprising that this would be considered among the top five of all animated short films produced in the year.

A Morning Stroll (UK) — An interesting look at a story set in three times. It opens in 1959 with extremely crude black-and-white line art animation and shows a man slowly walking down the street, paying attention to everything he passes. We then jump ahead to 2009 and see much better quality animation, in color and more detail. A man is again walking down the street, but this time completely engrossed in his cell phone and not paying attention to anything or anyone else. Another 50-year jump brings us to 2059 and yet another walk with even better animation and a new take on the theme. I was unimpressed with its first segment, but then it won me over with the second and third, when it became clear that it was a more complex story than it first appeared.

Wild Life (Canada) — The film opens with footage from an old black-and-white video encouraging people to come to Canada. One young British man must have seen this because he finds himself stepping off a train in a sparsely-populated town in Alberta and acquires 90 acres of land with his wealthy parents’ money. He takes to calling himself rancher, but he spends most of his time doing very non-rancherly things like playing golf and polo, and having tea and scones. The film uses an interesting style of animation that often looks like it’s comprised of oil paintings progressing at just a few frames per second, and while it has a more overt narrative than the previous two, there’s not a lot of depth to that story.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (USA) — In this tale of The Wizard of Oz meets Pleasantville meets Night at the Museum, a man who is sitting on his front porch reading is suddenly whisked up by a great wind and deposited in a black-and-white world inhabited. He happens upon a library and he soon finds himself to be its caretaker. The books are alive, dancing and flying and otherwise serving as his companion, and he soon finds that as people encounter and read the books, they turn from black and white into color. It’s well drawn and packs a lot into a fairly short period of time, but is pretty lacking in originality.

La Luna (USA) — This Pixar short features three people in a rowboat named “La Luna”: a boy and two men who we presume to be his father and grandfather. They’ve rowed out on a dark night but before long, the moon has risen into the sky. The father holds a ladder while the boy climbs up with a rope and steps onto the surface of the moon, anchoring the boat to it. We find the surface littered with lots of little shooting stars that have fallen to the moon, and it becomes clear that the men are there in a janitorial capacity. As expected, the animation is of a very high quality and the story is fairly touching, but I didn’t find it as immediately and intensely compelling as many of their other shorts.

I’m not entirely clear on the rules for Academy Award nominations, but I really don’t like that so many of the films which are nominated haven’t even had a real theatrical run in any city but New York or Los Angeles. That’s especially true with foreign film nominees, and this year was no exception. Bullhead was the only nominee I’d gotten to see before the nominations were announced, and that was because I got to see it at the Fantastic Fest film festival. A Separation seemed to be the front-runner in this category, so I was glad to have the opportunity to see it before the awards were actually announced.

The film opens with Simin hoping to convince a judge to allow her to divorce her husband Nader so that she can take their daughter Termeh out of the country to somewhere with less violence and more freedom. It seems that in Iran, a couple is only allowed to get divorced if both parties agree on all the terms, and Nader isn’t being as cooperative as Simin would like. He can’t go with them because he needs to stay and take care of his elderly father (who has been stricken with Alzheimer’s Disease), and while he’s willing to let his wife go, he doesn’t want her to take Termeh.

Simin may not be allowed to legally divorce Nader, but she doesn’t have to keep living with him. She goes to live with her mother, leaving no one to take care of his father during the day while Nader is at work. Nader hires Razieh to fill this role, but one day comes home to find her gone and his father lying on the floor with one arm tied to his bed. Upset about the way his father was treated, and believing that Razieh may have stolen money in addition to shirking her duties, Nader becomes perhaps a little too aggressive in his anger, and shortly thereafter he finds himself charged with a fairly serious crime.

First, it’s important to say that the hype is true, and that A Separation is an excellent film. It does get a little complex at times, with many people involved in the investigation and making contradictory claims, but it’s not all that difficult to keep things straight or to follow the film’s progress as additional information is revealed.

However, I was also surprised to find that it did not meet my expectations in one key area: that of the rules of Iranian society. I had expected it to have much more of a misogynistic, women-as-property feel to it, but it was instead quite democratic and even-handed in this regard. It’s possible that the film was censored by the Iranian government to portray their country in a more positive light, but it’s also possible that western propaganda has succeeded in convincing us that things are very different than they actually are. Religion does play a more significant role in the film than misogyny, but even there it’s done in a way that could have played out in a nearly identical manner if the story had been set in the United States instead of Iran.

That A Separation differs significantly in what I expected is slightly off-putting, but it also does make the film more relatable. Its Oscar nomination is completely deserved, but of the two I’ve seen in its category, I do think that Bullhead is the better film.