Back from Thanksgiving break, and filled to bursting with new cinema experiences. With so many films backlogged in my brain, I thought I might jettison a few:

Paranormal Activity. Exhibitionist horror on a micro budget and in a realistic vein: unknown actors, digital video, a pseudodocumentary style. The premise is simple beyond belief: a twentysomething couple set out to record a ghost or demon or what-have-you that’s been disturbing the furniture and that seems to have special designs on the girlfriend. The feeble development of a deeper plot is shoved aside for a series of well-timed shock effects: a creaking door, a shadowy shape, a bedroom attack, and much worse. One shot in particular, a wide angle on the sleeping couple, has a Pavlovian conditioning effect: every time we return to this setup, something worse transpires. Hokey and harmless in retrospect, fun and gripping if viewed under the right conditions (specifically a packed theater with good sound).  

Where the Wild Things Are. A hip kids film, a frolic, but a downer just the same. Extrapolated from Maurice Sendak’s vivid 28-page children’s classic, it follows an imaginative, misbehaving, misunderstood boy to a magical kingdom ruled by mega-sized Muppets who, in a weird twist, turn out to be just as obstinate as he is. Fascinating at first as a sort of Freudian dream film (with the beasts reflecting the boy’s latent insecurities), it has nowhere to go, and gets there quickly. Spike Jonze’s zippy direction is hamstrung by his own saccharine screenplay (co-authored by Jonze and Dave Eggars), although an early episode involving a crushed igloo is stingingly realistic, and cuts to the heart of childhood experience. The creatures (furry yet fearsome) are beautifully realized, courtesy of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.

Gentlemen Broncos. Another grotesque comedy from Jared and Jerusha Hess, the Mormon auteurs behind the bona fide cult classic Napoleon Dynamite and the less cultish but still bona fide Nacho Libre. Unfairly yanked from theaters after poor early box office and pitiful reviews, it’s a sometimes strained but often inspired lampoon of science fiction nerd culture. (The titles of some of the books provoke chuckles: “Yeast Lords,” “Cyborg Harpies,” “Troll Hole,” etc.) Two supporting actors emerge triumphant: Jemaine Clement, as a pompous fantasy author with Michael York’s sonorous voice; and Jennifer Coolidge, as a harried single mother and aspiring designer of hideous women’s fashions. The poop-and-barf jokes are misjudged and onerous, but the close kinship with marginalized losers betrays sympathy and even wonder. Perhaps only the faithful will dare find value in it. I, alas, am one of them.

The Box. Stone cold sci-fi, beefed up from a slim Richard Matheson story (“Button, Button”), and given the Richard Kelly treatment. In other words: solemn in approach, portentous in mood, ambitious in scope, and finally confusing in whole. What begins as a simple moral test in the style of W.W. Jacobs evolves (or rather devolves, depending on your view) into a cosmic crossing of Jean-Paul Sartre and Arthur C. Clarke. Frank Langella manages a few creepy notes as a shadowy figure with a crater where his left cheek used to be, and Arcade Fire’s husband and wife duo Win Butler and Regine Chassagne contribute an offbeat score.

Me and Orson Welles. Richard Linklater in a lighter mood, recreating the conditions under which a pre-Citizen Kane Orson Welles led the Mercury Theatre to triumph in an edgy rendering of Julius Caesar. Zac Efron is the assertive teenager who falls in love with art and Claire Danes, and whose illusions are shattered by the infidelities of theater folk. The ensemble cast is all-around excellent, with an extra round of applause going to Christian McKay who not only approximates Welles’s distinctive elocution, but also his arched brow and creased forehead. His image here as a titanic egotist and serial philanderer is a matter best left to his biographers and close friends.