Feb. 26 may be the Night of Silence. Everyone knows about The Artist—its many accolades, the likelihood it will take the top prize at the Academy Awards. But four out of the five films nominated for the Best Animated Short category are also silent or speak the cartoon equivalent, gibberish. Needless to say, if a movie has no dialogue, it better have a strong story. Well, there’s always next year.

The weakest of the bunch is Canada’s Sunday, a narrative that focuses on a young boy as his family goes through its Sunday ritual (church, Grandma’s). Simply drawn to the point of crudeness, the film offers charming images of squawking birds, bouncing cars, and houses that shimmy and shake whenever a train goes by. But, weirdly, a couple of animals get hurt throughout the story, which itself doesn’t seem to have much of a point.

Canada’s other entry is Wild Life, a 13-minute tale of a young Englishman who relocates to Alberta in 1909 and lies to his family about becoming a successful rancher when really he lives in a shack. Writers-directors Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby intersperse sometimes-amusing interviews with villagers about the stranger throughout, as well as not-so-successfully compare his trajectory to that of a comet’s. It doesn’t quite connect, but there’s a sadness that can’t be denied.

Another silent but jazz-scored entry is A Morning Stroll, a period-hopping piece about urban living, manners, a zombie apocalypse, and...a chicken that goes out for a walk in 1959, 2009, and 2059. Again, if there’s any message here, it’s not easily unearthed. But the different animation styles for each time setting — from simple, black-and-white lines to bright colors to a dingier but intricate video-game look — is a visual feast offered up in a mere seven minutes.

Pixar was unsurprisingly shut out of the Best Animated Feature running with its disappointing Cars 2—and it seems as if it barely squeaked into the shorts category. Its entry, La Luna, is pristine but relatively charmless, driven by an attempt at the magical instead of the witty. What exactly La Luna is about is a head-scratcher: Two grumbling (again, gibberish) old men and a boy paddle their rowboat to the middle of the sea and set up a ladder to the moon, on which they then sweep up stars.

So...they’re lunar janitors? Who knows. There’s a suggestion at the final image that they’re responsible for the moon’s phases, but the connection is tenuous and ultimately inconsequential.

The most ambitious and satisfying of the lot is The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, another wordless and fantastical tale about the redemptive power of books. Co-directors William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg use a combination of miniatures, CG, and 2D animation to present a literally whirlwind story of a tornado that blows the words out of books and the quasi-Oz the titular character discovers when he lands in an initially black-and-white world bereft of literature.

Not to worry: He soon finds a library, and life is suddenly sunny again. In ideal programming, Flying Books would be shown last of all the nominees, and you’d know exactly how Mr. Lessmore is feeling.

Writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’ throwback film tells the story of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a handsome 1920s screen actor whose popularity abruptly fades following the advent of talkies. Worse, a young dancer named Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), who was an extra in one of his films, rides the sound wave to superstardom, eventually signing with the studio that abandoned George when he refused to let his voice be heard. When he decides to write, produce, and direct his own silent film, it’s crushed by one of Peppy’s openings, and his downward spiral deepens.

Dujardin and Bejo are marvelous onscreen, both with looks that blend in perfectly with the bygone era being captured—he with a pencil-thin mustache and eyebrows that reach for the ceiling, she with a high-watt smile and physicality so expressive she can flirt with her elbows. Their characters’ attraction is palpable and joyous, which in turn lends the film a genuine gleefulness seldom seen in modern cinema. (An unconsummated romance with no giant lies or misunderstandings that keep the couple apart—how refreshing!) Also strong in his supporting role as George’s driver is James Cromwell, who is especially affecting after George can’t afford him anymore. But the best actor here may be Uggy the dog, a terrier who’s terrifically charming (and astoundingly well-trained) as George’s true best friend.

It’s inarguable that you’ll leave The Artist with a spring in your step and a grin on your face. And its achievement in delivering such an engrossing and invigorating story with only a handful of title cards and a lot of good acting is also undeniable. But it takes more than originality to turn a solid film into a great one, and The Artist falls just short.

It kicks off with Karen O and Trent Reznor’s screeching (in a good way) cover of “Immigrant Song” and goes ever-so-slightly downhill from there. The plot — except for a tweak at the end — remains the same: Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) has just lost his money and his reputation in a libel suit when he’s recruited by Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), the patriarch of a wealthy business family, to help solve the possible murder of his niece 40 years ago. Mikael eventually takes on an assistant, the antisocial and wounded Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), an investigative hacker who’d been hired to dig up information on Mikael before Henrik approached him.

Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who originated the role, will always be The Girl. But Mara is surprisingly serviceable, her button-cute baby face hardened by bleached eyebrows and Mom-cut black bangs. Lisbeth is a ward of the state, having been in and out of institutions since she was a child with a record of violence. And Mara is appropriately Goth and tough, her Lisbeth believably fighting back ugly when ugliness first confronts her. But it appears that screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Moneyball) doesn’t trust the audience to quite get it: “They say I’m insane,” he feeds into Mara’s mouth. “I am insane.” Noted.

Craig, too, goes through all the correct motions, with his Mikael deviating only slightly from the actor’s usual strong-but-silent types by showing a little uneasiness and uncertainty now and then. (Though really, his only edge on the Swedish version’s Michael Nyqvist is that you won’t spend the film thinking, Hmm, that guy kinda looks like Daniel Craig.) He and Mara make an intriguing investigative team, but only newbies will be enraptured by the story. To the rest, it’s all just a retread, and Fincher doesn’t bring enough of an interesting twist — in fact, there’s really no twist at all — to make this Dragon Tattoo worth the 158-minute sit.

A lot of folks are talking today about an email exchange, leaked to IndieWire, in which Hollywood super producer Scott Rudin rebukes New Yorker film critic David Denby for reviewing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ahead of its Dec. 13 embargo date. Over the weekend—at exactly the same time, in fact!—I received a similar missive from the chairman of the parent company of 20th Century Fox, who was irked about one of my upcoming reviews. It turns out studio types are really serious about these things!

—Original Message—–
From: Murdoch, Rupert
Sent: Sat 12/3/2011 12:08 AM
To: Olszewski, Tricia
Subject:

You’re going to break the review embargo on Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked? I’m shocked that you of all people would even think about doing this. It’s a very, very injurious move and a complete violation of what you agreed to. You may be a woman of ill repute, but you’ve always adhered to embargo rules.

From: Olszewski, Tricia
Sent: Saturday, December 03, 2011 11:19 AM
To: Murdoch, Rupert
Subject: RE:

Dear Rupert:

Rupert, I never meant to break the embargo, and I wouldn’t have with a negative review. But this time of year is difficult on alt-weeklies: A glut of dreary Oscar-bait films are released, and we don’t want to undermine something as compelling as Chipwrecked with a tiny write-up. So we decided to give it the space it deserved, which meant running the review early. What were we supposed to cover instead—Tinker Toy Soldier, or whatever it’s called? That’s not what the City Paper is all about.

So we reluctantly went with Chipwrecked, which I called “powerful.” I apologize for the breach, but it was a result of the strength of the film as well as year-end madness. It won’t happen again.

Congratulations on producing such a winning piece of cinema.

From: Murdoch, Rupert
Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 13:04:32 -0500
To: Olszewski, Tricia
Subject: Re:

I appreciate all this, Tricia, but the bottom line is you broke your word. You very badly damaged Chipwrecked by doing this; now ALL outlets will feel free to post early reviews of it willy-nilly. It doesn’t matter that you loved the film. You tacitly agreed to the embargo by attending the screening. The needs of your shitty publication do not trump the demands of the almighty 20th Century Fox or Newscorp, and if you knew you were going to break the rules, you should have done the honorable thing and confessed your intended breach to your Fox overlords before seeing the film. I cannot in good conscience invite you to another screening of ours. Have fun paying for Ice Age: Continental Drift.

The genius of the Muppets has always been the show’s ability to cut its gee-whizness with winking self-deprecation and a hint of cynicism. The somewhat insufferable Kermit the Frog has his rainbow-connectedness karate-chopped by an always-insufferable but realist Miss Piggy. Fozzie Bear and his terrible jokes are heckled by cranky balcony-dwellers Statler and Waldorf. And in the new film The Muppets, chickens sing — to Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You.”

Resuscitated by lifelong fan Jason Segel, who co-wrote and stars in the film, the Muppets are back to win over a new generation of fans. No, they won’t get the jokes about Benson or Tab, and they probably won’t recognize Mickey Rooney or Dave Grohl (the latter winning Coolest Cameo Ever). In fact, much of the script’s dry humor will go over little ones’ heads, such as Amy Adams playing an elementary-school teacher who heads an auto-mechanics class (“And that’s how you fix a 12-volt starter!”) or when her character, Mary, says when the inevitable conflict is introduced, “This is going to be a really short movie.”

And Los Angeles, where Segel’s big-kid Gary, his girlfriend, Mary, and his Muppet brother, Walter, go for vacation? It’s not quite Tinseltown but a city alight with police sirens. There’s even a barbershop-quartet performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” (Hard to imagine Courtney Love giving the go-ahead, but it must have happened.)

There’s gotta be a good-versus-evil angle, of course, and in this case it’s saving the dilapidated Muppet Studios from an oil baron (Chris Cooper) who says he’s going to turn the place into a museum but really plans to drill, baby, drill. (As the character, who embarrassingly raps in one of the film’s more misguided numbers, would say, “Maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh.”) So the Muppets, now spread all over the world pursuing different careers, must regroup to put on a last-ditch telethon show. (Kermit and Gary et al. gather a couple of the crew before Kermit’s helper robot says, “May I suggest we save time and pick up the rest of the Muppets using a montage?”)

Though there are multiple setbacks, the show eventually comes together, and when the Muppet theme song is finally played — well, members of a certain generation may feel a little tingle if not a happy tear. It’s no spoiler to say the telethon is a triumph, as is the movie itself: Segel’s pitch-perfect in his gee-whiz performance (though Adams is underused), he’s written the Muppets true to their characters, and every sentimentality is counterbalanced with a hit of dry wit. Even Statler and Waldorf would approve.

Written by Milk’s Dustin Lance Black, J. Edgar persistently bounces back and forth in time, a gimmick that results in a confusing narrative about Hoover’s personal and professional history. The broad strokes are covered: how a young charmer rose in the ranks and helped found the FBI, Hoover’s close relationship with his mother (Judi Dench) and his contentious one with other G-men and law enforcers, and—what viewers are probably most interested in seeing—whether or not Hoover was a gay cross-dresser.

The latter, while not presented salaciously, turns out to be the most compelling part of J. Edgar (though it’s not dealt with head-on until the film’s final chapters, long after you’ve started to nod off). At the heart of the rumors is Hoover’s associate director, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), with whom he’d taken meals and vacations from the time of Tolson’s hiring in 1927 until Hoover’s death in 1972. According to the script, Tolson was aching to become Hoover’s lover and couldn’t stand when he would mention any “lady friends”; Hoover, however, once told by his mother that she’d “rather have a dead son than a daffodil of a son,” fought his homosexuality, while still remaining close to his companion.

Besides its jumbled timeline, J. Edgar’s biggest misstep is its use of distracting prosthetics to age DiCaprio, Naomi Watts (who plays Hoover’s longtime secretary), and Hammer, who suffers the worst of it. (When Tolson has a stroke and begins to collapse, your first thought is that his terrible makeup is suffocating him.) DiCaprio’s performance, particularly in the flash-forwards, is defiant and captivating. But looking at him is a chore.

My Friend Peter: A Beaver-esque tale about a disturbed (but amusingly so!) guy who connects to the world via a monkey puppet; his success is about as believable as his piss-poor ability to throw his voice.

The Dual at Blood Creek: Such a silly but entertaining trifle hardly deserves the gorgeous cinematography it boasts; its twist is a cherry.

All of Me: Sex Over Seventy: If you want to hear an 84-year-old woman read her sex poetry with lines such as, “We laughed as you corrugated my nipples,” this short’s for you.

On the Beat: Soat: Essentially an animated music video that seems to star beans, Skittles, and fruit as they take the shape of dancers.

Abduct Me!: A ridiculous, poorly acted skit about a dude who gets jerked off by an alien.

Sold: Twelve minutes of tension as a kidnapped journalist tries to escape her captors.

Wiccan Tease: Another slight, occasionally funny bit about a young witch and a guy crushing on her that features stiff performances and the spot-on line, “You know, this is such a waste of time — and eye makeup.”

Tell-Tale: Carla Gugino raises this salacious short’s profile playing a Carla Gugino type; Clifton Collins Jr. co-stars as an investigator interrogating the femme fatale in this otherwise weak take on The Tell-Tale Heart.

Oh Baby, I Love You!: Forget the whimsical story about a young woman with a sexual tic — this film has the best O-face ever.

Mon., Sept. 12 at 9 p.m. at E Street Cinema
Sat., Sept. 17 at 4 p.m. at Atlas Arts Center

After-School Special

Sad sacks and victims dominate DC Shorts' Showcase 1. I’d advise you to bring your tissues, but none of these films are strong enough to warrant tears.

Long Story Short: A little person falls for his tall improv partner; the awkwardness is palpable, their connection is not.

The Man in 813: This three-minute film about 24 hours in an apartment building swiftly shows how fucked up some people are.

After-School Special: Written by Neil LaBute, this is the best of Showcase 1 if only for its shocking conclusion, which might be called Shyamalan-ian if that meant anything anymore.

The Scarecrow Girl: A rural girl whose parents believe that school is only for boys teaches herself to read, which is about as gripping as it sounds.

Spiral Transition: A documentary about a 27-year-old undergoing gender transitioning is more about his mother than him, leaving you wishing it went a little deeper.

Lighthearted Boy: An amusement-park ride is an unlikely source of salvation in this mediocre story about a suicidal grandfather.

She Was the One: Pairing real audio with animation, this is no TV Funhouse but an interview with someone who lost his love on Sept. 11, 2001. It may be one of thousands of stories, but that doesn’t diminish its poignancy.

Frienemies: A mini-melodrama about BFFs and a high-school sexting scandal that deserves rotten tomatoes for occasionally stiff acting and making me write “sexting.”

The Line: This slight comedy about three Mexican men crossing the border in the trunk of a car is less puzzling for its lack of humor than for wrapping things up with “Danke Schoen.”

Thurs., Sept. 8 at 7 p.m. at E Street Cinema
Sun., Sept. 11 at 11 a.m. at Artisphere
Tues., Sept. 13 at 9 p.m. at E Street Cinema

Boy, chimps sure are pissed at humans. At least that's the case in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a prequel to the Planet of the Apes series that portrays how those simians got so smart in the first place. Though the blowout is fierce, its origins are quite pedestrian, really: It was just an experiment gone wrong.

That, and a man who didn't fight hard enough for his chimp. "I'm sorry, this is all my fault," says scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) with guffaw-eliciting understatement after a sanctuary's worth of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans lose their shit on the Golden Gate Bridge. Landon's responsible for creating a drug that regenerates brain cells in Alzheimer's patients. His most promising test subject, Bright Eyes (its name one among several nods to the original film), appeared to have suffered violent side effects and was shot down. But not before giving birth—and passing along her altered genes—to Caesar (Andy Serkis, again working undetected under performance-capture technology). Caesar needs to be protected when the experiment is terminated, so Will takes the hirsute tyke home, teaching him language and raising him as a pet for his Alzheimer's-plagued father (John Lithgow).

But as anyone who's seen Project Nim knows, a chimp doesn't remain domesticated forever, and soon Caesar is court-ordered to live the rest of his days in a sanctuary-as-prison. (You'll hate its weasely, cruel keeper, played by Tom Felton, aka Harry Potter's Draco Malfoy.) Though the other apes are not exactly welcoming to Caesar, he's more dangerous than they are because of his lethal combination of intelligence and anger. A sadistic guardian, an owner who abandons him, peers who think they're all alpha—of course things are about to go bananas.

Directed by Rupert Wyatt from a script by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver—no, none of these names are of any renown—Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a self-serious but still entertaining technological marvel. Serkis, who also played King Kong in Peter Jackson's remake, brings Caesar to anthropomorphic life without seams; you'll easily read his expressions yet never once question whether there's a human underneath the hair. The other apes are just as majestic and fluid, their uprising a thrilling marvel to behold.

But where the action excels, the tone falters, with characters and dialogue that are a little too flat to make the film exceptional. Its only laughs are unintentional, such as when that famous line from the original is reprised—though it's not because of the command itself, but the surprising response the deliverer gets from one damn, dirty ape.

With Indiana Jones, James Bond, and the man behind Iron Man, you might expect Cowboys & Aliens to be the most entertaining of mash-ups, part True Grit, part Super 8. What you get instead is closer to a disaster flick in the worst sense of the term.

It required an astonishing five screenwriters and director Jon Favreau to take this Platinum Studios comic and almost immediately pack up its promise and ride it into the sunset. The story's in the title: It's 1873, and a strong-and-silent stranger, Jake (Daniel Craig), has just arrived in a dusty town, claiming to not know his name or his past but wearing some fancy metal wristband that comes in explosive handy when the area is then attacked by...well, they're not sure what they are, but "demons" is one guess. Brightly lit spaceships swoop down to blow the place up and lasso its citizens. Why? To study our weaknesses, a battle-ready lady (Olivia Wilde, with the whitest teeth in the West) tells us. They also want our gold. And then they'll wipe us out. OK.

Helping Jake and the lass take on the E.T.s is another alpha male named Woodrow (Harrison Ford, more grizzled expression than character), along with a ragtag group of cowboys, plain ol' citizens (including Sam Rockwell), and, eventually, Indians. (See how they learn to get along!) To oomph the aw! factor, we learn that the aliens have taken Jake's girlfriend and that Woodrow regards his Indian sidekick as more of a son than his actual kid (Paul Dano, barely a presence). But mostly, a lot of stuff blows up, with the appropriately fugly aliens occasionally touching ground to roar and act menacing to our heroes' faces.

Cowboys & Aliens is not without its charms. It offers a fair dose of humor (particularly how ridiculously ass-kicking Craig's Jake is) and some exciting action sequences. But the lack of a solid story turns it all into a bunch of (often repetitive) noise and bluster, weakly punctuated by flashbacks or mouthsful of exposition. (A particularly eye-rolling speech extols the gruff Woodrow's softer side.) Meanwhile, the title's former half will bore you long before the latter makes their inevitable exit.