This exclusive CityArts series will chart the recent peculiar releases that failed to get Oscar nominations. Yet, just like the Oscar-nominated fare, these movies are not a part of film culture but exist outside what moviegoers patronize and talk about. The films’ staggered release from December 2011 to early 2012 delays the effects of film on the 
If the filmmaking team Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wrote out their thoughts on how contemporary pop has traduced fun, warped thrills and debased energy in the art form they love, it would be a great provocative piece of criticism—although few film publications would want such a principled view of the destructive entertainment that’s routinely 
In the stultifying Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, British actor Tom Hardy briefly appeared in a romantic subplot as a heartbroken, repentant operative who laments all the impenetrable death and subterfuge simply because it cost him the woman he loved. For a few fleeting moments, Hardy’s alert eyes, sensual lips and magnetic ruddiness broke through film’s 
Safe House, an espionage chase film set in South Africa, is rotten enough to be a sequel to District 9, where South African racial issues were treated to a dumb sci-fi alien allegory. Here, the alien is Denzel Washington, who first appears walking down a Johannesburg street in a Malcolm X beard and fedora. But 
Update: In Breaking Dawn, Part 1, Bella marries Edward, gives birth to a demon baby and Jacob stops moping long enough to “implant” with the infant. These predictable plot details are not spoilers; the film itself is a spoiler. All the potential of the Twilight vampire series is squandered. Part 2 may already be in the can, but 
