Reviewed in 2024: I missed this somehow when I originally saw it, probably in 2014 or 2015. Abel Morales owns a heating oil business and competes honestly against numerous corrupt competitors, and even his father-in-law. Abel is confronted with the challenge of staying honest and suffering significant losses, working with the DA to "clean up" the industry, or striking back, something his wife, surprisingly perhaps, advocates. Very well acted, dark, powerful drama.
Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Alessandro Nivola, Elyes Gable, Lorna Pruce, Albert Brooks, Jerry Adler
Morvern wakes up one day beside her boyfriend who has slashed his wrists, on Christmas day, and died, on the floor of his apartment. "Don't try to understand", he has informed her via his computer (displaying "Read Me" on the screen). She gets up, gets dressed, takes some money from his pockets, and goes out, to meet her friend Lanna. They go to a club. Where's your boyfriend? He left. In the note, her boy friend tells her about a manuscript for a novel that he suggests she send to a list of publishers. She does so, and then she disposes of the body herself, and then she and Lanna go to Ibiza, Spain, to be ravished by the sunlight and the scenery, though she impulsively also leads Lanna to a small Spanish town having some kind of religious feast, after which they are stranded far from everything. The fate of the manuscript comes in to play as Morvern seems indifferent and disengaged from everything around her, from the casual sex and drinking and drugs, to her friends confession that she had slept with the boyfriend-- but it didn't mean anything. The New York Times mentioned the "weightlessness" of her life, the "empty weariness", and that seems right. Really right. A flaw: editors at a publishing house would expect to spend a lot of time suggesting rewrites and edits to a manuscript: there is no suggestion of how this would work out in the context of this film.
Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Paul Popplewell, Ruby Milton, El Carrette
Based on book by Michael Lewis, brilliant, tour-de-force on the financial meltdown in 2008, beginning with some clever traders who-- ostensibly for ethical reasons-- decide to play against the bundled subprime mortgage industry by betting against their viability. Sometimes impressionistic and comical, sometimes tragic, always mesmerizing, takes you on a ride through the roller coaster of massive financial transactions as the markets react to perceived or imagined developments.
Ryan Gosling, Rudy Eisenzopf, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei
It's all action, but amazing action, thrilling chases, unusual vehicles and sequences, daring stunts. As good as an action film gets, but missing that essential ingredient of a great film: substance. It's all just chase, chase, chase, escape, confrontation, battle, blood-letting, and chaos, but unusually well-edited and directed, and even a little tasteful, as in the use Charlize Theron as a woman who takes things into her own hands-- Miller doesn't get preachy or showy about it, but there is an enlightened feminist perspective to the film. Except for one thing: the thrills consist of conflict and pursuit and violence. That is the one truly feminist element no film like this will ever adopt. In short, a woman war-rig driver, Imperator Furiosa, leads a group of enslaved wives (shades of ISIS) to escape a dystopic kingdom ruled by Immortan Joe, who, of course, gives chase.
Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Josh Helman, John Howard
Unusually serious treatment of the scandal of abusive priests in the Boston arch-diocese as covered by the Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team, who succeeded in persuading victims to talk to them and obtained documents showing that the church hierarchy was aware of the abuse and did not act. I was frankly astonished that the film did not create fake conflicts or stereotypical villains. When the reporters confronted a reluctant editor with the importance of the story the editor thought about it ... and agreed! And the Archbishop gives a speech after 9/11 that sounds Hollywood progressive and enlightened, showing respect for the Moslem faith and pleading for tolerance. Didn't dumb down the story: the complexities of obtaining the documents from a related court case are displayed in all their glory and you just have to try to follow the legal reasoning as best you can. The Globe's journalists cooperating with the production and it shows, and their comments later highlight the sincerity and respect given to the story by the producers. This is a gem that raises serious, important questions about the church, about Catholicism itself, and the legal profession.
Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci
Dalton Trumbo was one of the most successful Hollywood screenwriters of his generation... and a avowed communist. "Trumbo" tracks his descent from popular success to __ as the House UnAmerican Activities Committee exposed his communist associations and prevented him from working for the major studios. Trumbo found work, either by using a fake name, a front, or by writing for B-list directors (also under fake names). He even won two Oscars, for "The Brave One" and "Roman Holiday", under aliases. Eventually Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas both had the courage to openly employ Trumbo. But "Trumbo", ironically, is not that well written, and certainly not well-acted or directed. It's a pedestrian production that still packs a punch because of its subject and the titillating cameos by various Hollywood icons like John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, and Kirk Douglas. Cranston as Trumbo is off-putting: by the end of the film, I cared more about the issue than the character, though I was surprised by the graciousness he displayed once he had been accepted again by Hollywood. No on in the cast stands out in any respect, except John Goodman, who chews through a scene in which a HUAC official confronts him about Trumbo with bravado and wit. Helen Mirren is okay as Hedda Hopper, but most of the other guests act like they don't know this is a take. The film inexplicably shows Edward G. Robinson betraying his friends before the committee: never happened.
Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C. K., Dean O'Gorman
Based on the book by Walter Isaacson. Focused intensely on Jobs' obsession with product vs. his attentiveness to his family, including a daughter he insisted, at first, was not his. Fassbender is excellent, as is Winslet and Waterston. Sorkin's trademark witty banter and in motion dialogue hasn't entirely worn out it's welcome, and suggests an under-story here that makes the movie seem more than the sum of it's parts: what kind of person was Jobs? The movie doesn't argue for or against his brilliance (having Wozniak ask what exactly he brings to the product) but does dissect his vanity and vision, and the complex personality that both tickled and aggravated so many people. A difficult movie to assess apart from the personality of Jobs himself, which is even more difficult to assess. I think he really was brilliant, and I think the defects in his character are the defects of a visionary, confident, brilliant mind.
Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Katharine Waterston
Fatally diminished by an overwrought, unappealing premise, "Unbreakable". Shyamalan's first film after the clever "Sixth Sense", wallows in forced melodrama and semi-comic scenes of sadness we are supposed to feel as tragedy. David Dunn, once a promising football player, is sad because he is only a security guard at a Philadelphia sports stadium, until he meets Elijah Price. And how did Shyamalan ever think of the idea of naming him "Elijah". Yes, that's the flavor of this piece. Anyway, Elijah, who is very breakable, always ill, always injured (though, in the film he has broken bones but never anything like the flu or a cold), comes to believe that there must be someone the opposite of him: someone who is "unbreakable". That turns out to be David Dunn, who survives a train wreck. Now, let's be clear on the plot of this movie-- spoiler alert-- but who cares!--: Elijah picks out people the thinks might be "unbreakable" and then stages mass killings (as disasters) in order to test his hypothesis, and accepts that David Dunn, having survived only the one accident-- a train crash in which every single other passenger is killed -- might be the real deal. But Dunn's secret is not that he is unbreakable, suddenly: it's that he can weirdly sense other people's inner lives as they brush past him. And so on. Bad enough that the plot doesn't make sense and is not appealing on any level: Shyamalan doesn't get good performances from anybody except maybe Robin Wright either. And I've already wasted too many words on a mediocre film.
Bruce Willis, Samuel Jackson, Robin Wright, Chalayne Woodard, Spencer Treat Clark
Fatally diminished by an overwrought, unappealing premise, "Unbreakable" wallows in forced melodrama and semi-comic scenes of sadness we are supposed to feel as tragedy. David Dunn, once a promising football player, is sad because he is only a security guard at a Philadelphia sports stadium, until he meets Elijah Price. And how did Shyamalan ever think of the idea of naming him "Elijah". Yes, that's the flavor of this piece. Anyway, Elijah, who is very breakable, always ill, always injured (though, in the film he has broken bones but never anything like the flu or a cold), comes to believe that there must be someone the opposite of him: someone who is "unbreakable". That turns out to be David Dunn, who survives a train wreck. Now, let's be clear on the plot of this movie-- spoiler alert-- but who cares!--: Elijah picks out people the thinks might be "unbreakable" and then stages mass killings (as disasters) in order to test his hypothesis, and accepts that David Dunn, having survived only the one accident-- a train crash in which every single other passenger is killed -- might be the real deal. But Dunn's secret is not that he is unbreakable, suddenly: it's that he can weirdly sense other people's inner lives as they brush past him. And so on. Bad enough that the plot doesn't make sense and is not appealing on any level: Shyamalan doesn't get good performances from anybody except maybe Robin Wright either. And I've already wasted too many words on a mediocre film.
Bruce Willis, Samuel Jackson, Robin Wright
Inspired by several true stories, the story of a young girl who is kidnapped and held prisoner for seven years, and who gives birth to a boy while in her "prison", a backyard shed. The conceit is that she has taught the boy, who is five at the time they finally emerge into the real world, that the shed is the entire world, and that nothing exists outside of it. This aspect of the story isn't really explored in any meaningful way, but the film is bravely sophisticated in other ways-- the kidnapper isn't caricatured, and neither is the talk show hostess, and the mom is no saint, and the child isn't always charming. And their transition to normal life does not go smoothly though it was unclear to me, at times, if it was intended to suggest that society can be as constricting and repressive as their shed. There is one terribly clumsy sequence, but most of the performances, especially Jacob Tremblay as Jack, are exceptional.
Jacob Tremblay, Brie Larson, Sean Bridges, Wendy Crewson, Joan Allen, William H. Macy
Inspired by several true stories, the story of a young girl who is kidnapped and held prisoner for seven years, and who gives birth to a boy while in her "prison", a backyard shed. The conceit is that she has taught the boy, who is five at the time they finally emerge into the real world, that the shed is the entire world, and that nothing exists outside of it. This aspect of the story isn't really explored in any meaningful way, but the film is bravely sophisticated in other ways-- the kidnapper isn't caricatured, and neither is the talk show hostess, and the mom is no saint, and the child isn't always charming. And their transition to normal life does not go smoothly though it was unclear to me, at times, if it was intended to suggest that society can be as constricting and repressive as their shed. There is one terribly clumsy sequence, but most of the performances, especially Jacob Tremblay as Jack, are exceptional.
Jacob Tremblay, Brie Larson, Sean Bridges, Wendy Crewson, Joan Allen, William H. Macy
Based on a book by David Lipsky of Rolling Stone (and not flattering to him), an account of a book tour by David Foster Wallace from his home in Bloomington, Illinois, near Chicago to Minnesota and other environs accompanied by Lipsky who was doing a Rolling Stone profile. What do writers do when they are not autographing copies of their books and answering stupid questions on talk shows? Watching junky tv shows and movies and eating at the food court in monstrous shopping malls. Interesting to get a look at how speaking tours are arranged: Joan Cusack is charming as a driver for one of the dates. Foster is completely unexpected: forthcoming, honest, self-deprecating, and very self-analytical, as he muses about the relationship between famous author and fan and biographer and media, and how manipulative it can be to not be manipulative, or to be manipulative and admit it, thereby suggesting that one is not manipulative. The film is conversation, most of which was recorded by Lipsky and so accurately represents Wallace's thoughts and feelings. Lipsky admits, through this script, that he was jealous and envious, and not entirely honorable in his relationship with Wallace, who committed suicide 13 years later. Brilliant conversation by a brilliant novelist, nicely wrapped in a road trip movie, and well acted, particularly by Jason Segel.
Jason Segel, Jeremy Eisenberg, Joan Cusack, Anna Chlumsky, Gummer Mamie, Ron Livingston
From the very first scene, Johnny and two associates "riding" bikes in front of rear-projection, this is a typical Hollywood take on a social issue, with the usual literate if hokey script and melodrama (with an unusually sophisticated moral perspective), and stilted performances. Like "The Blackboard Jungle", a generally liberal view of a gang of criminals: they are just people, like you and me, who went astray, but might just have hearts of gold. They also talk more like beatniks than a motorcycle gang. Johnny leads his gang, "The Black Rebels" ("What are you rebelling against?" "What'ya got?") into a small town where a weakling Sheriff refuses to stand up to them. Other townspeople agree with him: why force a confrontation? The gang threatens women and loots stores and creates chaos in the local bar. When an angry town bully, Charlie Thomas, (and he is called a "bully") gets a gun, and forms a vigilante group, Sheriff Bleeker stops them, having purposely left his gun in his office desk. The Sheriff's daughter happens to be comely Kathie Bleeker, who is simultaneously attracted and repelled by Johnny, who can't sort out his feelings for her. In the spirit of the times, Johnny is shown to be misunderstood and harshly judged by the townsfolk, and is unjustly accused of causing a death. The real villain is the bully, who hurled a tire iron at Johnny as he tried to escape the vigilante mob.
Marlon Brando, Mary Murphy, Robert Keith, Lee Marvin, Hugh Sanders, Ray Teal
Paul Thomas Anderson's odd, doped up, stream of altered consciousness take on the '60's via "The Big Sleep" and especially "The Long Goodbye". Diffuse and sometimes shapeless, follows the misadventures of PI Larry "Doc" Sportello as he, basically, smokes up and carries on inane conversations with a lot of suspects who offer him clues as to the disappearance of real estate mogul Michael Z. Wolfmann. Okay, so it's a comedy, and every interaction is jokey and trippy, but the performances are so good-- especially Phoenix, Brolin, and Waterston-- and the dialogue clever enough that you might not mind the excursion. Anderson always gets compelling performances from his stars, and there are raft of them in here with generous opportunities to over-act and skewer types.
Joaquin Phoenix, Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short
On December 6, 1989, frustrated student Marc Lepine walked into Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering school, declared that he hated feminists and began shooting any female students he could find. He killed 14 and wounded 17. "Polytechnique", in black and white, follows him and several students throughout the day, sometimes shifting forward in time and then back again, dissecting their interactions with each other, their responses, and the panicked chaos on the campus immediately after the shooting, without drawing out much in terms of meaning or insight. We get all the external evidence of the event, and low-key flashes of personality and desires (a student has an interview for a job on the same day) and a rather faithful dramatization. In some ways, that is a strength of the movie, which is resolutely non-exploitive. On the other hand, it leaves it somewhat bereft of passion or perspective. Perhaps, in some ways, that is the aspect of the film that is the most faithful to the reality: what kind of meaning is there to random mass murder? The real Lepine was brought up in an abusive household, but the movie wisely avoids the subject. It's all just random, just idiotic (many of the women would certainly not have thought of themselves as feminists). Also odd-- for a "fictionalization" (real names are not used), it is more faithful to the facts than most "true stories" are. Similar to "Elephant" in its odd, matter-of-fact approach to an overwhelming, sensational event. In that sense-- in an important sense-- it gives the viewer a far more realistic experience of the event.
Maxim Gaudette, Sebastien Huberdeau, Karine Vanasse, Evelyne Brochu
Harsh document about the life of a boy soldier in Africa, his experience of learning how to kill, the use of drugs, sexual abuse, and relentless brutality. Filmed under tough conditions in Ghana using real soldiers from Sierra Leone and Liberia. The Commandant leads them through several operations until he rejoins his "supreme commander" in a city, who has other plans for him. The soldiers eventually find themselves mining for gold, desperate for some income, as the Commandant has split off from the movement to run his own army. Fascinating, inside look at an important phenomenon, resonating with rebel movements everywhere, including the middle east. Idris Elba, "Stringer Bell" from "The Wire", is excellent, as are most of the child actors and the extras. Gritty and compelling.
Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, Emmanuel Affadzi, Grace Nortey, Ricky Adelayitor
Sorry George, this is a diffuse, poorly structured and directed montage of adorable actors posing in lovely historical settings. It's a pastiche of feel-good American-centric moments, vaguely about the importance of art, for an audience that could not bear one moment of actual contemplation of any of the masterpieces referenced. How did it work? How did they relate to the military authorities in real control? Who made decisions key to the recovery of these works? Why so little attention to the efforts of European resistance fighters who undertook the most dangerous efforts? Few answers, and few details, but lots of earnest dialogue about the foundations of Western Civilization and all that. An example of the weaknesses of this film: when a German confronts Garfield and Savitz, there is no explanation of what he wants, why he would come into the open, or what Garfield and Savitz might think he wants. It's just an inexplicable moment, to add some tension to the story. "The Great Beauty" dared to ask the viewer to try to understand what was so beautiful about the sculptures and architecture of Rome: "Monuments Men" turns away quickly before, it assumes, the audience is bored.
George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin
Interesting sci-fi film about an American-- yes AMERICAN-- space crew who inadvertently leave someone behind on Mars because they think he's dead. He's not, of course, and "The Martian" follows his use of science and ingeniousness to survive the long period of time before he can be rescued. What do you say, crew? Do we all risk our lives on the minuscule chance that we will be able to reach Mars and rescue Mark before he dies? What say you? Yes! And like good boy scouts they swing back. Not one second of dialogue indicates the slightest consciousness of large, complex moral issues. Just how many other lives do you risk to save one? How would a political leader deal with the obvious problem of explaining to the public their decisions? What would it feel like to be alone on a distant planet? All substituted for with a disappointingly bland Jessica Chastain slowly wasting her talent in dull, big-budget Hollywood films.
Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Kate Mara
Mark Rylance is the main attraction in this film, as outed Soviet spy Rudolph Abel, who is offered back to the Russians in exchange for downed U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers. Spielberg doesn't touch on the public humiliation of Eisenhower, who lied to the U.N. only to discover that the Soviets had proof. Mainly, it's concerned with the heroic James Donovan, played with antiseptic blandless by Tom Hanks (who, going for anguish, actually looks constipated). Donovan stands up for civil rights, even for a Russian spy, whom most people want to hang. In real life, Donovan almost persuaded to overturn Abel's conviction on the basis of unlawful search and seizure-- a truly remarkable achievement. The usual Spielberg whiz-bang production values, but occasionally aimless and unfocussed, and the conversations between people like Dulles and Donovan are scarcely credible-- they sound like boy scouts-- "gosh, we've got to do something or else".
Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Alan Alda, Amy Ryan, Austin Stowell, Peter McRobbie
And writer Annie Mumolo. Directed by a man? Well, directed like a sitcom by a former sitcom director, Paul Feig (The Office). This production which was touted as an emblem of female empowerment in Hollywood, was indeed directed by a man. It's witty and sometimes clever, a comedy about a maid of honor, Annie, who can't get anything to go right for her, and her rival, Helen, who seems capable and successful and clever. So, essentially, it's about how awful Annie feels when she fails and Helen succeeds, and how jealous she is of Helen's success and charm, and how funny it is when Megan, the fat bridesmaid, assaults someone. Actually, Melissa McCarthy is talented and sometimes funny, but "Bridesmaids" starts drifting about half-way through when it seems nobody knew where to go from the point at which Annie has completely bombed out, she has rejected a charming, likable boyfriend because he suggested she could be successful running a bakeshop. Wisely keeps characters within the realm of believability (which is funnier anyway) and is nicely restrained for the most part (with the exception of a cringey scene trying on dresses after a dubious meal at a Mexican restaurant).
Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne
Simon and Robyn are married, successful, live in a beautiful house, and look ready to start their perfect family. Except that Robyn recently miscarried, at their previous home in Chicago. LA is a better job, a fresh start for them both. While out shopping for supplies, they bump into an old school friend of Simon's, Gordo. It is immediately apparent that Gordo is a little "off". He is awkward and uneasy and it seems odd that Simon can barely remember him. Gordo weasels his way into their lives, coming over for dinner, and inviting them over for dinner to a lovely house. We find out that Robyn has abused prescription medicines, and Simon creepily chastises her for a possible relapse. We find out that Simon has been promoted at work, after scandalous information about a competing employee emerged. Gordo leaves their lives but sends one last message, in the most intriguing moment of the film, Robyn wonders what he means by an offer to "let bygones be bygones". And here an otherwise intriguing storyline begins to wonder: Simon appears to have done something terrible to Gordon in high school; he told a fib, making it look like Gordo was gay, and Gordo's father found out and nearly killed him. Gordo's revenge is elaborate, improbable, and dramatically diffuse. It depends on you believing that Simon would care so much about certain things that taking them away would destroy him. However, given what we know about Simon, it's hard to buy into him being anything but contemptuous of Gordo's actions.
Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, Tim Griffin
Unsatisfying documentary about Glen Campbell's struggle with Alzheimer's -- no, wait: it's a film about Kim Campbell's wonderful efforts to guide Glen Campbell through a concert tour while he struggles with Alzheimer's, and how much he loves her and his daughter Ashley, who plays and sings in his band, and how much people admire Glen Campbell. The Alzheimer's angle is an rationale, obviously, for a sometimes disturbing invasion of Campbell's privacy at a time when he was probably not competent to give genuinely informed consent. Spends way too much time showing tributes: the classic high school mistake of telling rather than showing. There's a lot to show of this brilliant guitarist who played so well on so many great recordings, but Keach prefers a more manipulative approach. There is something to the idea of giving us an honest picture of the effects of Alzheimer's on a particularly talented individual, but it's a very uneasy balance. Campbell's children from his earlier marriages were suing at the time the documentary was made. Campbell had been put in a care facility in Nashville and his older children felt the care was inadequate.
Glen Campbell, Ashley Campbell, Kim Campbell
Unsatisfying documentary about Glen Campbell's struggle with Alzheimer's -- no, wait: it's a film about Kim Campbell's wonderful efforts to guide Glen Campbell through a concert tour while he struggles with Alzheimer's, and how much he loves her and his daughter Ashley, who plays and sings in his band, and how much people admire Glen Campbell. The Alzheimer's angle is an rationale, obviously, for a sometimes disturbing invasion of Campbell's privacy at a time when he was probably not competent to give genuinely informed consent. Spends way too much time showing tributes: the classic high school mistake of telling rather than showing. There's a lot to show of this brilliant guitarist who played so well on so many great recordings, but Keach prefers a more manipulative approach. There is something to the idea of giving us an honest picture of the effects of Alzheimer's on a particularly talented individual, but it's a very uneasy balance. Campbell's children from his earlier marriages were suing at the time the documentary was made. Campbell had been put in a care facility in Nashville and his older children felt the care was inadequate.
Unsatisfying documentary about Glen Campbell's struggle with Alzheimer's -- no, wait: it's a film about Kim Campbell's wonderful efforts to guide Glen Campbell through a concert tour while he struggles with Alzheimer's, and how much he loves her and his daughter Ashley, who plays and sings in his band, and how much people admire Glen Campbell. The Alzheimer's angle is an rationale, obviously, for a sometimes disturbing invasion of Campbell's privacy at a time when he was probably not competent to give genuinely informed consent. Spends way too much time showing tributes: the classic high school mistake of telling rather than showing. There's a lot to show of this brilliant guitarist who played so well on so many great recordings, but Keach prefers a more manipulative approach. There is something to the idea of giving us an honest picture of the effects of Alzheimer's on a particularly talented individual, but it's a very uneasy balance. Campbell's children from his earlier marriages were suing at the time the documentary was made. Campbell had been put in a care facility in Nashville and his older children felt the care was inadequate.
Honest, politically incorrect story of a teenager who pursues a sexual relationship with her mother's boyfriend, and likes it, and wants to continue it even after the boyfriend begins to worry about being outed. Minnie is also a budding artist in the mode of Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb (who appears in cartoon form in the movie, to encourage Minnie) whose funky images come to life at times to express her inner confusion. Minnie experiments with drugs and sex and defiance while beginning to realize the value of enduring relationships, embracing her mother with all her flaws, and embracing herself as a girl who isn't beautiful in a classic sense but is learning just how far her sexuality will take her. Well acted, fresh, and original.
Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgard, Christopher Meloni
It begins with horrible "concert footage" of Al Pacino aping a professional singer in concert. It is terrible. The rest of the movie wallows in its wake, about a dissolute rock star who regrets his neglect of his son and wants to rebuild that relationship, and help out his grand-daughter who has severe ADHD, apparently, that can be fixed by some celebrity school master in New York, that Danny can afford to pay for (his son can't). But then, you wouldn't have conflict, so the ungrateful son has to get very angry at Danny for-- I think it was drinking, but it seemed relatively trivial in presentation. Then the son has a crisis. Then more soap. Awful. The only bright light in the movie is Giselle Eisenberg as the grand daughter, Hope.
Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Jennifer Garner, Katerina Cas, Christopher Plummer, Giselle Eisenberg
Supposedly an enlightened Disney product, tells the story of a curious teenage girl with a special gift who embarks on a mission to find a mythical place after breaking into NASA facilities to try to prevent them from being dismantled. You see, that would deny the beautiful spirit of human creativity. She is given a button that gives her access to Tomorrowland, which, after a diversion to the Eiffel Tower, she is able to travel to Tomorrowland where she realizes that some kind of feedback loop has begun to destroy the world of creativity and invention because people no longer believe in it. But the plot is really kind of a mess and ends up with the paradox of a well-meaning villain, Nix, willfully destroying his own dream because he believes the dream will be destroyed-- which, in my view, almost inevitably fizzles as a plot device because it is fundamentally unbelievable.
George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Judy Greer
I find Jack Black insufferable but the kids in this film rescue it from mediocrity. They are played for real, with subtlety and imagination, and Linklater directs them astutely. Dewey Finn is insufferably played by Black as a pathetic and abrasive metal guitarist who must come up with rent money or be evicted by his buddy Ned Schneebly (played by writer Mike White) and his annoying Jewish girlfriend Patty (Sarah Silverman). Ned is a substitute teacher and when a call comes for him that Dewey intercepts, he decides to take the gig to earn money for rent. He takes over a class and tells the kids that match and geography and all other academic pursuits don't matter. Then he finds out they all play instruments so he forms them into a band and they enter a contest. Yes, totally formulaic. But the kids are fresh and interesting and even the principal, Rosalie Mullins, has a sideways credibility that works for the movie. There are unexpected moments-- one of the kids rebelling against being assigned to be a "groupie" because she finds out groupies sleep with band members-- and others kids who just reject the whole idea. And there is the cliche about the repressed son whose exploits on stage cause his father to recognize his gift. So it's an odd mix, kind of entertaining overall, and partly annoying. For the record, all of the kids really played their instruments.
Jack Black, Adam Pascal, Joan Cusack, Miranda Taylor Cosgrove, Rebecca Brown
In a critically revealing scene late in "Inside Out", Riley remembers a sad moment in her life, the day she missed a critical chance for her hockey team costing them the championship. I had been led to believe, by many reviews, that "Inside Out"-- unlike most Hollywood children's fare-- suggested that there was a legitimate place for sadness in our lives, and it should not be banished or denied but embraced as part of what makes us fully human. So here was the scene in which Riley has a chance to confront and accept, with sadness, this disappointment, and carry on as a stronger person. But that's not what happened. Instead, the scene quickly filled with her parents and team-mates who were tossing her into the air with joy, telling her how much they loved her. In other words, the scene was not very sad at all, and no one should have trouble accepting disappointments in life that include your teammates and parents hugging you and patting you on the back and celebrating you you you. A soul-crushing moment in a film which had such positive reviews, many of which specifically claimed that this children's story did not allow a saccharine moral to dominate the story line. Yes it did. Joy runs everything in this child's mind, and sadness is only acceptable because Joy finds a way to use sadness to ram more joy down everyone's throats. "Inside Out" spends way too much time inside and very little time developing Riley's character. Riley has to move to San Francisco and on her first day at school has to tell the class who she is and where she is from. She cries because she is sad she had to leave her home in Minnesota. This is the best they can give us in terms of a "crisis"? This is the pitch, the peak, the dynamic that they want to use as a springboard for all the activities in her mind involving anger, sadness, anger, revulsion, joy? That is frankly worse than pathetic. It is criminally negligent story-telling. It's story by committee and child mental health consultant. It is definitely not different from any of dozens of others assembly-line children's films. And, for good measure, lets add that with the exception of Lewis Black-- and even he becomes tiresome after a while-- all of the voices are rather lame, generic, and colorless.
Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Bill Hader, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias
Strange, ambiguous documentary about a family, six boys, one girl, who are locked away in a Lower East Side apartment while growing up, by a father with an alcohol problem, and a compliant mother. Their situation is not really brutal or repressive: they are allowed to watch thousands of movies that their father, a real cinephile, brings home for them. They emerge, through chance circumstances, and meet Crystal Moselle, who hangs out with them for a long, discovering their homemade re-enactments of favorite movies, like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and made this documentary. Their father does not seem particularly brutal, but as the boys emerge from their seclusion, they are resentful. When one of them willfully leaves for a time, their father's reaction is not what they expected. They are all gentle and naive, but perhaps, not as naive as you might expect.
Bhagavan Angulo, Govinda Angulo, Jagadisa Angulo, Krsna Angulo, Mukunda Angulo, Narayana Angulo
Seriously over-rated contrived story about a 14-year-old misfit who connects with some seniors, including a hot girl, in his first year of high school, with predictable nods to classic movies and off-beat music, as if... Charlie has some serious problems due, apparently, to being molested by an aunt earlier in his life (which is evoked by an intimate gesture by Sam), and has had a breakdown. But the wildly exotic Sam and gay Patrick adopt him rather enthusiastically-- way more enthusiastically than imaginable-- and a kindly, literate English teacher inspires him, and, a wonderful, totally dedicated psychiatrist tries to help him, and, well, not much else really happens. Not one intimation of the delicate vulnerabilities of high school teenagers is evoked: his new friends immediately make him the center of their social circle, and never make a single surprising or ambiguous gesture towards him. Their dialogues with him sound like bad sitcom conversations between perfect parents and adorable mischievous children. Not one believable or really interesting character in the bunch, except for Mary Elizabeth, and then, only until she has to be twisted into an obsessive, unpleasant character, so you don't feel badly about it when Charlie dumps her, and you realize just how right Sam is for him. Charlie readily fills in for Patrick at a Rocky Horror Picture Show event, dressing up in drag and lip-syncing. Just completely tone-deaf to the feel and rhythms and nuances of teen-aged life. And peculiarly sexless, in spite of several tame scenes of kissing and holding. Well, what do you expect from a director who was "inspired" by "Dead Poet's Society". Yes, it has exactly that kind of cloying pretentiousness. (Note: the film does indicate that Charlie was held back a year and has his birthday in December, thereby implying that he is closer in age to Sam and Patrick than it would appear.)
Ezra Miller, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Dylan McDermott, Joan Cusak
Filmed in Mauritania by a Mauritanian director. Is that why it won 7 out of 8 Cesar Awards? Otherwise, generally disappointing film redeemed somewhat by it's exotic, unusual story and setting. This foreign film is simply not in the category of "Leviathan" or "A Separation" which were both exotic and brilliant. Appears to be using mostly non-professional actors of various abilities. It's the story of a nice family, good husband, loyal wife, lovely children, living near Timbuktu, and worried about Isil occupiers who truck around in Toyota's trying to ensure purity and piety. They like music, as do others, with bitter, tragic results. Nicely notes ambiguities, the Isil leader who sneaks off to have the occasional smoke, and the compassionate translater who seems wary of the motivations of his commander. But it does give you picture of intifada, in sharp relief against the lives of those who ultimately pay the price. Also some nice touches of humour, including boys playing with an imaginary soccer ball, and a fish-seller is ordered to wear gloves.
Ibrahim Ahamed, Toulou Kiki, Abel Jafri, Layla Walet Mohamed, Hichem Yacoubi
Boy's father is in prison but somewhere in their hardscrabble land is a bag of money he buried there. Boy keeps digging, hoping to find it, as he digs in his memories and illusions about his big, wonderful father. When father appears, however, those illusions stand to be challenged. All of it takes place in the scenic but not beautifully filmed Maori community in Eastern New Zealand, mined so effectively in "Whale Rider". Village Voice thought it would have been a much better film if the director had simply ignored the adults. I'm not convinced there was all that much there either, but it couldn't have been more disappointing.
James Rolleston, Te Aho Eketone-Whitu, Moerangi Tihore, Cherilee Martin
Eerie, suspenseful, original horror film about a curse that is passed on through sex, which results in the victim being terrorized by a slow-moving but relentless creature, sometimes in the form of "someone you know". Jay Height is the victim, seduced by Hugh, who then disappears. Jay and her friends try to track him down and find a way to escape the curse, while not quite believing it until there is a forceful confrontation. Beautifully filmed amid the abandoned houses and factories of Detroit, including extraordinary scenes of decaying buildings and parking lots and the rubble of American industry. Often surprising and expressively filmed and well-acted. Odd, interesting touches, including a reading of Eliot's "Prufrock" in a classroom (as Jay spots her first stalker), and a scene filmed in a unique theatre-- really exists-- with a still-functioning Wurlitzer organ.
Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe, Jake Weary
Over-rated drama about a woman how is betrayed to the Gestapo by her husband and, after her face is reconstructed surgically, meets him again. He thinks she is a stranger who looks like his wife and tries to use her to get control of her property. She is also a singer and Petzold tries to use her music to carry some kind of hefty dramatic revelation that never really merges from what appears to me to be a facile and shallow exploration of guilt and love and despair. Part of the problem is that it was very hard for me to buy into the conceit that her husband, Johnny, doesn't recognize her, though, obviously, her body and voice remain exactly as they were before the war, except for the surgically altered face, which, incidentally, appears far too pretty.
Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf, Trystan Putter, Michael Maertens
Exquisitely beautiful proto-feminist story of a young woman of noble birth who disgraces her family by falling in love with a mere retainer. She and her family are exiled and her father, to try to save the family fortunes, sends her off to be a concubine to Lord Matsudaira, whose wife cannot conceive. The family thinks their fortunes are saved, but she is discarded immediately after a male child is born. This initiates a chain of disasters in her life as she becomes a courtesan and finally a prostitute, a ruin of a soul, begging for scraps on the street. Fascinating study of the life and roles of women in 17th century Japan, as Oharu tastes all of them, from privilege and honor to the disgrace and humiliation. But this film is a diatribe: its often other women who are her worst enemies, and sometimes men who are her saviors, including a fan-maker who, just as she has found a stable, assured life, is murdered, and their shared property is seized by his brother. Exquisitely photographed-- of course-- and staged, in rich detail and lavish scale. Perhaps melodramatic by today's standards, but consummately watchable.
Kinuyo Tanaka, Tsukie Matsuura, Ichiro Sugai, Toshiro Mifune, Toshiaki Konoe, Hisako Yamane
Tragic, almost Shakespearean tale of an aristocratic family in medieval (Heian) Japan that is destroyed when the father, a governor, is considered too compassionate towards his peasants and sent into exile as punishment without his family. Before he leaves, he teaches his son that without mercy, a man is not truly human. His family eventually sets out on a journey when they are beset by bandits and slave-traders and the two children, Zushio and Anju, are sold to Sansho the Bailiff as slaves, and the mother becomes a Courtesan on the island of Sado. They are advised by the Sansho's compassionate son to endure the slave camp until they are adults, when they can try to escape and seek their mother. When Zushio is ordered to dispose of an elderly, ill woman on the mountain (to leave her to die), he decides to escape. Here the plot takes a disturbingly improbable or incomprehensible turn: Anju insists that Zushio escape without her, taking the elderly woman with to a Buddhist monastery, while she remains behind. I tried but can't make sense of this plot development unless it was calculated to lead to the drama that follows it. It strong-armed the plot into submission. Possibly related to the fact that, in real life, Mizoguchi's sister was sold by his father to a Geisha house and she later returned and took care of him, obtained positions for him, and sacrificed for him. Absolutely gorgeous cinematography, like many Japanese films, featuring beautiful composition and striking lighting effects, powerfully acted, and with immense period detail and construction. But also relentlessly pessimistic about the human condition, and the chances of virtue surviving in a world filled with evil.
Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo, Akitake Kono
Greg finds out a class-mate has leukemia. He goes to visit her but she tells him to get lost: I don't need your pity. He tells her it's not pity: his mom made him do it. And so they are off. Greg and his friend Earl make cheesie parodies of favorite Hollywood and foreign films, including Bergman and Werner Herzog, and he feels like a misfit who gets by in high school by pretending to be casually accepted by all the different groups. The first hour of the film was magnificent, rising to the challenge of taking a massive cliche and rendering the story fresh and affecting. The characters were engaging and charming, and Olivia Cooke was utterly winning as Rachel. Then someone decided the film needed a major crisis, and it doesn't rise organically from the material delivered up to that point. Worse, it falls back into all of the cliches that the film seemed to mock in the first half, suggesting that the film-makers wanted it both ways, to simultaneously undermine and embrace "The Fault in Our Stars". I am in a small minority on this-- most reviewers didn't complain about it.
Olivia Cooke, Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, Nick Offerman, Connie Britton
Strange movie about two girls, kind of demented Czechoslovakian Valley Girls, who love to eat, go out to dinner with wealthy men, and ruminate on trivial details of their existence. They bounce, they chatter, they eat, they vandalize banquet rooms, and produce insanely kinetic giggles while contemplating themselves. Funny at times, tedious, ultimately rather boring.
Ivana Karbanova, Jitka Cerhova, Marie Ceskova, Jirina Myskova, Julius Albert
Beautifully filmed and acted, and very mysterious and dark, but underdeveloped in terms of plot and story. A former member of the French Foreign Legion recalls bitterly the events that led to his dismissal, his time in the African nation of Djibouti, his jealousy of a fellow soldier, and the moment of decision when he acted on his emotional state. Suffused with images of the wilderness, the ocean, the men training (lavishly, lovingly rendered), and beautiful women dancing at a club in a nearby town.
Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Gregoire Colin
Odd, clumsy, but sometimes compelling drama about two men who drive around the country (often on Route 66) racing their customized 1956 Chevy for money, and the young girl drops into their lives with no apparent destiny or purpose, and a man in a GTO who agrees to race them to Washington D.C. Mr. GTO also picks up hitchhikers and tells each a different made-up story about how he got his car. In the process, they cross America meeting many other racers and occasionally cops-- to no ill effect, really-- and meditating on cars and engines and not much else. A real slice of Americana, poorly acted and clumsily written, but oddly fascinating, at times. Dennis Wilson and James Taylor can't really act, but Oates can, and cinematography is at least serviceable, and, after all, they shoot most of it on location, usually with terrific driver POV shots. Doesn't look like they hauled the cars around on trailers-- looks like they are really driving. Laurie Bird starred in only three films and became Art Garfunkel's girlfriend, before committing suicide in 1979. She's a compelling presence in the film as a lost hippie, dolefully contemplative and impulsive.
James Taylor, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, Dennis Wilson
Austere, sensual film about the lives of a family living in a ghetto in LA. Stan works at a butcher shop. His wife, wafting in frustration and disappointment, manages his home. His children play with other children among the vacant lots and abandoned cars, throwing rocks at trains, climbing roofs. His friends hatch ill-considered schemes like buying a motor and installing it in a broken down car. In one exquisite scene, Stan and his wife dance slowly to some jazzy music, touching and not touching, feeling each other, lost in disappointment and, ultimately frustration. The children's interactions in particular are convincing and compelling. Beautiful and stark if somewhat static; a worthy slice of American life that is not often captured with such intimacy. Made for $10,000 and not released for years because the music rights alone would cost $150,000.
Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett, Eugene Cherry, Jack Drummond
Unusual and original biopic of Brian Wilson severely marred by the controlling self-interest of his second wife, Melinda Ledbetter, played lavishly by Elizabeth Banks as a saintly beauty who drools ridiculously over the rather repellent disjointed Wilson of the Landy years. The studio scenes, fresh in one respect (in that they tried to show what actually made Brian Wilson special), were improvised and it shows in the rather unconvincing dialogue between Wilson and the musicians. Commits the cardinal biopic sin of having characters say stuff like nobody ever had one musician playing in "D" while another played in "Bm", or something, and quoted McCartney praising "God Only Knows" without acknowledging Wilson's own debt to "Rubber Soul". Dano is okay at the middle Wilson, but Cusack is completely uninteresting as the later Wilson (some reviewers feel his sections are boring because they reveal Wilson as having pulled himself together). Has it's moments, particularly in the studio, but
John Cusack, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Jake Abel, Graham Rogers
Benjamin Murmelstein is despised by many Jews as a collaborator with the Nazis. Is he a hero instead? Or just someone caught up in the cogs of an impossible system? Lanzmann, surprisingly sympathetic, explores the issues raised by Murmelstein's activities, and notes his ridicule for Hannah Arendt's view of Eichmann, whom Murmelstein asserts knew everything about Nazi plans for the Jews and pursued them vigorously right from the start.
Claude Lanzmann, Benjamin Murmelstein
Joan Webster knows where she's going: to marry a rich industrialist, Robert Bellinger, in Kiloran Island. She will be set for life, prosperous, well provided for, and stable. But on the way, she is trapped on the island of Mull by bad weather, and encounters Torquil McNeil, a dashing navy man, and gradually comes to realize that the charming poor citizens of the island have more passion and feeling in their lives than she does. The strength of the movie is the credible depiction of island ways, the ceilidh, the life around the fishing boats and simply survival. The weakness is it's melodramatic flourishes and dated aesthetic, which remind me of David Lean's great but flawed films. It's not necessarily a quality of the age: "The Third Man" isn't fatally melodramatic. But it doesn't stand up well against modern standards, though the writing and dialogue are superlative. Some scenes remind you of high school drama, stiff and tidy. Noted: a young Petula Clark plays a precocious young girl and she's the best thing in the movie.
Wendy Hiller, Duncan MacKechnie, Roger Livesey, Pameal Brown, Ian Sadler, Petula Clark
Joan Webster knows where she's going: to marry a rich industrialist, Robert Bellinger, in Kiloran Island. She will be set for life, prosperous, well provided for, and stable. But on the way, she is trapped on the island of Mull by bad weather, and encounters Torquil McNeil, a dashing navy man, and gradually comes to realize that the charming poor citizens of the island have more passion and feeling in their lives than she does. The strength of the movie is the credible depiction of island ways, the ceilidh, the life around the fishing boats and simply survival. The weakness is it's melodramatic flourishes and dated aesthetic, which remind me of David Lean's great but flawed films. It's not necessarily a quality of the age: "The Third Man" isn't fatally melodramatic. But it doesn't stand up well against modern standards, though the writing and dialogue are superlative. Some scenes remind you of high school drama, stiff and tidy. Noted: a young Petula Clark plays a precocious young girl and she's the best thing in the movie.
Biting critique of the use of captive killer whales for entertainment at various marine parks throughout the world, focusing on Tilikum and Sea World in Florida. Tilikum had killed a trainer in Victoria, B.C., but this was kept from the staff at Sea World, though they noted the anxiety expressed by his handlers from Victoria when Sea World staff got too close and Tilikum showed aggression. Convincingly argues that Orca have high-functioning brains and emotions and the constricted environment of a theme park likely damages them emotionally, and may be responsible for the attacks on trainers. Certainly very difficult to justify continued captivity for them after witnessing this documentary, though it didn't fully explore why Tilikum was so essential to Sea World's breeding program: it had become illegal in most jurisdictions to capture killer whales.
Tilikum Tilikum
A young boy living on a ranch in Montana with his eccentric but lovable mother and eccentric but lovable father and shrill sister invents a perpetual motion machine and is invited to give a speech at the Smithsonian on his discovery. They think he's an adult man, at first, and it is emblematic of this disappointing film that how this impediment is solved, within the story, is neither satisfying nor remotely believable, no matter how far one suspends his disbelief, nor all that interesting. It's a likable story, with a melancholy thread through it-- his brother, Layton, was killed in the barn in a gun accident. We are given to understand that T.S. feels guilt about this event, but it is so poorly evoke that I barely paid attention to it, until, shockingly, it became the core of the most critical, climatic developments in the story. And the most familiar cliche of all. All of this-- Jean Pierre Jeunet, the director of "Amelie" and "Delicatessen", for God's sake-- to end up with the most shopworn, predictable cliche of all: the reunited and healed family? Along the way, we are supposed to be tickled by the mean teacher who tolerates no creativity, the adorable truck-driver who is charmed by the lad, the police who which to prevent his journey, the vain, shrill, manipulative museum curator? The ugly press? This from Jeunet? I don't know what went wrong but this is a crushing disappointment.
Kyle Catlett, Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis, Callum Keith Rennie, Hiamh Wilson, Rick Mercer
Predictable and somewhat pedestrian interpretation of the Stan Lee characters featuring an impressive cast who sleep-walk through most of the parts. Tony Stark has created artificial intelligence, which, miraculously, develops a will-- though it is hinted that Stark has programmed it with a mission. Tries to be witty, doesn't try to be coherent, and spends vast fortunes on big but un-beautiful special effects. Humans just get in the way of these monuments trying to save humans, for unknown reasons. Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch was the least uninteresting thing in the film. And where did this "Hawkeye" come from, and you have got to be joking with the arrows.
Elizabeth Olsen, Robert Downey, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner
Slow-moving but compelling story about a robot, Ava, who is the subject of a test by a contest winner, Caleb, to determine if she passes the Turing Test and could pass for a human (if she was not partly transparent, to show her parts). Nathan, her inventor, is a mystery: what's his real interest and motive? Caleb is no fool-- he knows he's being used but is too fascinated by resist, at least at first. Alicia Vikander is excellent as Ava, conveying naivete, curiosity, and even wit, but the movie's fundamental premise: that a robot could have a will or wit or feeling for anything-- is, of course, absurd. Still, beautifully filmed and well-acted.
Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Corey Johnson
Compelling documentary on the Church of Scientology and it's brutal methods of dealing with dissent and criticism, and their determination to extract as much money as possible from adherents. Also highlights the struggle with the Internal Revenue Service of status as a church, which, shockingly, they win. Recruits are sometimes assigned to tasks on Scientology's ships, for which they receive very little pay. Features interviews with Paul Haggis and others who eventually left, and, of course no interviews with any current officials or spokespersons. Spends considerable time on Tom Cruise and John Travolta and one former official with Scientology asserts that he broke up his marriage to Nicole Kidman because she was seen as a threat. Many of the interviewees acknowledge deep embarrassment, especially after finding out more of Hubbard's mythologies-- the volcanoes and the thetans and the aliens.
John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Paul Haggis
For it's time, a terrific, innovative film, that holds up fairly well. Juliette and Jean are married and move into his barge, to live together with Le Pere Jules and Le Camelot as they haul goods up and down the canals of France. Juliette is young and naive and wants to go into the city when they arrive at Paris, but Jean has work to do. They love and argue and reconcile, while Le Pere Jules gripes and clowns around and flirts with Juliette, showing her his exotic collection of puppets and souvenirs gathered from around the world. Picturesque and raw at times, vividly depicting lives and wants with charm.
Dita Parlo, Michel Simon, Jean Daste
For it's time, a terrific, innovative film, that holds up fairly well. Juliette and Jean are married and move into his barge, to live together with Le Pere Jules and Le Camelot as they haul goods up and down the canals of France. Juliette is young and naive and wants to go into the city when they arrive at Paris, but Jean has work to do. They love and argue and reconcile, while Le Pere Jules gripes and clowns around and flirts with Juliette, showing her his exotic collection of puppets and souvenirs gathered from around the world. Picturesque and raw at times, vividly depicting lives and wants with charm.
Don't let the name of the director fool you: this is an interesting and moving account of the fall of South Viet Nam, but it is not a documentary so much as a warm-hearted paean to those wonderful, caring, compassionate individuals like CIA operative Frank Snepp, who, in the euphemism employed generously throughout the documentary, were "loyal" to America. They are indeed entitled to compassion for the poor treatment those who remained received from the North Viet Namese, but these were not health care workers or development staff: many of them worked for U.S. intelligence services, the military, the South Viet Namese military, and so on. The South Viet Namese government was neither democratic nor popular but the result of a U.S. instigated coup. There are no voices from the communist victors, or from those who weren't in on the sudden abandonment, courtesy of U.S. helicopters and ships, and very little comment from journalists who might at least have noted the irony of ambassador Graham Martin staying right to the very end, after stubbornly refusing to allow his staff to plan ahead for the inevitable evacuation. The U.S. Congress is made to look like jerks for not pouring more money into a losing, unpopular cause. Still, worth watching, particularly for the details about how the U.S. embassy was abandoned, how the marines had to lie to the waiting Viet Namese, 420 of whom were still in the embassy compound when the last helicopter lifted off with the last marines, who had discretely left their posts and raced to the elevator to the top floor.
Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Frank Snepp, Henry Kissinger
Preposterous and underdeveloped right from the very first scene, and rife with cliche's, supposedly scary story about hackers crashing a nuclear reactor in China--as practice-- so they can manipulate the price of tin. Nick Hathaway is the macho rogue hacker released from prison because-- get this-- he is the ONLY hacker in the world capable of dealing with BlackHat. The only one! Just him! When they offer him a deal, he confidently refuses it because he just knows they will have to come back to him. When Chen Dawai's hot sister meets him, why they barely get each other's names before she's panting for his smoldering ego. But this plot is not merely underdeveloped: it gets downright absurd-- why would these hackers even bother with guns? Why would Hathaway bother confronting them? Why doesn't he have a personality? Dull, dumb, and boring, I couldn't wait for it to end.
Chris Hemsworth, Leehom Wang, Wei Tang, Viola Davis, Ritchie Coster
Maria Enders' career was launched 20 years ago in a brilliant play by Wilhelm Melchior and she has been selected to give a speech honoring him at an event and accepting, on his behalf, and award. She is accompanied by Valentine, her personal assistant, and artistic nemesis, who provides a continuous stream of criticism and commentary on Enders career choices, artistic sensibilities, and attitudes towards modern, popular culture. The play that "made" Enders a star, featured her as a young, vicious, lesbian lover to an older woman who disintegrates before her relentless manipulations. When Enders finds out that a spoiled celebrity, Jo-Ann Ellis, has been cast opposite, as the ingenue, in a revival of the play in which she is now cast as the older woman, it provokes a crisis, which Valentine picks and prods as their relationship frays. The director too seems to see something different in the casting decision and challenges Enders' defensive interpretation of the role. This is a low-key, intelligent film, of simmering, dark emotions and perceptions. Ellis is not what she appears to be, and Valentine is smarter than Enders' gives her credit for and, in a shocking moment of deep significance, Valentine reveals something about Enders she could not have known but immediately realizes is completely true. Stewart and Chloe Grace Moretz are brilliant. Binoche, an over-rated actress, neither disappoints nor thrills.
Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloe Grace Moretz, Lars Eidinger, Hanns Zischler
Typical Disney fare: amazing animation-- though not in an artistic sense-- and pedestrian character development and plot. Suffocated with wholesome values, with the routine hypocrisy of admiring Baymax because he heals and is programmed to do no harm, and then indulging in ferocious action adventure violence (but without, of course, any perceived casualties: even the villain gets redeemed, sort of, in the end). With an assortment of politically correct diverse supporting characters. Even for Disney, under-developed and sloppy-- a lot of the plot sequences don't make any sense, really.
Scott Adsit, Ryan Potter, Daniel Henney, T.J. Miller, James Cromwell, Maya Rudolph
Disappointing Australian horror film about a child who sees a monster, the Babadook, and the mother who begins to believe him. He has asked her to read the story to him, but it becomes too frightening. When she tries to destroy the book, it keeps reappearing, insisting that once the Babadook comes into the house, it never leaves. The boy is shrill, spoiled, emotionally wrought, but you begin to wonder about Amelia, the mother, as she begins to feel repelled by the little monster, and almost seems to wish him dead-- the real Babadook in this story. Doesn't quite navigate the perils of over-used horror tropes, and, in the end, not really very compelling. But the boy, Noah Samuel, is brilliant, loud, strong, frightening.
Essie Davis, Daniel Henshall, Noah Wiseman, Tim Purcell, Hayley McElhinney
Stunning dramatization of the infamous McDonald's incident (though they disguised the food outlet) in which a policeman phone a McDonald's and persuaded an assistant manager to take a young woman staff member into a back office and strip search her in order to confirm that she had taken money from the purse of a customer. The "policeman", of course, was a hoaxer, and the assistant manager even persuaded her boyfriend to come in and watch the girl while the caller made him make her do jumping jacks, dance, and even perform oral sex on him. Compliance examines the question of why anyone would do that-- eventually, the maintenance man refused and the real police were called. The caller appears to have done this over 70 times, and he was arrested but not convicted. The boyfriend was convicted and sentenced to 6 years. Strange story which is quite faithful to the facts, and shocking, as a very, very disturbing depiction of how humans can commit outrageous acts with modest persuasion. Well-acted and written, filmed simply, directly.
Ann Down, Dreama Walker, Pat Healy, Bill Camp
Entertaining--at times--parody of Bond thrillers with lots of action, lots of bloody violence, and a few moments of wit. Jackson has become a bore and Firth is stylish but not as clever as he and the director thinks he is: just terminally cool as he disposes of reams of bad guys in a few moments of whimsical acrobatic violence.
Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson
Odd portrait of an odd man, Tim Levitch, a New Yorker who acts as a guide on Grey Tours, and whose unparallelled knowledge of New York history and trivia is matched only by his propensity for exaggeration and outright myth-making, and self-absorbtion, as he dissembles on various topics. Ultimately, "The Cruise" doesn't really expose the real Tim Levitch so much as just catalog his eccentricities and inclinations. Intriguing and always entertaining, if not completely satisfying.
Tim Levitch
Engaging, entertaining-- if a bit deceptive-- documentary on the great Soviet Red Army hockey team of the late 1980's, 1990's, focused on Viacheslav Festisov, and his battles with the Soviet Sports Federation to play in the NHL, and on Viktor Tikhonov, who even refused to allow a player to go home to visit a dying father. Exaggerates the standing of the famous Soviet five-some, Fetisov, Krutov, Kasatonov, Makarov, and Larionov. What the film overlooks is the fact that they were only able to dominate club teams in North America because, essentially, they were the all-stars of Soviet Hockey training together for 11 months out of the year. Let's say Gretzky, Messier, Lafleur (or Lemieux, or Crosby), and Coffey and Larry Robinson all trained together, day and night, four times a day, for eleven months of the year, every year? Might be a better comparison of the their skill levels. That said, Red Army is always entertaining and occasionally compelling (as with Fetisov talks about his falling out with Kasatonov, of the loss at Lake Placid).
Viacheslav Fetisov, Viktor Tikhonov, Scotty Bowman
Witty, fast-moving, Sorkinesque take on race relations at a University Campus. An all-black fraternity is about to be instructed to integrate, so an angry Sam White takes to her blog to decry the racial sensitivity and explain why it's not descrimination if black's do it. All the characters follow there-after, engaged in lively, jokey, and barbed conversations about race, entitlement, gender, and oppression. And then Lionel decides to puff up his resume with a scandalous story about the scandal of a franternity party that features white students (and some blacks) pretending to be slave-owners (based on several true instances at San Diego and other campuses). Very funny at times, completely relevant, and fresh. Sam White is a heart-breaking character who might have been offensive if acted with less breeze and delicacy by a lesser actress than Tessa Thompson.
Tessa Thompson, Tyler James Williams, Dennis Haysbert, Parris Eyonah, Brandon Bell
From the popular book by Lisa Genova. Alice Howland is a brilliant, beautiful, charming 50-year-old woman with three lovely, brilliant, super-model children, and an adoring husband. She is a world-renowned expert on linguistics who suddenly finds herself struggling to remember simple things. As per the usual Hollywood fatal illness schematic, the act of forgetting one word at a lecture causes consternation as if the actor and all the extras have intimated something significant is afoot. Alice always seems articulate about her growing inarticulateness and charming about her growing charmlessness and though "Still Alice" dutifully raises all the relevant issues and marks all the traditional milestones the sheer expectedness of every development undermines the drama: this is not really about Alzheimer's but about-- wait for it-- familial love. That said, I will give it credit for not quite following the template. There can be no happy ending to Alzheimer's, of course, and "Still Alice" acknowledges that. Director Richard Glatzer suffers from ALS and cannot speak. Nice of Moore to take a month off from "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" to do this civic-minded piece, after Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Diane Lane, and Michelle Pfeiffer had all turned it down. Does this film owe more than a little to "Do You Remember Love" (1985, starring a superior Joanne Woodward)?
Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth, Shane McRae, Hunter Parrish, Kristen Stewart
An Albanian girl is on the run from Christian villagers in Macedonia during the war in Bosnia. A young monk finds her in his bedroom and tacitly agrees to shelter her, while observing a vow of silence. We don't know exactly what she has done, but her hunters are bent on blood revenge. Aleksander arrives, returning from London where, as a renowned photographer, he has just broken off a relationship with a prominent photojournalist, and intervenes in an attempt to give his life fresh meaning in the midst of violent ethnic conflict. Every relationship in this story is ambiguous and fraught with peril and even the girl's family cannot be trusted in this context. Yet the tricky circular plot line doesn't seem, to me, to resonate with the lively investments of the characters, who struggle with personal morality and cultural shadings that lead one after another to disaster. It's a powerful, relevant story that doesn't, in the end, seem to get as much traction as it deserves. Anne, Aleksander's lover from London, bears witness, but what she sees is less of a revelation than an exclamation mark. Perhaps what we are meant to absorb is that this kind of ethnic hatred can only always be cyclic and unresolveable. A worthy film, but not quite great.
Katrin Cartlidge, Rade Serbedzija, Gregoire Colin, Labina Mitevska, Josif Josifovski, Petar Mircevski
From the director of "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia". Eerily evocative of Tolstoy-- particularly "Anna Karenina"-- tells the story of a rich former actor who owns a hotel in a small town in central Anatolia, with an acerbic sister, a loyal assistant, and a young, idealistic wife. Aydin is faultless in everything he does, his management of the properties he shares with Necla, his sister, his handling of a stone-throwing incident, his solicitation for the welfare of his guests. But when his wife, Nihal takes on some volunteer activities, to give herself a sense of purpose, and Aydin tries to help, his real character is revealed, and it is a tribute to the director's skill that it is one of those things that looks like a surprise but which, upon reflection, seems like it shouldn't have been surprising at all. Beautifully acted and filmed in a very strange place: the homes are carved into rock faces, and the surroundings seem bleak and bare. As Village Voice remarked, "worth" the 192 minutes: rich, compelling, wondrous at times, and bitter. An unforgettable portrait of a disintegrating marriage.
Haluk Bilginer, Melisa Sozen, Demet Akbag, Ayberk Pekcan, Serhat Mustafa Kilic, Nejat Isler
Clint Eastwood's first "serious" film as director is a biography of the great Charlie Parker, the jazz saxophonist who became the archetype for the tortured jazz genius whose spirit is so vast that his body explodes with tension that can only be soothed with drugs or alcohol, and whose institutionalization for madness can only be considered evidence for divinity. Along with Coltrane, who died at 41 of liver cancer, Parker was one of the great losses of the great jazz age who just couldn't overcome heroin and alcohol. Eastwood takes us through the last eight years, his relationship with Chan Richardson (whose consent was required for Eastwood to get rights to a library of Parker recordings used in the film), Dizzy Gillespie, and others, his deterioration, the death of his two-year-old daughter, and his final delirium in Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter's apartment (she was closely related to the Rothschilds but had abandoned her family and hero own five children and moved to New York where she became a great patron of Bebop). Eastwood never shows Parker shooting up even though his heroin addiction became the central fact of his life in those years. Would he refuse to show him playing a saxophone? But maybe it wouldn't have helped: I just never bought Forest Whitaker as a jazz artist. He's the right build physically, and he emotes for all he's worth, but he really never had the kind of talent required to pull off a portrait like this-- like, say, Timothy Spall as J.M.W. Turner, or De Niro as Jake La Motta, or even Tom Hulce as Mozart, or Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Capote. He certainly won't get help from Eastwood who, despite being a notoriously bad director of actors, gets good performances from Diane Venora as Chan and Michael Zelniker as Red Rodney (whom Parker passes off as an albino on one southern tour). What's he doing wrong? He never misses a flinch or shrug or giggle or sudden mood swing that is not telegraphed or inevitable. He never displays that thoroughbred's rail, that thing that holds geniuses apart from everyone in the room, the consciousness that they are so good at something that they don't have to defend or explain it. He's not as bad as Leonardo Di Caprio in almost any film he's in, but he's just never more than only what you see in front of you. He's a man who's trying to sweat, rather than someone who's sweating out a note. Aside from that, it's a pretty good film, typical of Eastwood: don't expect beautiful cinematography. Just adequately composed scenes of adequate interest. And one excruciatingly cheap shot at rock'n'roll: Parker staring in disgust as a former colleague sells out, something Parker was accused of when he released his "Charlie Parker with Strings" albums.
Forest Whitaker, Diane Venora, Michael Zelniker, Samuel Wright, Keith David
A young woman is about to lose her job because an employer, who makes solar panels, can only afford to pay a $1,000 Euro bonus to his workers or her salary. He allows her to try to persuade a majority of her colleagues to vote for her job instead of the bonus, over two days. Low key and prosaic at times, Sandra has problems with depression and anxiety, and her colleagues have problems with the idea of giving up their precious bonus. How they are set against each other by an unforgiving system is what this is about. The Dardennes are often at pains to show you that these are average people, heroic in small ways, cowardly in others. In the end, they can't escape the capitalist system that always seeks to pit them against each other for the scraps available to them. Nobody is really poor here, or rich, or cruel or saintly. Excellent performances but no show-pieces here, and not much of a dynamic.
Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Catharine Salee, Batiste Sornin
Documentary by Laura Poitras on her encounter with the mysterious "CitizenFour", who claims to have shocking revelations about the NSA surveillance programs and the illegal collection of data by various Telecoms at the behest of American intelligence services. CitizenFour turns out to be Edward Snowden and this documentary follows Laura and Glenn Greenwald and others as they absorb the monumental trove of documents Snowden releases to them which were soon published in The Guardian, the Washington Post, and New York Times and provoked storms of controversy-- but little real change-- in the political and journalistic landscape around the world. Snowden emerges as an articulate, idealistic young man with few illusions about the consequences of his actions. Senior U.S. officials are revealed to have liked to Congress and the public, and Obama himself asserts that Snowden should be charged with various crimes under the ancient Sedition Acts. Restrained, thoughtful, and provocative.
Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald
Tomas and Ebba and their two children, Harry and Vera, are on a ski vacation in the French Alps. Their stay is bucolic and uneventful until a controlled avalanche threatens to flow into the lunch area of the a restaurant where the family are eating, and Tomas grabs his cell phone and flees. The tension created by this incident is almost unbearable, as the the children and Ebba say nothing for a time, wondering if Tomas will bring it up and apologize or acknowledge it. When he fails to, Ebba brings it out into the open, with friends present, and the family is truly endangered. Richly compelling and suspenseful and really quite horrifying. Another couple, Mats and Fanni, are affected by the revelations, when Fanni wonders if Mats would have done the same thing. The children are distressed, sensing not only father's humiliation, but the risk to the marriage. Can a marriage survive the sudden revelation that all the illusions and stereotypes of the all-protective, powerful father figure are just that: illusions and stereotypes? At one point, see a group of men indulging in one of those braying, aggressive, group rituals that, we now see, is just facade. A hollow attempt to restore father's place in the family becomes comical, as mother, after being "rescued", quickly trots off to fetch her skis.
Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Vincent Wettergren, Clara Wettergren, Kristofer Hivju, Fanni Metelius
Tomas and Ebba and their two children, Harry and Vera, are on a ski vacation in the French Alps. Their stay is bucolic and uneventful until a controlled avalanche threatens to flow into the lunch area of the a restaurant where the family are eating, and Tomas grabs his cell phone and flees. The tension created by this incident is almost unbearable, as the the children and Ebba say nothing for a time, wondering if Tomas will bring it up and apologize or acknowledge it. When he fails to, Ebba brings it out into the open, with friends present, and the family is truly endangered. Richly compelling and suspenseful and really quite horrifying. Another couple, Mats and Fanni, are affected by the revelations, when Fanni wonders if Mats would have done the same thing. The children are distressed, sensing not only father's humiliation, but the risk to the marriage. Can a marriage survive the sudden revelation that all the illusions and stereotypes of the all-protective, powerful father figure are just that: illusions and stereotypes? At one point, see a group of men indulging in one of those braying, aggressive, group rituals that, we now see, is just facade. A hollow attempt to restore father's place in the family becomes comical, as mother, after being "rescued", quickly trots off to fetch her skis.
Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Vincent Wettergren, Clara Wettergren, Kristofer Hivju
The formula is: young talented ingenue finds out he is not nearly as good as he thinks he is and is thrown into a relationship with an older mentor who drives him ruthlessly forwards until he has become even greater than he could have imagined, all the while encountering emotional and physical tribulations and challenges and troubling personal issues. So I did not welcome this movie when first described in previews. Yet somehow Chazelle has given the first half of this film a vital pulse that drives it forward with great energy and suspense. The key to this success is the credible performances by Teller and Simmons-- but mainly Simmons. The question is, how much of a beast do you have to become to be brilliant? As Chazelle himself has observed, maybe this conundrum does not really apply to music, as "Whiplash" seems to argue (and "Amadeus" contradicts) but more likely to Navy Seals or Marines. Is Fletcher's brutality really necessary for musical genius? And is Teller's huge drum solo near the end really great music, or just a tiresome, self-indulgent exhibition by a narcissist who has completely lost sight of what matters in music? Either way, the film, after leading off so brilliantly, skews off into a ridiculously improbably coda that undermines the whole experience. Why, oh why?
J.K. Simmons, Miles Teller, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist, Austin Stowell
Powerful, dark story about a Russian man named Nikolay (but called Kolya) whose lovely house on the coast of the Barents Sea is being seized by the civil authorities in order to build a new resort, clearly intended for the pleasure of Mayor Vadim Shelevyat, whose behavior seems to echo the real-life actions of Valdimir Putin. Kolya secures the help of an old friend, Dimitriy, who is able to obtain some "dirt" on the mayor. But he is entering a dangerous game, complicated by the relationship between Kolya's wife, Lilya, and Dimitriy, his son's disdain for Lilya (his step-mom) and everyone's obsession with vodka. As the pressure increases, Kolya desperately tries to stand up to an implacable, ruthless, authority while keeping his family intact. Subtle and nuanced, and always believable, explores the dark corners of corruption, where figures with the right connections and strings to pull are able to manipulate events to their favor no matter how unfair, or how angry or determined the opposition. Pessimistic, without doubt, but compelling and rich, and set in the stark beauty of a decaying small town on the coast. Superbly well-acted, especially Elena Lyadova as Lilya and Roman Madyanov as the Mayor.
Elena Lyadova, Aleksey Serebryakov, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Roman Madyanov, Anna Ukolova, Sergey Pokhodaev
Exquisite dramatization of the later life and times of J.M.W. Turner, the British painter whose work was so bold and innovative, I assumed, for a time, that he belonged to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not the late 18th and early 19th. We follow Turner as he meets with potential customers and patrons, travels to the countryside or Holland to study landscapes and sketch, and, occasionally, seizes the moment with his housekeeper, Hannah Darby, or a landlady in Margate, a seaside town, with whom he later moves to Chelsea. Every cliche about artists is dodged: Turner is abrupt and impatient but he is never a monster; he can be shamed but he never apologizes for being distracted by his passion. When he is snubbed by Queen Victoria, his feelings are hurt, and she does not get her comeuppance in the film. "Mister Turner" is scrupulously authentic, and surprisingly detailed in its reconstruction of the era. There is even a moment with an authentic steam train, which inspired Turner's most famous painting. Over all, this may have been the finest film of 2014 but the Academy will never go this far out on a limb to honor it.
Timothy Spall, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Ruth Sheen, Martin Savage
I doubt "American Sniper" is really as controversial as the media seems to believe it is. Sure, it provokes arguments, but the arguments don't really seem to be about this mediocre and fairly callow portrait of a happy killer, who clearly misrepresents himself in his book and personal appearances, and feels it is a personal asset to make it known that he never questions his own government about why they might want him to go to another country and shoot people. The arguments seem to be about the Iraq War, and patriotism, and guns, none of which are really argued in the film: you are to assume that America is never wrong. Chris Kyle takes a New Testament with him to Iraq for reasons that, aesthetically, are a mystery to me: is it Eastwood's snarky rejoinder to the terrorists' passion for the Koran? For is Eastwood, deep down, a good ole bible-thumping fundamentalist at heart? For the record, "American Sniper" is based on Chris Kyle's biography in which he brags about holding the record for most kills by an American sniper. But Eastwood doesn't want to give you a bad impression of this killer, so he only shows hits of bad Iraqis who are just about to kill American soldiers-- always sneakily, from an alley, or in a car, or a rooftop (like Kyle!). That is not how snipers work of course-- even Steven Spielberg knew that (see "Saving Private Ryan"). Snipers do not wait to make sure the target is really going to try to kill and American, nor does any credible authority establish whether or not the victim was really an insurgent. We do know that there was no bounty on Chris Kyle's head, other than the same bounty on the heads of all American snipers. The homeland segments show him as a tough but wholesome all-American boy, who gets the girl once she realizes just how virile and manly he is, and who feels that killing a living creature for the first time is an excellent bonding experience for father and son. Eastwood clearly, unquestionably encourages the audience to believe that Iraq was involved in 9/11 even though it clearly wasn't (and, in fact, was an enemy of Al Qaeda). Eastwood probably sees 9/11 as being of a peace with the generalized war America must fight against unspecific vaguely primitive interchangeable foreign-looking terrorists who hate us because we're free. The most reassuring thing about "American Sniper" was it's conspicuous mediocrity as a film: Eastwood rarely gets good performances from actors because he doesn't believe that anything more than a line reading and the odd grunt is really required, and he hates wasting film on retakes. Just do your lines. Cliche-ridden and boring, and even the so-called action scenes were tedious.
Bradely Cooper, Siena Miller, Kyle Gallner, Troy Vincent
Touching story about two older men who are finally able to get married, only to have one of them lose his job at a Roman Catholic School. Not heavy-handed at all-- the priest who gives George the bad news is reasonable-- and they are hardly oppressed. They end up moving into different homes of different friends, creating predictable tensions with them, and with each other, but, again, it's predictable but not overly laboured. What's refreshing is how it treats their relationship as a relationship, not some benchmark test of their friends-- and ours-- virtue. Lovely and sad and low key but won't knock your socks off either.
Alfred Molina, John Lithgow, Marisa Tomei, Charlie Tahan, Eric Taback
Mohammad lost his mother and now his father, Hashem, is late to pick him up for vacation time from the school for the blind. Turns out, he is in a bind. He wants to court another woman but feels that a blind son will be in the way, even with granny to help look after him. He wants Mohammad to start an apprenticeship with a blind carpenter. In one of the most heart-breaking scenes in the film, Mohammad fights back tears as he talks with the carpenter. He thinks his beloved granny has betrayed him, and he knows his father does not really care for him. This follows lovely, slow-paced scenes of Mohammad with his sisters, running through meadows, listening to the sounds of woodpeckers and other birds and brooks and horses. It is unfair, to Mohammad, that he should be deprived, be made blind. A simple, moving, powerful film.
Hossein Mahjoub, Mohsen Ramezani, Salameh Feyzi, Farahnaz Safari
Tense, powerful drama about an investment firm suddenly discovering a massive failure of investment stocks (in garbage bundled mortgage securities) just as 80% of staff are being fired. One of them understands what is happening and desperate attempts are made to locate him and persuade him to come back to work. Unusually astute and wise perception of power dynamics at an investment firm, the roles of managers and executives, and the inevitable scapegoating of the risk assessment staff. Some, like Sam Rogers, do have some ethics and they struggle with the question of whether the firm should sell off the toxic funds without disclosing their true status to potential buyers. Others radiate the poisonous cynicism that actually governed the industry in 2008. Some of the best performances by actors like Demi Moore and Spacey and Simon Baker are offered, all of them pleasantly restrained and believable. Some minor errors-- computers would never have continued to display live data when employees are out of the building, and Eric Dale would never have been permitted to take a USB drive with him-- but more than compensates with it's smart script and performances. Appears to be inspired mostly close by the Lehman Brothers failure in 2008.
Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Mary McDonnell
Based on the book by Jane Hawking, this should be called "The Theory of Jane Hawking" to remove any confusion with a film about Stephen Hawking, because it's not very much about him at all. It's more about how much Jane loved him, and he loved her, and how she found life difficult with three children while looking after Stephen, who really needed a full-time nurse (but they couldn't afford one), and rather apologetically acknowledges an affair she had with a choir director. Also a blessing: doesn't contrive a phoney opposition (like "The Imitation Game" did) in order to graft tension onto the plot of a story that doesn't really have any great adversity to tell us about. Generally well-acted, though David Thewlis doesn't get to do much. Very poorly filmed-- the edits don't make any sense and the cameras shift angles and shots without purpose of artistic effect. Okay, it's well-lit. Nor do the actors ever build up any kind of intensity in any scene, with the exception of the tear falling from Hawking's eye when he realizes he has lost his voice (after a bout with pneumonia) forever. Instead, they know what's coming, they take their positions, they do their readings while the camera is on them, and then off to the next scene. So, in the end, this is really kind of a soap opera, without any real drama or artistic voice. Not the worst biographical film ever, though Hawking seems to have approved of it (he lent various items, and his artificial voice to the film.
Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, David Thewlis
DuVernay is on record as insisting that she is not a historian and her movie is not history. Yet, at the conclusion, she inserts updates of the lives of many of the protagonists, including John Lewis, Andrew Young, and Coretta Scott King. The movie is also soaked in controversy over the cynical portrait of a manipulative, reluctant Lyndon Johnson, shown at times to engage in very un-presidential sophomoric arguments with King. It's not that these arguments might or might not have occurred, but DuVernay seems to have no sensibility at all for the political and psychological dynamics that surely come into play when a civil rights leader discusses issues with a president. Instead, the dialogue sounds mostly like a bunch of college sophomores asked to re-imagine, out of their own heads, what these conversations would have sounded like. "Selma" is not without it's virtues: the lovely cinematography certainly evokes the mid-sixties, and King is a far more rounded, and subtle character than the usual rendered pieties. We are even given a glimpse of King's ability to discern when a given confrontation would play well for the media and when it would not. But, like "The Imitation Game", the director seems desperate to create argument and conflict in order to further the narrative, and unwisely chose Johnson, who, by almost all accounts, was a sincere and passionate supporter of civil rights and anti-poverty programs, and took grave political risks in order to pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. It also gravely wounds the film that the King Estate would not give permission for the use of his actual speeches: they are irreplaceable. Why, 50 years after the events, can they not use the text of public speeches at a historically significant event? Little known facts: after Viola Liuzzo was murdered by the KKK, Hoover, aware of the fact that an FBI informant was in the car with the KKK members who shot Liuzzo, attempted to discredit her by leaking fictitious claims that she was having sex with a black civil rights activist and that she was addicted to drugs.
David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Roth
From the musical by Stephen Sondheim. Interesting, visually stunning rendition of Sondheim's strange, dark musical about various fairy tale characters, including Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Prince Charming, interacting with each other in various subplots that eventually connect to each other, and involve various journey's through the dark woods. There are witches and giants and beanstalks, but it's really more about betrayal, deceit, and selfishness. Each character has an angle, as they say, and attempts to manipulate events to his or her own maximum advantage, and evade blame for various disasters that happen. Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood is particularly winning with her mixture of spunk and curiosity and moral assertiveness, while admitting that there is something a little exciting about being pursued and eaten by a wolf. Central to the plot is the determination by the baker and his wife to get a child, which they can only achieve by fulfilling the wishes of a nasty, neighboring witch. They are willing to steal and deceive to meet the requirements: not your usual Disneyfied version. And the Baker's wife is not really very resistant to the advances made by Prince Charming, who, of course, is cheating on Cinderella (he admits he was raised to be charming-- not sincere). The only problem is that Meryl Streep really can't sing very well and Anna Kendrick is a bit shrill, but the others do well with Sondheim's sophisticated, complex score.
Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, James Corden, Tracey Ullman, Johnny Depp
Quiet, low-key study of Margaret Keane, a young painter who created the infamous, kitschy "big eye" paintings of waif-like children in the 1960's that became extremely popular with young people and certain celebrities (including Natalie Wood and Joan Crawford). Margaret met and married Walter Keane, who passed himself off as a painter who had lived and studied Paris, but, in fact, may never have painted at all-- he appears to have had his works shipped in. As Margaret's paintings grew more and more popular, Walter, partly through a misunderstanding, began to take credit for them. When the money began pouring in, Margaret went along with the arrangement for years, until, disillusioned with her relationship with Walter, she decided to sue him. Amy Adams is, as always, mesmerizing, providing the subtle, detailed characterization that brings Margaret to life; Waltz, on the other hand, appears to be mugging at times, playing Walter with broad strokes.
Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Danny Huston, Terence Stamp
Promising but ultimately ridiculous story about two detectives (that's original) investigating a serial killer (even more original) while their corrupt superiors obstruct and subvert them (wow-- three banger!). A very strong opening three hours introduces a novel character, Rust Cohle, who, by episode 3, has become just another Clint Eastwood stand-in, which his comically inept partner, Marty Hart, gets the honor of playing straight man for the next five episodes. All pretense is dropped when they plunge into the arrest of the main suspect without, of course, summoning a full police force or swat team so that if they are killed, as we are supposed to believe they might be, someone else will at least get to stop the serial killer. Characters routinely tell the truth when threatened, though we don't get to see Cohle use the battery on at least one sheriff they, improbably and incredibly, kidnap and interrogate without, apparently, consequence. The writers bend over backwards to accommodate the need to have the two end up working together long after they had them hating each other, and to explain how they could access police information after both have left the force, and so and so on. It became absurd and unbelievable, if somewhat stylish for an episode or two. To cap it off, the resolution of the plot in the 2014 sequence was insultingly pedestrian. And if McConaughey's whispering method acting was not annoying enough, it borrows heavily from other films like "Blair Witch Project" and "Dirty Harry", from which, I believe it derives it's ethical perspective.
Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Potts
Promising but ultimately ridiculous story about two detectives (that's original) investigating a serial killer (even more original) while their corrupt superiors obstruct and subvert them (wow-- three banger!). A very strong opening three hours introduces a novel character, Rust Cohle, who, by episode 3, has become just another Clint Eastwood stand-in, which his comically inept partner, Marty Hart, gets the honor of playing straight man for the next five episodes. All pretense is dropped when they plunge into the arrest of the main suspect without, of course, summoning a full police force or swat team so that if they are killed, as we are supposed to believe they might be, someone else will at least get to stop the serial killer. Characters routinely tell the truth when threatened, though we don't get to see Cohle use the battery on at least one sheriff they, improbably and incredibly, kidnap and interrogate without, apparently, consequence. The writers bend over backwards to accommodate the need to have the two end up working together long after they had them hating each other, and to explain how they could access police information after both have left the force, and so and so on. It became absurd and unbelievable, if somewhat stylish for an episode or two. To cap it off, the resolution of the plot in the 2014 sequence was insultingly pedestrian. And if McConaughey's whispering method acting was not annoying enough, it borrows heavily from other films like "Blair Witch Project" and "Dirty Harry", from which, I believe it derives it's ethical perspective.
Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Monaghan
IMDB lists both Pressburger and Powell as directors/writers. During wartime, Lieutenant 'Spud' Wilson, taking part in war games in London with the Home Guard, decides to attack at 6:00 instead of midnight because the Germans, and the Japanese at Pearl Harbour, didn't follow the rules, so, to be convincing, he shouldn't either. When he invades a Turkish bath in order to seize Major General 'Sugar' Candy, an old, balding, pompous, rotund commander, Candy is apoplectic, and fitfully outraged and attacks Wilson, insisting that he has no understanding of what it's like to be an old soldier. This leads to a very long series of flashbacks telling the life story of 'Colonel Blimp' (a satirical British comic character), Sugar, and his involvement in the Boer War, defending British 'honor' in Berlin against imputations by a German spy, World War I (after which he insists that Britain won because it was more virtuous than Germany (while turning a blind eye to a South African's use of torture in German prisoners), and his retirement, then reactivation for World War II, and then his final retirement when his views on war are considered obsolete by the Home Office. In Berlin, he made a lifelong friend in Theodore Kretschmar-Schuldorff, who is designated by the German army to fight a duel with him after he insults the German army. They only wound each other and recover together in a hospital, where they both fall for Edith, who becomes engaged to Theodore. Only later, does Blimp admit that he was in love with Edith-- for all of his life. Churchill famously tried to suppress the film (why couldn't he?) and the thinking is that he saw himself in the character of Blimp (though he never saw the movie). Blimp represents all the comical British 'virtues' lampooned so effectively by Monty Python, epitomized in the insistence that mechanized British troops continue to wear spurs, and ridiculous notions of honor and courage (which generally translated into blind patriotism and mindless obedience). He is blind to the reality of modern war (and was really blind to the realities of ancient war) and convinced that abstract notions of British culture would prevail in a world that neither cared nor respected antiquated views of the world. It's really a brilliant movie, extremely well-written and acted and filmed in glorious technicolor. It must be understood that Clive Sugar (Blimp) was originally envisaged as more of a vicious, meaner character played by Laurence Olivier. When the British Navy refused to release Olivier for the part, it went to Livesey instead, who gave Blimp more of a lovable, bumbling character, which, Powell says, blunted the message considerably. People adored this Blimp, and perhaps lost sight of just how consequential that bumbling arrogance could be to the lives of soldiers.
Anton Walbrook, Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, James McKechnie
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