The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

3 Stars (out of four)

So here we are!  The hugely anticipated final film of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger...oops.

So here we are!  The hugely anticipated almost final film of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games series.  If I seem a bit jaded about this very cynical money grab, then you would be correct in your assumption.  It annoys me how blatant this is, to get our money.  But, that said, this movie is worth seeing.

We now join Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) as she deals with the after-effects of the Quarter Quell.  She has nightmares just about every night, but the revolution has begun.  The problem is that it is still in a fragile state and can be snuffed out quickly.  So the leaders of the revolution, President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) and Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman in his final role) ask her to become the face of the revolution in a series of propaganda films to steel people's resolve and fan the flames of the nascent insurgency.  But this would not be a story if Katniss wasn't difficult, so she hems and haws until she can't ignore it any longer.  But Katniss being Katniss, she agrees to do it for selfless reasons.  She insists that the insurgents save Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and the other Tributes who have been taken by the Government and are being used for its own nefarious ends.  That's pretty much it.  Outside of the on again-off again love(?) relationship with Gale (Liam Hemsworth) which is still going on, and Katniss being the ever-changing tease who cannot make up her mind, not much else happens.  I guess we will have to wait until NEXT year before we find out.

Two things I really liked about this particular installment despite the griping I've already done.  Our new golden age of TV is beginning to teach the movies a lesson they forgot awhile ago.  That is, story actually does matter.  No matter how much pomp and circumstance you put in a film, it falls flat without a good story and characterizations.  (See Star Wars Episodes 1-3 on how NOT to do this) There is value to taking a break from all the action and catch our breaths for a moment.  These intimate moments matter because we have to relate to the protagonist in any situation.  That is what good storytelling is.  We must be emotionally invested in the story, not some detached observers to the events.  The emotional connection is key.  It used to be TV was the bastard stepchild of movies, and if you were a movie actor who had to work TV, it was a demotion, a sign your career was in trouble.  It is now almost the opposite.  A-List stars are now beginning to work TV because it is so good.  Shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, True Detective, The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, even American Horror Story are showing what great storytelling can do, and I hope Hollywood moviemakers are being shocked out of their complacency.  If Mockingjay is any indication, it seems they are.  The movie has some great action pieces, no doubt, but it relies on Jennifer Lawrence to deliver the goods (which she does) to make us care about Katniss.  There are scenes of internal conflict with her that really resonate and save this movie from its somewhat simplistic plot.  Kudos to her.  It is easy to see why she is an Oscar winner at such a young age.  Despite the stellar cast, the movie fails without her performance.  She doesn't phone it in, which she could easily do with this.

The second thing I liked was the exploration of the motives behind revolutions, especially their leaders.  Just how real are they?  It is not a secret that propaganda is vital in times of stress, which we in the US seem to recoil from in these times.  In an increasingly interconnected world, it is easier and easier to put out a message, especially against a much stronger foe.  The astonishing success ISIL has had in recent months in recruitment from western countries with young people who grew up there is proof of this.  And while it is important to be able to defend yourself militarily, unless you are willing to wipe everybody out, the only way to fight an idea is with another idea.  The pen is mightier than the sword and all that.  Mockingjay speaks to the absolute importance of propaganda and at the same time criticizes its artifice.  Just how real are the leaders of any movement?  Are they cynically exploiting the ideals of others to get their way, or is it necessary to, in all respects, lie to your followers (or at least creatively bend facts) to get them to do what you need them to do?  The movie argues otherwise, but it is an interesting point to explore.  I, for one, enjoyed this little rabbit hole.  On a fun side note, there is a cute mini-acting class when Katniss does her first propaganda ad.  The different ways Lawrence delivers the lines is fun to watch and shows you how good actors can make the difference between stirring and blasé.

Overall, this movie is great and I cannot wait for the next one.  I would recommend it to anybody, but definitely watch the first two fbefore you see this film or you will be lost.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Wow!  THIS is why we go to movies, or at least I do.  Big, bold and brassy.

For those of you living under a rock, this is the third movie of The Hobbit trilogy.  An approximately 300 page story that took as much times to tell as its its 1200 page sequel, The Lord of the Rings.  Lest you think this is a complaint, it's not.  I am not a Hobbit purist and I like the direction Peter Jackson has taken the series.   The movie takes up where the last one left off.  Smaug the dragon incinerates Laketown and is killed by Bart.  Because their homes have been destroyed, Laketown now goes to Thorin to give them what was promised so they can rebuild.  Thorin, at this point, has become mad with greed and will not honor any past agreements.  Through a huge series of events which I won't detail here (read the book dammit!  It's 300 pages long.  You can literally read it in one day.), armies of elves, dwarves and orcs all come to the same place and have it out in a 45-minute orgy of fighting.  Thorin dies.  Everyone's sad.  Bilbo goes home.  The end.

This is a tough review for me.  There isn't a lot to say other than AWESOME!  The story is not particularly complex.  The Hobbit is a children's book after all.  The trilogy cut it up into very bite-sized parts.  Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh filled in some more story from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Cimarillion to fill out the time, and while the purists hated it, I loved it.  I already knew the Hobbit, so it added a new layer of discovery for me which I enjoyed.  The other issue is that, frankly, Tolien was not that good a writer, so most of his books are a bit of a mess.  But he was a great creator and storyteller and made this world lush and amazing.  Jackson did a masterful job at bringing both stories to the screen and I'm glad he did.  He ties together the two trilogies beautifully at the end.  I must admit, when I saw the end, I shed a little tear. In was introduced to The Hobbit when I was seven, and it has been a part of my life ever since.  With this ending, this brings to a close about 37 years of waiting, and boy, was it worth it.  The only reason for it not getting four stars, is that it's a little simplistic and drives every point home in the first 30 minutes.  The other two hours is just more of the same.

I sometimes just love to sit in a theater and be totally entertained.  The Hobbit did exactly that. Not was grand, exciting, epic and most importantly, fun.  If you're not into the sto liken universe, it may not be for you.  For all you Lord of the Rings purists out there, get over yourself and join our reindeer games.  Stop being such dorks.  You can't have everything, but this comes close. Nor everyone else, strap yourselves in for one wild ride.  You'll thank me later, if you haven't already seen it.

Divergent

2.5 Stars (out of four)

I held off watching Divergent because I thought it would be another suckfest like Twilight.  It turns out I was sort of wrong, but something surprised me.  It actually kept my attention.

So, for those of you who do not know the story, it takes place in a futuristic Chicago, after a long and destructive war.  To keep the peace, mankind now lives in factions based on their talents to form a new society.  They are: Erudites-dressed in blue.  These are the intellectuals, scientists, etc.  Candor-dressed in white.  They speak the truth to the point of rudeness.  These are the judges.  Dauntless-dressed in black.  These are the most fearless.  They are the police and soldiers.  Amity-dressed in tan, these people are harmonious.  They are the farmers.  Abnegation-dressed in gray.  They are selfless and serving.  These are the leaders and public servants.  Our main character Beatrice (Shaileen Woodley) is the daughter of two prominent Abegnations.  She always felt out of place in her caste, preferring the Dauntless and their carefree life.  When children turn a certain age, they are tested to see which faction they fit in, which will be their family for the rest of their lives.  Faction over blood they call it.  There is no intermixing.  Despite whatever the test says, the person can choose their faction if they want, and the choice is for life.  Thus, the movie breaks its own rules.  If you leave a faction, you become factionless, essentially the homeless and dregs of society.  When Beatrice takes her test, she is a Divergent, one that doesn't fit into any faction.  This is a dangerous thing apparently, and she is told not to reveal it to anyone.  She chooses to become a Dauntless and meets her future love interest Four.  While she fights for her place in Dauntless, she finds out some dark secrets of which she may be in the center.

Okay, that sets it up.  I don't want to say much more to avoid spoilers.  So, this movie was an enigma to me.  I thought it was written by Stephanie Meyers (Twilight), but quickly realized the story is more complex than that, but not by much.  To be fair, it kept my attention, and it is pretty good.  I actually enjoyed it.  But that said, it is another movie trying to be more profound than it actually is.  It does have something to say, just not very well.  Again, to be fair, this was a story for younger readers and intended to start discussions.  Many women I know really seem to like this film and it's easy to see why.  Like the recent crop of stories to come out like The Hunger a Games, the female protagonist is strong and resourceful.  Why it seems only young people's stories where this is the case is beyond me.  The funny thing is, sci-fi and fantasy seem to be the only places where this is most acceptable.  I'm not saying there aren't great movies out there with strong women in other genres, but it seems to be in these two particular genres where it is prominent.  A quick test.  Which of these characters do not belong:  Ellen Ripley, Sarah Conner, Janeway, Leia Organa, Galadrial, Natasha Romanov, Katniss Everdeen, Thelma And Louise?  Why is it that it is so inconceivable for women to be tough and in charge except in very fictional universes?  A commentary on our societal attitudes?  Probably.

But back to Divergent.  While Shaileen Woodley is certainly attractive, she is downright homely compared to just about the entire cast in the flick, who all appear to have walked out of an Abercrombie ad.  Everyone else is movie star gorgeous except for the main character.  Again, a way to get young women to identify because of this dichotomy of looks?  Beatrice (or Tris, as she later calls herself), gets more glamorous as she comes into her own and understands herself.  Beauty is a metaphor for strength and something to be aspired to by scaling impossible heights.  If you don't, you're ugly and worthless like the factionless, which is the only caste in this entire film who are deserving of nothing but scorn from all factions.  Another issue I have with the film is its overly simplistic worldview.  That is: most people are easily categorized and put into a box.  While the movie is obviously taking the position this is not desirable, it fashions a society built on this premise.  Setting up castes that cannot be broken to control them.  It argues tribal rules workas a basis for society, which is apparent to anyone who follows the Middle East.  Sarcasm aside, while the movie says this is not an ideal set of affairs, it argues that it works.  Not something I necessarily agree with.

Two other issues I have with the film.  While it glamorizes the life in Dauntless at first, we see that it is essentially a prison-like environment where bullies rule and the weak are cut down.  These are supposed to be the guardians of society by giving themselves without question?  This is obviously a commentary on the military and police, that they are mindless automatons who never question authority and are thugs to be pointed in a direction to kill.  I found it a little distasteful, insensitive, and ultimately childish and naïve.  Finally, it portrays Erudites, the smart people as being cruel and conniving.  What is the deal with the vilification of smart people and a celebration of ignorance and stupidity as if it were some great ideal to aspire to?  I've never understood it.

To sum up, it is a good movie, especially to watch with older kids to discuss the fundamentals of human nature.  Not much really happens, so it looks like it was angling for a sequel.  It is not great, though.

Exodus: Gods And Kings

2.5 Stars (out of four)

I really, REALLY wanted this movie to be good.  And it is on some levels.  The story of Exodus is sweeping in scope and makes for great drama, never mind its biblical implications.  This is one of those stories that reverberates across the years because of its importance to the modern-day world.  Whether or not you believe in the Bible, the story of Moses cannot be denied due to its impact on today.  All three major religions accept it and it is arguably the beginning of Israel as a kingdom and now nation with all that that entails.  The movie was in the very capable hands of Ridley Scott, a director who, time and again, has proven to be a master storyteller of huge, epic tales.  I won't go into a plot synopsis because unless you have been under a rock your whole life, you know the story of Moses.  So what, exactly, went wrong with this film?

Well, let's first look at what went right.  It is a grand retelling of Exodus, with real scope and majesty.  The special effects are spectacular and convincingly portray the large events in Exodus, from the plagues to the parting of the Red Sea.  Everyone in the cast is great, with Christian Bale's portrayal of Moses and Joel Edgerton's Ramses as incredible standouts.  As they are the heart of the film, these performances were crucial, and if they didn't work, the movie falls apart.  There are large, expansive sets and scenes and spectacles that take your breath away, and Scott's great eye for capturing these moments was spot on.  The movie is big and ambitious and hits the mark for showmanship.

But what goes wrong with the film are the small parts.  Inevitably, this film will draw comparisons to The Ten Commandments, but it really should have tried for the beating heart of the animated The Prince of Egypt.  Exodus: Gods and Kings is so preoccupied with its epic scope, it forgets the drama of what is actually happening right in front of you.  A theme I was forced to return to again and again as I watched this film was intimacy, or rather, the lack of it.  The film has been taking its fair share of abuse from critics and audiences by saying it is essentially Gladiator (another Ridley Scott film) meets Moses.  The emphasis on action cheapens or totally obscures the real messages of the story, the whole reason to tell it in the first place.  While Ridley Scott is good at telling historical drama, most of his movies are fictitious painted against tableaux of real historical events (Gladiator, The Kingdom of Heaven, 1492: The Conquest of Paradise).  There are a lot of compelling things in Exodus.  Putting aside God for a moment, there are two powerful cousins as close as brothers ripped apart due to competing loyalties to each other and their motivations; Moses' exile and return to Egypt; Moses' story of his divided heritage; his adoption of a new culture and family far different from his upbringing; his discovery of his true identity and the effect that has on him; Ramses' divided loyalties between his brother and his responsibilities as Pharoeh; the actual exodus of the Jews out of four hundred years of slavery.  All of the things make for great drama, and none of them are addressed with any real emphasis other than the exodus itself.

All this potential great drama seems peculiarly cold and detached in the movie.  A good example is Moses' wedding night.  Before the consummate their marriage, we see the Moses and Sephora telling each other what their love means to each other in an oddly stilted manner, as if they are rehearsing wedding vows.  Compare this to the wedding night of Braveheart where in the morning, William Walkace's wife dresses him.  With this simple act, there is a very warm and human intimacy between the two that powerfully illustrates the deep love they have for each other.  While I don't doubt Moses loved his wife just as much, the scene just feels contrived.  They fall in love because the script says so, and now let's get back to the action in progress as quickly as possible.  The movie is replete with failed opportunities like this for us to connect with any of the characters on any human level with the exception of Ramses, who gets the most sympathetic treatment I've have ever seen of him.  In The Ten Commandments, for the most part, Yul Brynner has to play him almost as a comic book villain.  In Exodus, it is the exact opposite.  Ramses' character feels as one whom things are being heaped upon unfairly and elicits more than a small bit of sympathy.  In fact, he comes across as the most rational character in the story.

But for me, and for most people who will see this film, the most important, and glaring issue, is the almost complete omission of God.  The whole movie seems to be interested in demystifying the entire exodus story, to the point where God almost has no part in it at all.  And when he does show up, He is played as a petulant child by a very young actor (in one of the most bizarre plotline device and casting choices in movie history). Now, while it is true the God of the Old Testament is very different in actions from the God of the New, it is almost jarring how annoying they make Him here.  The God of the Old Testament tends to be more wrathful while the God of the New more loving in his actions.  But in this movie, God is most interested in revenge and retribution.  He scolds Moses time and again for his hesitancy to act, yet when Moses asks him, quite reasonably, why God has waited 400 years to act and why the urgency now, God lashes back at him in a hissy fit.  Then when Moses does act in an ultimately doomed insurgency, God tells him to sit down and shut up and begins the plagues.  Gone are any confrontations between Moses and Pharoeh and his court.  Gone are any indications that Moses is speaking for God at all.  In fact, the whole movie suffers from the Raiders of the Lost Ark story problem: Moses is incidental to anything that happens in the exodus.  It all happens despite him, and he is not an active participant in the events, so he has no effect on their outcome.  It is as if the filmmakers were so interested in telling a "realistic" and scientific version of the events (an admittedly interesting and apologetic idea), they forgot the deeper reason to tell the story in the first place: that is God actively helping establish a new nation for his Chosen People.  I know labels like this are scary to modern revisionists who don't believe in God, but this IS the reason for the story.  And while this movie is light years better than last year's spectacular crapfest Noah, Exodus: Gods And Kings still misses the mark. Is it worth watching?  Yes.  The movie should be told on an epic scope in a theater.  But ultimately, it will leave you unfulfilled as a story.  An interesting, but ultimately failed idea in the final analysis.

The November Man

2.5 Stars (out of four)

I really had high hopes for this film.  As a huge James Bond fan, this actioneer promised some pretty neat thrills and chills, a kind of James Bond meets Jason Bourne kind of thing.  The movie certainly delivers on the action.  The plot, well, that's another story entirely.

The November Man opens with a CIA team led by a very English-sounding Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) leading a CIA team on a mission to protect the U.S. Ambassador in Montenegro from assassination.  Part of the team is Devereaux's protogė Mason (Luke Bracey).  Mason is still being trained to be an operative and although the mission is a success, Mason's impetuousness results in a child being killed.  We then fast forward 8 years to the present where we find Devereaux has retired and is running a cafe in Switzerland.  An old boss and friend visits him one day and asks for help in getting a source out of Russia, one of Devereaux's old cases.  This is an unsanctioned mission as the source is targeted for assassination by a CIA team, led by who we find out later to be Mason.  Devereaux accepts the assignment out of a personal responsibility he feels to protect her, but he fails.  But before she dies, she tells him there is a plot between a high-level CIA person and the Russian president-elect.  This sets off a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between Devereaux and the CIA, with the fate of the world in the balance.

As I have said many times in the past, story is everything.  Everything else can be right, but if the script is bad, the movie suffers no matter how good everything else is in the film (Star Wars prequels anyone?).  The sad thing is, this movie actually has great potential.  The story is sound and engaging. It has a couple of twists that are fun, and unlike many other films of this type, has something to say regarding issues of real importance today that seem to get forgotten.  In this case, one of the big underlying issues is the problem of human trafficking in Eastern Europe in particular.  A key witness was abducted for two years and she holds the key to CIA/Russia nexus.  But as good as the setup is, it goes off the rails quickly in the telling.  The problem is that the movie is not very good at exposition.  We are dropped right in the middle of a very complicated story without any real background on the motivations of anyone in the film and this leads to a lot of confusion.  The movie instead prefers to let us in on important details as surprise plot twists which, instead of being the point where you shout out, "Aha!  It all fits now!" to just further muddying the plot.  In this movie, motivations are extremely important to understand why things are happening.  Devereaux is on a kill-crazy rampage to try to find out why the source was killed in Russia.  He also seems very interested in humiliating Mason and helping him alternatively.  Mason, for his part, is alternatively trying to kill Devereaux and helping him.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  It's as if the scriptwriters were writing as they go, making more and more preposterous leaps.

It's too bad this movie falls kind of flat.  There are some good stories in here.  If they would stick to one or two, it probably would have been a superior movie.  As it is, it is worth watching, but in the end, pretty disappointing from the letdown of how good it promised to be.

The Purge

2.5 Stàrs (out of four)

Considering The Purge's progeny (Paranormal Activity and Sinister, both very good horror films), I expected quite a bit when I sat down to watch it.  I have been holding off watching the movie for some time, thinking it would not be very good, and I was partially correct.

Thè Purge takes place in the near future in a rich suburbanite town.  America has a unemployment and violent crime rate that hovers somewhere around 1%.  This is because there is some new quasi-theocratic government running the United States, and every year, for 12 hours, the purge occurs.  As some kind of natural catharsis, all crime is legal, and all police and emergency services are suspended.  It is a sort of government-supported anarchy that theoretically gets the beast out of everyone by letting them fulfill their darkest desires.  The specific story is about a wealthy family who, during the purge, let in a homeless man who was wounded by some very unlikeable young punks who want to kill him for sheer sport.  They threaten the family that if they do not release the man, they will break in and kill everybody.  Eventually they do break in, but another twist throws a monkey wrench in those plans..,

So.  This is not exactly an original story.  Star Trek had an episode entitled Return of the Archons which was essentially the exact same scenario except it was called the Red Hour instead of the Purge.  In either case, both shows were making points about the thin veneer of civilization that covers our very brutal souls.  Each show suggests it will not take much to let that beast out.  They also posit that if everyone were able to live out their darkest fantasies of raping and killing anything they see for a certain period of time, that this will have some kind of therapeutic effect on a population.  Since Stár Trek comes from a much more optimistic worldview on human nature, Kirk says no to those inner demons, while acknowledging their existence.  He is on the side of civilization, and how that civilization is crucial to us as human beings.  Perhaps because we now live in a more cynical age, The Purge, while saying there may be unintended consequences to this activity, it will still go on.  Now, the movie is not suggesting this is an ideal set of events; far from it, actually.  But it does suggest it is a possible scenario.

As I stated before, this movie was brought to us by the same people who made the superior horror film Sinister, and like Sinister, it is filled with very disturbing imagery, especially when you consider the age of the perpetrators in both films.  But while Sinister is an unapologetic horror film that is very bleak, The Purge is attempting to be something more.  It is attempting to be a social commentary of sorts, in its own extremely ham-handed way.  The movie alternately posits that this is the natural outgrowth of a government based on religious principles.  It also a very class-conscious vehicle.  The homeless man is, of course, black and poor, and his attackers are privileged, white young people.  The film also says that the purge was made to eliminate the poor class as they do not have the means to defend themselves with sophisticated home defense systems.  So the movie is a white/black-rich/poor war scenario that seems straight out of The Turner Diaries.  And while I do applaud the writers for actually trying to say something more profound than a horror film, the philosophy behind it could be written by a twelve-year-old and has all the depth of a mud puddle.  It is obvious and brutish at every turn, and the final twist is mildly clever, but ultimately predictable.  It's The Stepford Wives meets Psycho, but has neither of these shows' understated nuance (yes, there is nuance in Psycho).

In the end, it comes down to the fact that the filmmakers were shooting for something profound and ultimately produced something hackneyed.  But they are to be commended for at least trying to say something, as we live in a jaded and apathetic time where moral relativism reigns.  It is trying to sound a warning klaxon in its own plodding way.  Like Paranormal Activity and Sinister, it is chock full of very disturbing and threatening imagery that is quite effective, making this a cut above its slasher kin.  But ultimately, it's the story that matters, and it falls a bit flat in this case.  It's disappointing really, considering how good the other two are.  They can't all be winners, I guess.  Now let the horrible sequels commence!

Foxcatcher

 3 Stars (out of four)

Foxcatcher was one of those films that is getting a lot of good press, but I am not so sure it deserves all the press it gets.  Most of the critics loved it, but I am so-so about it.

The story is actually pretty simple.  Based on true events, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo play Mark and David Schultz, a champion brother wrestling team (both were Olympic gold medalists) who joined Team Foxcatcher, a team sponsored by John E. DuPont from the DuPont family for the 1988 Seoul Olympics.  Events take an unexpected turn with tragic results.

Based on a true story.  One critic wisely said those are some of the most dangerous words in cinema.  Obviously movies are not documentaries, nor are filmmakers historians, nor should they be.  But those five simple words have caused more misunderstandings of historical events because of the dictates of good storytelling.  But because of those five words, it gives any filmmaker a free pass on what they decide to show or use the story to push their political agenda under the guise of "It's not my fault.  It's a true story."  Because of the perceived realities of film, people take these stories literally and it causes a group misconception.  Shows like Argo, Blackhawk Down, and We Were Soldiers, with their differing levels of liberties taken with people and events make me question the authenticity of any of these stories now.  And now, since these types of stories are becoming so ubiquitous, it no longer seems like any of them have any shred of truth.  It gives the filmmakers a crutch in my opinion, a lazy way out on taking a stand.  Yet they still fascinate because of those five little words.

The movie itself is fine.  It is quite fun to see Steve Carrell plays such an oddly menacing guy.  It is such a departure over his usual fare.  While Carell is a gifted comedian, I have found comedians tend to make some of the best actors out there.  Steve Martin, Gene Wilder, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks.  I think the reason they all make such good actors is that they have to be hyper aware of what they do for comedy.  Every nuance, every gesture, every tic, every inflection can kill what would otherwise be a good joke.  This hyper-awareness of themselves is precisely the same kind of skill that is required for good acting to be convincing, especially since good comedy tends to be an inflated sense of reality and must be real enough to be convincing.  That said, the movie is, in the movie vernacular, "deliberately paced."  Most normal people would call it slow.  I have been seeing that the movie is getting a lot of accolades for all the acting, but the overarching theme of the movie seems to be awkward silence.  The whole movie seems to be based on nobody saying much.  There are no dramatic confrontations, no fast-paced action, and therefore a tad boring.  It is an interesting story, but this is something that can wait to rent.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

3 Stars (out of four)

I have been complaining for a long time that Hollywood has no original ideas left.  Boy, was I wrong.  I must say, while I have seen the techniques of this film before, I have never seen their combination pulled off so deftly.

Michael Keaton plays Riggan, a washed-up, superhero actor who is trying to overcome several obstacles to produce a Broadway play that he wrote to restore some of his former prestige, or at least relevance.  He has left a trail of wreckage from his past that he is trying to fix, as well as overcome all the problems that occur just before a play premiers.  He is trying to repair his relationship with his estranged daughter Sam (Emma Stone) as well as his former wife Laura (Andrea Riseborough).  He, along with his best friend Jake (an almost unrecognizable Zach Galifinackis) have to deal with accidents and hiccups to bring out a play that is teetering on failure before it even starts.  After a freak accident injures their leading man the day before the first preview, they hire Mike (Edward Norton), an incredibly gifted, popular, but self-centered actor who may destroy the show.  Finally, they must deal with the biggest problem, will anyone actually come to it?

Writer/Director Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu has pulled off something great here.  Mark my words, you will see him win either best Director or Screenplay from this film.  The film, as I said before, is all technique.  It is a mishmash of Waiting for Guffman, Rope, and just about every screwball comedy you have ever seen with a heavy dose of pathos for atmosphere.  The movie is told with everything from aplomb to zest.  It starts slow and deliberate, but as the pressure mounts, the movie's action and dialogue gets more and more frenzied to by the time we hit the climax, almost everyone is yelling and running.  One of the neat filmmaking techniques in here is that it is told as if it was caught in one long tracking take, which was done previously by none other than the great Hitchcock himself in Rope.  This continuously moving camera gives a documentary feel to the story.

The actual story takes place over about a week and melds fantasy and reality seamlessly, almost too much so.  It is sometimes very difficult to know where reality ends and fantasy begins in this story, especially in its enigmatic Lady or the Tiger-ish ending.  We see most of the story through Riggan's eyes and his cinematic superhero alter ego Birdman, whom we hear speak to Riggan in his mind.  Riggan also has superpowers that manifest themselves during the film.  Is he really Birdman, or is it all in his mind?  We never really know since no one sees him do these things until the end when Sam sees him flying?  We don't know.  The film is never clear.  Keaton's performance in this is so good.  He should have had an Oscar 26 years ago with the movie Clean and Sober, and he has never turned in a bad role from Mr. Mom to Beetlejuice to Pacific Heights to Jackie Brown and yes, even Batman, which this film unapologetically references through Birdman.  He will no doubt be nominated, but I don't know who else was better than him this year.  Maybe this is finally his time.  It is long overdue.  But Keaton isn't the only great performances here.  Galifinackis is wonderfully restrained, a welcome change to his man-child character of The Hangover.  Emma Stone is the perfect, cynical and damaged suicide girl with just the right amount of vulnerability.  And Edward Norton is as amazing as ever with his Method-immersing Mike.

The hardest part for me in this film, however, is what it is condemning or extolling.  It is a love story to the theater and a poison pen letter to its illegitimate bigger brother, cinema.  It seems to extol the theater as the place for real artists, and film as the toxic dump where art goes to die to be replaced by commerce.  Yet it also condemns the theater for giving into film's siren song of cash by taking on the very stories of film it is supposed to be above.  This is a not-so-subtle dig at recent Broadway fare like The Lion King, The Producers, and most obviously, Spider-Man: The Musical.  The attitude of the theater crowd is reflected in Tabitha, the aging theater critic.  She is determined to kill Riggan's play in its crib for no other reason other than it stands for everything she hates; from privileged actors who have no business on Broadway with "real" actors, the cheapening of art in favor of stylistic themes in theater, to the cynical cash-grab from plays that have no artistic merit from her eyes.  

This is the classic conflict of the art versus the pop world.  What is more important--art or commerce?  The answer, of course, is both, and those who understand that are usually branded as sell-outs.  The "serious" art world is very small and pompous and in love with its self-perceived ability to understand things the philistines cannot.  That is why great artists like Norman Rockwell to Andy Warhol to Banksy will never be considered great artists by the arbiters of taste because they appeal to the common person's sensibilities, and that offends them.  That is why they prefer The Iceman Cometh to Jackson Pollack to Federico Fellinni to Miles Davis as opposed to Phantom of the Opera to Stan Lee to Alfred Hitchcock to Lady Gaga.

Ultimately, Birdman is a really good film, almost great.  It has something interesting to say in a very interesting way.  It is trying to be big like a blockbuster while keeping its art film soul.  It will not be everybody's cup of tea, but I, for one loved it an would recommend it to just about anyone who wants something meaty to chew on thematic-wise.  For all you film geeks out there, there is a lot to love as well with the aforementioned technique.  I think you will be surprised.  Check it out.

Big Hero 6

3 Stars (out of four)

This was a lot of fun, and I didn't expect it to be, which just made it that much better.  Disney has been pushing this film for so long, and telling us absolutely nothing about it, that it was saturating the market.  It turns out I shouldn't have worried, because John Lassitar was at the helm and he has saved Disney from itself by backing fabulous stories like he did when he headed Pixar.

Big Hero 6, based on the Marvel comic (another Disney property.  Ironic, isn't it?) takes place in the not-so-distant future in the city of San Fransokyo.  The main character is Hiro, a young robotics genius who is a bit of a layabout until his older brother,Tadashi, convinces him to enter a robotics contest for a scholarship to the school he goes to.  Hiro enters with a groundbreaking robotics design and wins.  But there is a fire in the building and Tadashi ends up perishing in an explosion.  Hiro is understandably heartbroken by this and one day accidentally turns on Baymax, Tadashi's invention of a robotic nurse that looks like a big balloon.  Hiro realizes that someone has stolen his invention and is using it for nefarious ends, so he convinces Tadashi's friends to form a super team based on their individual scientific talents to stop the bad guy.  They, with an upgraded Baymax, then go to save the day.  Like many very original stories, there is obviously a lot more to this story, but I don't want to give too much away.

In a recent interview in Wired! magazine, John Lassitar gives his maxim for a great movie, whether it be live or animated: no matter how good the premise is, the characters must be believable and relatable for the movie to resonate with audiences.  This is a basic truth with good storytelling anytime; that because we are seeing it unfold through his eyes, the protagonist is our anchor to the events of the story and helps us suspend disbelief for it by making him or her relatable.  In other words, we like the main character, we tend to buy the story no matter how weird it is.  This is especially crucial in sci-fi and fantasy, two genres whose odd environments require this suspension.

John Lassiter is responsible for pretty much every successful Pixar movie until he started to work as the head of Disney's animation department.  Once he started at Disney with the movie Bolt, there is a dramatic uptick in the quality of Disney films that have been lacking since Mulan, when Jeffrey Katzenberg left.  It is ironic that Disney did not learn from Katzenberg's example of what makes stories work, and has taken Lassitar to reteach these lessons to them.  In both cases, Disney was the pioneer in animation, but that animation just became the money machine, with the dollar taking precedence over the story, and in each case, they could not produce an interesting or entertaining movie.  Compare Oliver & Company to The Little Mermaid or Treasure Planet or Lilo & Stitch to Frozen.  It is night and day.

Big Hero 6 has a lot of great themes running through it.  Dealing with grief, the importance of family and friends, and more importantly, forgiveness.  It makes heroes out of the geeks, a trend that I, a proud geek, am glad to see.  I wish they had these films when I was a kid.  In any case, is this Disney's best film?  Not really.  But it is excellent and funny and totally entertaining.  I would recommend it for anyone.

Dumb and Dumber To

2 Stars (out of four)

Well, there is a problem with high expectations.  Usually, they get dashed against the wall.  I went into this sequel to the fantastic Dumb and Dumber with the exact opposite attitude I went into the first one, and it turns out one hurts a lot worse than the other.

There really isn't a lot to Dumb and Dumber To if you have already seen the first.  We get the continuing adventures of Lloyd (Jim Carrey) and Harry (Jeff Daniels), two of the dumbest nitwits alive.  After being in a mental asylum for twenty years as a goof, Harry and Lloyd resume their lives.  It turns out Harry finds out he is a father, but he got the notification 22 years too late.  When Lloyd sees her picture, he falls in love (or more accurately, in lust) with Harry's newfound daughter.  This sets them off on a trip which brings the madcap duo back to the screen.

When I saw Dumb and Dumber for the first time, I almost had to be dragged there at gunpoint.  I was on vacation, didn't want to see a movie, and worse yet, had been purposefully avoiding this one because it looked so...well, dumb.  As it turned out, it was one of the funniest films I have ever seen.  A film I can still watch today and bust a gut laughing (turbo lax?).  The combination with my hating the possibility of seeing it with the heat of 10,000 suns and just how incredibly funny it actually was made for one of the most sublime movie experiences I have ever had.  After the movie was a hit, the two leads went onto bigger and better things and never looked back.

Well, I guess Carrey and Daniels needed the paycheck because it's twenty years later and we're back to the past.  Now, to be fair, the movie has two or three incredibly funny jokes in it that save it from total mediocrity.  Unfortunately, that is not enough to make this a film worth the $13 it will cost you to see it.  A friend put it perfectly.  When they did the first film in their mid 30s, it was edgy stuff that was great and original.  Fast forward twenty years, and they are now in their mid 50s, and the jokes just seem mean.  He hit the nail on the head.  The film's chief, and possibly fatal, flaw is that it either assumes you never saw the first one or that you like ironic self-reference a LOT.  They must have really liked every single joke they wrote in the first movie, because they are all rehashed in this one.  Don't believe me?  Check out the teaser posters:

Now, as a rule, there is nothing wrong with a little self-reference.  In fact, it can be quite funny if it builds on the joke.  But, like cilantro, a little goes a long way.  The problem is when that self-reference is the essence of the movie, especially a comedy, it constantly reminds us that you are out of good, or at least original, ideas.  Then the question becomes why should we watch this when the original is so much better?  While there are many factors that make humor funny, I would argue one of the most important is spontaneity, the fact we don't see the joke coming.  And that is the chief problem with Dumb and Dumber To; you see all the jokes coming because you've already seen them once before.  And the end result is not a comedic masterpiece, but rather seems like a cynical retread to separate us from our money.  The producers and writers didn't even work that hard at it.  They said "Let's just do the same damn thing we did before and the stupid public will eat it up."  Carrey and Daniels are both in fine form and try their best to save this film, but sadly for them, in this case, lightning did not strike twice.

John Wick

2.5 Stars (out of four)

John Wick is a pretty hackneyed movie in just about every aspect.  There is absolutely nothing in this film that is unfamiliar or surprising, but it has ONE unexpected ace up its sleeve...

The plot is simplicity itself.  Keanu Reeves plays John Wick, a very rich guy who recently lost his wife and is in deep mourning.  His wife, knowing so was dying, gives him a puppy as a gift to help him with his grief.  Of course, the puppy is so adorable, they become inseparable.  A few days later, some young Russian mobsters straight out of central casting ask to buy his car, which he refuses.  They visit him that night at home and nearly beat him to death, steal his car, and to show off how truly dastardly they are, kill his dog.  What they don't know until their boss tells them later, is that John Wick is not only a retired hitman, but he is the hitman you hire to kill the boogeyman when he is on your tail.  Unsurprisingly, John Wick comes out of retirement and goes on a kill-crazy rampage, seemingly single-handedly wiping out the entire Russian mafia in what we presume is New York.

This is the Hollywood movie that pulls every safe cliche out of the book.  The bad guys are white, mafia, eastern-Europeans (as if there are no other bad guys in the world).  These bad guys have the blackest of black morality, caring nothing for anything.  Everyone dresses in hitman chic, dark gray or black suits.  They are fodder for the good guy hitman(!), who gets hurt just enough to show he is human, but can still go on.  The bad guy is at his heart a coward.  There is even an assassin's guild of sorts, a shadowy organization that has its own rules of conduct and even owns a hotel for when these guys are on jobs.  Aside from the fact it seems like a twelve-year-old wrote the script, I just, for some inexplicable reason, cannot buy Keanu Reeves as a badass.  While I don't think I heard a single "whoa" in the whole movie, he just does not come off as the meanest killer out there.  He seems like Ted grew up, put on a suit and gun and somehow blunders his way through the bad guys.

However, it has ONE big trick up its sleeve that saves it from absolute mediocrity; it's style.  This is one of the most stylistic movies I have seen in a long time, turning a drab, dumb movie into one of the more visually interesting films I have seen in years.  It is told so bombastically, with such enthusiasm, it transcends the stupidity of its source material and makes every shot a sight to behold.  Directors Chad Stahelski and David Weitch are to be commended for making such an excitingly beautiful work out of such a drab turd of a script.  These guys should be directing much better material than this dreck.  Their style is a unique combination of Martin Scorsese's camerawork with Michael Mann's eye for atmosphere, color and mood.  It's as if Drive met Die Hard.  The visuals were so good that it pulled me out of the stupidity of the story and left me rapt.  That's why it is 2.5 stars, better than average.  The excellent visuals weighed down by a stupid story.

Hart's War

2 Stars (out of four)

Hart's War was one of those movies I have been curious about for years.  There has never been a really good explanation about its plot, so I thought it would be like The Great Raid, one of those missed gems that inexplicably no one has seen.  Well...

The story stars off pretty interestingly.  In one of Collin Farrell's earlier films, he plays lieutenant Hart, an army officer in WWII who comes from a privileged family.  His father is an important senator, so he gets assigned as an intelligence officer in the rear lines straight from law school.  But, like most rich, idiotic kids in movies like these, he wants to experience combat (watch Platoon and Glory for more on this) and gets captured by the Germans on a routine trip.  After some brief questioning, he is sent to Stalag VI, next to a munitions factory posing as a shoe factory.  The officer in charge is Col William McNamara (Bruce Willis), who takes an immediate disliking to Hart, quartering him with the enlisted men instead of the officers.  Soon after, two black officers who were Tuskegee airmen join the stalag and are bunked in the same barracks.  Since this is 1944, obviously most of the men don't take kindly to this and shortly thereafter kill one of the officers.  In what seems to be retaliation, the other officer, Lt Scott (Terrence Howard) is caught in an incident where it looks like he killed one of the men.  McNamara then assigns Hart the job of defending him in a court martial, where it seems he's destined to lose.

Hart's War is another one of those films that is desperately trying to be bigger and more profound than it is.  What starts off as a pretty darn good military prison drama, a la Stalag 17 or The Great Escape, turns into a fairly by-the-numbers courtroom drama about how badly black people were treated in recent history.  I am not suggesting this is a bad topic, it's just that it has been covered so well in other, greater movies like Mississippi Burning, In The Heat of the Night, To Kill A Mockingbird and a Time to Kill just to name a few.  At this time, there were a bunch of movies made about the plight of newly-integrated black officers in the military like Men of Honor.  I don't know if this was a way of correcting the record of history or not, but this angle sort of comes up unexpectedly in the film and radically changes the tone, and not for the better.  There are actually several interesting stories in this movie, but unfortunately it tells none of them particularly well.  However, without giving away a key plot twist, it does tie together nicely at the end.  There is nothing particularly bad about the film.  The performances are good and believable and are interesting at times.  But the movie is obviously trying to be more than average, and it sort of fails in that regard.

On a personal note, Terrence Howard is, I believe, one of the more underrated actors in Hollywood.  I have never seen him turn in a bad performance, but he keeps choosing roles that are beneath him.  He could do so much better.  I think he was unfairly dismissed after Iron Man in lieu of Don Cheadle.  Nothing against Don, but I think Terrence was a much better fit in the role, and I am still waiting for him to get that big break.  He is so good, and so underused, it is almost criminal.

Nightcrawler

4 Stars (out of four)

There are a few movies that really can get under your skin, not because they are scary in the conventional sense, but that they are shocking because they uncover uncomfortable truths about ourselves and others through a protagonist's actions.  The protagonist becomes a funhouse mirror of uncomfortable subjects we don't want to address because it implicates us.  Nightcrawler is one of those films and follows in a grand tradition of movies that tended to, but not always, destroy the careers of their makers.  Films like Freaks, Peeping Tom, Psycho, Rear Window, Taxi Driver, Network, almost all of the "blaxploitation" films of the 70s, Falling Down; all share this common characteristic where the characters reveal uncomfortable and hidden truths about ourselves and our society that we would rather not face.

Nightcrawler is the story of Louis, a small-time thief who realizes he can make big money by filming the puerile paparazzi subjects at the bottom of the barrel: car accidents, shootings, robberies and such for the local news stations in LA.  He first gets a cheap camcorder and police scanner to find all of these scenes and then sells them for death on display for the ratings-obsessed morning news cycle.  As he gets more and more successful, he does more and more escalatory actions to get more sensational news.  These include things like moving accident victims so they will frame more dramatically, disturbing crime scenes for maximum emotional impact to even causing events to happen in order to manufacture the exclusive.  He is also intelligent enough to have a plausible stiory as to how he got the footage so as not to implicate himself.  He comes across as affable, but a little off.

His semi-witting (or not so semi) partner in crime is Gina, played stunningly by Rene Russo, the news director for the vampire-shift at the lowest-rated news program in LA.  She is the tutor who brings Louis the student into the shadowy underbelly of the news and is the beating, black cynical heart of the story.  She is much more than the "if it bleeds, it leads"-type of person.  She is obsessed with selling shock.  Above all, the idea is to sell paranoia to the public.  Not interested in crimes in poor neighborhoods, she says if the victim's white, great.  If it's a white woma, better.  Extra points if the assailants are minorities.  Wanting to paint urban crime creeping into affluent neighborhoods despite the fact crime is going down.  She characterizes their preferred types of stories as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.  And this is where the movie implicates society.  Even Louis points out that all informative news: local politics, weather, fiscal issues, etc are jammed into 22 seconds of news time, while stories like the ones he is filming take up 5 1/2 minutes.  News used to have a public function to inform, but is now meant to entertain, subject to ratings just as much reality TV and cartoons.  It implicates us as a society because maybe we aren't as progressive as we like to think we are.  We still harbor deep-seated attitudes and prejudices about "other people," whomever they may be. If we didn't, the movie posits, why are these programs and formats so popular?  What happened to the news?  It doesn't inform, it tantalizes and titalates.  Don't believe me?  Watch your local news for a week and tell me there isn't some kind of breathless thing that will kill you or your children.

A lot has been ballyhooed in the press on Jake Gyllenhaal's performance as the psychopath Louis. I was half-expecting this to be a cross between Network and Taxi Driver, and it kind of is.  Louis is a psychopath in the truest sense of the word, utterly devoid of empathy, and is intelligent and coldly calculating.  And while it is a great performance, maybe Oscar-worthy, his character is not the real point of the film and those who think it is or focus on it are totaling missing the bigger picture.  It's just that a psychopath is perfect for this kind of work.  No, it is the accusatory finger pointing at the media and society that is the point.  Why has this state of affairs come to pass?  Why do we tolerate it?  Why are the voices of reason usually shouted down in favor of expediency?  This is the next logical entry into a series of movies that chronicle not the death of, but the rape and exploitation of the power of the media, most specifically, the news.  This series includes, in order, Good Night and Good Luck, Network, Broadcast News, Morning Glory, and Nightcrawler.  And this type of yellow journalism for the Information Age is not confined to local news.  CNN recently aired footage from Ar Raqqa where ISIS members had decapitated and mounted Syrian soldiers' heads on fences in the middle of town as a warning.  CNN gleefully aired the footage with a "viewer discretion advised" warning and pixelated the heads.  To me, this shows they want their cake and eat it too; disgusting and shocking footage that teases danger just enough, but not enough to offend delicate sensibilities.  My only complaint for the movie is that it tends to plod at points with its pacing.  However, the does create of sense of unease, lingering longer than one should.  But overall, Nightcrawler is a superior, and disturbing, piece of filmmaking.

Interstellar

3 Stars (out of four) - 2014 Review

3.5 Stars (out of four) - 2016 Reconsideraion (in IMAX)

Well, it's here.  Chris Noland's next movie is out in the wild.  I'm sure many of you, like me, will go see this movie based on his record of really good, mind-bending movies he's made in the past like Memento and Inception, whose trailers made you say "what the hell is that about?"  And this movie sort of delivers on that promise as well again, albeit with a little less flair this time.

I'll try not to give too much away with this description.  The Earth is dying for some reason.  The movie is not too specific on this, but probably a war.  However, what we do know is that a blight is killing each crop in the world one by one, and it is a matter of decades before humanity will starve.  Matthew McConaughey plays Coop, a former NASA engineer who is now a farmer like most people on the world.  He has two children:  Tom, who follows him to be a farmer and Murph, a genius daughter who takes after her dad's predilection for science.  Murph has been receiving messages from what she calls a ghost that directs her and her father to go to a certain spot.  That spot is the last and very secret NASA outpost in the world.  There, Coop is persuaded to go onto a space mission to find a new world to live.  It turns out a wormhole has opened near Saturn to another galaxy with several possibly habitable worlds.  NASA sent several manned missions years before and they are getting some promising preliminary data.  This new mission is to check them out.  What follows is the search for those worlds and a LOT of philosophy.

There will be a lot of people who will not like this film.  It harkens back to a day when movies were made for grown ups and you had to think.  It is very deliberately paced (read slow) and takes its time weaving a really complex story filled with a lot of interesting ideas, despite the fact the plot is pretty straightforward-find a new home.  Nolan's movies have all been like this, and he needs to be careful for a couple of reasons.  One is that he not become like poor M. Night Shymalan, whose movies like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable gave us great ironic twists at the end, but forever painted him into a corner.  Now people expect to be floored every time like they were the first time and are inevitably let down.  We will not allow him to make a "normal" film.  Second, while they are good, I think Nolan is beginning to fall in love with his own cleverness, and his movies will eventually become way too arty, like The Sopranos dream shows.  They will become arty for their own sake, not to tell an interesting story in a unique way tso he can show us how smart he is.  We will get Fellinni and not Tarantino, and that would be a shame and a waste.

Part of the problem with Interstellar for me was it plays too much with concepts I don't know much about, specifically quantum physics and relativity.  Relativity, in particular, takes a central role in this movie.  Specifically, characters age significantly compared with the leads due to time relativity.  And while I can go with it for the plot premise, I don't know if this works or not.  My brain kept rebelling at these particular concepts because, frankly, I don't know enough about relativity and it's practical application. The movie actually does some pretty good exposition to explain a lot of the phenomena, but relativity becomes the central plot driver that doesn't work for me for some reason.  There is also a great McGuffin about who opened up the wormhole in the first place.  Are there fifth dimensional beings helping us?  The movie doesn't elaborate, but teases us to think they are.  Or maybe not.  In this instance, I kept getting reminded of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which explores similar theistic themes.  What is out there?  God?  Aliens above our comprehension?  How engaged are they with us, if at all?  

I really liked that I had to think beyond the movie and its initial construction; that there is more to it, or at least the attempt to make something more of it.  We need to be challenged in an entertaining way occassionally, and that gets us back to what I said before.  I think this movie will not perform as well as the studios think it will, because we have been dumbed down by Michael Bay-ish brainless actioneers like Transformers for so long.  People think fondly back to the 70's when great, complex movies were made as a matter of course.  Movies like Easy Rider, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, The Sting, Five Easy Pieces, Mean Streets, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and A Clockwork Orange all come to mind.  Movies that engaged you intellectually as well as entertainingly.  But I think we are past that now.  People want to be stimulated, not engaged, and it's not their fault.  A steady 2-3 decades of dumbness have followed that brief, shining moment.  And while the occasional great movie comes out, unless it's an indie, greatness is the exception, not the norm.  Movies, after all, are a business to make money, in the end.  If you think I'm too hard on people today, try this little test.  Dumb and Dumber To comes out in a week or so.  And as much as I loved the first one also, let's see which one performs better at the box office.

***************2016 UPDATE. Interstellar in IMAX*************

NEW Rating upon further consideration: 3.5 Stars (out of four)

So, I watched Interstellar again and had a much more satisfying experience.  This movie is a sumptuous feast as opposed to entertainment fast food.  I really wish there were more films that challenge us like this.  It's nice to see that a truly intelligent and original movie can be made and made well.  This second watch helped clarify some of the mind-bending plot for me and it made a lot more sense.  So that was helpful, particularly with me actually experiencing the movie, because in IMAX, boy is it an experience.

First, this movie was one of the best crafted movies I have seen in a long time.  Nolan is quickly beginning to be able to take his place by the side of the greats like Ford, Capra, Hitchcock, Lean, Scorsese and Spielberg.  Movies like Memento and Inception proved he can tell amazingly unique, and entertaining stories from different points of view than you are used to.  Even those three horrible Batman movies show a great flair, especially working with such great actors.  But while each of his previous movies have something unusually unique about it (Memento's reverse-linear story and Inception's mind-blowing, impossible effects), Interstellar is the whole package.  Pacing, while deliberate, is spot on.  Dialogue that makes difficult concepts easy enough without insulting your intelligence or becoming too exposition-y.  But what really took hold of me was the amazing interplay of story, images and music.  The soundtrack is like another actor in the film by being so evocative of mood.  I have rarely seen such a deft combination.  There are scenes that moved me to tears.

But the IMAX makes it worth the price of admission.  While Hollywood is becoming culturally bankrupt of ideas due to movies' expenses, they have instead relied on gimmicks to make bad films into mediocre spectacles with 3-D or IMAX presentations.  Normally, in the hands of a lesser craftsman or story, the extra bells and whistles just meant you paid more money for the same turd.  But in the hands of a craftsman like Nolan, it only amplifies the film's power.  I remember reading several reviews of 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was younger and it was only available on home video.  Every review said one thing in common besides that it was a watershed movie.  Every reviewer to a one remarked how much grandeur the movie lost on the small television screen.  The movie was still good, but felt like a hollow imitation from the one on a large screen.  I never understood what they meant until I saw it at the Washington DC Uptown Theater.  For the first time maybe, I saw what grandeur on a great scale could be, and they were absolutely correct.  The huge Earth and space station vistas are awe-inspiring on an epic scale and gave so much more context to the film thematically.  It became a totally different experience for me, and that was a real revelation.  It was like watching it for the first time.  It didn't hurt that one of the greatest masters of the image, Stanley Kubrick, was the vision behind it.  Movies like this are what separate the giants from the merely competent.  Nolan's IMAX Interstellar has that same grandeur, that power of the image, and really opened my eyes.  If you ever get a chance to see it on this grand scale, do so. It will be worth every penny. 

Fury

4 Stars (out of four)

When the mayor of Atlanta pleaded with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman not to burn down the city, Sherman was famously quoted as saying, "War is Hell."  Claushwitz went further to say, "Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war.  Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed.  War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst."  These quotes lay at the heart of Fury, the new WWII tanker movie starring Brad Pitt.

The movie itself is pretty simple.  It is April 1945, and the crew of the tank Fury have been fighting in WWII since North Africa.  They recently lost their assistant driver who has been replaced by a young recruit Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) who is in the Army for 8 weeks and has no tank training.  It is through Norman's inexperienced eyes the story unfolds.  The tank crew is sent to rescue a platoon, liberate a town and finally stop an SS battalion single-handedly with a damaged tank that can't move.  We see how in a short time, Norman goes from wide-eyed greenhorn to seasoned veteran and his changing relationships with his crewmates.  Brad Pitt plays the tank's commander, Don 'Wardaddy' Collier, who mercilessly instructs Norman on the realities and horrors of combat and war.  Michael Peña, John Grantham, and an unrecognizable Shia LaBeouf round out the rest of the crew.

I've said before that the best war movies are anti-war movies at the same time.  Like Saving Private Ryan before this, it is an unflinching look at WWII combat and how gruesome it was.  If one were to watch the totality of movies about WWII, they have a fairly mild take on the issue.  War is glorious and celebrated as we defeat the evil Nazis and Japanese Empire.  In fact, I think most people look to WWII as the "good war" because of the fairly black-and-white morality that surrounds it. There are good guys and bad guys and we fought to overcome some of the most evil regimes in history at great cost.  It is easy, then, to make films with larger points that sterilize the horror of it, to gloss over the gruesomeness of what war really is.  It is easier to imagine war is dirty and sick when the original motives or objectives of the war are unclear at best.  But it is hard to imagine the greatest generation stabbing a german soldier in the eye to kill him as is in the opening scene.  I don't object to the reasons behind WWII, far from it.  War has a time and a place, and should NEVER be entered into lightly.  Movies like The Sands of Iwo Jima, To Hell And Back or even Patton do a great disservice to the men who actually served, injured or died fighting to its end.  They make war look like a fun, macho picnic where people die cleanly and gloriously, not shivering as they die because their guts have been spilled in the mud.  As hard as it is, the real face of war should never be hidden.  People should see the horror and the blood and the inhumanity involved because war is such a terrible business and should be avoided if at all possible.  The fact that we now can use drones and hit targets thousands of miles way in a precision, almost videogame-like environment makes remembering the cost involved even more significant lest war seem an easy way out of a jam.

There is not a bad performance in this movie.  The tone is perfect, veering wildly from the evil that men do to finding humanity in the oddest of ways and places.  Aside from its anti-war stance, this movie is not really taking a stand one way or another, just saying how it is.  People die quickly, unexpectedly when a moment before the scene was boredom.  The fact it takes place in cold, misty and muddy environments just adds to the misery overall.  Beauty is fleeting and can be snuffed out in an instant.  This is not a happy movie nor is it a pumping action movie, although there are some very exciting scenes.  There are also some very visceral scenes of violence that sear into your brain and not easily forgotten.  Approach this movie with caution if you don't want to be affected by it.  Definitely not one for children.  Many movies use the backdrop of WWII to make a greater point about the human spirit, like the upcoming  Unbroken, which Pitt's wife Angelina Jolie directed.  While these movies certainly have their place, Fury is all about the truism Collier says to Norman: "Ideals are peaceful.  History is violent."

Let The Right One In

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Wow, do I love it when I am thrown a curve and get to see a great film I knew next to nothing about!  I have seen many lists and critics praise the 2008 Swedish film Let The Right One In for some time now.  I even think I tried to see it at the theater but didn't get around to it.  This movie totally blew away my expectations and is one of the better horror films I have seen.  Period.

The movie is about a bullied 12-year-old boy named Oskar.  One night, a mysterious family moves in next door to him and quickly after that, strange murders begin to happen.  Oskar then meets a mysterious girl Eli (pronounced EE-lee, not EE-lie) who only comes out at night.  They strike up a fast, very close friendship.  She is very elusive whenever he asks her personal questions.  Eli becomes a great friend to him, encouraging him to stand up to the bullies, which he does.  Gradually, Oskar begins to realize Eli is a vampire, and rather than being repelled by it, he grows even closer to her.  When events around town begin to point to Eli, she says she has to leave, but ends up rescuing Oskar from the vengeful punks he stood up to earlier and helps him take revenge on them.

This was nothing what I expected it to be.  It is a movie sympathetic to both the vampire and its victims.  It portrays a vampire for what it is, not the particular aspects that make them attractive like The Lost Boys, Twilight, or even Tru Blood.  The vampire myth holds our interest for many reasons, overtones of sexual lust, power, control, eternal youth and whatnot.  What separates this film from all the others is its portrayal that a vampire it is what it is, a predator rather than an evil monster.  By making the vampire a 12-year-old girl, she is both strong and weak. Strong because of the obvious powers of a vampire.  Weak for the same reason Anne Rice said of the child vampire in Interview With The Vampire; as a child, they cannot exist in society, they cannot blend.  They will always need an adult with them or they will instantly stand out, which can be a problem for a creature that has to kill to survive, burns up on the sun and whose biggest defense is they look like everyone else.  But a great twist on this movie is that it deals with the results of a vampire's killings, the plight of the victims.  A key plot point comes when Eli kills a friend of one of the townspeople, which gets him obsessed with finding whatever killed his friend, with tragic results.

Also, many vampire movies, or at least the actors in vampire movies, put on this affected aristocratic air when they play vampires.  The Underworld and Blade movies demonstrate this propensity particularly vividly.  It's become almost cliché that if you play a vampire, you have to be an heavily-accented, boorish snob.  Eli is the exact opposite of that.  She is almost a waif, seemingly brittle to the touch until she actually kills a victim.  Even then, it looks like a small girl attacking a much larger person.  Most of the supernatural aspects of her powers are offscreen, making them scarier from what is implied.  But unless she is covered in blood, the juxtaposition of what she did versus her small frame is refreshingly off-kilter.  You don't really believe she can do these things until she does.

But the real heart of this film is the relationship between Oskar and Eli.  These are not two experienced adults doing a sensuous dance like in most vampire movies, but more of an innocent first love.  It is obvious Eli is much older than she looks.  Indeed, her "father" is actually someone who has devoted himself to her and her safety.  She obviously loves him, too, but she is also the power in the relationship.  There are very tender moments between her and her protector, but at the same time, she mercilessly scolds him when he messes things up.  It is almost like he has the mind of a child, utterly incapable of making his own decisions and serving her every whim.  At the end of the movie, it seems the same will be the fate of Oskar, yet he is happy about it.  The movie's is vagueness about this is intriguing.  Does Eli love Oskar, as she says multiple times throught the story, or is she manipulating him for her needs, or a combination of both?  It's left up to the viewer.

The only complaint I have is the film is that it is a bit ponderous like many european films tend to be.  It takes awhile  to get to the point, but when it does, this film does not disappoint.  Despite the fact the two main protagonists are twelve, this is really an adult movie.  It is not some schlocky gore fest, but rather a plot-driven character study that is utterly engrossing.  It doesn't rely on cheap thrills or even a sense of dread, just an amazing story from start to finish.  When you watch the DVD, it is dubbed, but not too badly.  I always prefer subtitles in foreign films so you don't get the chop sucky bad overdubs.  But I also like them because I hear the actors' original performances which usually get lost in the dubbing process.  All in all, this is an excellent film that I really can't recommend more highly.  If you want to see something truly original, this is the movie for you.  I may have to read the book now.

Kill The Messenger

3 Stars (out of four)

So, having a soft spot the fourth estate, when I heard what this movie was about, I got in line.  I love most of the movies that deal with news guys, particular the state of the news industry, especially investigative journalism.  I truly believe that a free press is an essential part of a free society since they keep everyone in line.  Except tabloids.  They can all die a thousand deaths.

Anyway, Kill The Messenger is about a San Jose Mercury News reporter who, during a fairly routine story, gets handed a grand jury testimony that says that the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s was helped along by the CIA as it turned a blind eye to smugglers who were assisting the Contras in Nicaragua.  The drug sales were funding arms purchases that would be funded back to Nicaragua.  At first, the story is a bombshell that catches the national interest.  But very quickly, it all unravels as the government begins to harass him and his paper, and rival papers turn to discredit him.  Very quickly, he becomes a pariah among the news industry as his paper does not back him.  Eventually he is forced out of journalism and as we find out in the end, he was killed by two shots to the head that was ruled a suicide.

So basically, this is All The President's Men with a much more depressing ending.  The movie is a little conspiracy theorist, but it does try to be fair by repeatedly mentioning that the plot was not necessarily hatched by the CIA.  It is kind of intense, but the movie does not seem to have the urgency like many of its better predecessors.  I just doesn't grab you and the movie suffers for it.  It desperately wants to be more than it is, but ultimately falls kind of flat.  It was worth the price of admission, but it is one of those movies you probably could wait for the DVD release.  The high point is Jeremy Renner.  He was not very well utilized as Hawkeye in the Marvel movies, but he has a very expressive face that does belie what he is thinking.  I think he will eventually become quite the actor if he continues on this trajectory.  I really enjoyed his performance without it being bombastic or calling attention to itself like Al Pacino or Joe Pesci.  I am excited to see him tackle tougher material like this.  Ultimately, this is a good movie that wants to be great.  It has the right material, a very interesting plot, but ultimately falls flat.  There are better news movies than this, but ultimately, it is worth a watch.