Doug's Favorite movies of 2014

The Imitation Game
Whiplash
Boyhood
John Wick
Guardians of the Galaxy
They Came Together

Appendix A:

Movies that I hated that everyone else loved:

Birdman

A Most Violent Year

The rules are that I can't technically review this because I watched it on video, and only movies I see in a theater are allowed on the blog. But if I were to review it, my review would be: meh.

The Interview

It’s hard to see what all of the fuss was about. Critics complained that maybe this comedy was offending an entire culture, but I don’t agree. It only goes after the leaders, who deserve to be ridiculed. The Americans in this movie aren’t much smarter, and to say that this movie is a “declaration of war” is just ridiculous. But maybe that’s the point. If a dictator is so volatile he can be insulted by a dumb comedy, maybe he’s not fit to lead? Anyway, we laughed, we didn’t get blown up, and satire, it seems, has become the biggest threat of all.

Foxcatcher

Creepy. Creep-y. The filmmakers establish the creepy vibe in the first ten seconds of the movie and it never lets up. Channing Tatum embodies his desperate athlete with “Rocky Balboa” levels of pathos. You can sense the train wreck coming when he’s lured into the freaky world of the ultra-rich by the creepiest of rich creeps, John Du Pont, creepily portrayed by Steve Carrell. And the exposition of the theme begins in earnest. John Du Pont is one of those rich dudes who’s so rich that the rules don’t apply to him. He can revise history. He can call himself the coach of a team. “Don’t forget,” the film says. “Rich dudes can do whatever they want.” Money buys you power, even if you’re a creep.  And man, oh man, is he a creep. Unfortunately to the filmmakers, creepy also means slow. So there are times when you wish that this movie would quit it with the creepy mood and get to where the rubber meets the road. And it happens eventually, with adequately creepy results. But pacing is important. Foxcatcher understands its tone perfectly in the beginning, but squanders its good will earned in the set up by de-emphasizing the finale. Still, kudos go to all involved for sticking to their tone and their theme, even if they have to try our patients to do it.

The Imitation Game

While thousands of allied troops were storming Omaha beach, a small group of mathematicians were breaking the Nazi codes and quietly winning World War 2. It’s an amazing story; well-directed, beautifully acted, and historically reverential. It’s also heartbreaking how the British government treated Alan Turing, the genius cryptographer who built the machine that solved the Nazi puzzle. So while this is a superb and inspiring biography, it’s not a very uplifting one. But it’s a must see. Keira Knightly and Benedict Cumberbatch will earn lots of nominations and statues and stuff for this. You can bet on it.

Birdman

Unfortunately, the “hype” of this movie sabotaged it for me. I had so many people tell me how cool and wonderful it was. I had so many friends appalled that I hadn’t seen it yet. When I finally saw it, I was annoyed the whole time. It doesn’t help that I’ve never been a fan of Iñárritu. 21 Grams, Babel, and Biutiful were all style and histrionics, and felt inauthentic. Birdman feels like its trying way too hard to be cool; to be meta. Everything feels affected, precious, and forced. Yes, there are a couple of laughs, but they tend to get smothered by the inside-jokes and jerkoffiness of it all. The filmmakers seem so pleased with themselves, sticking it to the critics. I was not impressed or entertained.

The Shawshank Redemption

Always nice to see this on the big screen. A classic.

Dumb and Dumber To

The original Dumb and Dumber was not only really funny, but it was also really fresh. The Farrellys dared to go to some taboo places for laughs that most movies wouldn’t dare venture. This new iteration is still funny, but it isn’t really "fresh." It’s nice to see Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey together again, and the commitment of everyone involved is pure, but some of the gags feel a bit well-travelled.

Whiplash

It’s not like a movie about the relationship between a music student and a music teacher is so original. Student-teacher relationships are archetypal and have been explored in drama for centuries. But what’s different here is: Whiplash explodes with technique. The editor must have been freebasing “Five Hour Energy” drinks to make some of these cuts. The music scenes are frenetic, but also hyper-controlled – a lot like jazz itself, and a lot like the dick-ish band conductor skillfully played by J.K. Simmons. But I questioned his character’s motives occasionally. He seemed to cut off his nose to spite his face more than a reasonable person would deem practical. Nevertheless, his performance is electric. As is Miles Teller as the artist who is so eager to please his mentor that he’s willing to self-destruct. This is an extremely entertaining and technically superb movie, even if the exploration of the artistic dilemma hits uncomfortably close to home.

Marriage Italian Style

So, do you want to listen to people argue in Italian for two hours? Here's how:

Faults

An interesting, low-budget thriller about deprogramming a cult survivor. There are plenty of twists and turns, even though much of the movie takes place in a cramped hotel room. The money-saving techniques here are admirable. Performances are also strong, including Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the mysterious central figure. At times, the tone strays too far into slapstick comedy, which I think hurts the overall suspense. But that’s a minor qualm in an otherwise taut and suspenseful no-budget yarn.

The Homesman

What’s with all the sad movies at AFI Fest this year? Director and star Tommy Lee Jones turns in this very sad, bleak tale about an ugly, old maid(?), Hilary Swank (all-in), who agrees to transport three mentally ill women across the prairie to get help. She hires a tough old cowboy to protect her and hilarity ensues. Besides being so depressing, what this movie lacks is relationships between Swank and the ill woman. They stay quiet for the most part, which feels like a missed opportunity for some interesting drama. Falling somewhere between True Grit and Little House on the Prairie, I’m not sure who this movie is for. Western genre fans will be bored by all of the camping. Woman will be devastated by the awfulness of Swank’s situation. It’s not that it’s bad, it just lacks any hope.

The Gambler

What stands out in this remake of an old James Caan movie is that the gambler is so addicted to gambling and gets himself in so deep that you never believe he’s going to make it out of this jam alive. It becomes almost depressing to predict how much he’ll fuck up even more. Mark Wahlberg, looking scrawny and pale, delivers an unusually affecting performance. Brie Larson takes a token “girl-next-door” part and manages to make it compelling. The rest of the cast is good, too. Each loan shark and bookie more ominous than the last. While it's sometimes nauseating to watch this guy’s self-destruction, the resolution is surprisingly complete and satisfying.

Happy Valley

This is probably one of the saddest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s sadder than Schindler’s List. While it’s initially sold as a documentary about the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal, it becomes more about football culture and hero worship. The culture that makes football coaches into religious leaders is bound to be rocked by a scandal that mirrors the Catholic Church. When people pursue one reality too much for too long, they tend to lock-out other realities. Great movie about strong and worthy themes, but SAD. Oh, and not a date movie.

Interstellar

In the film geek world, there’s a lot of jibber-jabber about the 70mm format. Christopher Nolan is one of the filmmakers who has sworn to save film vs. video. So much of the discussion is about the format. But how’s the story? An amalgam of 2001, Contact, and the various time-travel paradoxes, it’s not very original, but it is thought-provoking. The idea of relativity plays into the plot, which makes for some exciting, imaginative hypotheticals. It’s thematically ambitious. But the science of it all keeps an arms length from the emotion. There are some boo-hoo, tissue moments, but they don’t really resonate. So while I can say it’s “cool” I can’t really say I loved it. It’s more format than function, I guess.

Inherent Vice

Sometimes a movie is a little too weird for its own good. It starts out pretty straightforward. Joaquin Phoenix is a P.I. and a woman in trouble comes looking for help. The detours from the case are numerous and nonsensical. Some of them are hilarious, some of them are just out of left field. It’s beautifully shot and the period costumes are cool, but you’re not sure what you just saw at the end of it all. Josh Brolin as an angry, broke cop is the most memorable thing about this. Otherwise, the case doesn’t make sense. Even in the masterpiece of unsolvable puzzles, “the Dude” just wanted his rug back.

Nightcrawler

A clever, low-budget potboiler in which Jake Gyllenhaal plays a sociopathic scumbag. There’s a strong and welcome opinion here about the state of TV news, but since there’s no likeable characters, it’s hard to connect with this movie on an emotional level. You watch from a distance. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it also means you leave the theater feeling kind of icky. Still, good performances all around, and it’s always nice to see Bill Paxton.

John Wick

There is something so satisfying about revenge. Something so primal and visceral. The filmmakers of John Wick understand this and skillfully tap into this primitive urge with aplomb. The filmmakers take their time, setting up Keanu’s sensitive guy – almost, but not quite, milking it. Then when the payback comes, it’s so deeply and necessarily violent. Never for a moment do you feel any sympathy for the dozens of thugs and goons Keanu wipes out on his crusade for payback. The underground world of hit-man camaraderie is also a refreshing twist on the proceedings. But it’s really the killing that matters. You can almost taste the blood. I loved this!

The Equilizer

I guess I always thought The Equalizer was about revenge and making wrong things right. There’s only a little of that here, but it’s mostly about reading books and/or shooting people and not a lot of righting wrongs. Which is too bad. Revenge is such a powerful and worthy theme, to squander that is a shame, which is what happened here. A better movie about this exact same subject, Man on Fire, also with Denzel, came out a few years ago. Check that one out instead.

Gone Girl

Any time a David Fincher movie comes out, David Fincher is the star of the movie. The actors are, for better or for worse, supporting players and the movie has visual style flying out the wazoo. But in the case of Gone Girl, it’s less of a “David Fincher” movie and much more of a “Ben Affleck” movie. Affleck has been in the movie star doghouse for a long time, and while his directing career has been going swimmingly, he hasn’t been the “star” of a big movie for a while. But he OWNS this movie and he’s pretty good in it. Yes, there is something dumb and wooden about his performance, but that’s also a big part of his character. You need to believe he’s the kind of guy who all of this stuff could happen to. It’s an old-fashioned twisty thriller and you might find yourself working out some of the logic points after the show. But it tracks, I think. Whether it does or not, it’s a fun night at the movies, albeit less “Finchery” than other Fincher movies.

Let's Be Cops

The thing that I’m not really able to get over is: this is the exact premise of an It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode from season 3. That premise is slightly expanded here when fake cops begin to solve real crimes. But instead of these crimes being funny, writers take us down the well-worn and unfunny road of corrupt cops and arms dealers.  If you’re going to steal an idea, try to make it better, not worse. This was not painfully bad to watch. But it’s a re-hash, so it’s stale, and there’s no real point.

Lucy

This reminded me of the 2011 Bradley Cooper movie Limitless. Scar-Jo plays a floozie who’s suddenly endowed with great “brain capacity” which gives her telekinetic powers. The first half unfolds like a thriller, with a lot of chasing and intrigue. Director Luc Besson intercuts many scenes with footage of animals and nature; a way of peppering in theme. It was cool, and it reminded me of bygone Oliver Stone and Terrence Malick movies. The second half gets a bit Matrix-y, and Scar-Jo’s ability to assimilate with technology gets very cerebral while going mostly unexplained. Attempts to make a mainstream sci-fi movie are welcome, even though at the end of this you’re left wondering if there’s a larger, cautionary/sci-fi point to it all.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Sin City being what it is, you’re not signing up for a lot of happy endings. The black and white milieu with little bursts of color is still visually cool, but not as trailblazing as it was when the first Sin City came out 9 years ago. The acting is top notch... for the genre, and there are a lot of cool set pieces. As usual, Eva Green steals every scene she's in. But this left me wanting more, and I’m not sure why. There’s nothing WRONG with it, but maybe it was the short running time or the lack of freshness, but this made me long for 2005, when the low-budget, green screen movie was the newest craze.

Get On Up

Efforts to make this rock and roll biopic different from the others succeed, as much as possible. Chadwick Boseman looks nothing like James Brown, but he sounds JUST like him and when he stops to talk to the camera you can feel an intimacy that differs this from Ray, et al. Performances are great here, and the pace is fast and funky. It’s important, too, that the movie doesn’t white-wash James Brown’s drug use and abuse of women. He may have been talented, but he was also sometimes an asshole.

Guardians of the Galaxy

I couldn’t really tell you what the plot is about. Something about an orb that’s the key to the universe. But this is charming and funny. I especially like Groot. Whoever decided that the goon, the muscle, should be a tree is a genius. The cast is great and the banter is light-speed. Marvel managed to make a new, un-popular comic book into a hit. It’s admirable.

The Phantom of the Paradise

Who would think there would be a cut-rate version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Brian DePalma’s weird, campy twist on The Phantom of The Opera is a violent musical in which the only star is Paul Williams. It bombed, by the way. Now that it’s forty years old, it’s bypassed painful unwatchability and moved straight into hilarious train wreck. It’s also interesting to see the director that Brian DePalma would become. (One also remembers the trivia about DePalma, who laughed at the rough-cut of Star Wars, sure that it would bomb…)

Boyhood

I remember reading about this years ago -- the fascinating and ambitious project by Linklater and company chronicling a character as he grows up on screen. Since it took 12 years to finish, I sort of forgot about it, wondering if it was ever finish-able. Turns out, it was and it’s a first-class endeavor. It’s truly about boyhood, and the theme drives the movie. While there are characters and a story, there is no “plot,” per se. It’s a meditation about growing up, which consists of essays about the different stages of adolescence. (It reminded me of Dazed and Confused in this way: kinda loose.) The cast is great, especially Ellar Coltrane, the boy transforming into a man and the central subject. What’s neat is to think back over the movie after you’ve left the theater, remembering the little moments that you realize after the fact are important rites of passage. Yes, it’s a bit long. But it’s important that it is, it should feel like an emotional journey. There is no “resolution.” How could there be to boyhood? But there is a conclusion and it’s both simple and profound.

Begin Again

A nice, likeable movie about a washed-up record producer who decides to get behind an idealistic busker. The original songs are sweet, but nothing mind-blowing. The commentary about the music industry stays with you, though, as you start to wonder where original music is actually coming from. Is it coming from songwriters and artists? Is it computer algorithms randomly selecting notes and songs statistically likely to be hits? It makes you think.

Snowpiercer

A train circles the globe, never stopping. It’s miles long and the people in the back, the poorest of its residents, are fed up. They want better food and a better life. It’s time to rebel; fighting their way forward one train car at a time. The metaphor works: rich people in the front, poor people in the back. There’s no skipping cars to the front either, every car must be traversed. So the set-up is interesting. Some of the practical aspects of living on a train are skimmed over, but it’s sci-fi, so a it’s all an allegory anyway. It starts to get weird toward the end, and some important questions go unanswered. But the cast is good, especially Chris Evans as the reluctant hero. And the message, we’ve seen it before, about the rich oppressing the poor, “trickling down” their wealth and food, is always infuriating. At some point this train’s gonna crash.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

A serious, almost Shakespearean rise to power for Caesar and the threats to his leadership by vindictive lieutenants makes this a worthy follow up to Rise of the Apes. The motion capture acting, especially by Andy Serkis Andy Serkis and the army of motion capture animators and geniuses, is really impressive, as is the script which focuses on the apes as protagonists, rather than the humans. Certain critical chapters of this were rushed through for time, you can tell, like the “How the Apes learn to Shoot Guns” chapter. But we’ve seen how quick they can learn, so we have too accept a little dramatic license there. Otherwise this is an excellent, entertaining sequel, full of drama, imagination, and great science fiction cautions about mankind’s warring future.

22 Jump Street

It turns out Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are pretty good at poking fun at themselves. They did it in This is the End. And, hey, that worked, right? So, this is one inside joke after another. Jokes about their personas. Jokes about bro-mances. Jokes about sequels. Jokes about movie conventions. It’s so super-meta aware of itself, it’s like a hall of mirrors. It’s so narcissistic, it almost shouldn’t work. But there’s a relaxed vibe and a quick pace, so the laughs come easily. Stay for the end credits.

Obvious Child

This movie is all about RISK. It’s a rom-com about a woman who decides to get an abortion. No one in her life objects. There are no protesters outside the clinic. She never wonders out loud why she didn’t try “Plan B.” But it’s still a tough decision to go through with it, nevertheless. The cast is good, and they’re up to the challenge. But the point of the movie, I guess, is that there is no conflict. The point is to depict the women who have to make this decision and show them making it. So if you want politics, look elsewhere. The conflict of this movie is just telling the story in the first place. It’s an admirable endorsement of reproductive rights, and as a movie, it’s a decent, easily appreciated dramedy in which the resolution less important than the choice.

They Came Together

We laughed all the way through this. Not a spoof, per se, of any particular rom-coms, but more like a satire of the genre in general, picking on the well-worn tropes. Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd are in top form and so is the support cast. It’s too bad David Wain and company don’t have a bigger following and this didn’t get a bigger release. It’s so much funnier than those lame/obvious Date Movie things. It’s back to the old-school Zucker Brothers/Mel Brooks style of comedy and it’s a fun night at the movies.

Edge of Tomorrow

The trailers to this made it seem like a sequel to Oblivion, and a rehash of a thousand other sci-fi parables. But as skeptical as I initially was, Cruise & Liman delivered a taut, entertaining thriller that doesn’t suck. Performances are strong, the script is interesting, the pace is speedy, and it’s more or less satisfying. It won’t be chosen to be in the Library of Congress National Film Registry any time soon, but you won’t be pissed off seeing it, either.

Chef

It seems like all of the summer movies that are coming out have one thing in common: the world is about to end. The same is true in Chef. While the stakes aren’t quite as high as if Godzilla was rolling into town, Jon Favreau’s temperamental chef manages to lose everything, and then fights to get it back. It’s a nice, emotional movie. Sure, there are no buildings tipping over, but Chef may end up packing more of an emotional punch than expected as an inarticulate artist struggles to reinvent himself and also, if there’s any chance, earn a living.

A Million Ways to Die in the West

This could have been funnier. This should have been funnier. Not that it’s bad, it’s just… stale.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Superheroes almost always populate parallel universes in the near future. Technology is always one step ahead of reality. Cities closely resemble Chicago. The really cool thing about the last couple of X-Men movies is they’re period pieces that look like Mad Men episodes or if David O Russell directed the Super Friends. Bryan Singer’s latest super-opus is firmly grounded in the fictional past, giving it an old-school, analogue vibe, lending a level of history and gravitas to the proceedings. Nothing’s more important seeming than Richard Nixon in a bad suit negotiating with Magneto.

Godzilla

I didn’t hate this, but I wasn’t moved to tears either. I liked Bryan Cranston as the mad scientist, but the rest of the cast was dull and interchangeable. Filmmakers play with “scale” in the first half of the movie, so you never really know how big Godzilla is until a big reveal. Godzilla’s battles with various military machines and other monsters are par for the course: massive, epic, explosive. Thankfully, but only briefly, Godzilla pulls out all the stops for a satisfying conclusion, but I still wish the human characters could have been more, um, fiery.

Bachelor Party

Great watching this farce with one of its stars, Bradford Bancroft. Probably the best and most important thing about this movie is, the bachelor and subject of the party, Tom Hanks, never actually engages in any kind of sexual misdeeds. His commitment is pure, which is nice.

Revenge of the Nerds

It’s probably been twenty five years since I’ve seen this and I’ve always remembered it as one of the better 80’s comedies. But re-watching it after all of these years, it’s impressive how much of a parable it is for tolerance. Maybe that’s why it has such staying power, even though I didn’t recognize it at the time? Nevertheless, the main thing to remember is: the nerds win.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Not amazing. Did NOT like this. Unfortunately, Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 2 wrecked the franchise for me by raising the bar so high, no other Spidermans come close. I can’t really put my finger on why I disliked this, but I was bored. It lacked the pomp and circumstance. It lacked showmanship. It lacked humor. Spiderman isn’t symbolic of anything greater than himself. It was unemotional. There’s nothing specifically wrong with it. It just feels so artificial. So cynical and joyless. I miss Bruce Campbell. I miss MJ. I miss Raimi.

The Raid 2

All of a sudden they care about story?? The best thing about The Raid: Redemption is that concern about the story is minimal so the filmmakers can carry on with the innovative ass-kickings. But here, there are lengthy dialogues with gangsters posturing. In English, in a Scorsese movie, this would be fine. But in Indonesian? I was bored out of my mind. It’s 140 minutes long! Big fight scenes eventually take over, but it’s too little too late. So I was disappointed. My advice: watch The Raid: Redemption again and skip this one.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Comedy directors the Russo Brothers crush it, delivering a solid comic-book adventure and parable about preemptive crime-fighting and modern day privacy. In a lot of ways, Steve Rogers, frozen in time for all those years, is the best kind of character to explore these issues as he tries to understand the modern technology that we take for granted. Filmmakers give the audience plenty of treats along the way: Action scenes, old fashioned car chases, Easter eggs from the Marvel universe and, of course, lots of fighting. Steve sure knows a lot of Kung Fu for a guy who only seems to box at the gym. Although there aren’t a lot of surprises, there is a lot of suspense thanks to some tight editing and keen performances by the supporting cast. As a kid, I never cared about Captain America as a superhero. He was too square. But now, with anti-heroes and grey areas taking over the zeitgeist, it’s nice to see a good guy with the strength of his own convictions fighting evil.

Noah

Darren Aronofsky and company approach this adaptation of the bible with a nifty business model: do it like a Lord of the Rings movie! Like Peter Jackson’s opus, Noah’s god-fearing fable is approached with utmost regard, scope, and technique. Russell Crowe is great here; super–comfortable and formidable as the kook who dreams up the big plan to save humanity. The rest of the cast is strong, too --serious and reverential about their roles. Whether or not the writers of the bible intended for their myths to be interpreted so grandiosely with giant rock monsters and stuff, it’s obviously fantastic, free source material ripe for interpretation. Because no matter what anybody says about the old testament, whether they “believe” it or not, there’s one thing on which we can all agree:  The bible is fuckin’ CRAZY!

Divergent

I’m not sure I “got” this. As far as science fiction allegories go, this seems to be a diatribe against standardized testing and Myers-Briggs personality profiling, i.e. sorting teenagers into predestined life paths. Main teenager Beatrice gets all upset when her futuristic S.A.T. test comes up inconclusive, but why should she? She still gets to choose for herself during a weird bloodletting “choosing” ceremony. So what’s the big fucking deal? Like The Hunger Games, this futuristic society has these caste systems in place, but the only way to ideologically object or stand up to the system is to kick people’s ass. Cue the one-hour training montage wherein Beatrice learns to kick ass. Shailene Woodley does a competent job of keeping your attention while you wait for the story to start. When it finally does it’s brief and confused. There’s no decent explanation for why the “intelligentsia” caste wants to invade and/or take over the “selfless” caste. It’s probably a metaphor for something, but I’m not sure what. Anyway, there’s a lot of training and teen romance and fighting and pep talks and more training and it’s dystopia so nothing makes sense and blah, blah, blah. I hope teenagers like this and it makes a lot of money for Lionsgate. As for me, I regret to say I need my sci-fi allegories to be a little more, um, acute?

Non-Stop

This reminded me of a lot of the other plane movies: Passenger 57, Air Force One, Executive Decision, Red Eye. Thankfully Liam Neeson holds your attention well during the otherwise typical proceedings. It’s fun to watch, but I must admit, I rolled my eyes a bit when Neeson’s air marshall finally solves the mystery and reveals the villainous motives of the evil high-jackers. It felt a little “tacked on” and “ripped from the headlines.” Anyhoo, it’s a fun experience, despite the lack of emotional fulfillment.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Ralph Fiennes in a comedy! Who knew? And it’s a comedy through and through. Unfortunately, this means it lacks the emotional punch of some of the other Wes Anderson movies. On par for the filmmakers, it’s designed within an inch of its life. Every color, every last detail is precious. “It insists upon itself.”  There’s nothing wrong with that, but when you leave the theater wondering: what was the point? It might be time to change it up a little. I say: bring Owen Wilson back as a writing partner.

300: Rise of an Empire

The Original 300 raised a certain kind of bar for hyper-reality and overacting. The spraying blood and ridiculous visuals were matched well by Gerard Butler’s screaming and posturing. In a way, a new genre was born. This current iteration lacks the charismatic hero of the former. Not that there’s anything wrong with Themistocles or his quest, but he acts like he might be more at home in a more historically accurate sword and sandal pic.

ON THE OTHER HAND… Eva Green smirks, bitches, and wisecracks her way into stealing this movie out from everyone else. Her bellowing and self-aggrandizement is HYSTERICAL. She seems like she truly understands what Gerry Butler had achieved and she’s determined to surpass his heroic histrionics with her own deliciously conniving villainy. She takes what could have been a tolerable but unremarkable movie and turns it up to eleven.

Robocop

“Hey! I know! Let's remake Robocop, but WITHOUT all that pesky satire!”

Thud.

Bad Words

Watching Jason Bateman, as surly and deadpan as ever, take down innocent kids at spelling bees is darkly, sadistically funny. His accidental bonding with a sheltered, but emotionally neglected child competitor (Rohan Chand, perfect as the Indian nerd) ups the emotional ante while still mining plenty of laughs. As funny as it is to watch Bateman destroy these gullible kids, one wonders, even at the beginning: What is his endgame? That’s the weak point of the script when it’s finally revealed. So the ending feels a little rushed, and the wicked tone is lost, temporarily. But Kudos to Bateman for sticking to his ridiculous premise and shining a spotlight on a really funny kid. 

Tim's Vermeer

It’s a natural progression for Penn and Teller to jump from the short documentary format of “Bullshit” into feature length docs. Directed by Teller and Produced and narrated by Penn, they take an in-depth and fascinating look at a seemingly ordinary dude, Tim Jenison, who wants to paint a painting like the Dutch Master, Vermeer. Tim thinks he may have decoded a special method of painting, one which Vermeer may have used, that would result in the most photorealistic art of the era. The time and dedication Tim takes to work on his hobby/painting is both inspired and tedious. How did the Dutch masters do it? But the point is, Tim, who often refers to himself as neither “an artist nor a painter” is in fact, both of those things. So are we what we create? Or are we what compels us? A fascinating doc that asks a lot of worthwhile questions about art and artists.

The Lego Movie

I have never tried cocaine, but if I DID do cocaine, I feel like watching this movie is what it would feel like to be on cocaine. There is so much color, movement, and manic energy it’s startling and almost overwhelming to behold. In spite of all of this frenetic jibber-jabber, the main themes remain pretty well in tact: There’s nothing wrong with following the instructions, and in truth that helps maintain perfectly formed society. But if it’s your calling to, ”Color outside the lines” and stray from the instructions, then you must do that if only to help society become a better and more innovative place. I’m not sure that the filmmakers were THAT worried about the themes though. It’s funny, the voice-acting is perfect, and there’s a few nice plot surprises. But whatever this movie is, it’s also very much an advertisement for Legos. I know this because, in spite of myself, when the movie was over I really wanted to play with Legos. So this is an admirable kids movie even though it’s a bit like crack. It’s not the stuff that dreams are made of, but it’s a hoot.

The Monuments Men

On paper this looks like a great movie. Great cast, great true story. Home run for all involved. But the script is dull! After some boring narration about the importance of protecting art, the first half of the movie is not about that. It’s all about war being “hell”, which is a perfectly valid theme for any movie OTHER than this one. The theme of this movie is supposed to be “save the art.” So, finally, in the second half, the monuments men start to save the art. Some of the scenes are fun. They seem clipped out of an episode of Hogan’s Heroes, i.e. a bunch of tough guys standing around a map, planning and scheming, guessing where the Nazis would strike next. Good stuff. But that nagging question of, “What the fuck was going on in the first half of this movie?” never really goes away. So the script by Clooney and Heslov is sloppy and clunky which is too bad because this could have been really good.

Lone Survivor

Some of the battle scenes in the Afghani woods are taut and well-directed, but the before and after were eye-rollingly histrionic. To lend some credibility to this “true” story, Peter Berg and company begin with a lengthy montage featuring real navy seals and the unreasonable physical training they must endure to be our heroes and defend the country. Then, there’s about 20 minutes of Friday Night Lights, i.e. witty banter and light-heartedness mixed with macho introspection so that we’ll sympathize with the soldiers once they start falling off of cliffs. The third act is all made-up and fictionalized, which is too bad because it sure was boring. Like I said, the firefights were impressive, but the rest of this feels like phony-baloney.  (The Navy Seal movie to see is Captain Phillips. )

Her

** SPOILER ALERT **

When Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) panics because his operating system doesn’t start up right away, we can all relate. We’ve grown dependent on our gadgets. It’s nothing new. We’ve seen this trope, the relationship between man and machine, in plenty of other movies, but never at this level of emotional co-dependence. For her part, “Samantha” the O.S., is evolving quickly and, like a lot of sentient beings, is ill-prepared for the emotional toll love takes on her and her beloved. Love lessons are learned in heartfelt scenes that most movies wouldn’t dare attempt. Spike Jones has a sweet side. (Maybe after working so hard on Jackass he needs to infuse a bit of sentiment into the world?) To resort to a cliché: Her is very thought-provoking. Yes, we’ve seen incarnations of this type of story in the past, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Short Circuit and numerous episodes of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. But Phoenix’s willingness to completely dive into the emotional journey thrusts Her from sci-fi straight into romance. Scarlett Johansson completely embodies the voice of “Samantha”, if that makes any sense. But at the end of the movie, when Theodore chooses to take in the views of Los Angeles (the CG cityscapes are beautiful, by the way) it’s the human connection he realizes he needs, like all of us.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

It’s silly and in many ways a rehash. What’s clever is the satirical look at the type of “news” Ron Burgundy and his team decides to cover: sensational car chases, celebrity dismemberments, and puppies. The movie proposes that the style of news coverage that quickly made ALL the news so terrible was invented by Ron Burgundy. I would have liked to see more of that kind of media-skewering. Otherwise, it’s a lot of shtick. Some of it’s funny. Some of it? Not so much. You can tell when the actors are improvising, the comedy m.o. is “randomness.” It’d be neat if this gang of world-renowned comedians could move away from that style and try things more, um, contextual?  

The Wolf of Wall Street

Jordan Belfort is a scumbag. Wolf of Wall Street gleefully shows us this in the opening 90 seconds of the three-hour saga, skillfully establishing the tone and the general dicky-ness of said scumbag protagonist. Scorsese and DiCaprio remind us, in case we forgot, that Wall Street criminals are as bad, if not worse, than Mafia criminals. Wolf of Wall Street feels a lot like a white-collar version of Goodfellas or Casino, but instead of “goombas” whacking guys in dark alleys, the killing is being made in the daylight, over the phone, and on the trading floor, and all of the participants seem willing. Outrage over the sexuality here seems misplaced. Yes, there’s plenty of nudity, but all the sex scenes are between consenting adults and its nothing we haven’t seen on HBO or Showtime. Besides! What about the dwarf tossing? Where’s the outrage for that? I don’t understand why people would reserve their outrage for a movie with sex scenes in it, versus the real screw job perpetrated by the Wall Street swindlers. Scor-Caprio™ delivers the movie the Wall Street criminals deserve: a total indictment of stock market greed and American over-consumption. They never stand on a soapbox and pass judgment on their anti-heroes, but depiction is not endorsement, either. Instead, they force us to examine who we are as a culture (see also: Spring Breakers) and to ask ourselves why would THIS be a way of life that Americans should aspire to have?