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?