I’m way behind on this
little blog, though not sure many would notice. With that, I’m skipping the
full 200-word counts and running fast. These films deserve much more
consideration, but such is life…
The
Judge (2014) has a
cast to make any film fan swoon: Robert
Downey Jr., Billy Bob Thornton, Vincent D’Onofrio, Vera Farmiga, and Robert
Duvall. RDJ is the hotshot Chicago attorney who goes home to the farm to bury mom
and war with dad (Duvall), the small town, big stick judge.
When pop gets
busted for homicide, guess who must save him? Every moment is preset and
staged, most painfully when City Boy gets out his old bike for a country road
ride for no other reason than to crash said bike so he can get saved by – just happening to be passing by – his old
love. Boring.
Worst bit: RDJ’s autistic brother who’s treated as a comic relief
dolt who pops out his Super 8 camera from childhood at every inopportune time, just
because the script needs it. Give the man dignity. Maybe he uses digital? Second
worst bit: RDJ pisses on a colleague in a men’s room. That exact scene was in “Wolf.”
Twenty years ago. Letdown. C+
The
Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies (2014) has some great moments at the end with sacrifices and
heroics, but really it’s the overlong third chapter in Peter Jackson’s gonzo, throw
in nine kitchen sinks adaptation of the slim children’s book by J.R.R. Tolkien.
By
the time Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and his dwarf pals make it to the battle, not
even after, I stopped counting armies or caring. Dig those giant worms that knock
over a mountain and then quit the film back to, what, “Dune”? “Tremors”? “Battle”
soars in large chunks –- I love Freeman –- and yet it is uncomfortably exhausting,
a perfect example of a great filmmaker pouring on the sauce not because he
needs to or should, but because he can, with his never-ending budget and line
of CGI-world crunching supercomputers. I desperately want Jackson to think small
next time. B-
If “Hobbit” is all
excess, A Most Violent Year (2014) is a
sparse, smart crime saga about a non-criminal. It’s a cinematic treat. Again
proving he may be my generation’s Al Pacino, without hooting and hollering, Oscar
Issac (“Inside Llewyn Davis”) plays Abel Morales, a NYC oil delivery businessman
convinced he’s the lone good guy in a corrupt, mafia-run market. The catch: He
is exactly that.
But is that move –- calm and peace amongst threats and violence
–- wise, streetwise? When everyone around you is crooked or comes from such, including a
quick-to-anger wife (Jessica Chastain)? Director/writer J.C. Chandor (“MarginCall” and “All is Lost”) is fast becoming one of my favorite filmmakers,
focusing on good, vulnerable men thrown into caustic situations, and seeing how
they fall or rise. Abel’s path pops.
Even when Chandor serves up genre tropes
(the chase through narrow streets, the flailed man with a gun), he makes
choices that surprise. The final scenes leave open the door for more of Abel,
and I cannot wait to watch. A
Interstellar
(2014) is Christopher
Nolan’s science fiction head trip and ode to “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but it is
crucially, beautifully personal. It defies explanation and its own major faults
which threaten to topple the whole affair again and again.
Through sheer will
power, Matthew McConaughey keeps the film on track as Cooper, a one-time engineer/astronaut
now living as a farmer and widowed father of two children on a future, dying
Earth where food is scarce. I cannot give too much away lest I spoil plot and
the mystery. But some detail: Coop is tapped to lead a last-ditch expedition to
a possible new planetary home, the last mission of a crumbling NASA (led by
Michael Caine).
More so than the alien worlds and spacecraft, “Interstellar” is
about a father’s love defying all barriers to touch his daughter, here played
by Mackenzie Foy. Love it, hate it, fall for the finale, or reject it, Nolan’s
film demands payment, a strong immediate reaction, and then multiple viewings on
the largest screen possible. This is no pedestrian film. It grabs the viewer. High
point: A powerful score by Hans Zimmer that rattles and breaks the soul. A-
Selma
and American Sniper (both 2014) demand
more attention than I can give here, but such is life. “Selma” follows the 1965
marches led by Martin Luther King Jr. that riled Alabama, and shocked a nation
from its false American dream.
“Sniper” follows Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL
sniper with the most confirmed combat kills ever, himself killed by a gun not
in Iraqi but at home on a gun range. King and Kyle died before age 40. For all
the bluster that “Selma” dare distorts history, it is “Sniper” that more
severely ignores truths by giving Kyle a Hollywood adversary in the form of a
Syrian sniper that is his equal. The two men never crossed paths. Clint Eastwood’s
film makes this face off the linchpin of Kyle’s service and worship of war. Why
add drama to an already startling life story?
“Selma,” directed by Ava
DuVernay, is the far better film because it dares peel back not just the
ugliness of America, but the strife and troubles within the Civil Rights movement
and King’s own life. And our own troubles today. Brit David Oyelowo embodies
King as a man not the dream.
And as Kyle, Bradley Cooper astounds as a very
troubled man swallowed whole by war. Marvel how Eastwood and Cooper lay out
scenes that could be patriotic rah-rah-rah, or be viewed as anything but. Eastwood
cunningly uses silence during the closing credits to leaves us in the uncomfortable
void of our own voices, discussing what we just witnessed, if we dare talk. Points
off the scene where a Kyle is played, creepily, by a creepy doll.
Selma: A,
Sniper: A-
I recently came across
an online column where great director Martin Scorsese once listed The Uninvited (1944) and The Innocents (1961) as two of the scariest
films ever made. OK.
“Uninvited” is amusing, not frightening, to my eyes. Ray
Milland and Ruth Hussey play London-born siblings who move into an abandoned house
along a rocky English coastline. They pay cash. Cheap. Against the pleas from a
young woman (Gail Russell) with a past hidden in those old bricks. Soon moans wail
at night, rooms chill cold, and the cat runs away.
We know it’s haunted. But in
1944, haunted house flicks never had a ghost. I guess religious concerns? Whatever.
Between night frights, the siblings get mixed up with Russell’s gal, a local
doctor (Alan Napier), and a lesbian hypnotist (Cornelia Otis Skinner) who cringes
offensive stereotype. The women scream. The men get brave and yell to the
ghosts, “Go away!,” and the ghosts go away. I laughed.
I freaked out, though,
at the scary-as-shit “Innocents,” because it’s never clear what is going on.
This is horror. We first see heroine Deborah Kerr, hands clutched, praying for
a good boy and girl to love and care for. Then we cut to Kerr interviewing for
a job as a governess of a boy and a girl, orphans of a philandering uncle (Michael
Redgrave) who frankly tells her he has no love for the children.
Kerr, now
knowing the children need love, takes to their rural estate and serves
attention in droves. Oh, but these children (Pamela Franklin and Martin
Stephens) are quite odd and possibly haunted by two of their previous caregivers,
who died mysteriously, possibly after inviting the children to watch and join
in on their violent sexual meet-ups.
Disturbing stuff for 50-plus years ago. Directed
by Jake Clayton and co-written by Truman Capote from Henry James’ “Turn of the
Screw,” this is as good movies get. Watch it once, remain bewildered and
shocked by what you have seen. Ghosts? Voices? Did that boy really just tongue Kerr?
“Innocents” is an epic mind fuck for the ages. Where does that first scene
fall?
Both are shot with gorgeous black and white film stock that makes one
wish every horror movie were filmed as such.
Uninvited: B Innocents: A+
Not many films got my
blood pumping in 2014, but Whiplash –
seen finally on DVD – took hold and had me near inches from the screen as its
tale of a first-year prodigy jazz drum major (Miles Teller) falling under the
spell and doom of an abusive teacher (J.K. Simmons) plays out.
This is riveting
filmmaking, even if it is well trod territory with the oft-told tale of the
perfectionist obsessive who will destroy themselves to perform. Think “BlackSwan.” The trick here is we’re not sure how genius our prodigy Andrew really
is, and any of his talent is put off by sheer smugness and petty boasts. Andrew
is, in short, an asshole.
Writer/director Damien Chazelle, in his debut
feature, has crafted a film you cannot look away from. He plays with audience reaction:
Ae we rooting for Simmons’ bullying monster? See it. The music -– Chazelle tells
more with notes than words –- is brilliant. It’s not perfect.
If “Swan”
derailed gloriously in the end, so does Whiplash” with a car crash that seems random.
But it recovers quickly with a musical showdown that cuts like razor blades.
Simmons owns the film and our souls. A
