Massive film roundup…

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

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Peter Jackson pushes on his with his uber-epic 9-hour adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” with “The Desolation of Smaug,” a near-three hour action epic that -– behold, wonders –- improves from last year’s “An Unexpected Journey.” That film played crazy indulgent as it OD’d on “Lord of the Rings” nostalgia (Frodo checks the mailbox!) and eye-roll flashbacks. Here we again follow young Hobbit Bilbo (Martin Freeman) now in the middle of his adventure helping 13 dwarves recapture their mountain home from the monstrous dragon Smaug. (Smaug is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, making this a love-fest for BBC’s “Sherlock,” where Freeman is Watson to Cumberbatch’s Holmes.) Jackson and his team ramp up the action and add new material including a Errol Flynn-era Robin Hood-like female elf, played by Evangeline Lilly of “Lost.” Despite past grumblings of Jackson re-working Tolkien, this addition is welcome. I can’t recall a single female in the “Hobbit.” This middle chapter still is too long, far too “LotR” obsessed, and I still couldn’t care if most of the dwarves died by dragon fire, but Freeman carries it. He dazzles strong with physical comedy that could stand beside Chaplin. B

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), in 3D High Frame Rate

When I first saw “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” I did so in the 2D, normal 24-fames-per-second format. Movie geek that I am, I sought out the much-debated 3D, 48-fps version that Peter Jackson insists is the definitive version. The 48 verdict: Incredible. Damn the naysayers. I have seen hundreds of films in a cinema, but I have never felt as if I could reach into the onscreen fantastical world before me, and what better film to do that with than a Tolkien story? Even one embellished and stretched thin and loud as it is here, part one of a new trilogy. Skin, swords, wizard beards and hats, and even Hobbit pottery appear real. The 3D work amplifies the perspective. Of course, this was my second viewing, I knew what was coming. Would I be so positive on my first go-round, unsure of the “Journey” ahead? I cannot say. I can say: The action and special effects have zero blur, including the jaw-dropper “riddle” face-off with Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and Gollum (Andy Serkis). I hated the lethargic pace more, and the fully unnecessary “LOTR” alumni reunions more so, but what a visual delight! The B- advances to B for this version.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal 1937 children’s book “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again” is concise, funny, and light in spirit, which I cannot say for director/writer Peter Jackson and his team from the famed “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in their adaptation of the newly titled “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” There is no “Back Again” here, and there shall not be for two movies, and six (!) more hours. 

This toss-in-the-kitchen-sink trilogy opener stops just shy of three hours as it spells out in detail how Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman, playing the young version of Ian Holm, who appears as well) came into possession of the powerful ring –- the Ring -– that sets in motion the 2001-2003 films and 1954-1955 books fans know so well. 

First thing out of the way: I saw “Hobbit” in 2D and regular frame rate, not the 3D and 48 frames-per-second rate that has garnered much press. Second: I read the book so long ago I cannot recall it in my memory. I judge by hunches and –- God help me -– the Web. 

Movie wise, “Hobbit” is split as Tolkein’s greatest and most troubled character, Gollum, the schizophrenic villain/victim who owned and lost the preciousss golden circle to Bilbo, who decades later will hand it over to nephew Frodo, and you know the rest. Team Jackson –- including co-writer Gillermo del Toro -– take not just the “Hobbit” book, but myriad side-stories, prefixes, appendices, and shopping lists written by Tolkein and knit out a story that is jovial, eye-popping in wonder, and maddeningly dull and repetitive to the point of tedium. Even during the big CGI action sequences. 

(There’s a fist-fight between two black-rock mountains (!) that is impressive, bizarre, laugh-out-loud ridiculous, overlong by half, and in the end, useful as a lecture on thermodynamics.) 

I could not repeat all the plot tentacles to save my soul, except this quick sketch: Homebody Hobbit Bilbo is thrust into joining 13 dwarves (led by Richard Armitage as the dreamiest “GQ” dwarf ever) as they set out to kill the dragon that took their mountain homeland decades ago. The instigator of this hunt is the wise Moses-like wizard Gandalf, again played by Ian McKellan. The troupe is hunted by trolls, a vengeance-seeking one-armed orc, and wolves. Llittle of this is in the book, but thrown in by Jackson, who seems set on making a simple fable into something far darker and massively important. 

I know that’s nit-picking. Changes were made to the “LOTR” trilogy, especially the loss of the vital “Scouring of the Shire” finale, but so much of this movie is filler created solely because the filmmakers have the budget and technology, not because it serves this story. 

As with prequels, characters are re-introduced wholesale to goose memories. In almost every instance, these are time-killers. We don’t need Elijah Wood as Frodo. Nor Holm as old Bilbo. Cate Blanchett’s elf queen, so majestically introduced in “Fellowship of the Ring,” stumbles into this film with such little fanfare, one can’t imagine her importance. Same with Christopher Lee’s Sauramon, parked in a chair and practically giving away his whole game plan of evil to come later on. Ditto Gollum and his long slow intro, now redundant I suppose. I'm muffing some of the details here, but the point stands -- especially if this film is viewed as a true prequel.

See, Jackson is making these as a man looking back, nostalgic for every morsel he can scrape, not a man looking forward with this chapter and its two coming successors as predecessors to what befalls Bilbo, Gandalf, and all our beloved characters. 

All gripes aside, I have hope for “Hobbit” parts 2 and 3. Freeman -- Watson in BBC’s “Sherlock” -- turns in a star-making reading of Bilbo, a man (Halfling?) who finds his worth far from home. He’s funny, irritating but sincerely so, curious, bold, and thorough, a wonderful homage to Holm’s take. 

When Bilbo and Gollum meet –- toward the end -– the scene crackles and brings “Hobbit” to Must Watch status. (Andy Serkis as Gollum again shine as the MVP of this series. As well, the CGI work to bring this foul creature to life is still the best use of computers in a life-action film, ever.) As Bilbo holds a sword to the neck of a seething, panicking creature, Jackson and all the wizards behind this tale put us in the hot seat. We know striking down Gollum will prevent much agony later, and I thought, “Push it through.” Knowing full well that won’t happen. 

It’s a twisty definitive, solid moment in a film full of holes, not the Hobbit kind. B-

King Kong (2005)

Fresh from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Peter Jackson remade “King Kong.” What a tall order. The 1933 Big Ape in the Big Apple classic is still a great joy despite its painfully awkward racism. (Let’s forget the 1970s remake ever existed.) This has the best attributes of the original -- spectacular visuals, a dame, a guy and strange creatures galore -– with creepier tones and nice a bit of satire.

The plot is the same: American peeps on a boat land on an island forgotten by time, encounter ancient natives and creatures galore, meet King Kong -- the ape the size of a cathedral -– and decide to bring him back to NYC. Those creatures, by the way, are dinosaurs that would kick the evolution out of the dino’s in “Jurassic Park.” A fight between Kong and three T-Rexes remains a powerhouse CGI show. (Nothing will ever top that awkward, creepy, fuzzy movement of the 1933 Kong in physical model form. I dig stop-motion more than any other animated format.)

Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody play the dame and guy; she a novice actress, he a left-wing playwright who’s having a career crisis. Both are clearly enjoying the uncommented upon wink-wink casting. See, Kyle Chandler plays a limp, narcissistic square-jawed WASP against Brody’s cool-under-pressure Jewish New Yorker. Seventy years ago, those roles would be reversed and offensively so. As a zany, greedy film director, Jack Black is himself, all ironic tics and eye-rolls. As well, Jackson can’t resist the tired cliché of having the only black character of significance sacrifice himself for his pals. Sigh.

Also, Jackson thinks longer is better, and pushes his “Kong” to a long three hours – nearly twice the length of the irreplaceable original. It’s monster big. This length includes trite discussions on “Heart of Darkness” and Great Depression economic commentary, all serious Debbie Downers. An hour could be deleted easily. That said, as with many a James Cameron film, this is damn fine cinematic eye and ear candy. B+

The Lovely Bones (2009)

I’ve not read the wildly popular book “The Lovely Bones.” So I entered this Peter Jackson adaptation aware only of the plot: 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is murdered in 1973 by a neighbor (Stanley Tucci) and watches from her own fantastical mini-heaven as her family (parented by Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) grieves. Oscar winner? Not. The problems come quick: Jackson references “The Lord of the Rings” in a bookstore ad, and it’s just one hint of a director obsessed with his own past. To wit: In Susie’s heaven, we are served a “Heavenly Creatures” redux, but cloying and over-stuffed with CGI dancing penguins. The fantasy puff overwhelms the drama. In heavy makeup, Tucci is the most generic child murderer I’ve ever seen on screen: Bad blond comb over. Giant "I kill" eye glasses. Loner. Openly glares as teenage girls pass by. He builds doll houses. Doll houses! The guy would flag crazy in 1973, 2003 or 1773. Worse, his denouncement is bizarrely supernatural, tasked by Susie’s spirit? God? Only the performances gel, with Ronan proving “Atonement” was no fluke. Weisz shines, always. Tucci menaces, but all in one key. Only Wahlberg falls short. Surely the book must be better than this. C+

District 9 (2009)

“Avatar” may be the biggest, most eye-popping sci-fi film of 2009, but it’s not the best. Or the boldest. That crown belongs to “District 9,” a low-budget genre masher that outpaces James Cameron’s epic on every front -- writing, acting, brains, brawn and infection -- that really matters to a true cinephile. By infection, I mean this South African-made film got in my blood system and hasn't left. It’s also a razor sharp satire on politics, racism and society, without being obnoxious.

Produced by Peter Jackson and directed by newcomer Neill Blomkamp, “District 9” is set on an alternate Earth in which a massive alien ship entered South African airspace and hovered over Johannesburg in 1982. It has stayed stranded there ever since, with its alien passengers left to live in openly fetid anarchistic slums. The presence of these aliens, which resemble Greedo from “Star Wars” meshed with a lobster, upended Apartheid's bloody era by giving black Africans and ruling white invaders new ground in which to bond: Hatred and oppression of the visitors.

Our lead character is a xenophobic Haliburton-type, right-wing-patsy company man named Wikus (newcomer Sharlto Copley), who dearly loves his wife, but giggles happily as he watches and listens to alien eggs burn. (He likens the sounds of abortion-by-fire to cooking popcorn.) A pathetic, vest-wearing nerd, Wilkus is charged with clearing the city’s alien slums, thus shipping the residents to a countryside camp, not unlike a Nazi mantra. But something gets in his blood system … and the movie blasts off in a 100 directions.

Told in a mixture of faux documentary interviews inter-cut with straight forward movie narrative, “District 9” is staggering in its suspense and the character arch of Wikus. It’s also a treat after “Avatar” (despite my liking it quite well), to see special-effects treated as haphazard: The ship hovering over the city is just part of the landscape, a common site to every one on screen.

But it’s the satire here that really sells: Dig the interview scene where a woman speaks about the "evil" visitors: “They’ll take your shoes right off your feet” and “kill you” without a thought, she claims. As she speaks, a nearby alien desperately and hopelessly scrambles through a dumpster in search of food. The kicker: The woman is a poor black. Not a rich snooty European. That’s film-making with balls, not to mention the second smart blockbuster of the summer to re-do history (the other is "Inglourious Basterds").

It’s wild that a sci-fi film made halfway around the world, with no American actors and mostly in subtitles, can remind us that this genre is at its most glorious when it’s not just tickling our eyes and ears, but striking at our hearts and minds. But, I’ll take it. A

Heavenly Creatures (1994)

“Heavenly Creatures” is a cinematic gift from God. OK, skip that, Satan. In this 1994 true-life drama, director Peter Jackson introduces Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey as two awkward, lonely teenagers who meet in early 1950s New Zealand and become the best of friends. Too close, that is.

The girls have ripe imaginations and create their own Tolkien-like world of fantasy, kings and queens, and ribald wild sex, and that world spills out of their mind into reality. The twisted result: The girls commit matricide with a brick, wrapped in a stocking.

The film is a fascinating biographical tale of these 1950s teens in a 1950s (false) sweet world, and it’s also a hellish ride inside their obviously mentally warped minds. The screenplay uses actual words from the diary of one of the girls, an outcast at school who is statutory raped by a tenant of her parents.

Winslet and Lewinsky spin gold with their parts, heart-breaking and horrifying, they show absolute happy delirium and the most savage violence, all exploded by raging hormones indignation of having no control over their lives. Jackson proved himself a genius here. A