Non-Stop (2014)

“Non-Stop” is not a comedy. I laughed my ass off. Not a good sign for a thriller that stars Liam Neeson in Angry Action Figure Mode and plays on 9/11 fears of hijackings and police state surveillance. Neeson is Bill Marks, suicidal fuck-up air cop with a booze problem and a tragic life who should never hold a gun, much less be issued one by Uncle Sam for work at 30,000 feet. But here Bill is anyway, sweating buckets as he texts back and forth with a psycho who threatens to down the plane unless $1.5M is delivered to a Swiss bank account. One in Bill’s name. Cue drama! Cue the scenes where Neeson’s hero types. And types. And types. And calls his boss. Bill also kills a man, beats random passengers, screams, and waves and fires his gun like a madman. Why? This is “Taken” in the air. A cell phone and a gun, if those are in a script does Neeson just sign on? As stewardesses, Michelle Dockery of “Downton Abbey” and Lupito Nyong’o of “12 Years a Slave” do just about nothing. I’d watch a movie with them as the heroes. C-

Boyhood (2014)

Filmed during a 12-year period, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” follows a Texan child (Ellar Coltrane) from 6 to 18, from mishaps with pencil sharpeners to flirtations with marijuana and leaving for college. This has never been done before, not with one child, growing, maturing, faltering, and excelling in one motion. Stunt? No. The beauty of Linklater’s astounding film is how small it remains, this is not Gandhi, nor is there was or revolt. Mason plays Wii, watches movies, gets a car, a crappy job, and leaves for college. Mom (Patricia Arquette) struggles to better herself, for herself and her children (the director’s daughter, Lorelei Linklater, plays Mason’s sister), while dad (Ethan Hawke) takes decades to mature. Mistakes are made as mom remarries, and sees those relationships unravel fast, while dad quite can’t nail child interaction. Mason photographs. If there’s any “enemy” here, it is alcohol. Addiction, as empty escape. Linklater has Mason realize that trap on his own, observing, tasting for himself, observing, realizing. Coltrane’s performance is so natural, you buy him as Mason, unsure of where fiction and reality divide, and one cannot help but get swept up in Linklater’s ode to ordinary family life, drama, and love. A

P.S.  I'll revisit this film again and again, as I feel I will react to as I did “Tree of Life.” It is that good. That mind and soul altering. 

A Liar’s Autobiography (2012)

I love the hell out of Monty Python, the shows, the movies. I can’t get enough, even on repeat viewings. A wildly animated F.U. to the whole biopic genre, “A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman” wants to be the M.P. version of the group’s founding member and leader’s life story, but it’s a pile of random tid-bits that don’t say much. Crazy fact: I learned more trivia about Chapman’s life and comedy impact in the “Making of…” documentary on this film than the film itself. That’s sounds like a Python satirical sketch. (Skip the movie! Watch the extras!) “Liar’s” never boring and much of the animation stuns – dig the section that represents Chapman kicking booze -- but there’s so little context I never got a hook on the man. A scene big on Python gore has toddler Chapman looking at the bodies of soldiers killed in a WWII plane crash. Why? Did he recall this a haunting memory? Who can tell when we’re told it’s fake? A letdown from a film I expected much from. C+

Apartment 3013 (2013)

“Apartment 3013” is a horror flick with one worthy scene. It comes in the middle with a sick thud, and it is a welcome jolt. I won’t spill details. It’s the only highlight of a remake of a Japanese horror with every genre cliché. We open as 24-year-old Janet (Julianne Michelle) bolts home to move into her own sweet flat at $700 per month. Uh-oh. By her first night the gal is so scared -– ghosts, noises, perv super -– she screams exposition such as “I’m so scared!” This comes before a cop grimly tells Janet’s sister (Mischa Barton), “Apartments don’t kill people, people kill people.” Not mentioned: “The only way to kill a bad apartment with a ghost is a good apartment with a ghost.” This film is that awful. The bad actors try. But “3013” looks ugly and is boring. Continuity/editing errors abound. Hammer to skull: Faded star Rebecca De Mornay plays the alcoholic mom, a washed-up rocker who dresses like a demented Stevie Nicks, swinging her martini glass around like a community theater actress trying too hard. Tone it down, sweetie. D

The Lost Weekend (1945)

Billy Wilder is the greatest director. His “The Apartment” is the best romantic comedy film of all time. But check out Best Picture winner “The Lost Weekend,” the 1945 stark black-and-white story of a writer hitting bottom and finding yet more muck to dig through as he battles alcoholism, the kind where the guy knows he can’t breathe without a shot. Ray Milland –- I only ever knew him from “Escape to Witch Mountain” –- is Don, the insecure failure with just enough cash to buy just enough booze to finish ruining his life. But, this is 1940s-era movie, so there has to be an oh-so-devoted dame, and we get it with Jane Wyman as a magazine researcher. (Me, I thought the other lady of the film, a call girl, played by Doris Dowling, seemed far closer to earth than Wyman's saint.) Milland plays his part with a desperate bitterness and a swagger that every drunk knows is so well acted that no one would ever know he’s drunk. Wilder knowingly keeps those bottles in focus. The “upper” ender vibes wrong as if the studio didn't want audiences going home with too much a taste of reality. A-

The World’s End (2013)

Planet Earth had it rough in 2013. Along with numerous sci-fi flicks, our home got smashed about in “This is the End” and “The World’s End,” widely different (despite titles) comedies that satirize cinematic apocalypse larks with onscreen man-bonding and plenty of drink and drugs. “World’s End” is the last in a comedy trilogy from director/writer Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, following “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.” Here, we take a smart stab at alien-attack flicks and the goofy nostalgia films of old high school chums getting back together to party like the good ol’ days. Wright, Pegg, and Frost call bullshit. Not on aliens. Reunions. When you go back, you fail. Your town has changed, you have changed, and everyone else has, too. Pegg’s boozer doesn’t realize that, though, and watching the guy fret over beer more than humanity is riotous, and a smash at every other boozer film. As they have before, our trio up-end the genre they mock with laser sharp wit. Mainly: Whoever you be, never argue with a drunk Brit. Bonus points: An ex-Bond in a end-game cameo. Love the beard. A-

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

The story of Walt Disney’s struggle to make the 1964 classic “Mary Poppins” has often been told during the past 50 years. Author P.L. Travers fought Disney on every word during production and loathed the movie (the latter is outright squashed). This cleaned-up squabble is the basis for “Saving Mr. Banks” which shows how Travers (real name Helen Goff, played by Emma Thompson) was won over by Disney’s (Tom Hanks) charm, and explores why the children’s book author was so harsh -- mainly her haunting Outback youth. This is a Disney film, though, and from the opening logos, it works to make the audience smile and cry, damn the facts. It succeed, mostly. But “Banks” is grossly off point. Walt himself woos Travers with his own uneasy childhood tale, but it’s for naught. Yes, Walt had it hard, many do, but Travers’ parents were non-functioning adults riddled by alcoholism and mental illness that reached the act of suicide. (Worst offense: Mistaking dad’s drunken fatherly doting and kindness for actual doting and kindness.) No talk from a nice old guy or spoonful of sugar can remedy that. Still, the happy tunes and sunny spirit are difficult to resist. Disney magic, that. B-

Flight (2012)

Catch the trailer for “Flight”? Denzel Washington plays a pilot who miraculously guides a crippled plane to a crash landing -– upside down –- and becomes a hero? “Flight” is no more about flights gone bad than was “Dark Knight Rises.” Planes crash within the first few minutes. The rest of this unsparing drama -- a welcome return to live-action by director Robert Zemeckis -– follows Washington’s “Whip” Whitaker as decades of alcohol and drug abuse finally come to light. “Flight” dares pose a question that only the viewer can answer: If Whitaker’s debauchery led him to be able to bring that plane in safely and calmly, what does that say about heroism? Or so-called miracles? Whitaker is pitiful, shockingly careless, and self-centered, and yet impossible to hate. The way he stands in a room, near others … I know about alcoholism, and Washington nails every twitch. The climax feels wrong as we’re whisked away from Whip just as he is forced to go nine days sober, but it’s a tiny complaint. Zemeckis, lost too long with CGI Santas, has made a towering film, where a miniature bottle of vodka can own a man and his soul. A-

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a harsh, hopeful, tragic, and bold drama/fantasy unlike any film I have ever seen. It’s divisive film, too, not just a love it or hate tale, but one fully embraced or entirely repelled. This is no easy watch. We follow a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy (newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis) living -– barely scraping by, really -- with her father, Wink (another newcomer, Dwight Henry), in the shocking squalor of a direly impoverished fishing commune at the southernmost tip of Louisiana. This community -– located on a remote island, with homes built of parts from other houses, trailers, trucks, and laundry dryers, and off a dirt road -– is not just living off the margin of society, it’s off the page. Unrecorded. 

Distrustful of technology, government, and the modern amenities I’m sucking dry just typing this sentence, the group lives by its own rules. They wish to live alone, to fish and party, the latter often to extreme. Their homes are trashed, the children unwashed, food is eaten raw, and booze is plentiful. Judge them if you wish, they have no concern for our titles, names, or finger-wagging judgments. Yet, every person is family, no matter their age or skin color. The community is iron tight, and cares for one another deeply. Then a hurricane barges in and floods the make-shift town, drowning some, and sending others to retreat to the “outside” world. Those that remain survive on a make-shift trailer/boat. 

Life will get more difficult for all, especially Hushpuppy. Wink and some other men attempt to blow a hole in a nearby levee as they want to reclaim their homes from high water, and bury their dead mates as well as their livestock. The dangerous and darkly comical action brings the community satisfaction, but briefly. Federal officials move in, mandating an evacuation. 

It’s telling that screenwriters Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin neither condemn nor condone the invading authorities as it’s a near relief to see Hushpuppy delivered from such astounding -– to our spoiled mainstream American sensibilities -– poverty. The Bathtub residents, most of them, of course, flee. To our horror, and a bit of relief, too.

There’s another tick: Wink is dying. I can only guess from septicemia fueled by long-term alcohol poisoning as the man has a profound drinking problem that sends him away for days. Then Hushpuppy -– wiser than her years, and accustomed to inch-by-inch survival -- is left on her own to cook, clean, and care for several pigs, chickens, and dogs. She talks to her absent mother, and also chillingly imagines as only a lonely child can, prehistoric beasts breaking free of the Antarctic ice and coming to kill her. (A story of Climate Change has sent her into paranoia.) These beasts for all intent and purposes are real to not just Hushpuppy, but our eyes as well, and in the final scenes we witness their wrath. 

As with the harshest tale of childhood from Dickens and Twain, “Beasts” puts a child through a meat grinder that is difficult to stomach. It's telling that her most safe, secure moments come later on a floating house of, shall we call it ill repute? See, there I go judging. That is not the place for such an act. Alibar and Zeitlin pull no punches. And Hushpuppy's struggle feels desperately real. The documentary vibe comes from the film being shot on location with handheld 16-mm cameras, using all nonprofessional actors. 

Wallis and Henry are unknown to us, so we have no perceived baggage from other films, and they are amazing to watch. Their every action, cruel and kind, feel captured. Not scripted. Early in the film, Wink strikes the girl, and every one in the theater flinched hard. Hushpuppy retaliates by punching her father in the heart, wishing aloud his death, and he collapses, and the audience flinched again, harder. This is not Disney, not by a mile. In a just world our leads would each carry an Oscar home this coming season.

It’s a shocking, enlightening film to witness, with a final scene that leaves us gulping. I have read so many critical stabs at the film for being light in story, but I never minded that. This fictional tale is a record of a tumultuous life of one amazing girl who puts her ears to the chests of animals and family to hear their heartbeats, and fears the end of the world. She could be the girl next door, in any neighborhood in America. But she exists in a place no cameras or politicians go, an America never discussed at, say, a multi-billion dollar political National Convention. It’s a film difficult to shake, upsetting to the core, and hopeful, and funny, too. I  look forward to going back to re-experience this story. A

The Rum Diary (2011)

I discovered something about myself not too far into “The Rum Diary,” the latest gonzo tale by and about journalist/novelist/debaucherist Hunter S. Thompson, who never met an alcoholic drink or illicit drug he didn’t like. Correction, I learned something about Johnny Depp. He’s the star here. See, I have grown tired of Depp as an actor.

After watching “Pirates of the Caribbean: Are they Still Making These Things?,” I realized he no longer is an ace actor game at playing emotionally aloof rascals who involve themselves in dangerous games, but standoff at a safe distance. He has become an emotionally aloof actor involving himself in big films, but stands off at a safe distance. “The Tourist” more than fits that bill. His characters are no longer the ones who don’t give a shit, now it’s Depp himself.

Here, a journalism/discovery-of-self drama set in 1960 Puerto Rico from a HST novel, he plays Paul Kemp, a failed novelist who gets mixed up in a dying newspaper rag (headed by Richard Jenkins) and a corrupt real estate deal (headed by Aaron Eckhart), and must dig himself out. Between hits of rum and mescaline drops.

Depp lazily walks all over the film blasé style, hiding behind sunglasses, rather than the Captain Jack eye liner, and making jokes about mermaids (too soon) and dishing out that “Whoa, can you believe this?” double jerk take reaction he does without end. (He seems only jazzed by Tim Burton films.) Paul is supposed to be enraged by film’s end, but he barely ever registers a pulse. Ink and rage? Zzzzz. When the plot’s air leaks out of the bag and Paul leaves the scene with a defeated shrug, we have to rely on an end credit’s title scroll to tell us, “No, really, this Kemp guy is important! He did things!” From the sights on screen, I would never have guessed it. Not in 1,000 tries.

As the sexy femme fatale that messes with Kemp’s head and other body parts, Amber Heard is the only pulsating person on screen, seconded by Michael Rispoli as an overweight photojournalist comic foil, and the only guy on screen with a heart. They are the rum shots in this watered down drink. C+

Another Year (2010)

Few filmmakers portray life as real as Mike Leigh, and “Another Year” feels not so much like a movie, but an invite to stay with the family who’s at the center of this drama. Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent play a married couple, perfectly content with gardening, eating and reading in bed. She’s a counselor. He’s a geologist. They invites family and friends to a handful of dinners during the course of a year, including a divorcee (Lesley Manville) crumbling under loneliness who gulps wine as if it is an antidote, and an equally lonely old school chum (Oliver Maltman) who holds onto wine bottles as if they were oxygen. Alcohol equals life in this film. The main couple enjoys it as a side to the wonderful dishes they whip up. Take it or leave it. Manville and Maltman are full-fledged alcoholics, drowning their miseries in wine and all the more miserable for it. There’s not a false word, performance or scene in this drama that lays bare the jealousy that the miserable feel toward the happy. Manville should have won an Oscar. Fact. A