At the Cinema - December 2014

Sorry I am so late with the official year end movie blogs.  Everything is late in Mississippi.  For a movie nut, it’s tough to admit that I have yet to see movies like Under the Skin, Whiplash, and Birdman, which haven’t made it here yet, and I had to go buy the Blu-ray of Boyhood because it never made it here.  But here’s my last report on 2014 movies. 

Let’s start with the original stories:

Boyhood – 9

This fascinating film is the odds on favorite for a Best Picture Oscar.  Director Richard Linklater shot this over the course of 12 years.  The young man whose boyhood is at the center of the film is played by Ellar Coltrane who was cast when he was just 5 years old.  Imagine that gamble for just a minute.   You are going to shoot a film for 12 years and you have to guess what this young man will be like as he grows up.  Did the director write the story as the years went by?  Or did he stick with his script?  The mind races as the movie moves along.

You will be enthralled.

Top Five – 8

Chris Rock’s star vehicle is at times brilliant, hilarious, and downright gross, about what you would expect from this incisive comedian.  It’s a day in the life of a comedian going through a career crisis.

Andre Allen is most famous for his portrayal, in costume, of Hammie the Bear in 3 movies that I wouldn’t want to see.  He longs to be taken seriously as an artist, although his agent warns him that he is dangerously close (in one of the best lines of the year) to Dancing with the Stars.  His upcoming marriage to a reality TV star, played by Gabrielle Union, is plowing ahead despite his misgivings and he agrees to an interview with a journalist (Rosario Dawson) who is not what she seems to be.  He’s smitten.  He’s revealing.  He’s hilarious. 

What is the top five?  Throughout the movie there is an extended debate about the top 5 rappers of all time, and they might as well have been ranking the top 5 vegetables for all I care about that.  But, it’s just a plot device for a more meaningful transformation, as Rock begins to realize what is important.

The comedy is not for the easily offended, especially when Rock and Rosario trade exceedingly gross stories.  Chris Rock is progressing as a writer and filmmaker. Expect even better things ahead. 

The Grand Budapest Hotel – 8
Wes Anderson makes eccentric movies. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.  This one works from the standpoint that the visual uniqueness supports a story that could be out of the Marx Brothers or Charlie Chaplin.  I confess there was much I couldn’t follow.  This guys got an imagination and a vision like no one else working today.  But, it’s not for everyone.

And now for the true stories.

The Imitation Game -10

You’ll like this movie if you like historical movies, great acting, and computers.  This movie makes the case that the father of modern computer science was Alex Turing, a brilliant mathematician who was one of Great Britain’s codebreakers during World War II.  Germany’s war transmissions are easily intercepted but impossible to decipher due to their “Enigma” code.  It is up to Turing to build “Christopher” a thinking machine that can perform enough calculations fast enough to break a code that changes daily.

Benedict Cumberbatch inhabits Turing in one of the year’s great performances.  Turing was a homosexual in a time when that had dire consequences, and he ultimately paid a very stiff penalty.  His recognition as someone who may have saved the world from the Nazi’s has come posthumously because the story was kept secret for 50 years by the British. 

I have only one minor quibble with this movie.  Like every Hollywood movie made today, it jumps around in time, back and forth telling the story.  This story is so good, it doesn’t need that gimmick.  Straight forward, linear fashion would have been just fine.  The story is that good.  Nevertheless,

here’s the ultimate compliment.  I can’t wait to see this movie again.  And again.  If it ends up in heavy TV rotation I suspect I won’t be able to not pause and watch, like I do with Tombstone and A Few Good Men, and many others.  The “crisis scenes” crackle that much!  Don’t miss.

Selma – 9

This is a focused and riveting history lesson about the civil rights movement of the early 60’s.   Martin Luther King leads the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery in protest of the Alabama voting laws.  It’s tough to watch at times, because it graphically shows several deaths during the events, and doesn’t skimp on the brutality.  

What makes the movie work so well is David Oyelowo’s amazing performance as Dr. King.  It’s easy to see the charisma he brought to his quest, but Oyelowo also digs into King’s insecurities and transgressions as he deals with pressures from LBJ, his wife, his constituents, and his enemies.  Get ready to feel every ounce of every character’s pain, both physical and emotional.  It’s a near epic movie in its scope and importance. Best of all, it captures King’s oratory and strategic skills, as well as the price he paid to move a nation.

American Sniper - 9

Director Clint Eastwood makes a thumper of a war movie.  Whether you consider this an indictment of war, or an endorsement of it, the fact is that this movie is so well done that the box office and word of mouth potential is through the roof. This movie is right in Eastwood’s wheel house. But it’s not just a war movie.  It’s a little bit western.  It’s a little bit character study.

This is the biography of a soldier with a particular set of skills.  From the moment that Chris Kyle’s dad taught him to use a rifle for hunting, he had an uncanny aim which combined with his desire to protect and serve, created a perfect prescription for a Navy Seal.  With this movie we get terrific insight into the mind of a successful soldier.  Doubt never enters Chris’s mind, even while there is doubt all around him.  He will lose friends, he will kill until he is called “The Legend.”  But doubt or hesitation would have hindered him and impacted his ability to do his job.  It was not just his ability that made him the sniper with the most confirmed kills in U.S. history.  It was a relentless and perfect mental makeup for the job at hand.

I am predisposed here.  Some of my favorite scenes in movies are about snipers, starting with the great desert scene of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon.  For some reason, they make great film.  This movie takes that inherent drama and maxes it out.  There probably will never need to be another sniper movie.  It serves another function as well.  Much like The Hurt Locker, it shows the true hell that is war.  The everyday task of “clearing buildings” of insurgents, the activity that Kyle is usually protecting from a rooftop, is dangerous and tedious.  Can you imagine going through an American city building by building?

Chris Kyle comes back after four tours and has to begin to re-aclimate himself to his family.  His wife, played to perfection by Sienna Miller is a relentless force of her own in her determination to have a normal husband and a normal family.  It is Chris’s simple approach to what he has done that allows him to recover more quickly than the doubters he was surrounded by, or the wounded he begins to counsel whose scars are physical, mental, and emotional.  Bradley Cooper pulls all this off as the actor, and as the visionary who wanted to make this movie about an American hero.  The next few months will probably feature a lot of discussion about the glorification of war pictured here, but this is what patriotism looks like to much of America and it’s what Eastwood does best.   Whether or not you think this glorifies war, or justifies this particular war, this is American movie making at its most powerful.

Unbroken – 8

You’ll like this movie if you like nails across a blackboard, in a good way.  True stories are the most fascinating movies, even with the embellishments that sometimes come with them.  This is Angelina Jolie’s straightforward story of Louis Zamporelli, who lived more in 10 minutes than most of us do in a lifetime.  First, he was an Olympic athlete.  Then he was onboard a fighter jet in World War II over the Pacific.  His plane crashes into the Pacific, and he survives over 40 days in a raft.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that he is then captured by the Japanese and tortured for years in a prison camp.  Jolie pulls no punches.  It’s all graphic and brutal.

The best scenes in this movie though, are right up front.  The footage of the dogfights over the Pacific are terrific.  That the movie can’t keep up that pace is natural, but it’s a fitting tribute to the greatest generation.

Wild – 7

You’ll like this movie if you like endurance, Reese Witherspoon, and walking.
Witherspoon plays the real-life Cheryl Strayed, a promiscuous, drug using divorcee who has lost her mother to a short illness.  She is scarred and scared, lost, and lonely and decides there is only one way to get her life on track.  Take a hike.  A long one.  So this movie very calmly follows her up the Pacific Coast while interspersing flashbacks of her sordid past.  Reese goes without makeup and essentially shows that she should always go without makeup.  Reese says “star.”  The movie says "you won’t remember this."

Foxcatcher – 7

You’ll like this movie if you like wrestling, Steve Carell, and murder.

This is an important movie - it’s just not a very good one.  It’s important because it reveals that Steve Carell can be a good dramatic actor.  His transformation into John E. Dupont is amazing.  Unfortunately, I was not as impressed with the depth of his performance as I was his physical presence, because I never really figured out what Dupont was all about.  Yes, he was a mama’s boy, and he had a desire to be successful on his own, despite being in the richest family in America.  Going to work in a drug store was never really an option.  So he essentially bought himself the American Olympic wrestling team and brings them to his Valley Forge estate to the training facility he has built.  It starts with two brooding brothers, played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo, who are both totally convincing. 
It all ends in a famous murder, which Dupont commits.  I never understood why.  Maybe you will.

Scanning the Satellite

Olive Kittredge – This is a 4 hour HBO mini-series dominated totally by the incredible Frances McDormand who plays one of the realest characters you’ll see on a screen.  She’s ornery, unforgiving, and miserable. She is often at odds with her family and friends and is one of those souls who just never found her place in life.  Amazingly entertaining.

Next up - my year end movie ranking.