After the awards

In the weeks after the Oscars are handed out, new DVD releases are backed up like planes on the runway at O’Hare, so in this post I’ll be keeping up with the most celebrated films of last year, as the Blu-Ray disks arrive in my mailbox.  In addition to the Metacritic rating for each film, I’ve listed an overall critical ranking, calculated by averaging together a variety of annual critics’ polls.

I’ll start with my biggest beef with the Academy.  Really? -- “Best Picture” of the year was Birdman (MC-88, #5, NFX)?  In a year that was graced by Boyhood?  There are definitely aspects to be enjoyed in the execution of Birdman, but I found myself utterly unmoved.  Okay, maybe it would be different if I had seen Michael Keaton as Batman, but as a protagonist caught between a past of comic book superhero movies and a present of Broadway theatrics (two genres of strikingly little interest to me, except All About Eve, which might count as both), he wins my admiration for his energy, but the character offers little insight or empathy.  I would say much the same about the admirable cast – Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, and the rest – with the exception of Amy Ryan, whom I always find affecting, as the only person who seems to have a life outside the walls of the theater.  The co-headliner with Keaton is cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, whose gliding camera style is instantly recognizable but still miraculous, as well as sinuous, continuous, and ubiquitous.  Leaving least till last, I mention “‘Best Director’” Alejandro González Iñárritu, who I don’t really believe has anything to say to me.  I can only assume that Academy voters filled in feelings for experiences I’ve never had. 

Whiplash (MC-88, #9, NFX) built up a year’s worth of acclaim, from multiple Sundance awards to three Academy Awards on top of its Best Picture nomination, and it’s certainly worth seeing, but apart from the powerful performances of Miles Teller and Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons, hardly rates a rave.  To me, under-thirty writer-director Damien Chazelle relies too much on well-worn tropes to tell the story of an aspiring young drummer and his oh-so-demanding music school instructor, thereby earning the sobriquet, “Full Metal Julliard.”  Besides the drill sergeant veins popping out of Simmons’ temples, and the horrific abuse that spews with spittle from his mouth, the film plays out like dozens of sports movies, in overcoming every manner of adversity just in time for one final rousing all-or-nothing competition.  Despite the over-hyping of the story, there is enough personal experience in Chazelle’s film to give it an aura of authenticity, along with its kinetic pleasures.

More engaged with The Theory of Everything (MC-72, NFX) than expected, I credit that largely to Felicity Jones, who emerges into stardom with this film, even more than Eddie Redmayne with his Best Actor Oscar.  I’ve always been skeptical about theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and found Errol Morris’ documentary about him, A Brief History of Time, much more interesting and unsettling than Hawking’s bestseller of the same name, and indeed more interesting than this Hollywoodization of his life.  The source for this new film was Jane Hawking’s memoir, and maybe Felicity Jones had more material to work with, but she is definitely the more engaging character in the film, as she commits to Hawking at Cambridge, despite his disease and his severely limited prognosis, and cares for him diligently for decades, during which they have three children.  Director James Marsh showed his chops with the documentaries Man on Wire and Project Nim, but his eclectic try-anything style does not translate so well to features.  Since I am defiantly less interested in cosmology than in family relations, I found this “theory of marriage” more satisfying than those who were looking for some exposition of Hawking’s own pie-in-the-sky theories.

In vein of Oscar-bait biopics of differently-abled British geniuses, I found The Imitation Game (MC-73, NFX) somewhat less engaging, despite Benedict Cumberbatch’s impressive impersonation of Alan Turing, the brilliant, autistic, homosexual mathematician, famous for breaking Germany’s Enigma code during WWII, meanwhile developing an early digital computer as well as the idea of artificial intelligence, of which the Turing Test remains the arbiter.  Given a lot to pack into a relatively short running time, this film sacrifices depth for broad coverage.  The screenplay seems a bit callow, and the direction a bit stodgy, but the acting is good across the board, from Keira Knightley as the one woman on the code-breaking crew at Bletchley Park, to the boy who plays Turing during flashbacks to his school days.  With all the flashbacks and flashforwards, plus the montage summations of the war’s progress, the film finally comes across as overstuffed, if undernourished by genuine human complexity.

Bennett Miller seems to be one of those well-regarded directors, indeed Oscar-nominated, who simply isn’t on my wavelength, with a rhythm and focus different from mine.  I could see plenty of good things in Foxcatcher (MC-81, #27, NFX), but as in Capote and Moneyball, something kept me from full engagement.  It just seems that he doesn’t tell me what I want to know, show me what I want to see.  There was indeed some fascination in watching the odd but compelling performances of Steve Carell as the bizarre duPont heir with the eagle nose; Channing Tatum as an extremely convincing Olympic wrestler, dim and inarticulate; and Mark Ruffalo as his older brother, also an Olympic gold medalist, but an engaging coach and family man.  I was not aware of the true story behind this film, so wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but even afterwards I had very little sense of why.  Along the way, there are sharp observations and some implicit social and political critique, but I didn’t come away with any particular understanding of the characters.

Still to come are two Best Picture nominees not yet on DVD, about which I expect to have opposite reactions, Selma and American Sniper.  Of the two nominees I’ve previously reviewed, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is precisely to my taste and my favorite by a wide margin, while Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is somewhat the opposite.  I’ll soon be running down my own list of the year’s best, after I see a few more of the critical consensus Top 50 films.

New & noted

While I’m catching up with the Oscar “Best Picture” nominees of 2014, as they come out on Blu-ray, before making my own soon-to-come ranking of the best films of the year, I’ve been watching other recent releases little noticed by the Academy, but more so by critics.  (Along with Metacritic rating, I give a numerical ranking that represents a calculated critical consensus.)

The family that makes films together, stays together, or so we can hope.  In his debut as director in Nightcrawler (MC-76, #28, NFX), Dan Gilroy teamed with his brothers, producer Tony (director of MichaelClayton and The Bourne Legacy) and editor John, to make a film that would do their father proud, Hollywood old pro Frank D. Gilroy.  One can almost hear their high-concept pitch to investors -- this is Taxi Driver meets Network.  But the Gilroy boys bring the whole thing off with style and wit, given the immeasurable contribution of Jake Gyllenhaal in a career-best performance, as he plays the creepy title role, a sociopath who finds his career path, prowling the streets of LA at night, looking for blood and gore to film for sale to local newscasts, where “if it bleeds, it leads.”  He becomes a figure of menace and even horror, all while spouting nothing but self-help seminar affirmations picked up on the internet, a true American go-getter, with no concept of any reality other than his own drive to succeed.  As the wreckage builds around him, he becomes an avaricious avatar of capitalist media.  Neat trick to embody this satiric critique in a film ablaze with shootouts, car wrecks, and plenty of blood.  Also, a neat trick for Dan to elicit a believable performance from his wife, Rene Russo.  My expectations were low for this film, even lower after watching the accompanying previews on the DVD, but they were far exceeded, to make for an unlikely recommendation.

Writers, apparently, are the most unlikable of people, so I suppose director Alex Ross Perry is brave to center his Listen Up Philip (MC-76, #19, NFX) around two of the least likable authors around.  And since Philip Roth made such hay out of alter egos and masks and shifting identities, he’s fair game for such treatment in turn.   Jason Schwartzman is Philip Lewis Friedman, a second novelist of surpassing obnoxiousness, who is taken under the wing of a successful older novelist named Ike Zimmerman, played with acid glee by Jonathan Pryce.  Zimmerman is the obvious Roth stand-in, the name reminiscent of Roth’s Zuckerman, with plot elements taken from his first Zuckerman novel, The Ghost Writer.  Schwartzman might be taken as a younger version of the same character, but perhaps alludes to Bruce Jay Friedman.  All this inside lit-biz receives its most hilarious visualization in the parody jacket designs of all the books by the two authors.  As an avid reader of Roth, and a longtime bookseller, it was fun for me to match fake to actual book covers, but hard for me to accept that Roth young or old was quite so unredeemable a character.  Elizabeth Moss is foremost among the women whom Philip treats abominably, and her story offers a bit of respite from the literary bile.  I watched this under conditions where I missed some of the dialogue, so I’ll hold off on a thumbs down, but have little taste for a second viewing to hear what I missed.  Still, as someone who lives with a full shelf of Roth hardcovers, I was amused by the turnabout, whether it was fair play or not.

The Sundance TV series Babylon sent me looking for more of Brit Marling, the indie-it-girl of the moment, or so I read, which in turn led me to The Better Angels (MC-53, NFX), a film about Abe Lincoln’s childhood produced by Terrence Malick, and directed in just his style by A.J. Edwards, his editor on several films.  Since many hate the master, many disparage his acolyte, but I found this film highly watchable.  In stately black & white filled with Malickian images, angles, and voiceovers, the film tells of Abe’s sainted mother Nancy Hanks (Brit Marling) and even more saintly stepmother Sarah (Diane Kruger), and in the meantime conveys a genuine impression of life on the American frontier in the early 19^th century, as Malick has done for the early 17^th and 20^th centuries, in The New World and Days of Heaven.  If you want a clear story told in a straightforward way, this is not for you.  If you want to meditate on certain historical themes while enjoying rapturous visuals and terse enigmatic narration, then this might be just the thing.

We’re all rooting for you, Jon, as you move on from The Daily Show, and we’ll follow what you do, the stories you feel you have to tell, just as we did with Rosewater (MC-66, NFX).  Jon Stewart’s debut as writer-director of a feature film was honorable in every way, but not especially good, more earnest than insightful, less funny or pointed that his Daily schtick.  He’s helped by the presence of the always-watchable Gael Garcia Bernal, oddly cast as an Iranian journalist who was thrown in jail for covering the so-called Green Revolution after the 2009 election.  But frankly, this is a film I watched more out of loyalty than reward.

Locke (MC-81, #42, NFX) is an interesting exercise in minimalism, if not a fully engaging and satisfying film.  It’s one guy driving in a car and talking on the phone with various people for eighty minutes.  The guy, a construction foreman, leaves work, makes a decision, and takes a turn that has cascading effects on his job, his family, and his very sense of self.  Writer-director Stephen Knight and actor Tom Hardy make it work, maintaining involvement within the cramped space, and suspense in isolation, but the trip from here to there doesn’t get very far.

I took one for the team with Top Five (MC-81, NFX).  I watched it all the way through, so you don’t have to, unless you’re a Chris Rock fan, or perhaps the title conceit means something to you.  The touchstone for most of the characters is their personal list of top five rappers, and knowing so few myself, I was at a loss as to whatever characterization was implied.  Chris Rock and Rosario Dawson have some substance and appeal as the dueling rom-com adversaries, celebrity and reporter; and Chris Rock the director actually has some feel for the not-so-mean streets of New York; but Chris Rock the writer exploits only the most hackneyed of plot devices.  As a stand-up comedian with a lot of friends in the business, he populates the film with a host of them.  There are plenty of amusing moments, but very little heart or head.

There might be too much heart and head in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (MC-79, #11, NFX), too cerebral and too sentimental at the same time.  Whether he has refreshed the vampire genre is a matter of taste; whether you want to sink your teeth into this tale of Adam and Eve, undead lovers who have been together for centuries, is up to you.  Though they’re friends of Christopher Marlowe (for whom Shakespeare was merely a front), and formerly consorted with Byron and his circle, they now find themselves driving the dark deserted streets of post-industrial Detroit and living in an abandoned Victorian mansion.  They are of course the ultimate hipsters, colonizing urban terrain that the “zombies” have left behind.  They’ve got their blood addiction under control, contriving to get what they need without killing people for it, quaffing their elixir and sucking on Type-O popsicles.  Tilda Swinton is the mesmerizing Eve, Tom Hiddleston is the Romantic depressive Adam, solitary composer of electronic dirges.  Mia Wasikowska shows up as Ava, Eve’s sister “by blood,” and John Hurt is Kit Marlowe.  You’ve got to have a tolerance for this sort of thing, but if you can take the premise and the languorous pace, Jarmusch has delivered a witty, moody tone poem.

Remember, if you can, this name – Gugu Mbatha-Raw.  She is destined to become a star, but remain an actress.  She book-ended last year with extremely-winning roles in the Jane Austen-ish historical romance Belle and the of-the-moment show biz story Beyond the Lights (MC-73, NFX).  The latter film, by Gina Prince-Blythewood (of the fondly-remembered Love & Basketball – she could title her films more memorably), is a soapy romance enhanced by good acting from appealing characters, and a sophisticated perspective on the context of celebrity.  Gugu is Noni, an interracial child groomed for success by stage mother Minnie Driver.  She wants to sing Nina Simone, or better yet, her own songs, but her mother has managed her career into a role as bootylicious foil to an odious white rapper.  (Many reviewers reference Rihanna, but that’s a pop culture reference that means next to nothing to me.)  Providentially, Noni encounters Kaz, a Cory Booker-like cop and political aspirant, played by an equally attractive Nate Parker.  You know, and I know, and every viewer knows, that they are meant for each other, but will confront obstacles before the final clench.  So, no surprise in where the story is going, but lots of incidental pleasures and telling points along the way.  And thus, a believable star is born.