Me, I'll be catching up with all sorts of early releases from this year as well as new ones as they open up in their plush holiday time slots. As I do, I'll keep adding my brief capsule reactions to this space, which you can check up on from time to time (I'll make an effort to tweet new entries). Consider it my Non-Denominational Mid-December Holiday Special to you, whose readership I appreciate all year round!
So have a merry Christmas, a happy Chanukah, a kwazy Kwanza, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn yet dignified Ramadan.
Under the Skin
I wanted to like this highly touted,
art house sci-fi from Jonathan Glazer (back in the game almost ten
years after Birth) much more than I ultimately did. Some
things are just too obtuse and glacially paced even for me. But while
this oblique tale of an otherworldly succubus (Scarlett Johansson) is
not really my cuppa tea, there are aspects of it I do admire. The
minimalism of its screenplay, for instance, makes great use of purely
visual storytelling for much of the film. And it's hard not to
respond to Mica Levi's eerily dissonant music, or the sleek chic of
its sparse but über-cool
special effects.
**1/2 out of ****
Noah
A hot mess to be sure, but with a guy
like Aronofsky at the helm at least it's a hot mess with some
thematic substance and an eye for character to help mitigate the
over-the-top and outright weird stuff he decided to stick in there.
The production is impressive though, shot on a mammoth set
constructed in New York and embellished by some remarkably credible
effects from ILM (how they missed the Academy's vfx shortlist is
beyond me).
**1/2 out of ****
The LEGO Movie
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's
imaginative premise may impress with its wonderful weirdness, but
this film is so insistently manic that it becomes exhausting. Sure, a
lot of jokes land well, but just as many feel forced. It expends so
much effort trying to elicit a laugh every five seconds that it's
tough to take the sentiment-reaching climax seriously. Not saying it
isn't fun, but after a while it grows tiresome. Some of it is
awesome. Not everything.
**1/2 out of ****
A Most Wanted Man
Anton Corbijn's calculatory spy
thriller provides doesn't provide its intrigue in the form of
undercover life-and-death situations (or any other type of fabricated
espionage tropes), but by exploring the ethical/moral boundaries that
get breached in the interest of a greater good. Andrew Bovell's
superb adaptation of the John Le Carre novel on which it's based
seamlessly intertwines its parallel plot threads and makes smart use
of dialogue to deliver narrative points and character details
simultaneously, keeping the whole film story driven but not at the
expense of human accessibility. Playing a huge part in that “human”
factor is the work from a terrific cast, centred about a final
great performance from the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.
*** out of ****
Pawel Pawlikowski tells this story of a
novice nun in postwar Poland discovering her past and questioning her
place in the world with great economy and understatement. Its brisk
80-minutes is a refreshing example of 'less is more'. Although its
soft-spoken tone make it difficult to really get into at first, it rewards the patience invested in it. Pawlikowski
prefers lets the images tell the story over reams of dialogue. The
stunning black and white compositions of Lukasz Zal and Ryszard
Lenczewski help communicate the meek subservience of our heroine by
dwarfing her with the space she inhabits. The nearly square aspect
ratio plays a big part in this, allowing them to expand vertical
space and isolate in the bottom corner of the frame. A delicate,
artful, and quietly (extremely quietly) devastating film.
***1/2 out of ****
The Babadook
Aussie filmmaker Jennifer Kent has
earned a lot of critical congratulations for her creepy debut feature
about a widow (the excellent Essie Davis) slowly going mad under the
influence of a malevolent demon from a childrens book. Anyone
hankering for dozens of jump scares and monster mayhem may find
themselves disappointed by the film's more artful, character-oriented
style. Kent massages psychological scares out of the audience through
the power of suggestion, a technique that almost always proves more
effective than explicit sights. Of particular use to her is Simon
Njoo's deliberately arrhythmic editing and Frank Libsen's deeply
unsettling 'things-that-go-bump-in-the-night' sound design
(“Baba-dook-doook-dooook”... It's true, you can't get rid of
it!). Dramatically, it works well as a freaky metaphor for allowing
grief to govern your life, at least until the end when things become
more literal and a bit derivative. Still, this is an impressive first
feature.
*** out of ****
The Homesman
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
The Homesman
Tommy Lee Jones' staunch classicism is
a good fit for much of the picture, but the story takes a turn at the
end of the second act that isn't exactly beseeming (the novel's
fault, not the filmmakers). The shift in protagonist is jarring and
makes it difficult to reengage with the story, which proceeds to
peter out with nothing to act as a climax. A few of the scenes from
the last forty could have been cut out completely. But the film is
never less than marvelous to look at. Rodrigo Prieto's widescreen
compositions capture the stark beauty of the desolate Nebraskan
wilderness. Marco Beltrami's music successfully mixes traditional
Western motifs with more modern, atmospheric scoring techniques.
**1/2 out of ****
Hard to believe that at nearly 2.5
hours, Battle of the Five Armies is considered the short
Hobbit movie! True, it's the most action-heavy of the three,
but much of it boils down to a chaotic war scene that just keeps
going and going and going. Much like The Desolation of Smaug,
the result is tiring. Why Jackson feels that every single moment
needs to be the badass hero moment, I'm not sure. Even Weta's
reliably proficient effects begin to look obvious and diluted by
their own ubiquity. There are also a few too many subplots vying for
our attention, and not all of them necessary. But then again, this
entire trilogy was unnecessary.
The highest compliment I can think to
pay Jackson & co. is that when the time finally does arrive for
this sucker to end, he's able to wrap it up in under fifteen minutes
with an emotionally satisfying bow. I guess the trilogy taken as a
whole is probably worthy of a slightly higher rating, but the last
two movies really felt like they were going through the motions. They
also didn't make enough use of their best asset: Martin Freeman.
There's relatively little of the hobbit in The Hobbit, and
never is that case more so than in this concluding chapter.
** out of ****
The message behind writer-director Gina
Prince-Blythewood's showbiz saga is a clear and pertinent one: The
modern entertainment industry and the tabloid media surrounding it is
incredibly hostile towards women, and that needs to stop. But as
praise-worthy as its intentions are, I found Beyond the Lights
often played like a TV melodrama, leaning a few too many cliché
emotional ploys. It is, however, elevated by Gugu Mbatha-Raw's
insightful and empowering performance. This lady is the real deal,
undergoing such a radical transformation from R&B sex object to
liberated artist that it would be hard for anyone who hadn't actually
watched the film to guess it's the same actress at the beginning as
it is at the end.
Beyond the Lights
The message behind writer-director Gina
Prince-Blythewood's showbiz saga is a clear and pertinent one: The
modern entertainment industry and the tabloid media surrounding it is
incredibly hostile towards women, and that needs to stop. But as
praise-worthy as its intentions are, I found Beyond the Lights
often played like a TV melodrama, leaning a few too many cliché
emotional ploys. It is, however, elevated by Gugu Mbatha-Raw's
insightful and empowering performance. This lady is the real deal,
undergoing such a radical transformation from R&B sex object to
liberated artist that it would be hard for anyone who hadn't actually
watched the film to guess it's the same actress at the beginning as
it is at the end.
**1/2 out of ****
Mr. Turner
Mike Leigh has long earned critical
respect for his observant, actor-driven character studies, and often
rightly so. Alas, his biopic of J.M.W. Turner (played with
growling dedication by Timothy Spall) – one of Britain's most important Romantic
painters – is impregnably dry. Leigh's fondness for steady, uncut
vignettes – often a virtue in his other films – simply desiccates
this piece. It's not the stillness that's the problem, but that his subjects aren't interesting enough to fill it. If
there's any benefit to Leigh's tableau-like staging, it's that it
does give us an opportunity to appreciate the sumptuous photography
of his longtime collaborator Dick Pope, who litters the film
throughout with landscapes and sunsets that look like could have been
painted by Turner himself.
**1/2 out of ****
Two Days, One Night
Two Days, One Night
The Belgian filmmaking brothers
Dardenne tell the story of a working mother, Sandra (Marion
Cotillard), whose colleagues must vote between their yearly bonus or
keeping her from being laid off. Also an examination of decent people
forced into untenable moral decisions, it is as bleak as an Italian
neo-realist drama, albeit with a more hopeful conclusion. The
hand-held camera often follows Sandra around without an editor's
interruption, as she goes door to door beseeching her coworkers to
let her keep her job. This unfussy (and somewhat repetitive) style
might have become a slog if the cameras were focused on anyone
besides Cotillard, whose natural talent is more than enough to hold
our gaze, let alone her international star magnetism. She paints an
aching portrait of a woman drowning in depression, forced to swallow
a little bit more of her pride and self-esteem with every anxiety med
she pops.
*** out of ****
Still Alice
Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's
drama about a vivacious linguistics professor diagnosed with
early-onset Alzheimer's gets by on some quietly observed performances
(especially from Julianne Moore), but is a slog to watch
nevertheless. Heavy, and yet also thin. There's nothing formally
wrong with Glatzer and Westmoreland's screenplay or direction, though
you could argue that their use of blurred focus to evoke Alice's
increasing disorientation and confusion is not consistently
successful.
But the real struggle of the film is
with its pacing. While past films – such as Away From Her
and Amour – have managed to deal with this subject matter
more poetically, Still Alice opts for a basic vignette-driven
structure, each more depressing than the last, that's somehow elegant
but blunt at the same time. If you can get by the stifling misery
that hangs over every single scene, this is a perfectly fine tragedy,
but the rest of us may find it overwhelmingly dour.
Fortunately, those scenes in and of
themselves are elevated by some beautifully introspective acting.
Julianne Moore seems bound for Oscar glory with her heartbreaking
portrayal of a woman slowly losing everything she values about
herself. But we should take care not to forget the smart and
naturalistic supporting turns from Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart
as Alice's husband and daughter, each of whom react to her illness in
complex, interesting ways.
**1/2 out of ****
A Most Violent Year
A Most Violent Year
J.C. Chandor finds a nice balance between the soft-spoken verbosity of his debut feature Margin Call and the stately mood-building of his followup All Is Lost in this New York crime saga. Oscar Isaac is excellent as a honest man trying to make it in the dishonest business selling heating oil, all while fending off robberies by his competitors, a nettlesome government lawsuit, and mounting pressure from his wife (Jessica Chastain, also outstanding). While the film certainly takes the long way around making its point about the easy corruption of the American Dream, it's a point made memorably enough to justify the slow pacing. Bradford Young's silhouette-laden photography makes it feel like we're watching a Godfather movie set in the 80s.
*** out of ****