When done right, comic book movie adaptations can be interesting, exciting, and every bit as engrossing as any other genre of film. See Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman. Marvel’s big budget blockbuster entry for last summer, Guardians of the Galaxy, is another good example. But Avengers: Age of Ultron, the second in a so-far-planned series of four films, doesn’t quite make the grade, and it definitely doesn’t live up to the massive amount of hype surrounding it. Then again, almost no movie could.
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George Miller spent a decade and a half working to get the latest installment of his Mad Max series onto the screen. The film was plagued with everything from budgetary problems, to original star Mel Gibson’s personal melt down, to uncharacteristic heavy rains in Australia that forced production to move to Africa. Many people, the director included, thought the project might never make it to theaters. Miller never gave up, though, and Mad Max: Fury Road was worth every minute of the wait. The movie is visually arresting, packed with action and suspense. It’s also just plain bonkers.
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Ex Machina is a little movie with some big ideas. It’s a movie that makes you think. Writer/director Alex Garland – who wrote the screenplay for the fatally flawed, but otherwise brilliantly conceived sci-fi film Sunshine – constructs a story so packed with ideas, I was thinking about them long after I left the theater.
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We can all imagine what a post-apocalyptic world might look like. So many films and TV shows have depicted fallen worlds that we take the iconography of those tales for granted: riots, deserted cities, violence at every turn. What about just before the crumble? What would those last days preceding utter chaos look like? That’s the scenario Ryan Gosling explores in his first directorial effort, Lost River. Within that framework, Gosling – who wrote the script as well as directed – uses magical realism to create a fairy tale, the story ever so slightly blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. He has made a rather haunting film.
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Wim Wenders and co-director Juliano Ribeiro Salgado get to the heart of the human experience with their documentary The Salt of the Earth. By exploring the life of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, the filmmakers simultaneously examine the boundless compassion and unimaginable cruelty we are capable of toward one another. They do all this while also committing to film some of the most starkly beautiful and terrifying images ever put on screen.
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Furious 7 represents the dawn of a new age in the action movie genre, and one in which I have no interest. At an interminable two hours and seventeen minutes, there are no human stakes to be found in this film, just set piece after set piece of supposed humans bludgeoning each other after performing feats that would make Sir Isaac Newton spin in his grave like a top. I blame comic book superhero movies.
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Compelling deconstructions of how our society functions can be found in the unlikeliest of places. Insurgent, the adaptation of the second novel in the Divergent series is a surprisingly excellent example. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would likely never recognize a movie like this, though a dystopian future sci-fi franchise aimed at a young adult audience can be more interesting in terms of gender equality than many of today’s “serious” films.
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The first five minutes of the vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows let me know I was in good hands. In those opening minutes, the filmmakers pay homage to both the classic silent film Nosferatu and Francis Ford Coppola’s stab at the most famous fanged tale, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Shadows is the brainchild of Jemaine Clement, one half of the comedy rock duo Flight of the Concords, and Taika Waititi, who wrote and directed several episodes of the Concords’ TV show. Clement and Waititi also collaborated on the 2007 comedy Eagle vs. Shark, and have made a very literate comedy in Shadows. They use the conventions of horror movies in general, and vampire movies specifically, to inform their film. Not incidentally, they have also made a very funny movie.
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In terms of music, I’m a 70s guy. Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band. I have an affinity for those groups comprised of musicians who find each other, form a band, and write and play all their own songs. I enjoy the majority of groups that were popular in the late 50s and 60s less so. Those bands tended to be assembled by producers, and most did not play their own instruments on the records they cut, nor did they write any of the songs. Enter the 20-30 studio musicians -- no one can quite agree on an exact number -- known as The Wrecking Crew.
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In Maps to the Stars, body horror auteur David Cronenberg’s latest film, the backdrop to this lurid tale of sex and violence is that most people in Hollywood are screwed up and emotionally broken... News flash, David, this is not a new idea. Hell, most people outside of Hollywood are screwed up and emotionally broken. The only difference is that insane amounts of money allow successful people in the entertainment industry to indulge in every crazy whim.
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Birdman is an assault on the senses. In the absolute. Best. Way.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu weaves around the characters with the camera, setting a frenetic pace that only rarely slowed to let me catch my breath. This is matched beat for beat by Antonio Sanchez’s powerful, jazzy drum score.
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Andy and Lana Wachowski know how to do epic, spectacular filmmaking. I adore their humans-as-batteries head trip The Matrix. Despite the bad press it received upon its release, I also loved Cloud Atlas, their filmed version of the supposedly un-filmable novel of the same name. So, when Warner Bros. pushed Jupiter Ascending’s release date back more than six months from the prime blockbuster territory of midsummer to the dreaded dumping ground of February, I wasn’t worried. When the film then garnered intense criticism, and even some walkouts, during its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, I still wasn’t worried. Okay, maybe I was a little worried. Turns out, I had good reason to be.
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Life is such a fragile thing. While we know that fact, at least philosophically, many of us are thankfully spared from having to confront it on a day-to-day basis. Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Lisa Genova, Still Alice is the deeply moving character study of what happens to a person who loses her very identity to the ravages of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Julianne Moore’s performance as Alice – a highly intelligent, respected linguistics professor – devastated and humbled me.
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Within the first five minutes of Selma, I knew that it was going to be an uncompromising film. In those first five minutes, there is a tender scene between Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta, as Dr. King prepares to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. The couple has a conversation about the importance of the event, and about how far they have come, but also how far there is left to go. This is followed immediately by a church bombing that rocked me in my seat. Those first two scenes set the tone for the entire film.
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Do a quick Google search of “Michael Moore American Sniper Tweets” and you’ll instantly understand the dread I felt when sitting down to write this review.
Moore can be a compelling filmmaker at times, but he can also be the worst example of an internet troll. He chose the latter route when he tweeted that he was “taught that snipers are cowards.” Defending his remarks against a storm of criticism both online and off, Moore claims innocence by saying he was referring to the sniper that ended his uncle’s life in WWII, and because he never mentioned American Sniper by name. If you believe the offending tweet being sent out on the film’s opening weekend was just a crazy coincidence, you need to get your cynicism settings checked. He made the comments to enrage people, nothing more.
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There’s a scene, consisting of two shots, near the beginning of Whiplash that cuts to the heart of the entire story. Andrew (Miles Teller) sits on the floor, listening to a jazz drummer he idolizes, Buddy Rich. Cut to Andrew’s point of view with a shot of his own drum kit. The kit sits there, looming over Andrew as the album plays. Cut back to Andrew, staring at his drums. The look on Andrew’s face is immediately recognizable to anyone who has ever undertaken a creative endeavor: frozen by intimidation. The intimidation of wanting to be great at something, but fearing you just don’t have what it takes.
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It’s hard to logically argue an almost completely visceral and emotional reaction to a film. Then again, aren’t emotional appeals the main point of making art? Sure, many creative endeavors seek to educate or to enlighten on a particular subject, or make an academic statement using intellectual appeals. But I would argue that the overwhelming majority of artists seek to hit the audience in the collective gut, wishing to elicit the strongest possible emotional response to their work.
That’s exactly what happened to me as I watched Wild.
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“Of course if you’re a flag-waving fan of writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson…you will be required to recognize it as a work of genius…” - Tom Long, The Detroit News
I’m a flag-waving fan of Mr. Anderson, and not only is Inherent Vice not a work of genius, it is the low point of his career thus far, and a near total disappointment.
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I’ve often struggled with how to describe what works in a movie and what doesn’t. Breaking through the standard “it was good”/“it was bad” dichotomy can be difficult, especially because my personal philosophy on what makes a movie “good” or “bad” tends toward the ineffable. But reaching an emotional connection to what’s happening onscreen is, unquestionably, a big part of it. Unfortunately, the biggest problem with Angelina Jolie’s biggest budget directorial effort to date is that the emotional connection never comes.
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I’ve had trouble writing about director Ridley Scott’s latest attempt at epic period film-making, Exodus: Gods and Kings, since first seeing it. I think I finally know why. After finding huge critical and popular success with his Oscar-winning swords-and-sandals epic Gladiator in 2001, Scott has returned to the period piece action-adventure well several times with limited success – as seen in both Kingdom of Heaven and the recent Robin Hood. The big problem with Exodus, a retelling of the biblical story of Moses freeing the Jews from Egyptian slavery, is that it doesn’t feel like a story Ridley Scott needed to tell.
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