Birdman

Plot: Actor Riggan (Michael Keaton) played the superhero Birdman in Hollywood blockbusters, but to be taken seriously, he is writing, directing, and staring in a Broadway drama. As the movie begins, they are starting rehearsals. The play's plot mimick the real life conflicts in Riggan's life.

Complicating this, Riggan believes that he has superpowers like levitation and telekinesis. It is unclear whether these powers are real or mental illness. Riggan argues with a voice inside his head like a madman, but it's Birdman's voice.

The plot has many threads, and one is the on-going fight about how to stage each scene of the play, especially with replacement actor Mike (Edward Norton). Debris from the past with his ex-wife and daughter surface too. The pressure increases on Riggan until the climatic and surreal opening night. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Birdman was a lot of fun because there are so many different levels. The characters are vivid and quirky.

Michael Keaton's Riggan is always is on the edge of breakdown. Unlike every other movie with Zach Galifianakis, Galifianakis is the sane one who calms the crazy people down, and helps them cope. Ed Norton and Naomi Watts should get supporting actor nominations -- strong, emotional performances of damaged people.

Emma Stone plays daughter Sam, and she floats around backstage. Her character is used to get the other characters to talk, but she is also tragic, fragile, and on the edge of self-destruction.

The soundtrack by Antonio Sanchez is distinctive with a lot of jazz drumming. During key scenes, the drummer appears in the scene -- in a magic-reality way.

Only see Birdman if you are OK with a fuzzy, abstract story that is both magic and real. At the end of the movie, there is a symbolic victory as well as sick person recovering, as well as Birdman flying around. People who want a logical resolution should go see Interstellar. 

Cast: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough, Edward Norton

Directed by: Anejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Rating: 4 stars: There should be more movies like this. 

 

More: At one point Riggin is arguing with Birdman's voice in his head saying, "You are just a mental concept" --just like a contemporary pop-psychologist. The audience is unsure how real Birdman really is -- maybe he is more than a mental concept. This reminds me how people in the grip of their affliction believe the voices that they hear are real too. 

Even More: Birdman is filmed to look like one long take. I noticed this at the beginning, but lost track of that as the action progressed. Now I'd like to see it again.

There is one funny scene where Riggan get's locked outside in his bathrobe, and for a contrived reason, he has to run around the theater in his underwear past the waiting audience who is filing in. The single camera action makes the action more immediate here. (This has a symbolic level too, with Riggan bearing his soul and so on. )

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The Theory of Everything

Plot: This is a biopic of Prof. Stephen Hawking's wife Jane (Felicity Jones). It isn't about Stephen's (Eddie Redmayne's) struggle to be a super-successful physicist with Lou Gehrig's disease.

It shows their courtship, Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) getting sick, Jane taking care of Stephen, Stephen getting sicker, Jane having babies while taking care of Stephen, Stephen making a discovery, Jane flirting with the choir director, Jane having another baby,  Stephen flirting with his nurse, and more. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: See this movie for the physical acting as Stephen drifts from physical fitness to physical disability, and that Eddie Redmayne does so masterfully. It starts slowly as foreshadowing, then trembling, and finally he falls . . . then wonderful scenes of Redmayne hobbling on two canes. We see and feel the turning point when Stephen sits down on wheel chair, and again when he begins to use the computer to speak. 

The first love triangle starts slowly and it snuck up on me. After that however, the movie just drifts for another 45 minutes until the not very definitive end. After all Stephen is still alive, and the movie had to peter out at the end, didn't it?

Cast: Eddie Redmayne. Felicity Jones

Directed by: James Marsh, based on the book by Jane Hawking

Rating:  2.5 stars: The great physical acting by Redmayne, and the facial acting from Jones balance out the weak ending. 

More: The soundtrack was pretty and melodic. Very nice. I bought two tracks. There were a few painterly visuals from director Marsh.

Even More:

Jane Wilde Hawking and Stephen Hawking in 1990

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Big Hero 6

Plot: Hiro, a bored 14 year old genius, invents mini robots that link up with each other to do cool things--just about everything. He meets other students who make high tech robots too. One student is Hero's brother whose robot is an inflatable medical robot called Baymax. Soon the school burns down with all the mini-robots, and Hiro's brother is killed. Suddenly a villain, wielding a massive number of Hiro's mini-robots, threatens to to destroy the city. Hiro and Baymax join forces with four students to become the Big Hero 6. They battle the villain and avenge the brother.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: This is a younger kid's superhero movie. In its best moments it is like The Incredibles with likable characters working together. In its worst moments, it is like Power Rangers with robots bashing stuff with colorful weapons. 

The beginning is slow, but after a while we meet the other students who liven things up. Baymax, the inflatable, medical robot, and needs to be coxed into fighting -- a little bit of pacifism in this kid-friendly superhero movie.

Big Hero 6 has a strong soundtrack. The ending has some nice graphics that evoke Studio Ghibli. The characters come together to save the day, and Big Hero 6 ends with a nice positive message -- adult superhero movies are never this sincere (although maybe that is the Japanese influence coming in again.)

Directed by: Don Hall and Chris Williams

Rating: 2.0  stars: Big Hero 6 is good when compared with other kid's movies. As an adult movie, it is a waste of time. 

More: One of the interesting aspects is the American-Japanese cultural fusion they show. With Japanese dialog it will play well in Japan. It is unclear if this is a world vision message or a commercial reality.

Even More: There already are little modular robots that link up to do things. 

Interstellar

Plot: Life on earth is being destroyed by an airborne disease, and everyone is farming since it is so hard to grow food including Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and his family. Daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chasten & Ellen Burstyn) thinks she sees a ghost in her room, and they decode a message from the ghost, sending them to a NASA base. Turns out the Cooper used to be an astronaut, so they send him to Saturn to look for a gateway to another galaxy (just like 2001: a Space Odyssey.) Cooper goes through the gateway to investigate worlds on the other side. They find black holes and barely habitable worlds, and after many struggles Cooper arrives beyond 3-D space where the final resolution takes place.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Interstellar is one of the best Sci-Fi movies intellectually: it has big ideas and big motivation. It hits hard on both spirituality and science, and I liked it with my brain. It does not connect emotionally.

There are good scenes too: a great tearful goodbye scene between Coop and Murph which will win Mackenzie Foy many future roles -- so remember her name. There is a suspenseful fight scene, and a gripping tidal wave scene too.

I loved the Hans Zimmer soundtrack, and I am disappointed that individual tracks aren't available to buy. I also liked the silence of space -- that is spaceships did not make jet plane noises like in Star Wars.

As mentioned, I didn't love the movie emotionally. The initial scenes with Coop's dad (John Lithgow) and son, were too slow. Michael Caine's Professor Brand had boring set-up dialog and was really dull.  The ending was a missed opportunity: sleepiness instead of joy. Where were the hugs & kisses? [More in SPOILERS below.]

The photography was a little fuzzy on the giant EPIC screen at MJR in Southgate. I think it was intensionally fuzzy --  see how fuzzy the move poster (above) is. I was not wowed by the space-ship scenes, unlike Star Wars or Star Trek. The spacecraft were work-a-day freighters and not very cool or even interesting. 

Mathew McConaughey was very strong just like he needed to be. I liked two of three Murphs, Chasten and Foy. Anne Hathaway had some good moments. 

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain

Written and directed by: Christopher Nolan

Rating: 3.5 stars: Cool ideas but not always fun-to-watch. It gets 1/2 star for its smartness and strong story. (Not as good as Lucy or Gone Girl. )

1/4

SPOILERS:  [SERIOUSLY DON'T READ THIS]: I loved how the ghosts and "they" were really humans from the future. I liked the concept of a place where time was a spatial dimension, but how every place Coop could see was only one room. Very cool.

I also liked the notion that love transcends space and time.

As mentioned the ending was a missed opportunity. After a lifetime of searching when Murph and Coop reunite, what happens. They didn't even shake hands. Why have her in a hospital room with strangers who did not care about seeing their long-lost hero grandfather. And then in the post ending, Coop is a-drift and is heading back out to space. Does he arrive, and give Brand a hug?  Well no. (About all this end does is set up a sequel.) 

More: Tesseract: the extra-dimensional place inside the blackhole - that is a four dimensional cube. I came across that on Wikipedia.

Nightcrawler

Plot: Freelance video photographer Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) crawls the streets of LA at night, filming for accidents and crime scenes to sell to TV stations for their morning news. Lou is driven to succeed, and he has odd ideas about business that he tells everyone. Soon he gets some scoops and sells them to Nina (Rene Russo) at struggling channel 6. He stumbles into a multiple homicide crime scene, and does some unethical things for better images, and these lead to the closing scenes. {imdb]  [photos]

Review: There is something a little off about Lou Bloom -- we see that immediately. In Nightcrawlers, Lou slides from a hustler who is a little weird, to an overeager paparazzo,  to a twisted manipulator, and finally to an evil man with a character disorder. Perhaps he always had a character disorder? 

Jake Gyllenhaal gives a great performance in making an believable character. My issue with the character is more with the writing than the writing by director Dan Gilroy, which gives us an obsessive loner character who is also people-oriented enough to be a master manipulator. That is an unnatural combination. 

There is one police car chase scene that is exceptional -- very suspenseful and more realistic because they are following the police and trying to film it.

The soundtrack is great -- several interesting pieces. The photography was strong too, especially the chase scene. 

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed

Written and directed by: Dan Gilroy; Gilroy is a writer, but he did a nice job here in his first directing assignment.

Rating: 3.0 stars: A good performance by Gyllenhaal; nice chase scenes; some interesting psychological twists. It was not always fun-to-watch because Lou was so creepy. 

More:  Nightcrawler is a thriller not an expose of freelance video photographers because of the twisted mental state of Lou. Lou's business blather is not so different from what pop business gurus say about getting ahead. When Lou does questionable things at first, perhaps this is OK.  As it continues, the moral lapses get greater, and we get a sarcastic critic of small business culture.

Even More: Possible Oscar nomination for Gyllenhaal. 

St Vincent

Plot: 7th grader Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) moves in next to  drunken asshole Vincent (Bill Murray), and inexplicably his Mom (Melissa McCarthy) signs up Vincent as Oliver's after school baby sitter. Of course, Vincent takes Oliver to the bar, to the track, let's him watch old comedies on TV and introduces him to stripper/prostitute/girlfriend Daka (Naomi Watts). [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Don't see this movie.  That is short and sweet isn't it. I can't believe I paid to watch this. Yuk. 

St Vincent is a black comedy where I was not amused by how big an asshole Vincent is. It was funny that anyone would spend any time with him. I'd bolt the door or maybe move. 

Like many movies, the child's dialog is far too adult -- so much so that it was distracting. Of course, distraction is welcome. 

Happily Melissa McCarthy is likable and fun. I also liked pregnant girlfriend Naomi Watts. The two women had jobs. Vincent just sits on his butt drinking, gambling, and extorting babysitting money from the neighbors. 

Other low lights include the gross eating scene at the end where Bill Murray crudely eats spaghetti with his mouth open. I hated the Dylan music over the end credits. 

It is too big a chore to watch this jerk. I can't believe I paid to watch this. Yuk. 

Cast: Bill Murray, Jaeden Lieberher, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts

Directed by: Theodore Melfi

Rating: 1 lonely star: Usually there needs to be something truly offensive to get a one star rating, but I am going to make an exception. 

 

More: Clint Eastwood was grouchy neighbor in Gran Torino. It was a drama not a black comedy, and Clint's character went through a redemption. It reminded me of much better Bill Murray movie, Scrooged, where Murray starts evil of course is transformed overnight. 

Even More: Yuk. 

Gone Girl

Plot: Nick (Ben Affleck) comes home and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) is missing, and there are signs of a fight. He calls the police and they search the town. Nick comes under suspicion. After this, there are big twists that are too much fun to give away.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Gone Girl has a long, long wind up to excruciating and clever conclusion. It starts like a murder mystery and ends as twisted psychological thriller. The end is super fun:  four stars.

Just like the book, the ending is creepy and tense and wonderful. Both Nick and Amy are sociopaths bound by that common thread. Both characters were trapped by their actions and the tension between them was so great. 

I loved the performances of Affleck and Pike. Affleck sold his contrite confession on TV seeming more sincere then confessionals seem in real life. Pike manages a range of emotions, but she is best when she is the driven, smart Amy -- the super-competent Amy. Even though real women aren't like that all the time, she was so good at it that she sells it.

Writer Gillian Flynn brings the tension from the book right to the screen. Even though there are some logic gaps -- the plot twists hold together pretty well.

There is a level where Gone Girl is an allegory for a real marriage -- where two high damaged people stay together by mutual manipulation. The end makes more sense when viewed that way. The end makes sense poetically more than realistically.

More in the spoiler section below.

Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon

Directed by: David Fincher

Written by:  Gillian Flynn, based on her novel of the same name.

Rating: 4.0 stars: This is what movies should be like. 

More:   The TV reporting plays a major role in the movie, that the book did not need. They become one of the motivating forces in the story. It reminds me of the Hunger Games book in how the media culture can motivate a new kind of evil. 

More with SPOILERS: The two big twists are so jarring even though I had read the book. I was swept along by the dynamic of the movie  Because we had begun to believe that Nick really had done it, when see Amy alive, suddenly we see everything that we thought was wrong.  It happens again when Amy kills Desi (Neal Patrick Harris) and a third time when she drives up to her house in front of the camera crews, and it is just as surprising when Nick gives her a hug on the sidewalk.

The strength of the story is that Amy is a great villain -- she is smart and works endlessly hard on her plan -- then she carries them out -- with a pretty smile. 

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