Hail Caesar

Plot: Hail Caesar is a spoof of 1950's movie studios. It tells the story of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), the busy head of movie studio, and it has three subplots; star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) getting kidnapped off the set and being held for ransom; Western star Bert Gurney (Alden Ehrenreich) making a high society picture badly; and DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), a clone of Ester Williams, who is pregnant and between husbands.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Hail Caesar mocks life in 50's America with absurdities and with a cleverly ironic plot. It is about a one day in Mannix's life and how insane it is. He need to deal with his crazy stars who are kidnapped, pregnant or way out-of-his element. Josh Brolin plays Mannix as if he were the real Caesar of the title.

George Clooney is all over the trailer, and he has a few great reaction shots. His part is not that large.

A highlight is the dialog between Mannix and his priest where he talks about his job, and how it is hard but he feels a calling. He compares that to taking a higher paying job at Lockheed. The movie seems to think making movies is more important, and this may be the real message of the film from the Coens.

As I left the movie, I said 2 stars, not so fun, only a little funny, and what was the point? As I write about it, I see it has a message from our celebrity writer/producer/directors justifying their life work. In that sense it is autobiograpical, and a love note to their industry. 

Cast: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Scarlatte Johansson, Channing Tatum

Written and directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen

The Music: Not so good. Mostly tinny period music played for effect. There was one great saxophone number that I loved. 

The Visuals: It looks like a Fifties movie made on a set. 

Rating: 2.5 stars: Not so fun to watch, but clever and ironic. I enjoyed seeing it. An extra half star for the autobiographical stamp. 

 

More: A highlight is an all-male sailors dance scene featuring Channing Tatum, which seen from 2016 is obviously gay. Too easy a gag to skip.

Even More: Mannix is the Caesar of the title. He has a map of the studio on the wall as if it were a country. He wins a few of his battles, but mostly he just lives to fight another day, and he enjoys the fight.

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Room

Plot: Joy (Brie Larson) has been imprisoned by a sexual pervert, and lives in a small "Room" with with her five year old boy, Jack (Jacob Tremblay), fathered by the pervert. After years of nightly rape, Joy struggles to raise Jack as best she can although he has lived his whole life in the room. After a plot twist, Joy and Jack come to grips with their lengthy abuse.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Room is an expression of suffering, and in seeing the suffering we also see what is essential to people. Room is tightly crafted to let us meet these damaged people. The story, the visuals, for example the view out of the skylight, combine seamlessly to help us understand Joy's experience. While the story focuses on the positive adaptations to imprisonment, the violence and depravity is always underneath: I left the movie thoughtful and a little down.

[SPOILER in these two paragraphs only]  In the second act, Joy and Jack plot a tension-filled escape attempt. The whole time I am thinking this will never work, and hoping that it does. Finally Jack is out, but he has never been outside before, and how can he help the police find Joy? I loved the scene with the police woman in the car: so clever, so compassionate. When Joy is outside, there is happiness as she sees her parents, but now they are divorced, and soon we see brave Joy has post-traumatic stress symptoms. A whole second story of recovery begins; one that is just as emotional and painful.]

Room is a fictionalized version of the Jaycee Lee Dugard story (http://bit.ly/1QDLkl1.) She was abducted as a teen, and was imprisoned for years.  By fictionalizing the story, the writer Donoghue could remove the weirdness of Dugard's kidnapper, skip the critique of the parole system, and add the Hollywood escape scene. Dugard's story is even more wretching though less cinematic.

[End Spoiler]

Brie Larson and the child actor, Jacob Tremblay are both excellent. When a young child actor is good, usually it means the director is outstanding, so kudos to Lenny Abrahamson.



Now I have seen all the Oscar best picture movies. This one belongs in there because of its emotional intensity and because of its craftmanship. 

Cast: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Allen

Directed by: Lenny Abrahamson

Written by: Emma Donoghue who also wrote the novel.

The Music: NO MUSIC. The quietness is part of the movie.

The Visuals:  Lot of thought went into the set and props. This is a well constructed movie. Obviously there are not breath-taking vistas. There are many clever scenes of people doing things.  

Rating: 3.5 stars: An intense story that is well-told. 

More: Joy: You're gonna love it. 

            Jack: What? 

            Joy: The world. 

Even More: Room is emotional, and it is staying with me as I write this the next day.

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Brooklyn

Plot: In 1951 Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) can't find work in rural WWII Ireland, so she takes a ship to Brooklyn. At first she is homesick and quiet, but gradually she meets people including a boyfriend Tony (Emory Cohen.) Soon, she is torn between her life in Brooklyn and her family in Ireland, and after a plot twist the pull between Ireland & Brooklyn lead to the final scene.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Brooklyn may have been made for people of my age and background. My parents were Catholics form immigrant families: she was Polish and he was Italian. They have recently passed away, and it is good time to tell their stories. The immigrant experience involves saying good-bye to everything in the old country, and that was a fundamental experience for all of them.

[BIG SPOILERS, but only in this paragraph. The rest of the review is safe] Brooklyn is a coming to America story with a romantic triangle. Eilis falls in love and then goes to Ireland to comfort her mother, where she falls in love again. She mourns for having left and she mourns for what she loses in leaving too. By going to Ireland the audience sees played out what her life might have been if she stayed. At the end she makes her choice, and you know what she chose because of the title.

[No spoilers from this point] Ronan plays Eilis cooly, and director Crowley often shows  tight close-ups of Ronan face which both emphasizes the stillness, and also shows the subtle acting that there is. Ronan is controlled and hides her emotions because Elias is shy and afraid of being embarrassed or being improper. I don't know, but I tend think that 1950's social structure was more strait-laced.

Both the script-writing and Emory Cohen's portrayal makes Tony engaging and likable: everyone needs to see why Eilis can't help but fall in love. This works well, and they have engaging banter.

The script is cleverly builds characters and sets up the final drama without being obvious. In the end, I can see why it had to be that way, and I was impressed how ever scene had a purpose.

Brooklyn is primarily a period drama, and it shows something of mid-20th Century America. I enjoyed seeing old-time scene like watch a Mad Man episode.

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleason

Directed by: John Crowley

Based on the book by: Colm Toibin (link)

The Music: Michael Brook composed a variety of melodies that are arranged simply. The music set the mood and was not distracting, sometimes not noticeable.

The Visuals: Occasionally the colors and the composition of the shot were so evocative of the mood, especially the Coney Island sequence was so light and happy. 

Rating: 3.5 stars: This romantic drama is not ambitious enough for 4 stars, but it is a well-made story with good characters and a historical background that I identify with. 

More: Tony's 8-year old brother has many funny lines. Including this sequence at dinner with Eilis:

Frankie: So first of all I should say that we don't like Irish people.

[General cries of outrage around the table]

Frankie: We don't! That is a well known fact! A big gang of Irish beat Maurizio up and he had to have stitches. And because he cops round here are Irish, nobody did anything about it.

Mauizio: There are probably two sides to it. I might have said something I shouldn't, I can't remember now.

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The Revenant

Plot: The Revenant is the story of 1820's Montana fur trader Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), who was mauled by a bear. The other traders are unable to carry him back to safety, and they are fearful of attacks from the Native American Ree (more properly called Arikara), so they leave Glass with Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and two boys. After a few days Glass is abandoned to die, the rest of the movie is about how he survived. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The bear attack is incredible. I have never seen anything like it. Truly horrible.  I watched it with one eye through my fingers.

Life was hard for the trappers and Mountain men in Montana, especially for Hugh Glass. The movie is never boring because terrible things keep happening. The vast majority of the movie is stressful because of the suffering and death. So many things go wrong, that it seems like The Martian. It improves when Glass becomes ambulatory again.

There are a meteors, avalanches, buffalo stampedes, and prayerful chanting that director Inarritu uses to create a sense of magical reality. While it suggests that the native gods are watching, it is also how Inarritu is acknowledging larger-than-life exaggerations in Glass's legend.  (see Even More, below.) 

One great scene was when Hugh Glass is floating in the freezing river to avoid the Ree, and ends up in rapids and then going over a waterfall: great pictures and very tense.

The action scene that "jumped the shark" was when Hugh was being chased by the Ree though the forest on horseback. Suddenly the horse runs off a cliff, and they fall directly into a fir tree. The Ree can't follow, and the tree breaks Hugh's fall. It sets up another clever/outrageous scene about keeping warm at night that I'm not going to spoil.

I didn't find DiCaprio's performance engaging or interesting. No doubt DiCaprio's performance was technically difficult, but so what? I am not a fan of DiCaprio.

Tom Hardy's performance as the bad guy Fitzgerald is more interesting and realistic.

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnail Gleeson

Directed by: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Based on the novel by: Michael Punke and inspired by the life of Hugh Glass

The Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto was slow and discordant; it added a lot to the movie. 

The Visuals: Generally dreary forest scenes befitting the mood, but there are some spectacular views of tree tops, mountains and river rapids. They did a nice job with the wounds on DiCaprio.

Rating: 2.5 stars: There are a few good scenes -- like that bear scene. It was fun to watch in a horror movie way, but mostly it was hard to watch in a documentary way. The few highlights are too spread out. I was looking at my watch regularly. 

 

More: Revenant - means someone who returns, especially back from the dead, according to the dictionary.

Even More: Hugh Glass is a legendary folk hero whose story is certainly embellished, just like Paul Bunyan. He has other interesting chapters in his bio, for example he was a pirate.

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2014 Top Movies

2014 Top Movies

• 4.0 Birdman
• 4.0 Gone Girl
• 4.0 Boyhood
• 4.0 Lucy
• 4.0 Chef
• 3.5 The Imitation Game
• 3.5 X-Men: Days of Future Past
• 3.5 Into the Woods
• 3.5 Interstellar
• 3.25 The Lego Movie

The Big Short

Plot: Prior to the 2008 crash, fund managers Michael Burry (Christian Bale), Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), and Mark Baum (Steve Carell) spotted the problems with mortgage bonds and tried to profit from it. The Big Short explains the reason for the 2008 financial crisis through the eyes of the three fund managers.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The Big Short is a dramatization of the 2008 financial crash through the eyes of three investors who saw it coming. Because financial crime is immaterial, director McKay keeps it lively with rock music, odd venues, characters addressing the camera directly, and odd-ball vignettes, for example, Margot Robbie gives a profanity-filled explanation of bond trading in a bubble-bath while drinking champagne.

The best part was the educational value -- I left with a better understanding of the 2008 crisis, and some knowledge of the gaps in today's system. It was interesting because it was true.

I liked how McKay cleverly worked technical definitions into the movie withOUT making it sleepy. Now I know what a synthetic CDO is, for example.

There was a great scene where bond rating agency manager talks wearing dark glasses as if she were blind. I appreciated the ironic humor. There were several gaps like this, some funny.

Compared to a real drama however, The Big Short,  comes up short. Why? The characters: they are motivated only by getting rich. The writers decided these people were abnormal and dehumanized them rather than humanizing them. They are depicted as anti-social or maybe Aspergers sufferers: even if this was been historically true, everyone has feelings and needs. Fewer characters with deeper backstories would have been more engaging.

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Steve Carell

Directed by: Adam McKay

Written by: Adam McKay and Charles Randolph; based on the book by Michael Lewis

The Music: Great. The rock music and the regular soundtrack by Nicholas Britell. I especially liked the jazz piano in "Redemption at the Roulette Table." 

The Visuals: The fast moving visual style is distinctive. Nothing breathtaking

Rating: 3.0 stars: It is a two star movie that gets a 1/2 star bump because its educational, and another 1/2 star because of its social value and ambition. Am I being suckered by the Oscar buzz?

More: The Big Short shows the cause of the crisis was ignorance and greed at the banks. This fits with Hollywood tropes about evil corporations. The real cause was lax financial regulation, and privatization of bond rating among three for-profit rating agencies -- who were too dependent on their clients to be honest. Free market capitalism can only exist in a framework of well-known rules.

Even More: When someone tells you that a thing is too hard to understand, take the time to learn it. That is my take away from The Big Short. I remember a hundred stories on mortgage bond derivatives, and every one had a disclaimer about how hard it was to understand.

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Joy

Plot: Joy is the story of Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence), who invented a mop, endured a difficult ramp-up process, and tries to sell her stuff on TV. Joy needed to borrow money from family, cope with sick relatives, screaming kids, a divorce and a trouble-some father. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Joy is an estrogen-soaked success story that emphasizes perseverance, and high school aged girls should especially see it.

The script-writer emphasizes the hardship in Joy's life, and at times she is like the biblical hero Job, with everything going wrong repeatedly. It is humorous how terrible things are in a sitcom sense.

The biggest shortcoming is that the script feels concocted to create these frustrating experiences for Joy -- no one's life is really like this. The unreality breaks the dramatic tension. There are intentional situation comedy moments from the co-stars especially De Niro, who is almost a clown of a father. Jennifer Lawrence is in a drama, and the co-stars are in a comedy like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

The highlights are all emotional turning points for Joy: Joy goes through a wringer, but it creates great moments for Jennifer L on screen. Definitely worth an Oscar nomination.

Even though there is a big cast of co-stars, only Bradley Cooper and Isabella Rossellini are something special.

Joy has its moments. I liked it, and I am glad I saw it. 

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, Edgar Ramierez, Diane Ladd, Virginia Maden, Isabella Rossellini

Directed by: David Russell

Written by: David Russell; story by Annie Mumolo 

The Music: Several good songs from Mexican folk to classic rock. 

The Visuals: The only good visuals are of Jennifer Lawrence in different poses. For example,  drawing with crayons or sitting at her desk at the end.

Rating: 3.0 stars: A showcase for Jennifer L. The overall movie is only OK. It gets some points for a positive message especially for girls and young women. 

More: Which Joy is better Jennifer Lawrence's, or Amy Poehler's in Inside Out?

Clearly Jennifer -- she should get an Oscar Nom. On the other hand, Inside Out is the better movie.

Joy Mangano and Jennifer Lawerence

Even More: Here is a photo of the real life Joy, who invented her mop at age 33. More here.



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