Jack Reacher

Plot: Five people are shot by a sniper and quickly the police arrest Charlie. He tells the police to call Jack Reacher, and then he gets beat up and spends the rest of the movie in a coma. Immediately Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) shows up at the police station, and meets with the detective Emerson (David Oyelowo) and the defense attorney Helen (Rosamund Pike.) Reacher is a tough-guy, former Army investigator who lives off-the-grid. 

Reacher checks into the evidence and finds it too neat, and suspects the Charlie is being set up. Soon someone tries to murder Reacher, and then witnesses start to die. Reacher just gets mad, leading to chase scenes, fist fights and a showdown at a quarry.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: I saw Jack Reacher at a $1 matinee since I did not like the first-run movies this weekend. Jack Reacher had a lot to like, and plenty of imperfections too. Not a bad popcorn movie -- better if you don't think about it. A few of the characters are well developed, and there are some clever plot twists.

I never really bought the idea of a drifter, tough-guy super cop like Jack Reacher -- why would someone live this way. Taking the bus everywhere? No cell phone?  Really? 

Rosamund Pike does a adequate job, but a better performance in the female lead would have really helped. Despite the fact that she might be double-crossed by people she trusts, we don't see much emotion. Tom Cruise does a nice job acting, but since Jack Reacher is such an enigma, it is hard to say what he is acting for. 

I liked the scene where he jumps out of the car curing a chase scene, and walks over to the bus stop to hide from the police. Then a guy loans him a ball cap as a disguise -- pretty funny. 

Cast: Tom Cruise, Rosamund Pike, David Oyelowo, Vladimir Sizov

Directed by:  Christopher McQuarrie, based on the book series by Lee Child (Lee Child can't be his real name, can it?)

Rating:  2.0 stars: good but with weaknesses. Enjoyable but not super fun. 

More: Nice scenes of Pittsburgh

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Beasts of the Southern Wild

Plot: Six year old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) lives in a rural southern Louisiana swamp called The Bathtub with her father Wink (Dwight Henry) who is poor, sick and often drunk. Hushpuppy takes care of  herself and the neighbors watchover her. Her father gets sick; there is a storm with terrible flooding; there are dream sequences of monsters; and  Hushpuppy looks for her mother. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: This is two movies at once: on one level it is a story of poor people with a "It Takes A Village to Raise a Child" message, and it is also about the monsters of life, the horrors of civilization, global environmental breakdown. 

The enjoyable part is how Hushpuppy overcomes problems and how the poor people of the Bathtub take care of each other. The sobering part is poor and dysfunctional it all is, and how it could be better. Films need evil to be overcome so I should not complain about how dreary it is, but the bad parts are pretty unpleasant.

The dreary parts in the middle are redeemed by the relatively optimistic ending, so I finished watching in a good mood. 

Cast: Quvenzhane Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly

Directed by: Benh Zeitlin; based on a play by Lucy Alibar

Rating: 2.75 stars: I saw this on a plane, so it might have been rated higher in the theater. It was enjoyable. 

 

More: Poverty porn is showing photos extreme poverty to produce emotions in the audience perhaps made worse by not aiding the subject of the photography. There is melodramatic manipulation in this movie, but that is what moviemaking and storytelling generally is. In a modern US movie, none of the actors are mistreated. In a documentary, perhaps there could be moral liability. 

The ethics of poverty porn are distant from the ethics of journalism which hold that a journalist cannot objectively tell a story if s/he is involved in the story. Of course, there is no journalism here. On the other hand sometimes the best thing a photographer can do is take pictures and show them. 

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Side Effects

Plot: Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) is depressed and Dr Jonathan Banks (Jude Law)  prescribed a new anti-depressant -- whose side effect is sleepwalking. One night Emily is sleepwalking and she stabs her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) to death in her sleep.  It looks like Emily will plead insanity but then the plot starts to twist and twist again. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Side Effects hinges on the photography and acting from Rooney Mara. It isn't what she says as much as the way she holds herself -- reacting to the action. Jude Law is just as good especially later in the film as the tension turns up on his character Dr. Banks. 

You might think that Soderbergh is making a film about over-medication or the prescription culture -- but actually not. It is an suspenseful psychological thriller -- very smart writing with clever plot twists. 

The music by Thomas Newman was always interesting and appropriate. I liked the interesting interior photography and actually the set decoration. Several of the paintings were interesting. 

I liked the ending, because once we figure out what is happening, the evil doers pay. 

Cast: Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Rating: 4.0 stars: a well-crafted film with a clever story and great acting; Why not 4 stars? 

 

More: I hate to give a movie 4 stars too early in the year, but it is as good as a lot of last year's favorites like End of Watch, but not as good as LIncoln or Cloud Atlas. Better than The Impossible, The Avengers, and Perks of Being a Wallflower. It does not have a message though.

Even More: By the end of the movie, we see that one of the characters is purely evil: fully disassociated from humanity kind of evil. Way past super villain evil into shoot up a room full of 1st graders kind of evil. 

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Zero Dark Thirty

Plot:  Dan (Jason Clarke)  and Maya (Jessica Chastain) are CIA analysts assigned to catching Ussama bin Laden in Pakistan. Early on, they are questioning and torturing prisoners. Later Maya begins to track a courier for bin Laden, Abu Ahmed. This takes years, but eventually she goes to Washington to convince higher-ups to make a military attack. The movie concludes with action scenes of the raid and bin Laden's death. 

[imdb]    [photos]

Review: Zero Dark Thirty is a gritty movie about messy, dirty, ugly parts of counter-terrorism. One of the ugliest parts is the torture of al Qaida prisoners, which takes up the first third of the movie. In the middle, Jessica Chastain gets tough to jump start the hunt bin Laden. She has a few powerful scenes that seemed realistic. The final raid is suspenseful and fast-paced.

The best part is the documentary value of learning about the search and the raid. Now, this is a Hollywood movie, and I know director Bigelow was going for suspense, drama, and reasonable running time, and that therefore many details are inaccurate.  The worst part is that it is not that fun to watch.

After I left the theater, I kept thinking about the morality of the torture and the midnight raid. Did so many people need to die in the early morning raid on the bin Laden compound? It seemed like one woman was killed accidentally. Given that no one was sure who lived there, why was there such a strong bias toward killing the occupants?

As a film, the photography was OK, and the soundtrack was not memorable. The helicopter assault scenes were good. 

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt 

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow

Rating: 3.0 stars: educational, thought provoking, not fun

More: .I continue to wonder how accurate Zero Dark Thirty was. I think it is an artist's impression of the facts with a bias to making the story dramatic.  It makes me want to read a book on it. 

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Silver Linings Playbook

Plot: Teacher Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) gets out of mental hospital and moves in with his parents Dolores (Jacki Weaver) and Eagles Football super fan Pat Sr (Robert De Niro.) Pat got committed to the hospital for a fist fight with his wife Niki's lover. Pat is determined to get Niki back by getting his life together. However Niki has a restraining order on him, and he can't get near her. His mom sets him up with Tiffany, (Jennifer Lawrence,) who is/was also mental ill. 

In the hospital Pat has adopted a positive thinking philosophy that concentrates on finding silver linings for bad things that happen. That is where the title comes from.

Pat and Tiffany flirt, and soon Tiffany signs Pat up for a dance contest. They start practicing modern dance moves while Tiffany sneaks letters to Niki. 

Meanwhile Pat Senior is deep into magical thinking  superstitions to get the Eagles to win, and he is gambling big money. 

In the end, the dance contest and a pivotal Eagles playoff game happen on the same night leading to the inevitable end.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Silver Linings Playbook is a black romantic-comedy with the twist being mental illness of the characters. Silver Linings doesn't probe the meaning of mental illness: more  that everyone is more or less neurotic. Most of the humor comes from the strange compulsions and maladaptions of Pat and his family. 

I liked the movie because Pat and Tiffany are quirky and good-hearted, and that Pat Sr's goofy football antics provide levity. 

The script delivers clever lines for the whole cast and De Niro, Cooper and Lawrence are up to the challenge with a full range of emotion delivered though the window of altered mental states. 

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro

Directed by: David Russell, based on the novel by Matthew Quick

Rating: 3.5 stars

 

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The Impossible

Plot: During the Indian Ocean Tsunami in Thailand, a family is caught up in the wave, separated and beaten up. The movie is about their impossible survival. After set up scenes of family life, there is the disaster, splashing in the water, finding the way to help on dry land, and then finding each other.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: An emotional ride though a real life disaster with good actors and a skillful director. A good ride that I enjoyed. 

Highlights are the disaster footage. All the scenes of water splashing over the hotel and landscape are great. The scenes of Maria (Naomi Watts) getting battered by debris on the way to the air surface are exceptional. Most of Watts and McGregor's scenes are great. All three child actors are good -- not wooden at all. 

It was not as melodramatic as I feared that it would be. There are some tear-jerker scenes -- no mistake about that.  The story has is more tangible, realistic, and less manipulative -- or at least less manipulative than it could have been -- it is still a major movie after all. Being a true story helps credibility too.

Besides being about the disaster, it is also about taking care of each other, and taking care of other people. The movie evokes charitable human feelings. 

Cast: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor

Directed by: Juan Antonio Bayona

Rating:  3.5 stars: not as fun-to-watch as my other top picks, but it is a disaster movie. It moves up due to the acting and the rapid pace. About as good as Hunger Games and Avengers. 

 

More: The Impossible is a dumb title because nearly every action movie plot could be called The Impossible. 

Even More No one in Thailand seems to have a sponge to clean the dried blood off our heroes. Seems they could have managed to clean up a little by end of the movie. 

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Les Misérables

Plot: Criminal Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) completes 20 years at hard labor in post-revolutionary France, and then skips out on his parole.  Valjean receives charity in the form of church silver from a priest and ten years later he is a factory owner. One of his workers, Fantine (Anne Hathaway,) gets in a spat with coworkers and is fired. She falls in with prostitutes and is beaten by a soldier. Valjean somehow meets her, and takes her to a hospital where she dies. Valjean learns of her daughter Cosette (Isabelle Allen/Amanda Siegfried) who is watched over by thieving innkeepers Thenardier & his Madame (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter.) Time passes, Cosette is 15, and a revolution is brewing again. Young revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne) falls for Cosette, but police commander Javert (Russell Crowe) is pursuing Valjean, and Valjean hides with Cosette. The revolution plays out, and people die. After the revolution, love wins out.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The good parts are good, and the bad parts are slow. There is grand spectacle with some dull parts. There is some heart-stirring emotion. Some really good songs.

Being a movie cast with famous actors, the songs are staged for drama and less for musical perfection. This makes for more dramatic feeling and less toe tapping. Here is a version of the music on You Tube. 

The best parts are the Anne Hatheway's song "I Dreamed a Dream." She gives a renders a tearfully sad version with enough emotion for Oscar buzz. Of course, Susan Boyle sings it better musically.

I liked the revolution scenes too. Every scene with Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen is a highlight. 

As good as the good parts were, there were several songs that were weak both in musicality and in plot content, and  while the movie did not feel too long, I was daydreaming during the boring songs. 

The visuals are consistently great; the sets and the costumes were tops. 

Compared to other musicals, it is not as good as Evita or Moulin Rouge. I loved both of them. Les Misérables is better than The Hobbit. 

Cast:  Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, Eddie Redmayne

Directed by: Tom Hooper, based on the music by Herbert Kretzmer and the novel by Victor Hugo. 

Rating: 3.0 stars. I am glad I saw it.

 

More: I have not bought any songs from the soundtrack, but I am streaming the Youtube version of the musical. 

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