My friend Dewey is a true Cinemaphile and his reviews need a wider audience - so I'm adding dozens to his circulation by adding his reviews to this Blog.
Clint Eastwood's adaptation of the life story of
Navy Seal Chris Kyle garnered Academy Award nominations, and was the
top-grossing film released in 2014. It is an interesting film which tries
to function in as non-political a vacuum as possible, but ultimately (for me)
cannot get away from such matters. Kyle (Bradley Cooper) was a young man
without a purpose in life, until he decided to enlist (at an age older than
most would) in the Navy Seals. There he finds purpose, and even meets his
wife Taya (Sienna Miller) while stationed in San Diego. He gets shipped
out right after his marriage, and ends up an elite sniper in Iraq. Flashbacks to young Chris' life show that his father believed there were
three kinds of people in the world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs.
Chris is told to be a sheepdog, and as the overwatch sniper for units
doing door-to-door searches in Iraq, he finds his calling. The film open
with a stone cold, suspenseful scene where Chris sights a woman approaching his
convoy with what appears to be a grenade--which she then hands to a child.
Chris has to decide whether to take that shot. As the film
progresses, we see the toll the war takes on Chris. His marriage is
rocky--he rarely sees his kids, and when he is home, he can only think of
returning to the battlefield. He cannot stop thinking about the soldiers'
lives he saves by stopping bad guys--wolves--from doing them harm. He is
undone by the shots he has to take, and the losses in his unit. A rival
sniper working for the Iraqis is Chris' dark mirror--he has to put a stop to
this man, who is crippling their operations and killing American soldiers. From moment to moment, Sniper works like a well-oiled machine,
intense and deeply felt, due to two men: Eastwood and Bradley Cooper.
Eastwood has never been a flashy director, but he knows how to film
action scenes so you can see what is going on, but that still ramp you up, and
he does not put in a lot of "look at me" psychology or fancy shots--his
approach serves this material well. Cooper--whom has become one of our
best actors--completely steps into Kyle's skin, never judging, just inhabiting
the man. (I would have been fine with him winning for Best Actor.)
However, I could not stop thinking about the Iraq invasion, and scenes of
soldiers kicking in doors and rousting citizens just didn't sit right with me.
And the rival sniper--how is what he is doing any different (ideology
aside) than what Kyle was doing? The movie does not grapple with these
thorny issues, and as such, is a tense, well-done war film, but lacks any
insight into the greater struggles. Kudos are due, however, for dealing
with Chris' post-war life, and his struggle with PTSD. Ironic that the
very thing he did to help himself--help other veterans--led to his unfortunate
death. The end of the movie is sobering, but again, lacks any insight
into the greater irony of a man that survived a war zone, but died in Texas by
another American's gun. (Dude, that can't be a spoiler--everyone knows what
happened to Kyle.) Grade: B+.
I really wanted to love this movie, writer/director J.C. Chandor's love
letter to New York and the movies of Sidney Lumet.
In 1981 New York, Abel
Morales (Oscar Isaac) is a mostly fair and clean businessman, working in a
corrupt industry--the oil heating business. Abel is looking to expand the
company he bought from his father-in-law and turned into a success, by buying a
dock and refinery lot from Hasidic businessman. He puts up his entire
savings on the down-payment, and has a short window of time to pay the
remainder, or forfeit his deposit, But forces are marshalling against Abel. A rival is hitting his trucks - with armed goons roughing up his drivers, stealing the trucks and draining them of the oil shipment. As the film opens, Julian (Elyes Gabel) is sent to the hospital after one
such hijacking, and the pressure is on Abel to protect his fleet. The
Union rep wants to arm the drivers, which is against the law, and threatens to
pull them off the trucks if they are not. An ambitious District Attorney
(David Oyelowo) investigating the oil heating business is intent on indicting
Abel. And Abel has moved into a new house with his wife Anna (Jessica
Chastain) and their kids, and a man lurking outside one night drops a gun
outside their window. The bank is getting restless about the hijackings
and possible indictments. It all reaches a head when Julian returns to
the job, and he is hijacked again, pulls a gun, and gets into a gunfight with
the hijackers, on a bridge. When Julian flees the scene, Able needs to
hand him over to the cops, or things will get even worse for him. And
what does Anna know about the books they are hiding from the D.A.? There
are a lot of things to admire in Chandor's film (not the least of which are
good performances from two of our best actors in Isaac and Chastain, and great
supporting work from Albert Brooks, among others) but there are some scenes
that just don't ring true. And the ending fell flat to me, with a
melodramatic turn that just didn't work and screamed "first draft, young
ambitious writer." Shame. Chandor is a solid filmmaker, and
the look of the film, and the recreation of 1981 New York was spot-on, but it just
fell a bit short. Grade: B.
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of my favorite filmmakers, but he has
increasingly followed his own muse (even when adapting other people's
material), and seemingly takes a view of "if the audience can follow along
and get into my groove, fine. If not, that's fine, too." Long
story short, I was on board with Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's
cock-eyed private eye tale.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Larry "Doc"
Sportello, a beach bum/stoner/private detective, still carrying a flame for his
ex, when she walks through his door one night. Shasta Fay (Katherine
Waterston) had taken up with a rich real estate magnate, Michael Wolfman (Eric
Roberts), and now fears his wife and other cohorts are scheming to get Wolfman
committed to an institution, because he has now embraced the hippie lifestyle,
and wants to give away his newest housing development "to the
people." Doc takes on the case (how could he say no to Shasta) and
proceeds to go down the rabbit hole of Nazi bikers, Oriental massage parlor
workers, missing musicians, and crazy dentists (Martin Short memorably playing
one memorable tooth doctor.) A lot of folks have had a hard time
following the plot, and others saying that you aren't even supposed to follow
the plot, that it is beside the point. I actually don't think this view
is valid. It is a complex story, that ambles and lurches into all kinds
of strange alley ways, and Anderson does his best to be circumspect and spare
when it suits him, but the plot does make "sense." Anchored by
Phoenix's perpetually laid back (and very stoned) protagonist, Vice floats
by on an almost psychedelic wave of early 70's paranoia. At heart the
film is really about the "squares" versus the hippies, and how the
Establishment hates the hippies, but also envies them, and how the
Establishment co-opted the things they liked (free love, recreational drugs)
and put their own spin on them, at the same time they tried to deny the parts of
the hippie lifestyle that don't make anybody any money! In some ways, the
film (and I assume this bent comes from Pynchon's novel) is a funny, wry, but
deep down kind of angry and sad look at the Powers That Be. One of the
most interesting angles is how the drug culture gets turned into a vertically
integrated Big Business, involving all kinds of unlikely types. But
mostly, the film is Doc bumping into all sorts of odd folks, including a
completely wonderful Josh Brolin as Doc's cop frenemy "Bigfoot" Bjornsen,
whom all by himself, encapsulates the push and pull of societal forces at work.
It is hard to recommend a movie as shaggy and lengthy as this one, but
for me, the time spent was very enjoyable, and flew by. For my money,
another winner from a director who is yet to make a bad film. Grade: A
Based on the graphic
novel The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons,
co-writer/director Matthew Vaughn has done the incredible--made a movie better than
the comic--and the comic was already awesome!
Colin Firth stars as Harry
Hart, a very well-dressed, dapper English fellow, who is really a Kingsman--a
"knight" in a very secret, well-funded, and unaffiliated (as in, not
beholden to any government) spy organization. As the film opens, an
operation in the Middle East goes sideways, and a Kingsman is killed. Harry comforts the widow and her young son, "Eggsy" (real name
Gary), and offers them a phone number for one favor to be cashed in.
Years later, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is all grown up, and is running in the
mean streets of London. His mother has a gangster boyfriend, and when
Eggsy runs afoul of his gang, he steals a car and ends up in jail. He
calls the secret number, and Harry bails him out. At the same time, an
operation in Switzerland goes wrong, with a Kingsman killed trying to rescue a
kidnapped climate scientist (played by Mark Hamilll.) When a Kingsman
falls, all the knights nominate one person to enter the training program, to
cull down to one recruit to take the fallen knight's place. Harry takes
another look at Eggsy, who has great grades and gymnastic skills, but a poor
attitude. Harry believes the Kingsman are doing themselves a disservice
by being class snobs, and he nominates Eggsy as his candidate. The rest
of the film details Eggsy's lunatic training program (which seems designed to
almost kill the candidates!) and Harry's investigation into the missing
scientist, and other missing leaders. His search brings him into the path
of eccentric tech billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), and a
conspiracy that threatens to kill a lot of the world's citizens.
(All for a good cause, it should be said.) I won't detail
Valentine's plan, as it is very shocking and should not be spoiled. It is
obvious that Kingsman is a bit of a cheeky take on James Bond and
other spy thrillers, but there are two approaches you can take to this kind of
parody.
The Airplane or Austin Powers route,
and go for full-blown, parodic comedy.
The Scream and
Shaun of the Dead tact, which is to make fun of some of the conventions,
but still take the genre seriously, and use it to make specific thematic
points.
Kingsman takes the second approach, and winds up with
an action film that is just flat-out fun, with kinetic action sequences, colorful dialogue, and wonderful characters. At its heart, Kingsman is
a critique of the class struggle in England (which is better than it used to
be, but has never gone away.) Firth is a revelation as the butt-kicking
would-be Bond, and Egerton steals the show with his cheeky but naive personality
(and innate good nature.) Great supporting work from Mark Strong and
Michael Caine does not hurt, and Jackson seems to be having a ball playing the
villain here. Be warned--the film is a bit violent (particularly during
one segment), but the point seems to be that James Bond films would not go
there, but hey, we are going full-bore on what would really go
down. I had so much fun with this energetic film that never forgets to
add the right touch of levity, but never mocks the genre. I wanted to see
it again right away, so that's my endorsement, right there. Grade: A- .
I love movies about process, and about hidden
history.
I had heard of Enigma, the machine the Germans used for
transmitting unbreakable coded messages during World War II, and the
codebreakers working to unlock its secrets and end the war. I had heard
of Alan Turing, but didn't connect him to Enigma.
The Imitation Game works
on two very interesting levels:
An account of Turing and his
team's efforts to break the Enigma machine (an effort that was only
de-classified more than 50 years after the fact)
A condemnation
of close-minded thinking that marginalizes people, even those extraordinary
ones who change history, and save lives--the "greatest generation"
indeed.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Turing, a beyond brilliant
mathematician and cryptologist, whom shows up at the Bletchley Park "radio
factory" for a job. Bletchley is actually a top secret military
installation in England, run by a very uptight Commander Denniston (Charles
Dance) and his unit's main function is to break Enigma. Turing is just
another man on the team led by Hugh (Matthew Goode), and Turing believes he
needs a machine to beat the Enigma machine. The Germans code their
messages, and the receiver of those messages uses the Enigma machine--set to
the specific setting that changes every day--to decode the message.
The problem is there are over 159 million million (basically, 159
followed by 18 zeroes!) possible settings, so a small unit of men has no chance
of running all the settings in the 18 hours they have before the setting
changes again--hence the need for a machine that can run those possibilities
and spit out the setting that will unlock the messages. No one believes
in Alan's machine, an issue further complicated by the fact that Alan is a
borderline autistic savant, who doesn't get jokes and social niceties.
After Alan appeals to Churchill himself, he becomes head of the project,
and needs new cryptologists, A crossword puzzle test in the newspaper
brings out candidates, among them a woman, Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley). If
Turing is dismissed for being odd, Joan is dismissed for simply being a woman
in 1940's England. But she is very talented, and Alan takes a shine to
her, and she joins his team.
Meanwhile the war rages on, London
bombed into rubble, people starving, soldiers dying, and the military growing
weary of Turing's belief in his "machine" and the lack of results.
The Imitation Game is about secrets upon secrets--the top
secret codebreaking team, the possible Soviet double agent in their midst, Joan
hiding what she is doing from her disapproving and traditional parents, the MI6
agent Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong) lurking about, and Alan hiding his true
self--he is gay, which is illegal in England. The film moves between the
1940's and the effort to break Enigma, Alan's years as a child in school
(bullied of course), and 1951, when the police investigate a robbery at Alan's
home, which leads to his greatest secret being uncovered. The
film--directed with invisible urgency by Morton Tyldum and well-written (if occasionally
on the nose) by Graham Moore--is a rich experience, a look into secret
history, and a time that seems very foreign to us in our more enlightened age.
The scene where the team stumbles into a way to break Enigma is one of my
favorite scenes of the year, and the third act is full of one interesting turn
after another. The supporting cast is excellent, with Dance, Goode and
Strong doing their usual outstanding work. But the film belongs to
Cumberbatch (whom has played this type of barely social genius before) and
Knightley (she gives one great performance after another, it seems.) I
defy you not to be a little outraged and sad by the end of the film, as Turing
was not only a war hero, his machine also led to the modern computer, and what
happens to him is cruel and unforgivable. Much of the film is about how
we marginalize those that are different than us, and how we (as a civilization)
may deny people their lives and contributions because they are not what we want
or expect. As such, an undercurrent of anger and melancholy runs under
this historical story, that tells us in no uncertain terms that we have come
far, but we should never forget how much better we could treat--and empathize
with--all people. Grade: "A"
