The eight or so previews I saw prior to Blackhat were indeed event films. More than a few of my interviews have suggested that's where we're headed: big pictures that have to be seen on the big screen. From the Seventh Son with Jeff Bridges to the often-moved Jupiter Ascending, let's hope the filmmakers don't mistake ambition or exercises for storytelling.
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The last three movies I've reviewed have received the same rating: three-and-a-half stars. This probably isn't a coincidence. Movies can be quite good and if just short of awesome, some re-evaluation could have been in order. Remember, people are paid big bucks to do this, and no one is perfect, though a few efforts, Psycho comes to mind, are just about there. It is so easy to pick apart a film and so hard to make one, yet you're not sure the filmmakers are sure what kind of story they have on their hands when the final cut begins. The Immitation Game, so strong for one hour and forty-five minutes, is one such film, that becomes an ode to its main character the last ten minutes when it's completely unnecessary. This isn't without admiration for what Morten Tyldum and Graham Moore, the director and writer, achieved; it's just that one wonders that if they looked back over the first ninety percent of what they did, they might have rethought how to finish this unassuming, compelling story. Then again, a writing instructor once said that finishing a manuscript is about the hardest thing you'll ever do. Was for me once. Maybe that's why movies and stories matter so much: we don't even know the ending to our own lives much less our daily lives.
You could subtitle last night's Golden Globes the rise of the indie. Richard Linklater, so pioneering the last twenty years, won Best Director for the best-reviewed films of the year, Boyhood. This is the same year that produced a documentary about the truly original director. I was truly surprised people remembered Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel from back in March; shut out were indie favorites such as Under the Skin, which many critics liked. I was glad it wasn't up for any, except for Scarlet Johannsson, who gave a brave performance and little to work with, even less to play against on camera.
Some also finally got honors they deserved: Jeffrey Tambor, Billy Bob Thornton, and Kevin Spacey have been good if not great for decades. Spacey gave a great speech, recounting an interaction with the one and only Stanley Kramer, a director barely thought of today who tackled social issues throughout the fifties and sixties. The speech was humble, recreated a momentous interaction with the director, and was clearly one that inspired the actor to this day and will for quite some time. Amy Adams won for Big Eyes; she makes more of an impression in a difficult role in the previews than some do over two hours. The Cecil B. DeMille award went to George Clooney for his tireless humanitarian work, and what a career! He's been on the big screen twenty years after a run on ER, and he's barely chosen a misguided project and story, even directing a few great movies to be remembered, such as Good Night, and Good Luck. In all a decent show, and the hosts will be very, very hard to follow, if it is indeed Fey and Poehler's last stint. You hate to say the "worst" of 2014, and only two came to mind as far as having talent in front of and behind the camera that created stories that never really took off. They are:
1. Sin City 2 - the guy at Sundance Cinema said this had a terrible marketing campaign, and yet this would've been an easy one: selling the sequel to the 2005 groundbreaking film that brought Frank Miller's vision to life. This sequel merely repeated the first movie but with banal dialogue and much of the same imagery, shootouts, and mean-spiritedness. And it ran out of ideas twenty minutes from the end. Me and two other people enjoyed saw this opening week. The next week it was gone. Robert Rodriguez needs new writers, ideas, and that elusive component, inspiration. 2. Under The Skin - My jaw hit the floor when Roger Ebert's guest critic said comparison's to Kubrick were not unwarranted. Oh, yes they are. This meandering, soulless, yet boldly original movie did create a world, had an unusual structure that was so slow, we really wondered what the point was. When viewing a preview of the film recently on DVD, I remembered the images and shots that made you pay attention; too bad the filmmakers couldn't back it up with heart, commentary, or...something. One note: the big summer releases such as Godzilla, Captain America (albeit in April), and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes were all good and solid, but none offered originality that will endure the test of time. My $.02. Another slight misfire, The Monuments Men, at least took on an original story and was watchable if not galvanizing. The characters seemed to be what was missing, and it is ironic that Scarlet Johansson in Under The Skin created the most memorable out or everyone in the above. 2014 may be seen as the year of the rise of cable TV. A guy at a nearby toy store said traffic had slowed and he wondered "if people just weren't getting out much anymore." With House of Cards, True Detective, and a slew of other good shows, it's little wonder. In the theater, movies seemed to appear, and be gone in a few weeks if no one showed. In my experience, these five were not to be missed and hopefully will become classics. In no particular order, the best five films of 2014 were:
1. Birdman - The year's bravest, most cinematic, effort showcased the most audacious performances and filmmaking to hit theaters this year. Wholly original and galvanizing, start to finish, even when it switched formats near the end. 2. Nightcrawler - Jake Gyllenhaal proves once again he can carry a movie on his back, and Dan Gilroy, mostly a writer, shows how to create the most memorable character of the year while mixing genres and providing societal commentary on not just a few subjects. 3. The Grand Budapest Hotel - entertaining from start to finish, this was pure storytelling with a gala of characters that never stopped surprising. 4. Foxcatcher - Through the levels of commentary lied a thriller that worked on every level. Steve Carell gives the performance of his career in a film that paid as much attention to filmmaking as it did to plot and characters. 5. Lucy - Scarlet Johannson proves as versatile as her director, Luc Besson, in his return to form. This was quite the mix of action, thriller, and ideas and jolted the summer box office. Distribution seems to be one of the biggest factors of the film industry as 2014 draws to a close. There's The Interview debacle, tied with the Sony-hacking debacle. The fact that tentpole releases prevailed, that one of the best-reviewed films of the year, Under the Skin, finally reached our shores and found a limited albeit satisfied audience (I was not one of them, though I can see and feel the admiration through recent articles). Through all my interviews, especially that with Pamela Douglas, cable TV, feature film releases, and streaming appear to have become complimenting and competing factors, if that can be a co-existing nexus of relationships. I keep thinking back to her comments about CBS starting to stream its shows, and raising the issue of when people will stop paying prices for seventy channels when they watch only ten. 2015 may indeed be the year when cable companies bow to the consumer. Not a bad change.
Reading Pamela Douglas's The Future of Television, there has to be a term called the Slow Reveal, where shows that run for hours slowly reveal all facets of storytelling: character, plot, setting, you name it. Even keep themes from us, we'll watch if it's interesting. Douglas notes in our interview that CBS just started streaming, so it's only a matter of time before all four of the majors are streaming, which is good for content creators. Whether it's Web series, which is rife according to Marx Pyle, television shows on major networks, or events that have to be seen in the theater, the future seems bright indeed. Actually, Douglas made the great point that cable companies, those behemoths we know little about, appear in danger. If you watch ten channels, why pay for, say, fifty and up? There are only so many hours in the day, and some of us have to work.
Seeing the Penguins of Madagascar today, I was reminded that animation has gotten so good, especially from Dreamworks, in its twentieth year of animation, that our expectations are pretty dang high. That can be difficult, and Steven Spielberg, co-founder of Dreamworks, knows all about expectations. He's also made less-than-stellar films after establishing himself as the box office king in the early eighties. Penguins isn't bad; it's just not quite the level of its shorts, with two key characters that are onscreen just enough in those little outings to provide moments if not seconds of memorable laughs. This is a ground-rule double, and could've been a homer.
Now, Birdman is a home run of the most personal, idiosyncratic order. We've seen previews, have a sense of what will happen, and then experience and never feel led astray, even when the movie deviates from its method at the end. Expectations are the mode here, and come Oscar time, I expect Michael Keaton and Alejandro G. Inarritu to reqp what they sew, specifically with how they engage their audience. In being so self-absorbed, the filmmakers and actors invite you in, and they may be less than perfect, but man do they achieve an intimacy not seen in a while. Reading the book How We Learn by Benedict Carey, he early on compares the brain to a film crew with cinematography - zooming in, framing shots, sound engineers - fiddling with volume, filtering background noise, editors and writers, a graphics person, a prop stylist, a composer working to supply the tone, feeling, and of course someone keeping the books, tracking invoices, facts, figures, and in the end, my own ending, where and when we’ll play to the biggest audience, achieve longevity. The director Carey says will decide which pieces go where, “braiding all these elements together.” So…are our brains the directors? We are, in fact, auteurs. Carey also states that our brains interprets scenes right “after they happen, inserting judgments, meanings, and context on the fly.” That’s the cinematic experience in a nutshell. No wonder we’re hooked.
Having just seen Big Hero 6, it's hard not to be hard on Disney. The formula of death so prominent, the moral choices so clear (so clear they're trite), and some lines lifted straight out of, I don't know, Star Wars and countless others where the guardian angel sacrifices. Also, none of the supporting characters are unlikable, or show unlikable traits. One thing worked: the preview this summer. It got us in the theater, and the robot come to life, Baymax, was the best, most memorable part of the preview, and his relationship with the boy the most curious in the movie. It's a page from WALLE, sure, but a good one. It evoked more than any California teenage character that's for sure.
You mean ratings can help or hinder at the box office? Not Nielsen--we're talking a PG-13 movie, Ouija, that darts to the top of the charts, debuting at $20 million and blowing past Fury and Gone Girl. Well, it's not all in the rating; it's also timing. Sure, many-a-salivating teenager wants a horror movie in the theater; it's a date movie, a group-of-friends movie, and scored the whopping 4.2 on the IMDB scale. So, yeah, there are lapses in the public's judgments. We don't want, or can't really handle, a Gone Girl every weekend, which, by the way, is still strong with a US take of $124 million total. Ratings and timing are key, and then there's the trailer for Birdman which is remembered by anyone who's seen it and has originality, integrity, and authenticity, all of which lead to universal appeal, written all over it. It probably won't pull big numbers, but will be seen and remembered. That we can only probably say for a handful of those who see Ouija.
Kill The Messenger, starring Jeremy Renner and based on Nick Schou's book, is currently in theaters and will probably be gone in a wee or two. Why? At a nearby multiplex it has two showings a day in just as many weeks in release. the Web was briefly aflutter with columns recalling Gary Webb's crusade. The book, finished by me a week ago, is prominent today, and mentions people such as Robert Parry of Consortium News. Movies remind us of times, issues, and current events that once engulfed our newsstands, even if for a day or two. I'm glad the film was made and called attention to this subject matter, even if Schou's book ended abruptly and we sense parts missing from the main character's life. It's still a snapshot, and hopefully much more.
In light of Gone Girl keeping the top spot at the box office, it struck me that it's an authentic voice and story. The ensemble comedy, This is Where I Leave You, is out of the top ten after two weeks. The Judge, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall, with anything starring the former oozes integrity and the latter is one of the few bankable stars, debuted at fifth. It didn't strike me as an authentic work; more as a John Grisham-esque courtroom thriller, and though we haven't seen one in a while, we have seen them before. Watch for original works such as Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman and Nightcrawler to triumph in the weeks ahead. Reading The New York Times interview with Michael Keaton, Birdman appears a frontrunner for this year's Oscar race, and is a completely original work, deriving and arising from the director's experiences. It's also eight years after The New Yorker declared "something was afoot in Mexican filmmaking." Remember 2006, when Inarritu's Babel, Del Torro's Pan's Labyrinth, and Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men all came out? Recall last year, when Curaon's Gravity won seven Oscars. The three are still on a roll, and taking their time, which proves to produce original work.
Having finished Gone Girl and seeing the film tonight, I feel satisfied already. It's a wonderfully-structured book, unique in form, if not a happy ending, definitely a fulfilling one. The one weakness would be the dialogue: at times it moves the story along with characters asking questions we're thinking of instead of sounding like people. Flynn adapted her own work, but Fincher, by all accounts, is a force. Seeing it tonight, we brace for his return to Zodiac and Fight Club territory, and for multidimensional characters that if not good, at least are recognizable. More than that, parts of them are recognizable, and then we think about how it doesn't take much to make these people inspired enough that we follow them, be with them, for over two hours.
Seriously: reading Gone Girl, which reportedly has sold more than 1.8 million copies worldwide, and that was as of last year, and you can see David Fincher lining this story up after the first fifty pages. This may or may not win Best Picture, as The Social Network almost did, but it will be a contender. I'm also not sure how good Ben Affleck will be, but he will likely be better with such a strong director, who likes closeups, knows how to cut a scene, and keep things moving for almost two-and-half hours. The story, and the great, structure, are there, which is probably why Guardians of the Galaxy is till in eighth place in the US box office, and why This is Where I Leave You fell from second to fourth, barely passing the twenty million mark, with quite the cast. I remember William Goldman saying in one of his books that it's all in the casting. That's a big part, sure, but ideas and stories endure.
Goodness, gracious I wonder sometimes how long before people just stay home. Let me back up: I just finished the first episode of True Detective, having been a fan of Nic Pizzolatto's novel Galveston and hearing so much about how good the show is, and then it is that good. You hear about the acting, the atmosphere "you can eat," according to one friend. Both are so good you forget about the filmmaking--we don't notice the cuts, but we sure do notice what we're looking at. And it's taken a place, Louisiana, that we've seen before many times on film, and here's where the extended series format can take its time, which we're grateful for. We notice the music by T Bone Burnett, the photography, and cannot imagine The Maze Runner coming close to this with any audience twenty-five and up. Doesn't mean they won't stop trying, but this on the big screen would be something to behold.
A professional athlete, whom we don't know much about outside of his versatility and dependability on the field, which are admirable traits, commits a terrible act. Someone films it, sends the disc to the league officials. The commissioner is informed, knows about the horrific act of the athlete, who is male by the way, beating his wife. The commissioner sits on it, or ignores it, or...well, we don't what he does with this knowledge, or if he's seen the disc. All we know is the net effect: the commissioner did nothing. Then the woman presses charges. Someone gets hold of the footage, and splays it on the Internet. Now the commissioner comes out saying he didn't make an announcement about the issue because he feared backlash. So now what? The commissioner, of course, is Roger Goodell, the player is Ray Rice, and the league is the N.F.L. which, a friend once commented, is entertainment. To a point.
I feel the same way about cinema. David Cronenberg said that we, along with our psychological underpinnings, create our culture. The underpinning in the above is anger and lack of control. It might be moral rottenness to the core, but we don't know that much about Ray Rice, and this isn't the first nor, I fear, the last case of spousal abuse in the NFL or society. He clearly cannot control one part of his persona, but is he the symptom of a larger machine? How he had talent and was groomed and lured to play football professionally? Does he know any different? Was there something before or after the incident that compelled him, or his lady, to act that way? This is the stuff stories are made of, and that thing called life. I said in my review of Guardians of the Galaxy that one might find it depressing that this is the highest grossing film of the year. Maybe. In an upcoming interview with author Marx Pyle, he said the movie had the feel of a roller coaster, like Star Wars. It takes brevity to pony up tons of cash to make this mind of movie that I didn't take seriously for a second when I saw the preview in April. Then it found its legs, had great word of mouth, which Donald Maass said in his seminal book Writing the Breakout Novel, is the secret grease to the rails in creating a hit.
We also know the drill: the sequel will be out in 2-3 years. I still remember when Back to the Future said "To Be Continued" after the first few weeks of showing. We can also imagine this world getting bigger, which means Guardians inspired and peaked our interest, and that's no small accomplis You know the saying, it's what you say, and what you don't. Rob Reiner's comedy And So It Goes is out of the top ten at the box office, and even more surprising is the PG-13 The Expendables 3 opening at the number four spot with only 16 million. With that cast? The toned down content with the corresponding rating a mistake? Also, The Giver, based on a huge bestselling book among middle and high school students across the country debuted at no. 5. Phillip Noyce, who appeared on our radar with Dead Calm (1989) and later directed Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994) is better with action and thrillers. His last film was Salt with Angelina Jolie, which The New Yorker called impersonal, but boy was it fun! Sentiment may not be his thing; even his Rabbit-proof Fence was propelled by a plot and journey on many levels. He'll be back. Perhaps he lost control of this one. Which brings us back to Reiner, though he's too talented to flop this many times. Or, this is the only kind of safe movie he can get made. But he made Flipped, also based on a well-liked book. Hopefully, he will be back, too.
It really did sneak up on me how much The Wolf of Wall Street matters. You can hear the Wall St. types saying, "Yeah, that was the '80s..." except after reading Matt Taibbi's The Divide this summer, how many Wall St. executives have gone to jail? How many have denied what was depicted in Martin Scorsese's film? Goldman & Sachs and other heavies say, "Well, that was penny stocks salespeople." And it's part of America, a part that still isn't reined in, and the deeper secret of who really knows what goes on in those isolated communities that are, in the words of Spike Jonze's character, "Sort of" regulated. We still don't really know. There are rules in place for trading, and Michael Lewis's Flash Boys showed how the dark pools are created and trade heavily beyond the touch of the consumer. One starts to piece together what the pie might look like, and just what kind of isolated reality Wall St. is.
The movie is volumes better the second time. The editing is seamless, especially with voiceovers during transitions. DiCaprio's performance is nuanced and fine tuned. We sense his inner struggles. This movie matters more all the time, to ages ranging from teens to those approaching a century. The movie's a snapshot, yet so applies. And did I mention it's commentary on men? The east coast? Midlife crises? When rules are absent? Watching last year's Out of the Furnace, I was struck how even if a story is predictable, contains elements we've seen before, in a place we've seen before, if the dialogue sounds real, the acting is good, things are well paced, and good, evocative music is thrown in (seen this before, too), we'll go stay tuned. We'll finish the story if things are well staged, paced, and handled. Check out any action movie. A friend strongly urges me to see Guardians of the Galaxy because of its "polished moviemaking," he says, after I convinced him to see Lucy because of the same thing. You know that notion of Buddhism: it's not what you do, but how you do it.
One gets inspired, who knows where from. Music is still so big in many people's lives, that when you've tracked a composer such as Eric Serra only to be led to one connection, through film, that says something. You wait for his scores in the films of Luc Besson. You wait for Luc's films, and his latest is truly original, one he long spent researching. James Cameron once defended his megabudgets by saying, "For $7, you get a lot of movie. End of story." He has a point. Lucy has quite the story and vision, and beneath that, what we expect from Besson's bang-bang interludes. But they work. The movie also uplifts, which is what the camera and sound can do.
Having just seen Planes: Fire & Rescue, the key underneath all animation is the writing. The characters in this film and what they say are instantly forgettable. I thought back to what the Executive Producer of this movie has done as a director, and he's been involved in the writing on the story level in all four vastly superior animated films I list. It boils down to story, or agendas, or heck, I started trying to think of witticisms during the movie and couldn't think of any. You know that zone between the performers and the audience? There has to be something there. Visuals are nice, but in this day and age of animation, there has to be more writing, more discussion around the conference tables at Disney. This was made by Disney Animation Studios, and I'm not sure of the relationship with Disney as a company, but a takeover of some sort by writers may be in order.
Oh, was I glad to see Luc Besson's Lucy pound the competition at the box office this weekend. In interviews, the director has talked about how he pursued this material, the lengths his female lead went to, and you know, it all sounds so personal. Goodness knows it's original, and proves once again it's the director, also the writer in this case, that creates the material and can challenge viewers. We see the lame comedy Sex Tape drop its haul to just over 6 million in its second week, with Transformers slowing to 4.7 million in its fifth. The big surprise was Rob Reiner's And So It Goes debuting in 8th place. Starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, these "safe comedies" used to be box office gold, and 25 years after Reiner hit a home run with When Harry Met Sally..., not hugely admired by me but my many of my brethren, as a director he seems poised for another hit. He had one a few years ago with The Bucket List, but he needs to take a risk. A college friend scoffed at him as a director, saying he always played it safe. Not always, but too nice might be his bigger issue, especially when we'd bet a fair amount of money that those two stars, smiling in the movie poster, end up together at the end. With Lucy, who knows what'll happen? That's the mystery, and that will draw more people in with the right story and ideas.
Three weeks into release, the new Transformers has fallen to 16 million, perpetuating the notion that blockbusters may still come, but their longevity at the box office depends on...what? Characters? Wit? Special effects? Well, at this stage, the latter we've seen what CGI can do for the better part of a decade. As John Badham said in our interview, we can do things now we couldn't even conceive of a decade ago. Now it's back to story, or money, or the international markets, where brands can transfer and find legs at the b.o. After all, it's just entertainment. But story connects with audiences. This we note with Guardians of the Galaxy on the horizon, which looks like it has more special effects than three of this year's blockbusters combined. They try for wit in the trailer, and almost get there. I'm still not sure if that offering will find longevity outside of the wacky
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