American Sniper

This is going to be a very short review.

American Sniper is a rather promising movie, but I can't help but feel its entirety is a mixed bag, almost always ending up on the negative side of that statement.

It details the life of America's most deadly sniper, Chris Kyle, and while director Clint Eastwood does a bang-up job in the early going pacing Kyle's pre-sniper days very well, he seems to struggle with how to pace the ending, which is quite understandable as Kyle was murdered after the source autobiography as well as actual filming had actually begun. But despite this late stumble, Eastwood's direction is, on the whole, very good. I would argue he's the greatest actor-director in history (at least that I can think of while writing this sentence), and he has some truly stand-out moments, not least of which is the sandstorm scene.

Nevertheless, the film is a true and honest testament to a modern day American hero and his struggles within himself to overcome the guilt of killing some of the (albeit deserving) people he killed and to overcome the PTSD he suffered back home.

Bradley Cooper delivers a very strong performance, the best of his career (yes, even better than his outstanding Silver Linings Playbook work), and Sienna Miller is solid enough as well.

The writing is what really destroys any chances the movie has at greatness of any sort. It is essentially an American propaganda piece without an ounce of understanding of cultural differences (not that I'm trying to give any excuse for Islamic militants). Strangely I found some of Cooper's strongest moments to be when he's making up for the script's massive shortcoming's, somehow reconciling Kyle's hearty agreement with a fellow soldier's noisy and ignorant (and often vulgar) blanket denunciation of Arabs, their culture, and the entirety of the Islamic religion and its followers in one scene, and showing incredible empathy for the plights of those whose denunciation he endorsed just a minute or two earlier. He also does a wondrous job making his PTSD believable and not over the top, especially since the script has absolutely no build-up to it. Considering the script's horrendousness, Clint Eastwood's ability to at least occasionally add some sort of unifying tone is quite a feat, even if it's only, as I implied, about one-quarter of the time.

72

The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game is a British movie in the absolute best sense of the word. Understated yet assertive, it rather conforms to its main thesis: Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

Superbly written by Graham Moore from Andrew Hodges biography of one of the men most misunderstood during his generation, The Imitation Game works equally well as a biopic, an acting showcase, and a heartbreaking look at life’s injustices, and only slightly less well as a thriller, though it never really tries to be one.

The film never soapboxes, yet by the end, there is the definite sense that something special has just been witnessed. Director Morten Tyldum deserves much credit for this. He walks a fine line straddling emotional potency and emotional overbearance and he does so with poise remarkable for a man directing his first English-language work. Alexandre Desplat’s excellent score certainly does not hurt either.

Neither do the performances. As Alan Turing, Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a masterful portrayal of a troubled genius nuanced so as to not resemble his Sherlock Holmes even in the minutest sense. It is most surely a mannered performance, but every mannerism feels incredibly natural and his emotional reveals are handled expertly. His genius is not precocious, instead being comfortable in his own skin because of a couple of loving persons. He makes Turing both a wretched human being and one the audience cannot help but sympathize with.

Keira Knightley gives arguably her best ever performance. Perhaps even more impressive, she’s actually convincing at playing the brilliant Joan Clarke. The rest of the cast is also up to the task and whether it be Mark Strong or Allen Leech, Charles Dance or Matthew Goode, each is up to the task.

But the movie is more than just about Turing’s tremendous accomplishments and contributions to the Allied war effort. It is also his homosexuality, and, perhaps more importantly, about the injustice of life, in which a national hero, admittedly unknown, can be convicted of a crime no matter how harmless.

The Imitation game is an excellent film and a deserving tribute to a man whose singular genius altered history.

The Imitation Game is one of my favorite movies of the year, not just for Cumberbatch’s performance or just for the complete Britishness of the proceedings, but for the honestness of its portrayal of a man struggling with himself in a society that cannot accept him.

93

Gone Girl

Before I saw Gone Girl, I wasn’t expecting the best things. Many of the people whose opinions I trust were somewhat underwhelmed by it, so I went in with low expectations.

Needless to say, those expectations were far exceeded. No, it’s certainly not a perfect film, but it’s certainly a very, very good one.

Let’s begin with what’s wrong with it. Like so many of the movies I’ve seen this year, the movie’s biggest weakness is its direction. Arguably the living king of the thriller, David Fincher fails to really find the right tone for his film. Fincher needed to find the right mix between a thriller and a movie about everyday life, as the movie is largely about how Ben Affleck’s character attempts to go on living his everyday life even as it is being ripped up all around him.

Unfortunately, Fincher does not really succeed, and it is not really until the film’s final, more thriller-oriented act that he really finds his directorial stride. The rest of the time, he seems to find himself unable to insert the necessary thriller edge, and the film’s tone is rather too pedestrian for much of the runtime as a result. In other words, the movie should mostly be about and feel like the everyday, but it should always have that thriller edge, which it is oftentimes lacking.

The movie is written by Gillian Flynn, who wrote the source novel, and I really did not come to a full appreciation for her script until I was able to look back on the movie after it was over. The early flashback scenes are utter brilliance as she uses a keen ear for dialogue to create conversations that are too good to be true. The way it never telegraphs anything and only shows you the parts of the picture you should be able to see at any given moment is also quite admirable.

Along a different vein, with their contribution to this film, it seems David Fincher has found the perfect creative team. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score is terrific and rivals the excellence of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Jeff Baxter’s editing and Jeff Cronenweth’s cinematography are likewise excellent.

The film’s acting is probably its greatest strength, and perhaps its greatest surprise as well. Ben Affleck carries the movie quite well. He uses his limitations as an actor brilliantly in creating a character that was completely out of touch with his life before his wife’s disappearance and that is completely out of his depth after the disappearance. His lack of conviction is also handled impeccably well as Affleck makes his reluctant interest feel completely natural. It is an outstanding performance, easily his best since his Oscar-worthy work in Hollywoodland, and another sign, along with the work I just mentioned, that he has talent if he is challenged in the right ways.

As Affleck’s wife, Rosamund Pike is stunning. She takes on a deceptively hard character, and succeeds wonderfully. She takes two seemingly completely disparate personalities, the normal and the psychotic, and masterfully combines them into a single, completely believable human being. Simply stunning.

The supporting parts are also mostly well handled, not least by Carrie Coon as Affleck’s sister. As the investigating detective, Kim Dickens is also effective at portraying the appropriate sense that she strongly believes something but has to put her personal beliefs on the back burner until the evidence shows them to be true.

Tyler Perry is never anything special, but as the big-shot attorney, he exudes a truly astounding amount of charisma. Neil Patrick Harris, while certainly distracting, is not at all close to the terribleness Matt Damon achieved in Interstellar.

All in all, I was far more pleased with Gone Girl than I expected to be.

90

Interstellar

Of all of the movies coming out in 2014, this was probably the one I was looking forward to the most. Overall, I must say it was a mixed bag. With Christopher Nolan at the helm, it would be unrealistic to expect anything other than a great movie, but it was, at best, just that. It was not an excellent movie or a brilliant one. In many ways, it was a disappointment.

It most certainly is an ambitious movie, visually, scientifically, imaginatively. But therein lies much of its problems. There is too much suspension of disbelief required in the late-going, a problem only saved by Matthew McConaughey, and the entire thriller section in the middle is telegraphed (and therefore unsurprising), absurd, and completely distracting due to the overrated Matt Damon’s presence. Just like the plot twists in The Dark Knight Rises, these moments and sequences make it seem like Nolan is just going for ambition for its own sake right now, and I hope he stops soon.

The movie is about humanity destroying itself and then pushing its limits to persevere and save itself from self-imposed extermination. This is all fine, well, and good, but maybe Nolan and his brother should have persevered and saved their own movie from self-imposed extermination by coming up with a different reason to fear for the mission’s success that did not involve Matt Damon.

The rest of the movie, though, is breathtaking and brilliant. The visual effects are stunning, as is the art direction. Hans Zimmer’s score is another tone poem, and it works quite well. Similar to Emmanuel Lubezki’s work in Gravity, Hoyte van Hoytema finds a way to make his cinematography gorgeous and great, even when he’s limited to unusual angles in CGI background scenes.

The movie really succeeds, though, because of its acting. Matthew McConaughey is an able and effortlessly charismatic lead throughout, but he furthers that by taking advantage of his every emotional scene. His scene while watching his daughter Murph grow up before his eyes is the stuff legends are made of.

And as Murph, Jessica Chastain and Mackenzie Foy are both solid and manage to play off of each other rather well.

Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine are fine, but neither really overcomes the limitations the script places upon them. Bill Irwin as the voice of the robot TARS, is really the only other performance worthy of mention above all the others.

So all in all, it has that wow factor, but once you get past the “I just got my mind blown” moments, which it admittedly has in spades, the acting is really what keeps it all standing.

No, it's not really trying to be 2001: A Space Odyssey at all, but it's hard to really go to bat for it in any sort of committed capacity regardless.

83

Nightcrawler

It is an exceedingly rare event for a fledgling writer-director to achieve excellence with his or her first effort. With Nightcrawler, Dan Gilroy has achieved excellence.

Gilroy’s direction brilliantly creates a perfectly intense and thrilling atmosphere, which is only aided by James Newton Howard’s great, Drive-like score. Gilroy’s script goes the extra mile, developing the characters and not just leaving them to act as pawns of the storyline. As the film is in many ways a character study, this is especially true and noteworthy of the main supporting characters.

Nightcrawler was given little chance by the general public because it was advertised as a sort of horror movie. This is exceedingly unfortunate as, while it is certainly not easy to sit through at times, this has everything to do with its fascinating protagonist and nothing to do with cheap scare tactics.

This sociopathic protagonist, Louis Bloom, portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal in a towering and fascinating 5-star performance of an intensely unlikable, profoundly watchable character, drives the plot through his gradual descent. The exploration of the depths to which he will sink to get the next big break is both nerve-racking and effortlessly watchable. It is easily the best performance of Gyllenhaal’s career and will be a hard one to top by anyone else I see.

The supporting cast, anchored by the solid, and sometimes heartbreaking, performances of Rene Russo and Reza Ahmed, ably-handles their parts.

At this unfortunately early stage in my movie-viewing efforts this year, this is my favorite movie yet, and it will take something rather special to unseat it. We’ll have to see if the consensus choice, Birdman, can do it.

94

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

My thoughts will be relatively short.

The last decade and a half have given us the opportunity to witness three of the new millennium's first decade's best films and three of the second’s most ambitious, if mediocre. It has given us the opportunity to witness the occasional brilliance Peter Jackson can achieve when directing the spectacle and the intimate moment in rapid succession. They have also showed us his apparent weakness for the spectacular, something which served him less than well with The Hobbit’s first installment and which only worked with its second because the moments of spectacle were given slightly lesser weight than the intimate ones.

Unfortunately the third and final Middle Earth installment ever, is saddled with action whose importance in the grand scheme of things is, according to the movie, much greater than it actually is.

For this third Hobbit is hurt most not by its lackluster continuity, as the first one was, but by its apparent lack of care about the characters the audience has been with for the preceding 6 hours.

This is not to say that its action scenes are not entertaining. Quite the opposite, in fact. They are thoroughly so. But they receive so much emphasis it’s hard to imagine what Jackson and co-screenwriters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Guillermo del Toro were thinking. In a movie of such relatively abbreviated runtime as this, to, for instance, take the time to have Legolas do a slow motion jump sequence is an insult to the book, the film series, and everyone who cares even semi-passionately about either of them.

This stands as a detriment to virtually of the performances. Richard Armitage’s great work as an increasingly dragon-sick Thorin Oakenshield is arguably the sole exception. He handles his descent into madness very well and is equally believable in his return to his senses, his scene with Dwalin (I think) being of particular note. That being said, he could have been even better if given more opportunity by Peter Jackson. Some of Jackson’s staging choices and cinematography choices are head-scratchers and his decision to make the gold floor swirl around and stuff instead of zooming in on Armitage’s face is confusing at best. Additionally, one or two more scenes on the recovery end would have done wonders for his performance and would have almost certainly pushed him over the top for me.

Martin Freeman is one of my favorite actors working today because he is so darn likable and because he uses the same stock mannerisms to create such unique characters. He delivers here just as he did in the first two installments. But he could have been even better had Jackson given him more of an opportunity to shine.

There are a few other players worthy of mention. Graham McTavish, who I’m pretty sure plays Dwalin, is my favorite of the dwarves, and Luke Evans follows up his MVP performance in the 2^nd movie (by my reckoning) with another solid, if lesser, effort here, that could have been helped by more focus on Jackson’s part. Billy Connolly is thoroughly entertaining in his very short time, and Evangeline Lilly, though largely lost (see what I did there?!?!) and forgotten for most of the movie, somehow makes her ridiculous romance with the hot dwarf worthwhile with her final scene.

On the other side of that coin, Lee Pace once again stinks it up with his effortlessly unintimidating performance. He is supposedly some sort of villain, at least to some degree. His character is given more potential depth in the finale, but he fails to capitalize on it in anything but his final scene, which is admittedly well done. Orlando Bloom is so universally bad all the time in every aspect of his acting career he need not be discussed here.

Howard Shores score brilliantly weaves together all of his prior themes into a wonderful score, and the special effects and set design are excellent as they have been in both of the predecessors, but it’s just not New Zealand, and that’s a real shame.

The one leg up I will give this final Hobbit movie over its predecessors is its credits song, featuring Billy Boyd’s extraordinary and magical voice. Its musical and lyrical tones as well as its instrumentation are all far more in line with the movie’s and series’ tone than those of either of its 2 predecessors were.

So all in all it’s a mixed bag for me. It had tons of potential, only some of which was realized. Peter Jackson’s direction of the action scenes, which are, admittedly, very entertaining, and some of the more comedic scenes, which are very funny and which does not include Bilbo’s return to the Shire, is great, but his inability to discern the less important elements of the story from the more frivolous elements is a shame. Whether this weakness was brought on by his own failings or by the whims of studio executives does not matter as Jackson takes the blame, unfortunate and unfair as that may be.

70