A Most Wanted Man

Film adaptations of John le Carré novels are arguably the most engrossing and intelligent spy thrillers around. Carré’s novels have been adapted for the big screen 8 times; the 9th and newest addition, Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man, is among the finest of the adaptations and further proof of the quality of Carré’s works as inimitable sources of smart, thoughtful movies.

It is a subtle work and an exceedingly thrilling one. Yet the characters rarely, if ever, move at anything faster than a walk, or their cars the speed limit. Not until the finale does a true action sequence occur, and I am hard-pressed to remember the firing of a single weapon.

The movie follows Günther Bachmann, the head of the German’s Hamburg-based anti-terrorism espionage unit. He and his team move to acquire a newly arrived Chechen named Issa Karpov who is perceived as a potential future threat, while simultaneously tracking the activities of Muslim philanthropist Dr. Faisal Abdullah.

The movie thrives under Australian screenwriter Andrew Bovell’s rich, layered script, which is aided by Claire Simpson’s well-done, seamless editing and Benoit Delhomme’s intermittently interesting, always solid cinematography. His focus shifting, particularly during a scene of two of the characters playing chess, is rather brilliant, and the movie as a whole is gorgeously shot.

The cast is pretty close to uniformly great. In his final leading role, Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a powerful performance that rises above any minute limitations the script places upon him. He effortlessly embodies his German character, even though he abandons his nearly unintelligible accent within the first 5 minutes and adopts a completely un-German, though certainly altered, accent. This shift is the only misstep in his otherwise sterling work.

The main supporting cast is rather good. Rachel McAdams, despite an awkward, rocky start, she settles in nicely, and while she never escapes her tendency to give performances that feel oddly empty (a quality that made her best performance to date, Mean Girls, unforgettable), she still fulfills her role admirably.

Robin Wright plays a role somewhat similar to her role on House of Cards, and she plays it quite convincingly. I could have used slightly more of the deviousness she utilizes so well in House of Cards.

Outside of Hoffman, Willem Dafoe gives the best performance in the movie. He rather effectively portrays the porous pompousness of his rich banker as well as his strong desire to right the wrongs of his father.

The cast’s weaknesses come in the smaller, yet pivotal parts. Grigoriy Dobrygin, despite actually being Russian, has an rather unconvincing Russian accent as Issa Karpov, and Homayoun Ershadi’s performance as Dr. Abdullah is nothing special.

The movie’s best quality, even better than Hoffman, is Corbijn’s direction. The Dutchman, who made his name as the music video director and visual creative director for both Depeche Mode and U2, showed his skill at the slow-burn thriller with The American, and his work here cements his abilities as perhaps the foremost director in the genre around today. His every move is masterful and only serves to build the tension that makes the movie so thrilling.

All the unqualified praise I have heaped upon the movie, there is one weakness that also plagued Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. There just seems to be something missing. The suspense is there, and so is the high quality of the contributing elements, but it never quite reached the heights it needs to reach masterpiece level.

Overall, it’s a great movie with an interesting dilemma. We all want the world to be a better place, but what’s the best method to achieve that end: Take out your enemies or control them?

93

Guardians of the Galaxy

Like X-Men: Days of Future Past, Guardians of the Galaxy is a movie for those who want to see superhero movies taken in a different direction. Instead of taking its superhero-ness seriously, it subverts the tropes of the genre, and the result is, at times, genius.

I say “at times” because it doesn’t always work. The movie takes itself too seriously emotionally speaking, and while this sort of thing can be done well, such as in X-Men: Days of Future Past, most of the serious, emotional scenes fall flat. Only the finale feels real. Much of the blame for this has to fall to James Gunn, the director, for while the script he co-wrote makes both the fun-loving and the serious sections equals, his direction fails to create the uniqueness of place necessary to juxtapose such scenes and still have a separation of tone. As a result, many of the serious scenes, while certainly full of heart, something the film has in abundance, feel unfortunately wrong. Fortunately this is the film’s biggest flaw.

Like many superhero flicks, the movie suffers from a case of exposition disorder. That is, it occasionally strays into sequences during which exposition is thrown out at every turn, causing the casual viewer to tune it out, which is rather unfortunate if a nugget of necessary information is embedded deep within the otherwise esoteric monologue.

Virtually every other aspect of the movie, though, is great. Chris Pratt’s winning performance as Peter Quill, aka Star-Lord, buoys the movie, and the other performances aren’t half-bad either. Zoe Saldana gives her best to-date, and WWE-fixture Dave Bautista delivers his metaphor-less lines decently, though not fabulously.

Outside of Pratt, though, the voicework of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel is really the standout of the movie’s main cast. Cooper makes Rocket’s every line sparkle, and Vin Diesel exudes every emotion Groot needs with just his three words. Diesel’s devastation over the untimely death of Paul Walker is apparent throughout his heartfelt voicework, and it helps tremendously.

Even the supporting cast, though often underused (especially Glenn Close and John C. Reilly), is rather good. I don’t know why it took so long, but Lee Pace has finally given a good villainous portrayal. It is by no means a deep, multi-faceted portrayal, but at least he seems invested enough in the part to make sure his lines don’t get stuck to his tongue like they did in the second Hobbit movie. Michael Rooker, best known as the eponymous Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and a Merle in The Walking Dead, really carries the supporting cast as Yondu Udonta, the closest thing Quill has to a father. He gives Yondu the depth he needs to make him more than just a jealous thief.

Judging from the comedic success of films this year, it seems the key to getting people to laugh is to make fun of life in general. This is the third movie I’ve watched this year that has succeeded in making me laugh not because it had funny gags, but because it made fun of itself. Meta-humor is engineering a rise, and I, for one, am not complaining. No, the jokes aren’t all perfect, but every member of the cast believes they are doing something new and interesting and important, which makes even the jokes that would otherwise fall flat instead make you smile.

The special effects are gorgeous, and the 3D, though not really utilized all that much, is not distracting, which is not something most 3D movies can boast.

Overall, Guardians of the Galaxy deserves every cent it makes. It’s strange to think that the superhero movie subgroup could be brought back down to earth by Peter Quill’s ever-temperamental rocket-boots. Though certainly not perfect, Guardians of the Galaxy beats much of the schlock we tend to get this time of year, and it offers a rather interesting deconstruction of the superhero genre.

80

Boyhood

What is a movie supposed to do if not relate somehow to the everyday and to make you laugh and think and reflect and hurt? Well, Richard Linklater seems to think these goals, which a relatively small number of movies ever successfully attain, are not enough. For him, a movie must challenge the very fabric of what a movie is. Boyhood is such a movie. Better yet, it’s such an achievement.

The narrative structure is, of course, what makes the movie so experimental. It is, after all, nonexistent, and yet, despite the problems it creates, like giving the film no tangible motivation supporting each chronological step forward, it flows better than almost any movie could ever hope to, and, above all, it forces the viewer to reflect.

Boyhood is like life. You go through life with all its pains and joys and monotony, and you come out the other end, not with the complete picture but with memories. The strange thing about memories is their unpredictability. What we remember is not always the most notable moments, though it often is. We are certainly going to remember getting “The Talk” from our dad in the bowling alley, but we may also remember, just as vividly, one of the nights we came home much too late to the accusatory figure and voice and words of our drunken stepfather, a scene that occurred a multitude of times, but that we, for one reason or another, remember this specific instance, though not because of any noticeable difference.

Linklater’s work, as I’ve said, makes us think and reflect and even goes so far so as to challenge what a movie is, but it also makes you laugh, and it makes you hurt. His direction and writing are utterly brilliant, bringing a lifelike intensity to each and every scene. This intensity is not just dramatic, but comedic as well, for what is life if not simultaneously a melodrama and a slapstick comedy all rolled up into one. His vision, the film’s massive scope, is one of the most complete ever, and Sandra Adair’s magnificent editing, no doubt aided by Linklater’s watchful eye, ties it all together with ease, creating a movie so free-flowing and fast-paced I never once looked at my watch during its 166 minute runtime.

It’s so hard to talk about acting in a movie like this. Actors and actresses change in both ability and knowledge as they get older. Thus, making a statement about some of the acting is rather difficult. Ellar Coltrane, as the lead, is slightly above average, I’d say. He’s rather good early on, and his later line deliveries are appropriately impassioned, but his role, not matter his age, is just too limited. Sure, he transforms, but it’s a natural progression from being 6 to being 18. His sister, portrayed by director’s daughter Lorelei Linklater, plays it too cute at the beginning, but matures into, I’d argue, the better actor of the two, though her part is too limited for her to make much of an impact. Patricia Arquette, too, is hampered by a limited role. She is never subpar and always exudes a fabulous sense of motherliness, but she’s too limited. The real star of the show is Ethan Hawke, who steals his every scene. Like his son, he transforms but as an adult, not in his transformative years, and his performance is really both entertaining and thought-provoking.

Boyhood is really all about Linklater and his vision, and oh what a vision it is! It’s a movie that challenges us to reflect on our own lives and that hopes we discover our lives are not about us. Instead our lives are about everyone around us, how they formed us, how they shaped us.

 

86

I've changed my rating from a 94 because the often atrocious supporting acting has stuck with me more than most of the other things about it. Also, Mason is just boring as hell.

22 Jump Street

This will be very short and not very well-written. I’m not having the greatest of times finding motivation to write reviews on non-Oscar contenders, so I’ve compromised by mainly just putting down raw thoughts with a little embellishment rather than going too much into the nitty-gritty like I normally do.

Is it as funny as the first? That’s the question that seems to be on everyone’s minds. Many reviewers thought it was, while I feel many I’ve talked to say it’s a close call, but that the original may still be funnier. I honestly don’t know. But it really doesn’t matter because 22 Jump Street is a fabulously entertaining, incredibly hysterical movie that, like its predecessor, breaks the mold of off-the-wall comedies and comes out the other side all the better for it.

Nowadays it seems every comedy is either a bad rom-com (why they’re bad will be left for an entirely different discussion) or a movie with ridiculous people doing ridiculous things. There’s a lack of decent gags (where have sequences like Michael Palin and the dogs gone?) and a plethora of terrible jokes and antics that are annoying rather than funny.

That’s where 22 Jump Street comes in. Sure, it’s silly and outrageous, but it’s not wholly defined by those characteristics. This is especially true of Schmidt and Jenko, the protagonists. They’re really average guys who do extraordinarily ridiculous things in specific situations. But that ridiculous thing is never the redundant. Their normality is also important. Most of the time, they’re like people you know. Their relationships with others are startlingly normal, even if they’re done in an over-the-top fashion. So when they do really stupid stuff it makes it that much funnier.

 

As many have said, the movie works because it’s so self-referential. Aside from the perfect use of references to sequel-quality, the meta nods to genre clichés (the 1^st did this excellently well), to various movies, and to the personalities involved in the movie are all terrific.

To delve a little into some specifics, the screenplay is spot-on and could end up as one of my year’s top five adapted screenplays, just as the original’s did. Once again, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are gut-bustingly funny. While most thought Tatum stood out in the original, I was more impressed with how great Hill was as more of the straight man. This time around, though, Tatum really is the MVP. He runs the show from beginning to end and headlines what I probably think is the movie’s funniest scene. But he couldn’t have done it alone. He probably couldn’t have even done it with anybody other than Hill; their chemistry is just that good, which leads to my next point.

Hill should really think about playing the straight man in more comedies. I know I’m in the minority as I find him only reasonably funny when he’s being ridiculous, but I think he really has a tremendous talent for knowing how to make the most out of a straighter part (not a completely straight one, though). Also, Ice Cube is not a good actor. He has just one setting and that’s loud, but he’s used to perfection here. His early scenes were a little too over-the-top for my taste, but his later scenes and reactions are some of the funniest in the movie.

After ruminating a little, I think I’ll say the 1^st installment is slightly funnier. The gags may be equally funny on the surface, but I think the original’s work on a purer level. You laugh because they really and truly were funny, whereas the gags in the 2^nd require the self-reference to achieve the same level of laugh inducement. Some of the originality is gone. That the gags and jokes are still pretty much equally as funny on the whole is really a testament to Hill and Tatum and to directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller as they easily could have presented the movie’s meta aspects poorly. All that being said, 22 is arguably a better overall movie than its predecessor. It has the laughs, but it also brings the heart. Its actual dramatic scenes flow naturally from the previous absurd scenes and are well-done. Schmidt and Jenko’s “break-up” scenes particularly stand out, being both heartfelt and hysterical.

I hope there’s a sequel and I hope there isn’t. The movie gets so much out of making fun of sequels that a less funny third one could ruin everything good that’s happened. That being said, a 3^rd one that knows how to be dumb could be great, and I thoroughly hope we get the chance to enjoy it.

84/100