So despite the dearth of postings of late, kindly rest assured, dear readers, that I have indeed been watching things. To make amends for my inexcusable sloth (of sorts) and to clear the most recent backlog, I present for your enjoyment another Summary Judgment Megapost.
This one’s a decathlon, which makes me the Bruce Jenner of your screen right now.
American Sniper
Anyone who calls this Best Picture has jingoistic hero paste smeared on their goggles, but it’s a solid film and a well told story. Prepare for some down home, honest to goodness patriot SEALs killing evildoers and coming to grips with tough choices. (But never too tough — with director Clint Eastwood’s firm hand on the tiller, the bow stays aimed at a clear moral North.) Good family backstory, some tight wartime action, and a rich, wholesome study of a modern soldier. And Bradley Cooper is great here. A satisfying night at the movies.
Haus Verdict: Solid, heartfelt story about a simple guy who shot a couple hundred people. You’ll like it, and him.
Mortdecai
Johnny Depp with a handlebar stache and velvet-jacket affectation? It’s what no one was asking for! Given Paul Bettany, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Goldblum, bright colors, all that whimsy and a world-hopping art-heist plot, it could’ve worked in some strange cult-film sort of way, but it doesn’t. It sucks.
Haus Verdict: No.
Two Days, One Night
Here’s a French (and subtitled) Marion Cotillard vehicle. She plays a working class mom who’s fired from her job at a solar panel company when her dozen or so coworkers vote to axe her in favor of a thousand euro bonus. The film takes place over the course of a weekend as Cotillard makes the rounds and asks each coworker in turn to forego the bonus and vote again to preserve her job. They, of course, need the bonus money themselves. Awkward turtle! It’s a frank and real-seeming picture that probably isn’t that real after all. It’s also quite repetitive. How many times do we need to see Cotillard make her case to a coworker? But it’s sufficiently socialist, affirming in its way, and checks the foreign film box for the week. It could have been twenty minutes long and made the same point, but hey. It’s French.
Haus Verdict: There’s a reason why they don’t make movies about everyday people with depressing lives. That said, this is a fun moral tale.
Jupiter Ascending
This movie honestly made me feel like I was five years old again, and not in a good way. In that I’m-seeing-a-movie-for-adults-and-I-don’t-know-what’s-happening way. Ostensibly a sci-fi story about Mila Kunis inheriting the Earth from ancient capitalist galactic human overlords, it falls totally flat and offers only (1) senseless, disjointed, drawn out, and overly colorful fight scenes between Channing Tatum on gravity-surf boots and a seemingly totally random collection of Star Trek-style alien bounty hunters (or cops, or agents, or something), (2) strangely Kafkaesque and Byzantine bureaucratic machinations, (3) strange Russian stereotyping, and (4) Eddie Redmayne bleating like a Quaalude-baked pedophile. All this with dialogue like a face full of buckshot: “Bees are genetically programmed to recognize royalty.” Say no more. The chief plot points appear to involve Kunis almost getting fake-married to a relative to game her inheritance, Redmayne ordering some lizards to do something, Tatum brooding and surfing on his gravity boots, and Kunis signing a document that Redmayne prepared for some greedy reason. I’m not kidding when I say I couldn’t spoil this plot if I tried: I have no clue what happened.
Haus Verdict: A colorful, steaming mess. Written, directed, and produced by the Wachowskis! Almost worth seeing for being utterly incomprehensible.
The Imitation Game
A movie about computer pioneer Alan Turing cracking the Nazis’ Enigma coding machine in WWII, quietly dealing with homosexuality. You’ve already heard about this film, cause it’s got the nom noms for some statues. Yes, it’s good. I’m not generally fond of Keira Knightley and I didn’t like her here either, but Cumberbatch is great, the story is true, that truth wasn’t widely known, and if you’re in Silicon Valley you can see a reconstructed portion of the machine at the Computer Museum. What more do you want?
Haus Verdict: Well acted, an interesting and true story. If you haven’t seen this yet, you should.
Birdman
My 2015 pick for best picture. A movie about movies, replete with skillful multi-minute cuts. Michael Keaton’s triumphant comeback, playing a washed up actor known for his past superhero role as Bat–ahem, BIRD–man, now putting on a Broadway play. A savage satire of the celebrity-obsessed sequelrific big studio film business, social media, art, actors, and critics, and just an all-around great time at the movies. Keaton is superb, the supporting cast is flawless, and it’s a totally engrossing picture. A bit over the top at times, but well worth the ride.
Haus Verdict: Super meta, super smart, super engaging. Best picture of 2015.
Big Hero 6
I have nothing bad to say about this movie. It’s a cute animated story about an inflatable robot called Baymax and his child-prodigy pal in “Sanfransokyo.” A strong Disney animation offering, it’s fun, heartfelt, modern, and laced with just enough Japanese culture to keep things interesting. Unique, unexpected, enjoyable. It gets superheroish toward the end, to good effect. Not just for the kids.
Haus Verdict: When a film is still playing after months and months, that’s typically a good sign. Fun! Engaging! See it.
The Theory of Everything
Here’s another that wasn’t as good as everyone seems to think it was. Eddie Redmayne gives a convincing performance as legendary physicist and Lou Gehrig’s sufferer Stephen Hawking. For pure physical mimicry TToE is on par with My Left Foot, but story-wise it’s a bit dull — it omits much of Hawking’s most interesting physics and focuses instead on his (famously uneven) family life. This makes more sense when you realize it’s based on a book by his former wife, but still, I was expecting a bit more Hawking as academic and a bit less home drama. I also don’t think Redmayne should win best actor for this. What he did here was stunning, but let’s agree to distinguish between physically aping a disabled body and real, statue-worthy acting. Plus, I’m still angry at him for Jupiter Ascending. Felicity Jones, though, was excellent.
Haus Verdict: An amazing performance of physical mimicry, which, to be clear, does not mean Redmayne is the best actor of 2015.
Wild
Reese Witherspoon plays real-life author Cheryl Strayed, who despite whatever you may read on Jezebel, seems to me chiefly to be a narcissistic mess with a deep-seated and fundamentally wrong belief that her story is meaningful to anyone but herself. Based on Strayed’s decade-in-the-making memoir of her soul-searching 1990s hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, it’s a couple hours of trials and trails and tribulations, blisters, poor backpack planning, general outdoor ignorance, and an interesting perspective (for once!) on what it’s like to be a woman alone in a land of weirdo men. Reese Witherspoon pours it all in the sand here and does a really good job, but it’s all just too faux-tough and self-important for my tastes — regularly truffling for meaning, for instance, in Strayed’s heroin-riddled easy-sexing days past. Maybe there’s no meaning there, you know? Maybe when people are drug-addicted cheating layabouts, there’s not always a pat little affirmation inside? Strayed gave herself a cameo, which should surprise precisely no one. Wild comes off like a deep meditation on the mystery of being, but I’m pretty sure it’s a hoodwink. Dislike.
Haus Verdict: Reese Witherspoon digs deep and hikes hard to portray a flawed (and sadly unsympathetic) character. If it didn’t grab so hard at meaning, this could have been a tidy story.
Foxcatcher
A total surprise and a treat. Does everyone else know the (true) story of John Eleuthiere DuPont and his super-weird wrestling team? I sure didn’t. Steve Carell plays DuPont, a stunted, unsympathetic, impossibly icky American aristo-baron on a ham-fisted quest for acceptance and relevance and meaning. Channing Tatum doubles down on his Magic Mike serious-face and he’s great as a credulous and semi-washed up Olympic wrestler. Mark Ruffalo is flawless as his savvier brother. Carell’s performance is a little too Silence of the Lambs for my taste, but it’s still a striking portrayal in an all around strange story. A sleeper Best Picture nomination that somehow didn’t earn one. Recommend.
Haus Verdict: Moody, measured, grim, weird, and true, Foxcatcher is a hard ride and one worth taking.