Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

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The Look of Love

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Carol

by George Wolf

Oh, Carol, what a mesmerizing, captivating, utterly beautiful web you weave.

Director Todd Haynes has crafted an insightful, exquisite love story full of bittersweet grace, propelled by two glorious performances.

Rooney Mara is Therese, a department store clerk in 1950s New York whose senses are awakened after Carol (Cate Blanchett) visits her counter at Christmastime. Though Carol is older, and married, the two fall for each other, stealing precious moments with the discretion their world demands.

Haynes, adapting Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt with screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, expands the themes he touched upon in 2002’s Far From Heaven, and infuses them with a profound and deeply felt humanity.

Though the period details are meticulous, Haynes bathes his film in an almost ethereal melancholy, transporting you to a world enveloped in the ache of those pretending to be something they are not.

Edward Lachman’s cinematography is an artful masterwork, and Haynes’s framing has a subtle but important impact. He often keeps Carol and Therese separated by rooms, windows, or other people, and each knowing glance carries enormous weight as two wonderful actors convey the costs of love in a way that settles in your bones.

As Therese begins to trust her feelings, Mara finds the touching nuance needed to bring authenticity to her character’s journey. She is the immaculate bookend to Blanchett, who serves up another reminder of the rarefied talent she possesses.

Carol seduces us just as confidently as she does Therese, with Blanchett gradually letting us glimpse the lessons learned from a life of hiding. Carol declares, “You seek resolution because you’re young,” with the voice of jaded experience, but when her husband Harge (Kyle Chandler) delivers an unexpected blow in the fight over their daughter, we feel her devastation like a punch to the gut.

Great films are able to make complex issues resonate through fully realized characters and intimate, thoughtful storytelling. Anchored in love and restrained longing, Carol is absolutely great, as moving as any film I’ve seen this past year.

Verdict-5-0-Stars

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4z7Px68ywk

 

 

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Long, Hard Winter

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The Revenant

by Hope Madden

There’s a natural poetry to Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s filmmaking. The Oscar winning director behind last year’s Birdman seeks transcendence for his characters, finding the grace in human frailty regardless of the story unfolding. And The Revenant is quite a story.

Based loosely on the true tale of 19th Century American frontiersman Hugh Glass, the film treks behind Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio – who can take a beating) as he crawls across hundreds of the most formidable miles to avenge a mighty wrong.

With no more than 15 lines in English, DiCaprio manages to capture the essence of this grieving survivor brought to his most primal self. This is easily the most physical performance of his career. DiCaprio is alone for the majority of his time onscreen, and his commitment to this character guarantees that those scenes are riveting.

Tom Hardy is once again an utterly compelling presence as Glass’s nemesis John Fitzgerald. Other actors might have read this character as flatly backwoods evil, but Hardy never forgets Fitzgerald’s humanity, giving the villain depth, humor, even sympathy.

The balance of the cast manages to keep up with these two heavyweights. Particularly effective is Domhnall Gleeson, who’s having another solid year. He plays the commander of Glass and Fitzpatrick’s ill-fated expedition. He’s the memory of civilization in a film that quickly erases all traces of progress and comfort.

Of equal importance to these performances is the imagination Inarritu brings to bear. It guides Emmanuel Lubezki (another Oscar winner for Birdman), whose magical camera, like a careening ghost, weaves through carnage and nature before circling into the heavens.

The sound design is equally spellbinding, the score itself sometimes a blend of the music of snow crunch, whispered voices, and the haunting ring of the wind.

This is a lonesome, brutal journey often punctuated by a remarkable tumult of violence. The grizzly attack that sets off Glass’s downfall is likely the most visceral, jaw-dropping image we’ll see this year.

Outside these flashes of punishing action, The Revenant offers a slow build and asks for your patience. At 156 minutes, the film is long, but is there any other way to do justice to Glass’s ordeal?

After winning the Oscar last year, Innaritu takes that human journey toward redemption to the out of doors with a brutally gorgeous, punishingly brilliant film.

Verdict-4-5-Stars

New In Theaters

Speak to Me

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Anomalisa

by George Wolf

With Anomalisa, Charlie Kaufman’s proposed animated short becomes a wondrous feature, utilizing a powerful subtlety to explore the challenge and the mystery of human connection.

Customer service specialist Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) is wilting under the weight of the mundane. Though he preaches about finding the individuality in each customer, he views each person he comes in contact with as interchangeable, hearing the same voice (the great Tom Noonan) each time anyone else speaks.

When Micheal flies to Cincinnati for a conference presentation, his rut continues until he encounters Lisa (Jennifer Jason-Leigh), who is staying on the same floor of his hotel. Though Lisa has traveled from Akron to hear Michael speak, it is Michael who is roused by the sound of a new voice – and by the possibility of rediscovering the joy in life.

Kaufman, who wrote the screenplay and co-directs with Duke Johnson, has created a kickstarter-funded marvel of complex simplicity. It envelopes you slowly, on an almost subliminal level, rendering Michael a sympathetic character as a simple matter of course. In doing so, the film touches on emotions so universal you may not even realize how loudly it is speaking to you.

There is a sly wit at work here as well. Michael checks in to the Fregoli hotel, a direct nod to the rare disorder in which one believes many different people are, in fact, one person in disguise. His trip down to meet the hotel manager is also a sarcastic hoot.

At times odd and imaginative, romantic and heartbreaking, Anomalisa ultimately feels like a gentle reminder about how much we need each other.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

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What’s Not to Love?

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The Hateful Eight

by Hope Madden

“You only need to hang mean bastards, but mean bastards you need to hang.”

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but 2015 may have been the year of the Western. The brilliant, underseen films Slow West and Bone Tomahawk kicked things off, with the amazing The Revenant just around the corner. But it’s the latest from Quentin Tarantino that solidifies the theme, and something tells me The Hateful Eight won’t be counted in the underseen category.

Though not exactly the soul mate of his 2012 near-masterpiece Django Unchained, H8 is certainly a Civil War-era shooting cousin. Set just after the War Between the States, Tarantino’s latest drops us in a Wyoming blizzard that sees an assortment of sketchy characters hole up inside Minnie’s Haberdashery to wait out the storm.

Throwback stylings, wicked humor, a deliberate pace, and thirst quenching frontier justice mark Tarantino’s eighth picture – a film that intentionally recalls not only the more bombastic Westerns of bygone cinema, but many of QT’s own remarkable films.

Kurt Russell (sporting the same facial hair he wore in Bone Tomahawk) is a bounty hunter escorting the murderous Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang, but they won’t make that last stage to Red Rock because of this blizzard. Hell, they may never make it to Red Rock at all.

With the genuinely gorgeous wide shots of a blizzard chasing a stage coach through a vast Wyoming countryside, all set to Ennio Morricone’s loudly retro score, H8 opens as a true Western, but it soon settles into something closer to an Agatha Christie-style whodunit. Although I’m not sure Christie ever got quite so bloody.

Minnie’s Haberdashery is populated by a lot of familiar faces. Sam Jackson, who’s never better than when he’s grinning through QT’s dialog, excels in a role that keeps the era’s racial tensions on display. Meanwhile, Mr. Orange Tim Roth does his finest Christoph Waltz impression.

Walton Goggins is especially strong as Rebel renegade Irskin Mannix’s youngest son Chris, but it’s Leigh who steals the film. She’s a hoot in a very physical performance unlike anything she’s delivered in her 30 years in film.

Most of Tarantino’s career has been about re-imagining the films that have come before. With The Hateful Eight, he spends a lot of time rethinking his own work. Much of the film plays like an extended version of the “Stuck in the Middle with You” scene from Reservoir Dogs, reconceived as a bounty hunters’ picnic.

As is often the case, QT breaks cinematic rules left and right. Sometimes these risks pay off, sometimes they don’t, but even at 3+ hours, the film never gives you the chance to get too comfortable.

This is not Tarantino’s most ambitious film and not his most successful, artistically, but it is a riotous and bloody good time.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnRbXn4-Yis

New In Theaters

Isn’t It Bromantic?

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Point Break

by Hope Madden

Just like a shiny new toy waiting to be unwrapped, Point Break is available for your viewing pleasure this Christmas Day.

Kathryn Bigelow’s 1992 MTV Award winning surfing/bank robbing/pathway to enlightenment classic wears some new trunks courtesy of director Ericson Core (Invincible).

Johnny Utah (yes, that’s still his name) was a YouTube phenom thanks to some extreme mountain biking and whatnot, but tragedy and guilt motivated him to change his life. One man-bun later, he’s a fledgling FBI agent with a nose for extreme sportsman heists.

Dude, I totally think those bank robbers are trying to perform the Ozaki 8.

That’s right, they’re not common criminals. They are extreme eco-warriors and poly-athletes.
Well now they’re just making words up.

Luke Bracey seems at times to channel Keanu Reeves, his predecessor in the rich and meaty role of Utah. Indeed, he boasts the sun kissed locks of a young Patrick Swayze as well as the utterly wooden acting presence of Reeves – quite a combination.

In the role of Jedi Master Bodhi is Edgar Ramirez, an actor who, in fact, has talent. You won’t see evidence of it here, though, as he struggles through dialog, such as, “All you see is lines. All we see is truth.”

Heavy.

Replacing the spunky Lori Petty in the role of Utah’s love interest is Teresa Palmer as Samsara. Look how adorably enlightened she is! She climbed a rock pile – yay!

But you don’t come to Point Break (either version) for the acting. If you can make it past the insufferable masculine posturing, the film looks great. Yes, the first two set pieces rip off the Mission Impossible franchise, with a little Fight Club robbery thrown in later, but who has time for originality?

The scenery is stunning, the stunts genuinely impressive, and Core is wise enough to limit dialog and plot to a minimum, allowing plenty of time for filling the screen with sky, valley, waterfall, and mountain top – you know, everything a real man conquers. For enlightenment.

Verdict-2-0-Stars

 

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Not So Young and Restless

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Youth

by Hope Madden

Like writer/director Paolo Sorrentino’s 2013 Oscar winner The Great Beauty, his latest effort, Youth, offers a visually sumptuous rumination on aging and regret.

Michael Caine leads a marvelous cast as Fred Ballinger, a retired composer who’s done with life. He’s wasting time at a luxurious Swiss hotel, sharing a room with his daughter (Rachel Weisz) and hanging out with his longtime pal Mick (Harvey Keitel).

Keitel and Caine shine. A fragile, passionate Keitel delivers his strongest performance in decades as the over-the-hill filmmaker grasping for one last “testament.” Meanwhile, the more restrained Caine is no less heartbreaking. Together they tease out a lived-in friendship that’s a bittersweet joy to watch.

Weisz, equal parts vulnerability and fire, joins a delightfully sly Paul Dano in support of the geriatric leads, all of them part of an unusual and high-brow population at this resort.

A parade of images, both grotesque and gorgeous – and the absurdity of that mixture – is the essence of the film. Sorrentino’s channeling a couple of compatriots with this one. You see the influence of Fellini in many ways, as Sorrentino gives life to poet Pavese’s quote, “The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.”

He’s helped immeasurably by cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, whose lens finds glamour and decay in equal measure, giving the film a dreamy cinematic quality. David Lang’s evocative score emphasizes the hypnotic quality of the visuals. It’s a visual and aural feast, though the concept that aging men see lost vitality encapsulated solely in the image of beautiful young women is wearisome.

This is a film marked, more than anything, by one concentrated feeling: longing. Sorrentino captures this beautifully, and his cast is more than capable of breathing life into characters saddled with a yearning for what is lost.

Segues into elegantly whimsical moments of fantasy are particularly enjoyable, but Sorrentino’s greatest triumph here is the sucker punch awaiting audience and characters alike with the introduction of Jane Fonda’s character.

A salty, aging diva, Fonda offers a swift kick to all this languid, self-congratulatory cinematic nonsense. She’s a blistering triumph, garish and glorious.

There are slow spots and questionable indulgences, but Youth, with the help of a stellar veteran cast, showcases something rarely offered in modern film – the power of age.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

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Bloodying Lines

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Over Your Dead Body

by Hope Madden

When you’re watching a film that blurs the line between art and reality, a story where actors in a play find that their real lives eerily begin to mirror the drama on the stage, you might think you can guess where things will take you. Unless that film was made by Takashi Miike. If that’s the movie you happen upon, all you know for sure is that things will, sooner or later, turn really ugly.

Such is the case with Miike’s 87th film, Over Your Dead Body. (He’s actually made four more since this one!)

The film begins slowly, but so did Audition, and that one eventually took audiences places we were ill-prepared to go. Something to keep in mind if you find yourself antsy during the first act.

Working from a script by frequent collaborator Kikumi Yamagishi, Miike employs unusual sound editing to immediately create a nightmarish atmosphere.

Miyuki (Ko Shibasaki) and her cheating boyfriend Kousuke (Ebizo Ichikawa) land the leads in a Kabuki style ghost story.

On stage and off, the lovers’ path is a rocky one, and Miike’s approach leaves you forever wondering whether you’re seeing any kind of reality – is this a hallucination? A descent into madness? Hell?

The ambiguity feeds the film’s horrifying dreamlike quality, but Over Your Dead Body is not all atmospherics and guessing games. The movie takes its first turn toward the supernatural when it introduces a creepy doll, but reminds you what you’ve signed up for once Miyuki starts rummaging around the utensil drawer.

Yikes!

Profoundly uncomfortable yet hypnotic and elegant, it’s a combination few manage quite like Miike. Over Your Dead Body is not the satisfying genre effort of Audition, nor is it the visceral wonder of 13 Assassins, and it lacks the macabre humor of many of the filmmaker’s previous collaborations with Yamagashi. The leaden first act doesn’t help, either, but you can expect a hell of a payoff. As always.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

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Great Dane

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The Danish Girl

by Hope Madden

Tom Hooper is a proven director. He followed an Oscar for The King’s Speech with an impeccable reimagining – perfectly theatrical and cinematic – of Les Miserables. He now turns his attention to the true life tale of what is likely the world’s first transgender surgery.

The Danish Girl is the gorgeously appointed, elegantly acted portrait of artist Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne – proving himself a chameleon of the same caliber as Tom Hardy or Tilda Swinton). His wife Gerda (a remarkable Alicia Vikander), an artist of less fame, needs a favor: her model has cancelled.

What begins as a favor – some silk stockings and fancy shoes – turns into a game for Gerda, but something else entirely for Einar.

The film works best as a study of marriage in turmoil, as Gerda’s riot of conflicting emotions is beautifully articulated by Vikander. Hers is an authentically tumultuous, tender and human performance.

Redmayne – Oscar winner for last year’s The Theory of Everything – is a fierce and nimble talent, no question. His graceful turn here is filled with vulnerability and longing. But The Danish Girl – and Redmayne’s performance, in particular – may be too restrained, too dignified for its own good.

Vikander’s character is fascinating from the beginning, and her fiery yet tender performance drives the film. But that’s kind of the problem. It’s Lili, the woman Einar is determined to become, that we should care for more, learn more about. The Danish Girl should be her story, but it really isn’t.

The fault is hardly Redmayne’s. He evolves slowly from a passionate if delicate husband to an even more delicate yet burgeoning woman, but he never invites us into Lili’s head. She’s an enigma.

The film never truly belongs to Gerda’s story, either, and the lack of true focus leaves the lovely film feeling superficial.

The story itself is astonishing, bordering on unbelievable. Lili Elbe was pioneering and tragic, fragile but fearless in a time when her journey was utterly unimaginable. The Danish Girl has a lot to offer, but it needed quite a bit more of Lili’s spirit if it was to leave a lasting impression.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

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Modern Day Sacrilege

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Concussion

by George Wolf

“The NFL owns a day of the week. It’s the same day the Church used to own. Now it’s theirs.”

That’s one of the best lines in Concussion, made even better because it’s not only a blunt reminder of how much America loves football, but a de facto admission that the film’s message may be modern day sacrilege.

Will Smith stars as Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian-born brain specialist who, while working in the hallowed gridiron ground of Pittsburgh, first identified CTE, the deadly brain disease afflicting former football players. He’s also the man who just recently proposed a ban on the sport for anyone under the age of 18.

(Pause for laughter).

Writer/director Peter Landesman seems more confident in driving home the dangers of football’s controlled violence than in turning Dr. Omalu’s story into a consistently compelling narrative. Highlights of ESPN’s old “Jacked Up!” segment roll in the background as Dr. Omalu demonstrates how the brain reacts to collision, describing one effect akin to “pouring wet concrete down kitchen pipes.”

These punches land, but then the film can’t decide if it wants to be 60 Minutes, Forensic Files or All the President’s Men.

More precisely, it tries to be all of them, exhibiting the same scattered focus that plagued Landesman’s script for Kill the Messenger, another true tale of a crusader under fire for his unpopular discovery. With Landesman also in the director’s chair this time, the reins are even looser, most damagingly in the one-note depiction of Omalu.

Smith delivers a committed, thoughtful performance that may be the best of his career, but he is hamstrung with a script that gives his character zero layers that aren’t heroic. Support from Alec Baldwin as Omalu’s colleague Dr. Julian Bailes, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Omalu’s wife, is similarly underplayed. Only Albert Brooks, in a scene-stealing turn as the head of Omalu’s pathology department, finds some moments that break convention.

Concussion carries an understandable sense of quiet outrage, but muddles its own case with cliches and curious wrinkles in the game plan. There’s a gripping movie in here somewhere, and no doubt the Church of the NFL is happy it wasn’t found.

Verdict-2-5-Stars

 

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Miracle Worker

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Joy

by George Wolf

Joy professes inspiration from “stories of daring women everywhere.” It was written and directed by a man. How’s that go down?

Pretty smooth, thank you.

It doesn’t hurt that the writer/director is David O. Russell, his headliner is the no-time-for-b.s. Jennifer Lawrence, and much of the story is true.

Lawrence is Joy Mangano, the inventor and home shopping guru who was a struggling single mom when she came up with the idea for the “Miracle Mop” in 1990. Deep in debt from startup and production costs, her tenacity won over an exec at QVC, and..how you like her now?

Of course, Joy’s actual path to success is a bit more complex, and it’s presented with a more high concept approach than we’re used to from Russell (Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle). Some amusingly cast fantasy sequences help introduce us to the various players in Joy’s wacked-out family, including a soap opera obsessed mother (Virginia Masden), a father jumping into online dating (Robert DeNiro) and an ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez) who dreams of being the next Tom Jones.

They all rely on Joy for a place to live, and for seemingly every answer to any daily problem. Though Russell flirts with kitschy excess in letting us into Joy’s world, the tone eventually strikes a relatable nerve. The respect for hard-working single mothers seems genuine, and the breezy reminder that we all have crazy-ass families is hard to resist.

Lawrence completely sells it, because that’s just what she does. The bone-tired exasperation of ambitions trumped by responsibility is evident early on, but Lawrence never lets the flicker of defiance to completely leave Joy’s eyes. When her fortunes begin to turn, the dreamlike elation over sudden success feels sweetly authentic.

Russell again shows his touch with actors is among the best in the business. Yes, he’s working with some of his favorites (Lawrence and DeNiro are joined by Bradley Cooper as the QVC exec giving Joy her big chance), but Russell’s entire ensemble seems both perfectly cast and completely invested, all carving out distinct characterizations.

Trimming twenty minutes would be ideal, but Joy has plenty on its mind. It throws a bit of magic at one woman’s success story, taking effectively subtle digs at consumerism, sexism and reality TV in the process.

Daring women, hear Joy roar.

Verdict-3-5-Stars