Legos! Has there ever been a cooler toy? It’s ideal for unbridled creativity as well as meticulous attention to directions and every tendency in between, so basically, it’s perfect. And it’s a weirdly apt building block for a movie.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller – writers and directors behind the surprise hit Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs as well as the even more surprising 21 Jump Street – return to animation with this artistic gem that pleases on all fronts.
Regular guy Emmett, construction worker and follow-the-directions type, falls into an adventure with wild idea creatives who are fighting to keep evil Lord Business from ending the Lego world as they know it.
It’s a solid, even familiar premise, and it offers these talented filmmakers a lot of opportunities. The tone is fresh and irreverent, the direction endlessly clever, and the voice talent spot-on.
Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell and Morgan Freeman anchor the tale, with great cameos (Jonah Hill and Billy Dee Williams are the biggest hoot) and talented supporting turns helping to keep every scene interesting.
A clear love of Legos infects the entire proceedings, with hilarious Lego pieces and familiar characters and creations popping up everywhere. But the core ideas are even stronger and more thoughtful, the satire bright and evident, and the final themes appropriate for the kids you took with you as your excuse to see this movie.
Lord and Miller manage to entertain every possible audience here, poking fun at modern blockbusters and reveling in youthful creativity. They are aided immeasurably by animators who offer vivid, imaginative action sequences that embrace the themes of the film and mirror the energetic fantasy world of childhood.
The result is a joyous voyage, a perfect match between content and presentation, and a super cool movie.
The film that may finally win Matthew McConaughey an Oscar is released to DVD today. Dallas Buyers Club is more than a socially relevant biopic. It’s more than a character-driven glimpse at the grinding reality of the dawning AIDS crisis, even. Between McConaughey’s multidimensional performance as AIDS victim and unabashed Texan Ron Woodruff and Jared Leto’s brilliant, Oscar-frontrunning work as Woodruff’s partner in crime, literally and figuratively, the film offers the defining moments in two careers that are just hitting their strides.
For another of McConaughey’s more recent, brilliant but serious performances (as opposed to his recent, brilliant but insane performances), check out Mud. This Huck Finn style adventure is the follow up to the bewilderingly wonderful Take Shelter, both written and directed by the underseen filmmaker of extraordinary talent Jeff Nichols. McConaughey plays the titular Mud, a man-child fugitive who befriends a couple young river rats in search of adventure. The result is a lovely journey of lost innocence and a vanishing American lifestyle.
The world of acting felt a profound loss this weekend with the passing of Philip Seymour Hoffman, among the most versatile and gifted actors of this or any generation.
He began his career playing variations on the theme of whining rich boy, but an artistic partnership with the brilliant filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson highlights Hoffman’s magnificent range. From lonely and misguided Scotty in Boogie Nights, to Punch Drunk Love’s volatile Alpha dog Dean, to the deeply decent and compassionate nurse Phil in Magnolia, Hoffman’s ability to bring a character’s humanity to the surface is evident.
He had a particular gift for supporting roles. Ensemble work seemed a joy to him, and his small roles in The Big Lebowski, Along Came Polly, Hard Eight, Moneyball, Strangers with Candy, Cold Mountain, Almost Famous, and The Ides of March contributed immeasurably to the artistic success of the films. In fact, he’s the only thing about Polly worth remembering, and he is hilarious. There is truly not a single film or performance that doesn’t deserve a mention. His few onscreen minutes in Catching Fire elevated the entire Hunger Games series, giving its underlying conspiracies and machination a chess match brilliance. He was even great in the teen zombie comedy My Boyfriend’s Back. The guy was a genius.
Hoffman was the definition of an actor. His talent was breathtaking. He breathed the rarified air shared only with Daniel Day-Lewis and Meryl Streep, and his skill and presence will be deeply, sorely missed.
Here, in chronological order, is our list of essential Philip Seymour Hoffman viewing.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Here’s where we fell in love with Philip Seymour Hoffman. He plays Scotty, the overweight and underappreciated camera grip in Paul Thomas Anderson’s porn–industry-as-dysfunctional-family-comedy-drama. A heartbreakingly awkward punching bag for the good looking talent, Scotty’s limited screen time is acting perfection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-vf8-1FE4Q
Happiness (1998)
Todd Solondz’s unforgettable black comedy benefits from a subversively brilliant screenplay and an ensemble who relished the outrageous opportunities that piece of writing held. Every performance in the film is a thing of beauty, including Hoffman’s creepy obscene phone caller Allen. The climactic scene with the object of his twisted adoration, played by Lara Flynn Boyle, is a work of dark comic genius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-3oeveop4o
Magnolia (1999)
Another true ensemble piece, the film’s steadiest heartbeat is the down-to-earth home health care nurse played by Hoffman. He approached the role with understatement and unveiled a level of compassion that not only characterized this man’s calling, but allowed the audience to find a way to empathize with the rest of the less likeable characters. It’s a beautifully nuanced and deeply authentic performance.
Almost Famous (2000)
As legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, Hoffman gives Almost Famous its critical reference point, as the middle ground between the two worlds the young William (Patrick Fugit) is juggling. Even with limited screen time, Hoffman conveys a funny, heartfelt, and deceptively sad persona that is essential to the film’s success.
Capote (2005)
Hoffman received his first Oscar nomination for the 2005 biopic, which makes you wonder where the Academy’s heads had been the previous ten years. He won for his unerring turn in this beautifully observed film about the writing of Capote’s masterpiece In Cold Blood. Never one to shy away from a character’s faults, Hoffman unveiled an equally sympathetic and mercenary soul as the writer befriends inmate Perry Smith.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwpVqRLsVSI
Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)
The year 2007 was a big one for Hoffman. He garnered an Oscar nomination for his supporting turn as Gus Avrakotos, government agent working with senator and playboy Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) to assist Afghanistan rebels in their war with Russia. It was one of three performances that year that could easily have earned Hoffman his second Oscar, each as different from the other as performances could be. He gives needed edge and weight, as well as biting humor, to a film that could have been too sentimental otherwise.
The Savages (2007)
Also that year, dream team Hoffman and Laura Linney play a brother and sister faced with caring for their aged, abusive father. Full of brilliant, darkly funny insights on correcting old wounds, responsibility versus irresponsibility, inevitability and family, the film is queasyingly realistic and relevant but the performances are a laugh riot, uncomfortable as they are.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
In his third award-worthy turn in 2007 Hoffman finds himself with a character that a great actor would dream of and the lesser of the world could only screw up. An older brother (Hoffman) hiding dark, addictive behavior, talks his sad-sack younger brother (Ethan Hawke) into something unthinkable. Desperate for approval, sensitive in the weirdest moments, black hearted the next, Andy is a fascinating character thanks to Hoffman’s effortless genius.
Doubt (2008)
Hoffman and Meryl Streep – one of his only true peers – face off as a priest who may have molested a student and the nun who will doggedly pursue the case. Hoffman never judges his character, bringing a self righteousness and grace to the part that allows the audience to doubt his guilt. Without that, the film bottoms out into just another finger pointing diatribe on the Catholic Church. But because Hoffman could walk the line perfectly – and because Streep and co-stars Viola Davis and Amy Adams are so goddamn talented – the film is a brilliantly ambiguous conundrum.
The Master (2012)
Hoffman is a gravitational force as Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of a Scientology-esque group. Pairing Hoffman with Joaquin Phoenix may have been director Paul Thomas Anderson’s greatest moment of casting genius. Phoenix’s disheveled, unhinged veteran vagabond balances Hoffman’s egomaniacal Master so perfectly that every moment the pair shares onscreen is theatrical magic. It’s a flawless film boasting two epic performances.
A coming of age story set in poverty stricken, crime riddled West Baltimore sounds like an episode of the Wire gone sentimental. That’s not 12 O’clock Boys, though.
We follow Pug, a savvy and funny preteen on the verge of adult decisions that will impact his life’s trajectory. And length.
What is absolutely fascinating about Lofty Nathan’s documentary, though, is that gangs and drugs and time spent on the corner are the furthest things from Pug’s consciousness. This is not to say that his goals are legal, exactly. And they certainly aren’t safe.
No, Pug wants desperately to join the dirt bikers who overrun West Baltimore streets each Sunday night, weaving in and out of traffic, through red lights, onto sidewalks – anywhere they like. Hundreds of zig-zagging, wheelie-popping maniacs have a blast while terrorizing and amazing onlookers, and Pug has no more passionate wish than to become one of them.
Filmed over three years, the doc chronicles Pug’s burgeoning adolescence as well as the societal, cultural and economic landmines between him and manhood. The fact that Pug is adorable – very small with a cherubic face and sly smile – only makes his struggle, his innocence that much more poignant.
But Nathan unveils more than just one boy’s journey. The footage of the Baltimore biking phenomenon is mind boggling, and the freedom and power the sport offers its riders does not skip by without mention. You might even applaud these young men of West Baltimore for avoiding, at least on Sunday evenings, much of the lawbreaking commonly found in their neighborhoods. But the 12 O’clock Boys – named for their ability to pull their bikes so far into a wheelie that they look like the hand of a clock striking 12 – can hardly be considered law-abiding.
And as thousands of traffic laws are beaten to submission each weekend, Baltimore police find themselves in a tough situation. The law forbids chasing the bikers because of the danger a chase poses to the riders and to bystanders, but they’re all in danger enough with or without a cop chase.
Wisely, Nathan’s position is not to judge the riders, the cops, the environment or Pug. Rather, he opens up an unseen world of skill, bravado and hellish traffic, and lets us watch it through the eyes of a budding young man still weighing his limited options.
We’re buckling under blustery weather and offensive temperatures. I require more degrees! Why not just embrace the White Death? These five films certainly do, so snuggle in with a big blanket and look at how much worse you could have it in this wintery weather.
6. Frozen
No, not the Disney film. In this skiing mishap, three friends hit the slopes one afternoon. They con their way onto the lift for one last run up the hill. But they didn’t really have a ticket to ride, you see, and the guy who let them take that last lift gets called away and asks a less reliable colleague to take over. That colleague has to pee. One thing leads to another. So, three college kids get left on a ski lift. It’s Sunday night, and the resort won’t reopen until Friday. Wolves come out at night. This is a brisk and usually believable flick. Sure, it’s Open Water at a ski resort, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
5. 30 Days of Night
If vampires can only come out at night, wouldn’t it make sense for them to head to the parts of the globe that remain under cover of darkness for weeks on end? Like the Arctic circle? The first potential downfall here is that Josh Hartnett plays our lead, the small town sheriff whose ‘burg goes haywire just after the last flight for a month leaves town. A drifter blows into town. Dogs die viciously. Vehicles are disabled. Power is disrupted. You know what that means…the hunt’s begun. Much of the film’s his success is due to the always spectacular Danny Huston as the leader of the bloodsuckers. His whole gang takes a novel, unwholesome approach to the idea of vampire, and it works marvelously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xAJGjPQpOM
4. Let the Right One In
Honestly, you can’t go wrong with either the 2008 Swedish original or its 2010 American reboot Let Me In. We’re leaning toward the original here only because director Tomas Alfredson made such effective use of the Swedish winter. Young social misfit befriends the mysterious new girl in his apartment complex. A sweet yet bloody romance blossoms. Whether you choose the original or the remake, a brilliantly told, often genuinely scary vampire flick emerges.
3. Dead Snow
You had us at “Nazi zombies.” A fun twist on cabin-in-the-woods horror, this film sees a handful of college kids heading into a remote mountain cabin for some winter sport fun and maybe a little lovin’. Dead Snowboasts some of the tongue-in-cheek referential comedy of the outstanding flick Cabin in the Woods, but with a great deal more actual horror. It’s grisly, bloody, hilarious fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJkd5X2aG34
2. The Thing
For our money, this is John Carpenter’s best film – isolated, claustrophobic, beardtastic, and you can get frostbite just watching. A group of Arctic scientists take in a dog, but he’s not a dog at all. And soon, most of the scientists are not scientists, either, but which ones?! The FX still hold up and so does the chilly terror.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoAuJaN78Hk
1. The Shining
Because that’s what could happen if you wander outside right now. You might find yourself lost in a maze, icicles hanging from your eyebrows, your bloody axe frozen to your cold, dead hand. Not that anyone inside is much better off. Enjoy Stanly Kubrick’s masterpiece of family dysfunction, Gatsby-style partying, Big Wheel love and bad carpeting. It’s never a bad time to watch The Shining.
If you watched the film Prisoners and thought, wow, this could only be better if it were more graphic and a little funnier, then have I got the movie for you! (Also, get some psychiatric help.)
A mixture of disturbing fairy tale and ugly reality, Israel’s Big Bad Wolves takes you places you really don’t want to go, but damn if it doesn’t keep you mesmerized every minute.
The particularly vulgar slaughter of several little girls sets events in motion. One teacher is suspected. One cop is driven. One father suffers from grief-stricken mania. It’s going to get really ugly.
Filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado implicate everyone, audience included. They create intentional parallels among the three men, pointing to the hypocrisy of the chase and making accusations all around of a taste for the intoxicating bloodlust that comes from dominating a weaker person.
Their taut and twisty script keeps surprises coming, but it’s the humor that’s most unexpected. Handled with dark, dry grace by Lior Ashkenazi (the cop) and Tzahi Grad (the father) – not to mention Doval’e Glickman (the grandfather) – this script elicits shamefaced but magnetic interest. You cannot look away, even when the blowtorch comes out. And God help you, it’s hard not to laugh now and again.
The violence is not shot to amuse. It is jarring and awful. But the subdued lunacy of the perpetrators allows a complicated kind of respite from the ugliness in the basement. Complicated because it pulls you back over to the side of men torturing another who – for all we, the audience, know – is as innocent as he claims to be.
Clearly the filmmakers are interested in the toxic ineffectiveness of torture as a method of interrogation, but the film never feels preachy. The characters are too well drawn, the performances too compelling, and the writing too full of misdirection.
The duo abandon the dark and dreamy camerawork that gave the early reels its menacingly hypnotic feel, and while the straightforward grit of later material suits the content, it’s hard not to miss the Goth poetry of Act I. But these two know how to develop dread, punctuate the darkness with almost absurdly beautiful images, and deliver a punishing blow. Big Bad Wolves will haunt your sleep.
A handful of befuddled but beautifully realized characters fall through the tears in the cultural fabric of a too-rapidly modernizing China in Zhangke Jia’s A Touch of Sin.
The film sets four tales spinning simultaneously, each uncovering the unpredictable challenges and opportunities facing four characters who are dealing with capitalistic expansion, an unprecedented and often unstructured change in more than just their economic reality. As each grapples with the task of making a living among the unscrupulous who’ve already learned to exploit the fledgling economy, bloodshed becomes ever more appealing.
Jia’s imagination and scope are epic, but his film remains intimate. Though his pacing is slower and his dialog certainly more restrained, Jia’s film draws on some of Tarantino’s staging preferences when push comes to puncture wounds and bullet holes. Like Tarantino, though, Jia never abandons his characters.
He remains invested in each one, whether it’s the disgruntled miner hoping to hold village officials responsible for community welfare, the young woman defending her honor to herself as well as her unwelcome suitors, the transient who enjoys his freedom and his handgun, or the adolescent thrashing desperately against a lifelong outlook of meager wages and soul-crushing employers.
The physical environment is as unforgiving as anything in this bleak, colorless winter where everyone looks cold and uncomfortable – not abjectly miserable, just utterly unhappy. It’s a perfect backdrop for these lost souls, although Jia seems to be suggesting that these outcasts may not be all that atypical. Not one is in an entirely unique situation, and only the gun-happy transient even seems like an odd duck. No, these are very regular people who finally, irrevocably react rather than submit.
This is the real brilliance in his film. With each passing storyline, the line between “he just snapped” and “would I have done the same” blurs. Jia wonders throughout how an intelligent, rational person is supposed to manage with no future.
Lake Bell makes her feature directing debut with a clever and insightful look at the world of voiceover talent, In a World… , which is available today on DVD. Also writing and starring, she plays Carol, quirky vocal coach and daughter to a buttery-voiced industry legend who doesn’t believe women belong in his business. Boasting finely drawn characters as well as wit and charm to spare, Bell’s unique debut will leave you smiling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZHBjLFu5is
Pair it with Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s debut behind the camera and pen, Don Jon. Both newbie filmmakers show surprising confidence and genuine aptitude. JGL plays a Jersey player who has either found the girl of his dreams or is facing a harsh reality about his intimacy problems. A witty and honest and insightful observation of our times.
For the last few years, the first weeks of January have been littered with horror films. Last year it was Texas Chainsaw and Mama; in 2012, Devil Inside; in 2011, Season of the Witch (remember that piece of shit?!) and The Rite. What the correlation is between the bleak and miserable post-holiday winter and bleak and miserable films is hard to say, but 2014 continues the tradition with Devil’s Due, the second mediocre-to-poor horror flick of 2014.
It’s one of those found footage style films that follows newlyweds Sam and Zach through their first, unexpected pregnancy.
There are only so many ways a horror film can go with an unexpected pregnancy, the most common of which, like Devil’s Due, travels down Rosemary’s Baby Lane. So, you know in advance what terror lies ahead. At that point it’s up to the filmmakers to find new and interesting ways to generate those scares.
Unfortunately writer Lindsay Devlin and co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett have zero surprises up their collective sleeve.
Ideas stolen from Rosemary, a smattering of Paranormal Activity films and scores of other, better movies are pasted blandly and unconvincingly together, with nary a jump, flinch or shudder to be found.
And do we seriously need two directors for this? Was there that much to do?
Devil’s Due is just another bad horror film, which means there’s little reason to explore cinematic integrity. And yet, here I go. The “found footage” approach in horror films is so, so tired that an actual artistic purpose for it rarely enters the picture anymore. In Blair Witch, someone discovered tins of film, and when those reels are watched, the mystery of three disappearances is revealed. In Quarantine, a newsman’s footage uncovers the terror of a hideous outbreak. In TrollHunter (if you haven’t seen it, you must), a TV news team receives and broadcasts footage shot of, well, trolls.
You see? If you have a found footage film, the footage has to be found at some point, explaining why we, the audience, are seeing it. Otherwise, the use of this technique is simply to avoid having to write a coherent story, provide character development or backstory, or learn the art of cinematography.
Far superior to the film itself, and much cheaper than a movie ticket, is the viral marketing video attached to it. Do yourself a favor and watch this (or watch it again) and skip the movie altogether.
Quentin Tarantino’s deceptively complex Django Unchained boasts almost countless fascinating images of depravity and violence, among them, the Mandingo fights that Django and Dr. King use to con their way onto Candyland Plantation.
Filmmakers Josh Waller and Robert Beaucage found inspiration in this particular idea, writing and directing the film Raze about a set of prisoners forced to fight each other to the death. Rather than pitting enslaved men against each other for the amusement of plantation owners, Raze forces kidnapped, attractive women to beat each other to death.
Back to Tarantino and his far better ideas. Waller pairs the involuntary death match concept with Tarantino’s favorite death proof stunt double Zoe Bell for their spare and brutal film. We know Bell can hang onto the hood of a speeding Dodge Challenger, but can she hold her own against 49 women desperate to survive and protect their loved ones?
Bell plays Sabrina, a young woman who woke up one day in a cell in the dungeon-like basement belonging to some wacko order of zealots. Losing a fight does not only mean a prisoner’s own death, but also ensures the death of one loved one.
It’s a streamlined plot, certainly, with precious little time wasted on character backstory or the specifics of this weird, bloodthirsty order. Just round after round of two women bare-knuckling it until only one’s left breathing.
It would appear that this exploitation film hopes to make some points about exploitation, and it’s true that these battle sequences could hardly be considered titillating. (Should you find these battles arousing in any way, do society a favor and seek help.) But any gesture toward feminism or humanity is hollow. This is not a “women in prison” film in the traditional sense, but gratuitous violence is its primary purpose.
Bell is impressive. It’s always nice to find yourself believing a performance, and I believe she can kick some ass. I wouldn’t cross her.
Her Death Proof co-star Tracie Thoms turns in a solid performance, and Doug Jones offers an effectively quirky turn as the leader of the cult. But the relentlessness of the plot becomes tedious with half the film still to watch, and the anonymity of victims more than undermines any high-mindedness the film purports to offer.
Raze devolves quickly to little more than percussive violence perpetrated without imagination or artistic purpose. Apparently there is more the filmmakers have to learn from Tarantino.
