Match opens on a ballet instructor – smilingly supportive yet rigorous, the kind of mentor with a joy for teaching that inspires. He is Tobi, an aging Julliard ballet instructor played with confidence and enthusiasm by the wonderful Patrick Stewart.
Director Stephen Belber adapts his own Broadway play for the screen, and though Frank Langella originated the role on stage, it feels custom made for Stewart.
Tobi craves his solitude, yet he’s agreed to meet with Lisa (Carla Gugino), who, with her husband Mike (Matthew Lillard) in tow, wants to interview Tobi for her dissertation on classical dance choreography.
Like the Richard Linklater film Tape, also penned by Belber from his own stage play, Match is a three-way dialog about the effects of the past. But where Tape was a grim exercise in regret, Match pairs regret with celebration, and the entire effort is buoyed by Stewart’s nervous showman’s energy.
Gugina and Lillard are solid as well, she conveying the depths of tenderness and heartbreak with an expression, and he capably animating his character’s pain and its protective layer of anger. Their chemistry with the lead, particularly in more intimate, one-on-one scenes, packs a punch. But the show belongs to Stewart.
Tobi is a character, not a type, and Stewart so fully inhabits this fascinating, multi-dimensional man that the actor ceases to exist.
Belber’s casting is spot on, and his dialog is sharp and insightful. How could Stewart do anything but soar with such magnificent lines? But the film feels trapped, confined. Belber is rarely able to open up, take advantage of the opportunities cinema offers that the stage cannot. His film feels like a play.
And though the second act, surprisingly fresh and raw as Lisa and Tobi get to know each other, is very strong, the entire effort feels just slightly stale, a bit contrived, and inevitably predictable.
Still, it’s a lovely film about chance, consequences, choice. If nothing else, it’s a magnificent showcase for an underappreciated talent.
One of the year’s most impressive directorial debuts is available for home viewing today. Justin Simien makes the leap from shorts to features with one of the smartest films of the year. Dear White People tackles racial issues with confidence and a mix of sarcasm, outrage, hilarity and disgust. Simien never abandons comedy for preaching, but there is not an issue he isn’t willing to spotlight, however uncomfortable. It’s an insightful, biting comedy too few people saw this year. Witty, incisive and one step ahead of you, this excellent indie comedy needs to make everyone’s home entertainment watch list.
There hasn’t been as funny, insightful and thoughtful a look at perceptions of race since Spike Lee’s groundbreaking 1989 Do the Right Thing. As Mookie makes his pizza deliveries on the hottest day of the summer, his alter-ego Lee unveils racism and other ugliness that bubbles up on days like this. It’s worth a revisit.
A woman wakes from a nap due to a phone call. She’s baking for the kids. It seems like a lovely way to spend your afternoon, really, drowsy and surrounded by the smell of baked goods. So why does Sandra (Oscar-nominated Marion Cotillard) sound defensive about the nap and too enthusiastic about the treats with whoever is on the phone?
Because there are layers and layers to the most ordinary of circumstances, a point Two Days, One Night explores so effectively.
Sandra’s co-workers were faced with a vote: each stands to gain a large bonus in return for eliminating one salary – Sandra’s. She has the weekend to convince them to give up their bonus and save her job.
If it sounds contrived, rest assured that writing/directing brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne embrace their characteristically naturalistic style to great effect. The films lacks any hint of melodrama, thanks in part to the brothers’ honest style and in greater part to a lead performance utterly absent of artificiality.
Cotillard is a master, and this film is no exception, it’s a highlight. Her gestures, her gaze, her posture, every syllable of dialogue simply convince you this is a woman fighting for her dignity as well as her job. She’s aided by a large, capable cast and buoyed by the Dardennes’ fly-on-the-wall camera work.
The film has larger goals, looking at ideas as concrete as corporate indifference, as amorphous as depression, and as grand as human nature. Grounding all this examination in the intimate and mundane details of one woman’s struggle keeps the film anchored in the reality so precious to the filmmakers.
Two Days, One Night is not as touching as the Dardennes’ Kid with a Bike or as gripping as L’Enfant – two of their finest efforts. It feels more contrived than those films, its craftsmanship more obvious. But Sandra’s challenge and her personal journey are so beautifully articulated that you won’t care. The film is a small, potent wonder.
American Sniper contiues to generate loads of box office cash and social backlash. Director Clint Eastwood – a figure absolutely synonymous with the badass, the gunman – continues to be fascinated with telling that guy’s story. His most powerful films are always stories of the physical and emotional damage the badass accrues over the course of a lifetime of violence, and American Sniper is another in this potent vein. Debate rages over whether it’s a responsible depiction of Chris Kyle as a man, but as a film American Sniper is a brilliantly acted, well executed thriller, ranking as one of the best of its genre.
Military films have often riled audiences and critics alike. Here’s a non-sequential list of ten of our other favorites.
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
This is Stanley Kubrick’s chilly vision of the war in Vietnam and its impact on the American psyche. More intense and yet more controlled than any of the other Vietnam epics of the ’80s, this film is a punch to the gut from boot camp through the Tet Offensive. It’s brilliant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9f6JaaX7Wg
No Man’s Land (2001)
Two soldiers – one Bosnian, one Serb – are trapped in a trench between the Serbian and Bosnian fronts. Their position is symbolic of the fuzzy barrier dividing compassion and hatred, as well as a symbol of the film itself – balancing and blending the bitter comedy of absurdities and the devastating human issues of war. This often comedic, often punishing look at the idiocy of war, in concept and in particulars, took the best screenplay prize at Cannes 2001.
Stripes (1981)
Yes, a change of pace for Army training, sir, but no doubt the most entertaining film on the list. Every list should have a Bill Murray film on it, and if you can pull from the exceptional bank of Harol Ramis-penned comedies, all the better. Plus, it’s a history lesson about all kinds of Eastern European nations that no longer exist.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1959)
A timeless examination of the madness of war and the bone-deep respectability of the British upper class, The Bridge on the River Kwai hauled in 7 Oscars. Director David Lean knows what he’s doing with a camera. The film looks amazing, and the choices made by every major character continues to surprise and confound almost 60 years later.
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Far and away the best of the Iraq War films, this unflinching and politics-free look at a U.S. bomb squad operating inside Baghdad is a triumph for director Katheryn Bigelow. It won 6 Oscars, including Best Picture and the historic Best Director nod. Four years later Bigelow upped the ante with the even more gripping Zero Dark Thirty (not an outright “military” film for our purposes here but we can have that debate another time). The Hurt Locker gets to you with the quiet intelligence of a film benefitting from years of history and hindsight. The fact it had neither makes the achievement all the more startling.
Das Boot (1981)
Wolfgang Peterson’s study in claustrophobia is the most tense and terrifying look at WWII you are likely to find.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Great performances and an excellent story follow what is one of the most devastating and visceral action sequences in war movie cinema. Steven Spielberg was robbed a best picture Oscar for this one, but he can rest assured that his WWII effort is holding up a little better than some fluffy Shakespeare tale.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Trippy, violent and hypnotic, Francis Ford Coppola’s iconic take on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is hard to watch and harder to turn away from. The film stinks of death and insanity thanks to Coppola’s bizarre vision and equally unsettling performances from Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen and Dennis Hopper.
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Twelve criminals execute a suicide mission in WWII. Here’s a throwback thriller where the guy who has your back in your top secret mission is very likely insane. Never trust a guy named Maggot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE-m6zUNKH0
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
Robin Williams’s best performance comes in the form of an obnoxious radio DJ sentenced to a station in Vietnam during the war. Funny and tragic, boasting an endlessly quotable screenplay and excellent performances all around, it’s one of the decade’s best films.
Pioneer braids claustrophobia, conspiracy and political intrigue to create a compelling, often uncomfortable thriller. Set in 1980 Norway, the film follows a Norwegian/American collaboration to create an oil pipeline at then-unattempted depths.
Norway is eager to own the project and, by extension, the oil itself, but they need American “know how” to train divers to work at depths of up to 500 meters. Tragedy strikes, and one diver puzzles through layers of deception, cover up, greed and corporate shenanigans to uncover its cause.
Director Erik Skjoldbjaerg crafts a tight but rich thriller, thanks in part to the savvy work of cinematographer Jallo Faber. His camera heightens every sensation: the paranoia of being followed, the thrill of the chase, the lead character’s panic. More effective than anything is the way Skjoldbjaerg and Faber develop tension by exploiting the sinking, oppressive claustrophobic nightmare of the depths.
The look of the film is also spot-on for its time period, but without a compelling story, all the set decoration and camera tricks in the world couldn’t keep you interested. Co-scriptor Skjoldbjaerg – working with a team of writers – keeps you in the head of diver Petter (a wonderful Aksel Hennie). You feel his confusion, empathize with his desperation, and work out the details as he does.
It’s a cagey approach, one that works as well as it does because of Hennie’s keen performance. The solution to the mystery is always just out of reach, which can’t help but compel attention.
The supporting cast is very large, though it boasts a few standout performances. Wes Bentley is fun in a change of pace role as an American thug diver and Ane Dal Torp’s enigmatic performance is weirdly fascinating.
Ensemble mystery/thrillers can be hard to stay on top of, especially if they’re primarily foreign language efforts. While Pioneer is never impossible to follow, it can get slippery here and there. On the whole, though, it’s a suspenseful surprise.
Jennifer Aniston has spent the last couple years shedding her golden-girl-next-door image with bawdy comedy roles in the Horrible Bosses franchise and We Are the Millers, as well as a handful of indie flicks. Through the journey she’s successfully mined new area in comedy, but her latest, Cake, shows she has unplumbed depths of talent in drama as well.
Aniston plays Claire. Suffering with chronic pain as well as deep emotional scars, Claire is a self-described raging bitch. Acid tongued and brutally frank, she’s not a favorite with her support group. Or with her physical therapist. Or with much of anybody, really, until she develops an unlikely (and highly contrived) relationship with the widower of another support group member (Sam Worthington).
The film, directed by Daniel Barnz (Beastly), wants to meander through Claire’s unconventional journey, allowing events and details to evolve sloppily, as they do in life. But it doesn’t succeed. Instead, it creates a highly unlikely series of coincidences and relies on Aniston’s formidable performance to make the linkages feel both natural and surprising.
He’s treading similar ground as John Cameron Mitchell’s poignant 2010 effort Rabbit Hole, but Cake suffers a great deal by comparison. Barnz and screenwriter Patrick Tobin are trying too hard. Their scenes feel forced, the relationships inauthentic.
Aniston, on the other hand, is as real as she can be. Her performance is unapologetic, as it should be. Grief isn’t flexible. It doesn’t change shape or appearance just to make the people around it more comfortable. Aniston understands this character, what she’s going through and why she’s behaving as she is, and she doesn’t judge her. More importantly, she doesn’t give a shit if you do.
Her supporting cast is stocked with talent, but only the great Adriana Barraza gets the opportunity to build a real character with a real relationship to Claire. And while even Aniston relies heavily on the words on the page, Barraza can convey everything she needs with a wearied look or a reluctant gesture.
We know Aniston’s cute, but the truth is, she has been proving herself a genuine talent for years. Unfortunately, she made far too many far too safe choices as the adorable romantic lead, and they did not pay off.
Now she’s taking real chances, and though Cake is not an exceptional film, Aniston’s performance is a revelation.
Butts did not fill seats when Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini’s small time mobster flick The Drop screened theatrically, which is a shame. But the film releases today for home consumption, so eat up, people! The two play cousins running a bar used to launder Chechan mob money, with Hardy adding layers and layers to a fascinating, maybe simple bartender. Shady characters, double crosses, symbolism and meager redemption keep your attention, plus there’s an incredibly cute dog. It’s worth a look.
The Drop writer Dennis Lehane has penned a number of Boston-based crime dramas, including Shutter Island and Mystic River, but the best of the bunch is Gone Baby Gone. The film that shocked us all with the knowledge that Ben Affleck is a genuinely talented director follows two private investigators working a missing kid case. Morally complicated, brilliantly filmed and boasting a career-best turn from Amy Ryan, this is a surprisingly great crime drama.
Kevin Hart bears a terrible burden in Hollywood. After salvaging a number of mediocre-to-poor films by sheer virtue of his manic comic talent, Hart has been sentenced to a lifetime of awful scripts and off-peak release dates. Got a weak-to-terrible comedy? Stick Hart in it and release it in January when there’s nothing else to see. Maybe it can be the next Ride Along.
Such is the case with The Wedding Ringer. In what amounts to I Love You, Man meets Hitch, Hart plays a best man for hire. Josh Gad plays the lovable dork about to marry up who has no friends to speak of. He needs to drum up 7 groomsmen to keep from admitting his loserhood to his bride-to-be (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting).
Oh, but it’s more than that. The Wedding Ringer is the cautionary tale of a man who failed to uphold the sacred man-vow: bros before hos.
How quickly you tire of The Wedding Ringer depends largely on your tolerance for gay jokes and misogynistic humor. Even if you’re a big fan of both, eventually the film’s lazy scripting, derivative plotting and general mean-spiritedness will likely turn you off. It’s hard to believe this dreck came from the same writing/directing team that brought us The Break Up – hardly a masterpiece, but at least a competently written and well acted comedy.
To be fair, this film contains a handful of real laughs, and Hart and Gad – another proven comic talent – have genuine chemistry. But every gag drags on minutes longer than necessary, and most zag into territory too unimaginative to be provocative in its tastelessness.
What if a romantic (or, in this case, bro-mantic) comedy chose not to depict the story of a schlubby guy who deserves help to nab a vacuous hottie? What if, instead, the film paired this decent, funny, worthy-if-overweight and nerdy fella with an equally overweight, worthy, decent woman? I would die of a coronary, that’s what would happen – but I’m probably safe, because where in Hollywood would they find the female lead?
A good movie for Kevin Hart may be just as unlikely, but I would love to see what he could do with a decent script.
It’s early. Too early to get excited. Blackhat will face a lot of competition as 2015 journeys onward, but it is as strong a contender for worst film of the year as any movie could be. Jesus, is it bad.
Yes, it’s January and the film is about hackers – that’s two big strikes against any major studio film. Remind me, when was the last time a cybercrime film was interesting? You can squeeze only so much tension from shots of fingers on a keyboard and anxious expressions reflecting the blue light of a computer screen. Worse still are those self-indulgent shots of the digital journey inside the hardware – kind of the Tron’s eye view. Unfortunately, director Michael Mann has nothing fresher than these ideas up his sleeve.
Chris Hemsworth plays the world’s greatest hacker, because hackers generally look like Chris Hemsworth. So, right there, authenticity is clearly key to the once capable Mann. As it happens, the Chinese and US governments are working together to solve a convoluted – even asinine – cybercrime, and they need the help of this uncharacteristically fit computer nerd, so they furlough him from prison. If he helps them catch the baddies, he’s free; if not, it’s back to the pen, and something tells me he’s pretty popular on the inside.
Bonus: he’s an expert marksman. Who knew? Must be all those first-person shooter games.
Hemsworth affects some kind of diluted Bronx accent – is that it? Boy, it’s hard to tell just what he’s trying to do with it, and in another film that would be a real distraction. But Blackhat is so loaded with bewildering ridiculousness – from the needlessly overwrought visual style to the utterly incompetent sound editing to the laughable storyline to the astonishingly weak and wooden performances – that an awkwardly unrealistic accent goes almost unnoticed.
Thor isn’t outright terrible, and that’s a real feat. Even the great Viola Davis chokes on this screenplay, and the usually solid Wei Tang (Lust, Caution) struggles too mightily with English to deliver a professional performance. Still, all three are outshone by the listless to the point of parody work of Leehom Wang.
It has been ten long years since Michael Mann made a good movie. The real distinction of his newest effort is simply that it is his worst.
Every year Oscar season sees a healthy number of well made biopics for the Academy’s consideration, and those efforts are very often rewarded: 12 Years a Slave, Lincoln, The Iron Lady. But in the 14 years I’ve been covering film in Columbus, none has been as painfully relevant as Selma.
Ava DuVernay’s account of the civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama doesn’t flinch. You can expect the kind of respectful approach and lovely, muted frames common in historical biopics, but don’t let that lull you. This is not the run of the mill, laudable and forgettable historical art piece, and you’ll know that as you watch little girls descend a staircase within the first few minutes. Selma is a straightforward, well crafted punch to the gut.
Working from a screenplay by first time scripter Paul Webb, DuVernay unveils the strategies, political factions, internal frictions and personal sacrifices at play in the days leading to the final march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Yes, she simplifies some complicated issues and relationships, but she is a powerful storyteller at the top of her craft and her choices are always for the good of the film.
The reliable David Oyelowo exceeds expectations as Dr. King. His passionate reserves at the pulpit and the microphone are goosebump perfection, but it’s in the quiet moments that he most impresses, having a bone-deep feel for the man’s weariness as well as his humor, his failings and his faith. It’s a beautiful performance and the heart of a powerful film.
At all times, DuVernay’s film certainly maintains an appropriate reverence for the material. Her cast is more than up to the challenge, beginning with the powerhouse turn from Oyelowo and extending through an impressive, sizeable ensemble. But it’s the filmmaker’s strength in storytelling that elevates this film above others, because DuVernay is never heavy handed, never preachy, and yet every scene is weighted with its historical significance as well as the disheartening immediacy of these events.
The closer black Americans came to the same simple freedoms others took for granted, the more dangerous their lives became, the more anger they faced in the streets, the more outrage was heard from the system that didn’t want – not just yet – to recognize their rights. That shameful time in American history was 1965 – a full fifty years ago. How awful that those wounds feel so fresh.
