Inside Llewyn Davis (***1/2)

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

Written and Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

***1/2

For as brilliant and celebrated as the Coen Brothers are, I'm not sure you can go through their filmography and find a performance like Oscar Isaac has in their latest film, Inside Llewyn Davis. They assisted the performances of Frances McDormand in Fargo, Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men, John Goodman in The Big Lebowski, which are all better performances than Isaac's here, but those are all still orchestrated by that oh so familiar Coen Brothers scheme. Their films are so specifically controlled and manipulated that the performances - even the great ones - feel like pieces of filmmaking, instead of the work of professional performers. Isaac bursts through that veneer with a character that feels so much like a Coen creation, but with a completely different representation. In their first film since 2010's underwhelming True Grit, the Coens turn their eye toward the pre-Bob Dylan folk music scene of 1961 New York. Our focus is on a single performer, Llewyn Davis, who's cycle of failure and poor luck makes up the whole of their latest, polarizing film.

Frozen (***)

FROZEN
Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee

***

The last decade and a half of film animation has been so thoroughly dominated by Pixar studios that at times it has seemed like no one else has even put up a fight, least of all it's parent company, Disney, which has its own legendary studio Walt Disney Animation. I feel like that has shifted ever so slightly in the last few years. Sony Pictures Animation has the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs franchise, which is very slight, but unbelievably adorable. Dreamworks has had a rough patch lately, but they're still the studio responsible for 2010's terrific How to Train Your Dragon and at least the first Shrek film was terrific. And last year, Walt Disney Animation produced Wreck-It Ralph, which may have possibly been the best animated film of the year (even though it lost the Animated Feature Oscar to Brave which was produced by - you guessed it - Pixar). None of those movies are as splendid as Frozen, though, which is Disney's best non-Pixar film since 1998's Mulan. And it's that good because Disney got back to its bread and butter.

Philomena (***)

PHILOMENA
Directed by Stephen Frears

***

Stephen Frears is one of the most consistent filmmakers working today, which makes it all the more unsettling that he's spent his last few movies orchestrating English prestige Oscar bait. When you think that he was the man behind such excitingly vibrant films like My Beautiful Laundrette, The Grifters and High Fidelity, it feels a bit like betrayal to see that he's got both the Freddie Mercury AND the Lance Armstrong biography coming down the pike. All that said, is there anyone playing the Oscar bait game who makes films as good as Frears? Is there anyone who really believes that Helen Mirren didn't deserve her steamroll toward an Oscar for Frears' The Queen? And while his 2009 collaboration with Michelle Pfeiffer, Cheri, was mostly dismissed as prestige pandering, it is actually an exceptionally made adaptation of Colette's novel of the same name. Frears is one of the few directors I trust in the Oscar bait director's chair, because he does actually care about making a good movie, even if he doesn't exactly have to. If he'd made The Iron Lady two years ago, I might have actually gone to see it.

Nebraska (****)

NEBRASKA
Directed by Alexander Payne

****

Bruce Dern is a seventy-three year old actor who's spent most of those years working consistently as a Hollywood character actor. He was at the peak of his powers in the 1970's, with bombastic performances in films like Coming Home (for which he was nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar) and Black Sunday. His version of Tom Buchanan is probably the only quality part of the otherwise droll 1974 version of The Great Gatsby. But he's spent most of his career as a relative unknown, especially these days, where his Oscar nomination is now forty-five years old. (Having just finished the documentary on actor John Cazale, I Knew It Was You, I realized the great parallels between Cazale and Dern - both terrific character actors. I wondered, had Cazale lived past 42 years, if he would've ever gotten his Nebraska). Alexander Payne's newest film, Nebraska, is the first time that Dern has been chosen to lead a picture. Staying true to his consistent professionalism, Dern delivers a perfect performance so evasive yet so incredibly intimate. The film also continues the consistent greatness of Payne, amongst America's best filmmakers, who crafts one of his best, most emotionally complex films to date.

The Book Thief (**)

THE BOOK THIEF
Directed by Brian Percival

**

The Book Thief really means well, and the overall nice-ness of the storytelling here makes it hard to really dislike. In it's purest form, this is really a story built for children, based on Markus Zusak's young adult novel, yet Brian Percival's film wants the prestige of a serious adult drama. It feels like its overextending its reach, even if it does have the gravity of a Holocaust story on its side. The Holocaust has inspired some of the very best films that I've ever seen (Schindler's List, Seven Beauties), but it's also inspired some disasters (The Reader, Life is Beautiful), with filmmakers attempting to tap one of history's greatest tragedies for sentimentality or life-affirming propaganda. It probably has less to do with the subject matter and more to do with the fact that there have just been so many damn movies made about it. The Book Thief is far from being either the best or the worst Holocaust movie, finding itself somewhere in the middle, with a collection of performances that manage to just raise it above dull.

Dallas Buyers Club (**1/2)

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee

**1/2

It's hard not to feel like Matthew McConaughey's recent career resurgence is reaching its crescendo here with Dallas Buyers Club. It's a striking performance, so captivating and virile. He famously lost 35 pounds, and its a testament to the performance that it doesn't feel too much like stunt acting. It's a juicy role, one that's screams out for awards attention, but McConaughey plays it without shame, and even at times without decency. That is to say, by avoiding the obvious way to play the role, he made it seem like that was the obvious way all along. This is what happens when you get the right movie star to play the right part - this was also proven with Tom Hanks in Captain Philips and Robert Redford in All is Lost. But what about the movie itself? Dallas Buyers Club's premise is problematic on its own, but what's to say of its execution, which nearly forces us to feel compassion for a homophobic bigot and an AIDS profiteer? Shouldn't that matter at all? It's a film that requires a lot of unpacking, even if it does supply a highly watchable two hours.

Blue is the Warmest Color (**)

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR
La vie d'Adele
Written, Produced and Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche

**

If certain straight people think that homosexuality is too mainstream, they should go and watch Blue is the Warmest Color. It's bullish, in-your-face and doesn't hide it's romantic entanglements behind narrative structure. It won the prestigious Palme D'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year, and was the first time in the festival's history that the award was given to two of the film's lead actresses as well as the director. It's part sexual awakening, part lesbian docudrama. It's part love story arc, part Mike Leigh-level improv experiment. It's depiction of the sex life between two women was explicit enough to earn the film an NC-17 rating, yet it probably spends more time peaking into classrooms, watching students of various ages read from pages of literature. Blue is the Warmest Color is one of the most important movies that you can see in a theater this year, but it is also probably one of the dullest, unequivocally muted by it's own need to capture reality, instead capturing mundanity.

The Counselor (*)

THE COUNSELOR
Directed by Ridley Scott

*

The plot of The Counselor is complicated in a way that leaves you with very little enthusiasm to actually figure it out. There's nothing engrossing about this film and these characters. It's story is not just bleak, it's apocalyptic - it's drama is second-rate Shakespearean, it's attempts at flourish feeling more like camp. It's a film made by a director and a screenwriter that feel that any message is incredibly important as long as they're the ones delivering it. Their clout allows them to pack the film with stars across the board; a hoard of Oscar winners, nominees, future Oscar nominees and Cameron Diaz. The trust these actors place in these veteran artists seems implicit, which is a shame. The result of their efforts is a two-hour megaphone rant scripted by two men on the wrong side of seventy-five screaming about how cruel, empty and inherently evil the world is. No country for old men, indeed. Let's hope it stays that way.

All Is Lost (****)

ALL IS LOST
Written and Directed by J.C. Chandor

****

The theme of survival has been explicit throughout the heavy-hitting October releases. Gravity put a frail biomedical scientist against grave odds to survive being lost in space. Captain Phillips showed one man's attempt to maneuver his way out of a dangerous kidnapping scenario. And just this weekend 12 Years a Slave showed how a free man turned slave has to find ways to stay alive just long enough so that his free status will eventually be recognized. The survival theme in 12 Years is most prevalent, with several characters commenting on it throughout, but in all three of those films the hero had a very definable destination they meant to reach. They knew the process and they knew the route to the position they coveted. All is Lost follows a man without any idea of how he will escape. He's a resourceful man, fully prepared for the elements that he faces, but it's nothing in the face of mortality. His actions seem to only prolong the inevitable, each action adding only mere seconds till the grips of death reach, which makes All is Lost the most gripping portrayal of survival yet.

12 Years a Slave (***1/2)

12 YEARS A SLAVE
Directed by Steve McQueen

***1/2

In a post Django Unchained movie climate, a film like 12 Years a Slave might get swallowed. Both films put almost Mel Gibson-like focus on the brutality of American slavery, soaking the audience in the horrors and the blood of the darkest part of American history. Django did it with flair, a pop picture using Western homage to contrast the grotesque evil shown on the screen - that movie only felt about ten percent sincere. 12 Years a Slave is a full hundred. It sees nothing catchy or funny about the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in New York during antebellum America who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the dastardly South. It's bones are rooted in complete seriousness. 12 Years is unflinching, rough to the touch and stark in its emotional portrayal of such a harrowing story. With incredible performances from his main cast members, Steve McQueen crafts a story that manages to side-swipe the sentimentality of previous slave tales like Roots while still managing to capture the helpless horror of its setting.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (**1/2)

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2
Directed by Cody Cameron & Kris Pearn

When you consider that we live in a movie culture where Hollywood has so desperately run out of ideas that they're making movies out of 500-word children's books, you have to appreciate the effort put forth to make a farce as charming as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It's maniacal commitment to Looney Tunes-style insanity felt refreshing compared to both the sentimentality of Pixar and the cynical, trying-to-hard-to-be-cool-ness of Dreamworks animation. It's zaniness had little in common with the original book's modest contrast of a normal everyday town being blessed with giant food falling from the sky, but it had a unique voice. It's easily the best thing that Sony Pictures Animation produced, so I guess it would be a no-brainer that it would produce a sequel. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 has the same formula of most children's movie sequels - take a winning recipe and add some extra, sugary toppings - but doesn't leave you feeling as bloated as it could have.

Captain Phillips (***)

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
Directed by Paul Greengrass

***

It's hard to think of a movie star like Tom Hanks - someone who has been a movie star for such a sustained, lucrative period of time - and think that he will be able to show us something new. But that's exactly what happens in Captain Phillips. It's hard to remember the last time Hanks was able to tear into a role the way he does here. Do we have to go all the way back to 2001's Cast Away? If Phillips is set to spark a new chapter in this historically popular star's career, it does so with a performance so ingrained into the Hanks reputation that it feels like something he's done a million times. But it isn't. This is a film less interested in the rights and wrongs of a dangerous situation than we might think, but its placement of Hanks, right in the middle, gives the movie an undeniable moral center. Does Hanks abuse that responsibility? No, he just uses it to give one of the best performances of his career.

Don Jon (**)

DON JON
Written and Directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Thanks to the internet, the development of wifi technology and the boom of video ripping/bootleg movies, pornography is more available to the public than it ever has been before. There is a lot consumption going on right now, with Spotify allowing its users to take in as much pop music as is possible and YouTube letting people hop from viral video to viral video until your entire day is gone, and your mind is racing with cats playing pianos or crotch punches. Porno is also a major player in this cultural development, though obviously people are a lot more mum about it. Don Jon wants to be the first movie to fully embrace this part of Modern American sociology, and its certainly different that a wide release discusses porn addiction, but this film's bite is rather soft and takes too much time to really make its point, which doesn't really have anything to do with pornography at all.

Gravity (***1/2)

GRAVITY
Produced and Directed by Alfonso Cuaron

***1/2

Should be said before we begin here, I only saw this movie in plain ol' 2D, and while I've been told that I only captured a fraction of the film's brilliant visual experience, I still found the film's effects to be staggering. Thought it best to get that off my chest before we're in too deep.

Gravity opens with text meant to reinforce how terrifying outer space is. It seemed like the kind of thing added self-consciously at the last minute because the last thing this movie needs is a list of factoids explaining why the events that are about to unfold are truly, down-to-the-marrow scary. And this is a movie that truly embraces its setting, acknowledging both its unmatched beauty and the unending threat of horrible, suffocating death. With the exception of that opening text, Alfonso Cuaron's latest movie is incredibly confident in its translation of that constant contradiction. It never fools itself that the silent grace of space is anything other than a siren's song coaxing many into an imminent death trap. This delicate balance produces what will probably be the most stress-inducing movie theater experience of the year and a visual wonder, suckering you into the majestic vastness of space all the while reminding you how frightening it can be.

Enough Said (***1/2)

ENOUGH SAID
Written and Directed by Nicole Holofcener

***1/2

Nicole Holofcener goes out of her way to make movies about women, but she has no interest at looking at them through the Nancy Meyers, feminist-lite lens. She just has stories in her head, most of them dealing with women over thirty, and has a way of telling these stories that is both flabbergasting in its effortless portrayal of things that are simply not shown too often in Hollywood movies and terrific in its modesty, not showering itself with praise but instead shaming the audience for even considering any of these tales as "innovative". Her 2001 film, Lovely and Amazing, is one of the best of that decade that contained a spectacular performance from Emily Mortimer that still goes horrifically unseen. Her latest film pegs Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as its muse, and isn't afraid to explore the comedic landscapes that she leads the movie into, and Louis-Dreyfuss is equally unafraid to delve into the film's deeper themes of trying to start from scratch with love when it has burned you down to the foundation.