REVIEW: The Revenant

The Revenant 4

The Revenant
Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Written by: Mark L. Smith & Alejandro González Iñárritu (screenplay), Michael Punke (novel)
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter

Leonardo DiCaprio endures such an excruciating array of torments in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant that by the time he guts a dead horse, strips naked and climbs inside it to keep warm for the night, I couldn’t help but laugh in pity.  The movie, set in an unspecified area of the American frontier in the 1820s, is a series of grueling endurance tests for his character Hugh Glass, and its payoff is a brawl that paints the snow red and fills it with chunks of skin and bone.

The Revenant is a predictable, hyper-masculine revenge story told with a brutal beauty. Glass is helping navigate a group of fellow frontiersman after their hunting expedition, though the movie wastes no time before pummeling the group with violence.  As they rest in the woods, a Native American tribe surrounds them and attacks;  arrows pierce throats, bullets rip through bodies. Much of the scene unfolds in a single take. The camera follows a person, usually until they die, and then picks another.  Unlike Birdman, Iñárritu’s underwhelming showbiz satire that was filmed as if it were all a single shot, The Revenant’s visual design enhances the movie’s other elements instead of overwhelming them.

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REVIEW: The Hateful Eight

The Hateful Eight

The Hateful Eight
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Walton Goggins

(Spoilers throughout)

The Hateful Eight is Quentin Tarantino’s most punishing film, both in terms of length and content.  His eighth feature is a three hour chamber drama that crams post-Civil War America into a cabin during a blizzard and watches as its characters tear each other apart. It seems made with a sinister glee that antagonizes the viewer more than it entertains, coaxing uncomfortable laughter and squirms as it becomes more and more sadistic.

Though much of The Hateful Eight takes place in the same room, it begins in the snowy Wyoming wilderness.  A black Yankee soldier-turned bounty hunter named Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) crosses paths with a stagecoach carrying three white people: a driver, another bounty hunter and his bounty.   Warren himself is hauling a few dead bounties with him, but the other bounty hunter, John Ruth (Kurt Russell), prides himself on taking his in alive so they can hang.

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REVIEW: Carol

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Carol
Directed by: Todd Haynes
Written by: Phyllis Nagy (screenplay), Patricia Highsmith (book)
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler and Sarah Paulson

When Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) see each other for the first time, at a department store in 1950s New York City, their first shared look is a barrage of confusion and longing, of instant connection stifled by societal codes.  In other words, it’s love at first sight.

Moments after that frozen-in-time first glance, Carol shows up at the doll display where Therese works, and asks about Christmas gifts for her daughter.  Therese doesn’t have the doll she wants in stock, but she suggests a new state-of-the-art miniature train set.  “I like your hat,” Carol says of as she walks away, Therese’s eyes widening as as she stays behind with the other Santa hat-donning store clerks.

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REVIEW: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Star Wars

Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens
Directed by: J.J. Abrams
Written by: Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt (screenplay), George Lucas (characters)
Starring: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Harrison Ford and Adam Driver

The seventh episode of Star Wars is a clear-eyed, contagious nostalgia trip that also manages the difficult task of setting the stage for a promising batch of new characters. For better and worse, director J.J. Abrams lays the groundwork for that new era of a galaxy far, far away by relishing in the familiarity of George Lucas’ original film.

The Force Awakens is a seemingly impossible balancing act that Abrams mostly pulls off; even as the movie retraces Lucas’ footsteps, it doesn’t feel like an insincere cash grab (ahem, Jurassic World).  The old characters– among them Han Solo, Chewbacca and General (the woman formerly known as Princess) Leia– don’t feel like they’re being crossed off a cameo checklist.  Though they’re introduced with applause-ready entrances, they’re still mixed organically into the story, which is set roughly 30 years after the events of the 1983 installment The Return of the Jedi. (This movie all but ignores Lucas’ prequel trilogy).

(Minor spoiler ahead)

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Short takes: Krampus, Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 & Creed

Krampus

Krampus — Krampus is a delightful, deranged revision to the standard dysfunctional family Christmas film.  It begins as one, with a slew of perfectly cast character archetypes — Toni Collette as a controlling mom, David Koechner as her gun-toting, obnoxious brother-in-law — trapped inside a home for the holidays.  The first third of the movie is sharply written, but fairly standard.  They bicker at dinner, pick at each other’s life choices and complain about the cooking.  Then Max (Emjay Anthony), a young boy teetering on the edge of believing in Santa, is ridiculed by his cousins into tearing up his letter for the North Pole.

From here, Krampus comes unhinged in the best possible way.  Max’s lack of faith disturbs St. Nick’s evil twin, a monstrous, horned demon who lands in the neighborhood with a band of demented elves and possessed Christmas toys.  Director Michael Dougherty orchestrates a gleeful spectacle of it all, finding a perfect tone that blends absurdity with terror.  From gingerbread men cackling as they fire a nail gun at someone to a giant clown jack-in-the-box that eats children, Krampus is filled with some wonderfully terrifying imagery.  The ending slightly cheapens the overall effect of everything before it, but I can see this movie becoming a welcome holiday alternative whenever someone suggests that we watch The Santa Clause for the 800th time.  Grade: B

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Short takes: Spotlight, Truth, I Smile Back & The Keeping Room

Spotlight 2

Spotlight—  The only direct brush with evil in Spotlight comes in an offhanded exchange between reporter Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and a priest who openly admits to molesting young boys.  He admits to it while standing casually in his doorway in the middle of the day.   He doesn’t seem to be thinking anything of it, like what he’s saying is perfectly fine. When his sister interrupts him and slams the door on Pfeiffer’s face, she walks down onto the sidewalk, where two children race by on bikes toward a school bus looming in the background.

Though their working space is cramped and flooded with blinding fluorescent lighting instead of windows, The Boston Globe newsroom is not hermetically sealed off from the world, and the story the paper’s “Spotlight” investigative team is uncovering impacts all of their personal lives.  The building where they work is across the street from a Catholic school where a priest was accused of molesting several boys, including a former classmate of Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton), the group’s leader.   Another member of the team, Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James), lives right by a home that houses priests who are “rehabilitating.”  It’s a two-story white house, indistinct from any of the others in his neighborhood.  Knowing it’s there and that he can’t run through the streets warning people before the story is published keeps him up at night.

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Short takes: Steve Jobs, Bridge of Spies & The Martian

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs — I was pleasantly surprised that Steve Jobs was honed in on three specific product launches in the late Apple prodigy’s life rather than a straightforward biopic.  There are flashbacks to key moments in his past, but they come in at spontaneous and fitting moments.  Each launch captures the personal and professional turmoil in Jobs’ life, and their pacing is unrelenting. The movie doesn’t shy away from how much of an asshole he was, though it does give him an overly sappy, redeeming conclusion.  Michael Fassbender captures his opportunism and arrogance, and the movie is able to make him sympathetic by focusing largely on his failures.

Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay, a rapid-fire burst of bitterness, denial and outright cruelty, is the true star of the movie.  This is both a good and a bad thing; the dialogue is brilliant, and delivered at such a breakneck pace that it’s often overwhelming, especially with Daniel Pemberton’s feverish score.  However, this also means Steve Jobs never really leaps off the page.  Sorkin, Fassbender and director Danny Boyle tap into Jobs’ magnetism, but it feels too calculated.  The dialogue sparkles, but other than a board meeting during a rain storm or a feverish crowd waiting for Jobs to take the stage, the images almost never do.   Grade: C

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REVIEW: Crimson Peak

Crimson Peak 5

Crimson Peak
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro
Written by: Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain and Charlie Hunnam

Warning: Spoilers throughout

Don’t worry, it’s just clay.  Red clay.  Seeping up through the ground.  They’re trying to mine it for some reason, this tall, pale, handsome man and his quiet, pale, sharp sister.  Almost as quickly as Edith (Mia Wasikowska) arrives at their English estate, before she can grow accustomed to their decaying mansion and its many time-frozen rooms, winter comes.  All of the sudden there is snow everywhere, outside and coming in through a hole in the ceiling and collecting by the main staircase. The red clay keeps seeping and mixing with it.  There’s a morbid sight outside now, probably the best way imaginable to keep kids off your lawn.

Edith goes there out of love and desperation. She’s whisked away from America by Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) almost immediately after her father’s murder.  She gets upset when a doctor friend (Charlie Hunnam) tries to examine her dad’s caved in skull for signs of foul play.  She’ll be thankful for his inquisitiveness later, but during her father’s funeral she all but ignores him, staring into the distance with her head pressed into Sharpe’s chest.  His sister is already back in England, waiting for them.

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REVIEW: The Intern

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The Intern
Directed by: Nancy Meyers
Written by: Nancy Meyers
Starring: Robert DeNiro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo and Anders Holm

Nancy Meyers has good taste.  The notoriously enviable interiors in her movies– the lavish getaway home of Something’s Gotta Give, the pristine bakery and matching house kitchen in It’s Complicated– aren’t just illustrations of her heroines’ lavish lifestyles, they’re basically characters themselves.  Her latest, The Intern, is another proud continuation of that stylistic tradition, but taste-making is also one of the movie’s subjects.

Set mostly within a thriving, millennial-infested clothing start-up in Brooklyn, The Intern provides ample space for Meyers’ production team to create an enviably modern workplace.  The movie never views that work-space as an alien world, everyone fits right in. This is true even as the script takes the point of view of 70-year-old Ben (Robert DeNiro), who is selected for the company’s senior internship program.  He’s assigned directly to shadow the CEO Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway), who started the business and is struggling to hold onto it as it continues to grow and expand.  The investors are pressuring her to pick a new CEO, someone with more experience with bigger companies.  All of the choices are men.

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REVIEW: Grandma

Grandma Lily Tomlin

Grandma
Directed by: Paul Weitz
Written by: Paul Weitz
Starring: Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden and Sam Elliot

Grandma is a robust, compact vehicle for the boundless talent of Lily Tomlin.  She is so effortlessly funny and at times disarmingly sad here that it makes its faults easier to stomach.  The movie is set up as a series of vignettes involving Elle Reid (Tomlin) and her granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) trying to raise $630 so Sage can have an abortion without telling her judgmental, ruthless mother (Marcia Gay Harden).  Though Grandma’s dialogue about abortion tends to be overly didactic, that it doesn’t punish, kill or judge Sage for wanting the procedure is admirable.

Elle doesn’t have the money on hand to give her granddaughter because she’s broke after paying off all her debt (and then cutting up her credit cards to make a wind chime), so she and Sage set out to raise the money.  First, they try the loser who got Sage pregnant (Nat Wolff), but he only has $50, and Elle has to hit him in the nuts with a hockey stick to get even that much out of him.  From there, the two go on a drive through Elle’s past in an effort to get the rest of the money before Sage’s appointment at 5:45 p.m. (They start off on their fundraising journey at about 9 a.m. that same day, when Sage shows up at her grandma’s house right after Elle had broken up with her girlfriend Olivia [Judy Greer]).

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