Iron Man 3 (2013)

4/5

Iron Man 3 was better than I thought it would be. After my disappointment with the second one, I was worried that this one would be even worse. Luckily, it managed to elicit enough thrills and laughs during its 2-hour runtime to keep a smile on my face. The pacing had enough momentum to keep me intrigued and on the edge of my seat. The action was well-filmed, keeping us involved in what was happening but far enough away so we could actually tell what was going on. And the characters were... well, they were comic book characters, let's be honest. They're not all that complex or developed, and they're not meant to be. But it's easy to accept. I think my least favorite part of the movie was the heinous voice-over that bookended the film. Although it kind of felt like the stylings of a comic book, it was wholly unnecessary in a movie. All in all, not the worst of the bunch, but definitely not as fresh and exciting as the first one. It's a no-brainer if you enjoy the series already, but it lacks much of the creativity and innovation that made this superhero series so engaging in the first place.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1300854/

Hugo (2011)

5/5

Martin Scorsese's Hugo is pure magic. Its conception and creation were very clearly labors of love by exquisitely talented craftsmen. The story begins with a boy, Hugo (Butterfield), who lives in a train station. He is caught stealing gears from a toy shop owned by Papa Georges (Kingsley), who forces him to empty his pockets. Among the stolen goods is a notebook that was given to him by his late father (Law). The drawings in the notebook seem to bring back unwanted memories for Papa Georges, who threatens to burn it and report the boy to the station master (Baron Cohen). He follows Papa Georges home, pleading with his eyes, and waits outside the house until he sees Papa George's niece (Moretz). Hugo enlists her help and they soon find themselves on an adventure that grows beyond their wildest imagination.

I know the book on which this movie is based has a lot of illustrations, so I can't give Scorsese all the credit for its visual power, but boy does this movie pack a punch. The story is told in images, with snippets of silent film interspersed with inspiration from Hitchcock's Rear Window. And it is an emotional roller coaster, juxtaposing the kind of pure sorrow and exhilaration as only a child could experience. It combines complex characters with expressive acting to tremendous effect. The energetic pacing complements the classic storytelling structure, thanks in no small part to Thelma Schoonmaker's efficient editing. Even the 3D technology was well-done. I know that because it did not give me a headache. (Whether a 3D movie gives me a headache is really my only criterion now for how good the 3D is--Avatar is the only other movie to have good 3D by these standards.)

Not all is perfect in this movie, but its flaws are easily overlooked. I have no doubt that the special effects used in this movie will one day look as dated and comical as King Kong or The Birds. But for now, they're passable. Also, the side characters are somewhat poorly developed. There are hints at uniqueness and charm--and the atmosphere itself is already filled to the brim with wonder and awe--but the side characters never get fully fleshed-out. Jean-Pierre Jeunet would have perhaps been a better choice to breathe life into the subplots and side stories, as he did in Amélie and Delicatessen.

This film succeeds on all fronts: as entertainment, as art, and as heartfelt nostalgia for cinema. Go into the movie knowing nothing and you will be surprised and delighted. Go into the movie a second time and I am certain you will still be profoundly shaken. That is the mark of good storytelling, and that is the mark of phenomenal filmmaking.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970179/

Transsiberian (2008)

3/5

Transsiberian attempts to be a finely-honed thriller but instead frequently crosses the line between tense and boring and often mixes up scary "what if" paranoias with absolutely ludicrous impossibilities. The movie follows an American couple, Roy (Harrelson) and Jessie (Mortimer), leaving China on an 8-day train ride to Moscow. On the train they meet another couple, Abby (Mara) and Carlos (Noriega), and quickly place way too much trust in them. When Roy is nowhere to be found when the train takes off, Jessie gets worried. She gets off at the next stop and waits there with Abby and Carlos, but they don't hear from Roy all night. Also, randomly, Ben Kingsley plays a narcotics officer that eventually gets involved.

The plot itself is a mixed bag. As I said earlier, the creators must have found it very difficult to strike the balance they desired. Oftentimes the movie drags, oftentimes it is preposterous. The other half of the time they spin a wonderfully taut psychological thriller. On paper it must have seemed well-crafted, giving the audience subtle clues and background stories to foreshadow ominous events before an exciting and climactic finale. But the whole thing seems very written and pre-planned. Unfortunately, the more you get into the movie, the less you believe it and the less you care about the characters. None of the technical features really stood out to me while watching it either. Still, this was a relatively enjoyable popcorn flick with a few too many contrivances and plot holes for me to really love it.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800241/

Shutter Island (2010)

5/5

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is everything I didn't know I wanted. It is beautiful, uplifting, disturbing, sad, and compelling. It may not be what you expect the movie to be, but it is everything that a movie should be. The plot follows US Marshalls Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) on Shutter Island, home to a prison for the criminally insane. A patient has gone missing, having apparently evaporated through the walls of her cell, and they are tasked with finding her. They are welcomed by unhelpful security guards and menacing psychiatrists (Kingsley, von Sydow). They dig deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the island--the fortified Ward C for the most dangerous patients, the solitary lighthouse surrounded by an electric fence--but the truth just barely eludes them at every turn.

The movie is not typical in any sense of the word. It bears some resemblance to noir in thematics and cinematics, but it uses blinding whites instead of pitch blacks. It shows us his traumatic past in fragmented visuals instead of linear storytelling. Its labyrinthine mysteries take on new dimensions in the physical, mental, and spiritual realms. The visuals are reminiscent of Kubrick's The Shining, but the traditional Hollywood horror aspect is muted to allow the unnerving psychological dysfunction to haunt us. It tugs us between pity and awe, hatred and sympathy, for the ill patients and their past acts. It asks us how we would treat them. And then it flips everything on its head and asks us all those same questions again.

This is a movie where the acting complicates the written characters in the best possible way. This is not a simple movie, and none of the personas within it are simple either. They are alive and breathing. And they hide secrets from the camera that we are never meant to know. The editing is equally complex: it takes flashbacks to a new level and it does so with simplicity and expert craft instead of gimmicks and CGI. This film shows a director, an actor, and an editor all at the top of their form. And I hope they just keep getting better and better.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1130884/

You Kill Me (2007)

2/5

You Kill Me is supposed to be a dark comedy, but it's more of an indie dramedy full of lingering camera shots, deadpan dialogue, and quirky characters. Ben Kingsley plays an alcoholic hitman who is sent to San Francisco by his mafia uncle (Philip Baker Hall) to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. Luke Wilson becomes his gay AA sponsor, Bill Pullman becomes his temporary West Coast realtor, and Tea Leoni becomes his 20-years younger love interest. I suppose the premise is smirk-worthy, but not laugh-out-loud hilarious. None of this movie really made laughter emanate from my belly uncontrollably, although at times I thought to myself, "That's pretty clever."

The best aspect of this movie was how perfectly it depicted the pain of Alcoholics Anonymous. It felt like church for atheists; everyone telling you you're wrong, and being overly friendly and superficial about it. Additionally, the performances were quite good. I'm not quite sure how strong their characters were, because they felt quite dull and uninteresting except for the aforementioned character traits. All in all, it wasn't particularly funny or memorable. Don't bother checking this film out unless you really really really really like the actors. Or you really hate AA.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796375/

Oliver Twist (2005)

3/5

Roman Polanski's version of the Dickens classic does not stand out in any way except visually, and not in an altogether positive way. The choice of which plot elements of the story would appear was kept to a minimum and included only the already famous "essential" scenes of the story. Although he did give slightly more depth to each scene, Polanski added nothing of his own directorial style, which made for a very uninteresting movie. We already know everything, so why are we watching? The film's colors are much too warm and inviting for the bleak and depressing environment of a traditional Dickens interpretation, as in the Lean adaptation. The acting, while acceptable, was hidden beneath layers of heavy make-up and exaggerated caricatures that made any emotional involvement with the characters impossible. The plot seems to progress by adding more and more characters instead of fleshing out and maturing old ones, and it becomes less and less about Oliver Twist the character and more about him as an object to own and use. And Barney Clark's Oliver just didn't garner much sympathy from me, I don't know what it was.

There were some positive attributes to the movie. The set design, costuming, and make-up was absolutely amazing. It was an exemplary achievement and a breathtaking spectacle to behold. Also, the music was really good, epic with just the right touch of melodrama. There were three excellent mini-scenes that really stood out and gave the movie a bit more visual flair than the otherwise boring and mundane shot/counter-shot staple. The pacing was precise, with nothing lingered on too profoundly. And while this review is mostly negative, nothing about the movie was appallingly bad. It just didn't live up to expectations, and nothing about it really warranted a remake. But I would say see it if you have no idea who Oliver Twist is! Which is nobody reading my reviews, I hope.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0380599/

Death and the Maiden (1994)

3/5

Death and the Maiden is a psychological thriller from director Roman Polanski about a woman (Sigourney Weaver) who believes that a man her husband brings home one night (Ben Kingsley) was a key member in her torture years earlier. She ties him up and tortures him so that he will confess to what he's done. But did he really do it? So begins a tense night, where secrets are revealed from all three of the main characters. The plot progression was fantastic; we slowly learn of each person's history and motivations in very calculated amounts. Kingsley's acting was superb. Until the end, we could never be certain whether he did it or not. He reveals nothing despite being on screen almost the entire movie. Most of Weaver's acting was also great, but was marred by the occasional ludicrous piece of dialogue or ludicrous delivery of an otherwise normal line. The descriptions of torture were hard to bear sometimes, but essential because it gave the audience a glimpse into what she had been through. The music was great as well (Schubert's Death and the Maiden, from which this movie gets its title).

Sigourney Weaver was naked for a period of time in the beginning of the movie. It was both unnecessary and unwanted. Because she looks like a man--an ugly man. The first half hour or so felt really wobbly; you could tell how Polanski tried to force tension on the audience to keep us interested as he set the scene for the rest of the movie. The story often went off on tangents (the husband sleeping with another woman) that would neither relate back to the central plot nor increase the tension. So why were they included at all? Sometimes characters would act in extreme and unrealistic ways, and others would consequently react to those actions unrealistically as well. The ending felt like a cop-out to me because everything was tied up a little too neatly. Both the cinematography and editing were unexceptional, except for several shots that made excellent use of foreground and background to increase the tension. I really did enjoy this movie though, and recommend it if you like psychological thrillers and/or Polanski.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0109579/

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

3/5

Lucky Number Slevin is, all things considered, a pretty entertaining movie. It's very fun, clever, and exciting, with an incredibly well-thought out twist at the end to make you sit up and pay attention. Unfortunately, because it's set up that way, it probably doesn't have a very good replay value. The twists at the end got a bit too ludicrous to be believable, and certainly unnecessary. And in explaining every minutiae of plot twists, the pacing suffers. It is especially exasperating when you've already figured out half of it, but they spend five minutes explaining anyway. The action was almost nonexistent; where present, it was obscured by bad editing techniques and flashy special effects. The camerawork was absolutely atrocious, which probably was one reason the editing was so jarring and gimmicky. While the idea was good, the script itself was pretty terrible; other than a snicker here or there, it was entirely bland and self-indulgent. But all in all, the movie is supposed to be a gangster/con movie, and it pulls it off pretty well.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0425210/

Sexy Beast (2000)

2/5

Sexy Beast is an intriguing film for many reasons. It is brave stylistically, its characters are off-the-wall, and the plot construction is bizarre. These three elements only work half the time; the other half you're left confused. The actors give it their all, though, and Ben Kingsley gives an entirely frightening performance. You laugh and shiver at the same time. It's quite possibly the darkest comedy I've ever seen (although not exactly the most effective one). There are numerous audio problems throughout. The tension often deflates for no real reason; the scene just ends. For a crime movie, there is surprisingly little crime. It spends too much time attempting to make its characters unique to the point that they become caricatures.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0203119/

Gandhi (1982)

4/5

This three-hour epic is everything an epic should be: monumental, expansive, and stirring. The pacing is excellent for the most part (even though I thought the last third dragged on quite a bit). This is helped by the stellar script, which expounded on an incredible philosophy extremely well. I found it eye-opening and informative and recommend it to anyone interested in the man or the country. The acting by Ben Kingsley was consistently brilliant.

There were some things I didn't like in this otherwise great film. I always feel a little bit cheated when a biopic only shows one side of its subject: in this case, Gandhi's sacrifice for his country. It makes him less three-dimensional and takes away from the overall film. (I hated Cinderella Man for that same reason--Russell Crowe's character was pure good with no flaws.) I also hated the use of news reels to tell the story for them; I consider it sloppy filmmaking. Also, although infrequent, some scenes seemed unnecessarily or excessively violent.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0083987/