A Most Violent Year (2014)

4/5

JC Chandor's A Most Violent Year takes place in New York City in 1981. A rising oil businessman (Isaac) finds himself at a difficult crossroads. His drivers (Gabel) are being carjacked and he is losing thousands of dollars in stolen oil; the DA (Oyelowo) is looking into his company for criminal misconduct; and he risks losing a $1 million deposit on property after the bank backs out of a loan.

Whether you call it an homage or piracy, the movie takes a number of cues from The Godfather, which I won't enumerate here. But it does it all in a different era; it's learned from its predecessors. It feels like what The Godfather Part III wanted to be.

It is visually and thematically rich, polished and perfected by studies of the countless gangster movies that came before. Soft sepia tones belie an unspoken intensity and slow pacing hides an unrelenting momentum. This movie defies expectations--violence is not the same as action--but rewards the patient viewer. The powerful finale perfectly encapsulates the entire movie: a quiet moment of reflection punctuated by a gut-wrenching act of violence, a striking visual composition with enormous emotional resonance, and a morally ambiguous denouement to leave the saga ever unraveling.

The acting is spectacular--there is nuance and subtlety, even in loud moments of vitriol and rage--and the cinematography is breathtaking. But it is not a perfect movie. Some early scenes felt off kilter; a few sideplots felt unnecessary and unresolved; and parts of the movie felt boring. But on the whole it's a much more mature project compared to Chandor's earlier Margin Call, and it's definitely a film worth watching.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2937898/

Interstellar (2014)

2/5

Christopher Nolan's overindulgent Interstellar is a pretentious pile of crap. It will draw instant comparisons to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, mostly because it's overlong and cerebral, but it doesn't achieve nearly the same success as its predecessor in the field of art or entertainment. The plot is the least important part of the movie, but Nolan spends an exorbitant amount of time and effort explaining all its inane details. Whereas 2001 contained groundbreaking universal ideas, Interstellar contains unexciting characters performing specific tasks in a fictitious world. Nolan adds in an emotional tug that was absent in 2001, but it almost serves as the antithesis of the existential crisis at the core of both sci-fi films. I never felt myself pulled in by the relationship between Matthew McConaughey and his daughter (it felt inauthentic) or by Anne Hathaway's silly monologue about believing in love over science.

But my biggest problem with the film is that everything is wrapped up too neatly. I normally enjoy circular stories--where the end brings everything back to the beginning--but here it feels so written, so planned, so deceptive. The movie is too tidy for the big ideas it presents. Nolan tries to lecture and explain instead of let the film exist as a jumping off point. He wants to control the discussion instead of letting the discussion occur organically. Perhaps 2001's greatest strength is that it was so unexplained, so open to interpretation. Interstellar doesn't have that, and it leaves the movie flat. Despite the gorgeous visuals, spot-on acting, and surprise cameo, the movie just doesn't do it for me.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

4/5

Katheryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty is an intense, visceral experience. It details the decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden following September 11, 2001. The movie is thrilling, but under a premise I find somewhat unsettling. The whole motivation for the film is essentially for us to cheer on the murder of a real human being--this seems disturbing no matter how guilty and deserving that person might be. I felt like a spectator watching gladiators fight to the death--haven't we evolved past that point? If you're able to take that (admittedly large) component out of the equation, then you're left with an exceptional piece of filmmaking.

Kathryn Bigelow takes what she learned from The Hurt Locker and hones her already expert craft to fill Zero Dark Thirty with scenes of tension and dread. Each one is an episodic burst in which you know something bad is going to happen but you don't always know what. Bigelow is able to take that uncertainty and that fear and combine it with efficient editing and sharp cinematography to keep us on the edge of our seat for the entire 2.5 hour runtime. This is in spite of knowing "how it ends" for one simple reason: we were never witness to the inner workings and behind-the-scenes political intrigue that made it happen. We were never witness to the true cost and true sacrifice to get to where we are now.

It is not the most inviting story, or the easiest to discuss, but it is an important one. Bigelow is a filmmaker at the top of her game, who makes it absorbing from beginning to end even while addressing difficult topics like the role of American-led torture and government-sanctioned murder. She has made a uniquely American movie that takes place almost entirely outside of America. But one of her greatest accomplishments is in directing Jessica Chastain.

Chastain gives a phenomenal performance as Maya, the CIA agent who doggedly pursued her lead to the very end and who fought tooth and nail against government doubt. She is fierce, girded by righteous indignation over 9/11, and vulnerable, suffering alone as she loses the people she loved. Make no mistake: this is Chastain's ballgame, and she knocks it out of the park. This is a movie worth watching for her performance alone. You will not be disappointed that you did.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/

The Help (2011)

4/5

The Help is a surprisingly affecting tale of race relations in Jackson, Mississippi during the civil rights movement. It is the story of "the help," black women who work as nannies and maids to rich white Southern belles, as told by budding author Skeeter (Stone). She asks Aibileen (Davis) and Minny (Spencer) to tell her what it's really like to work as the help, despite the significant danger publishing such an account would pose to everyone who contributes. Aibileen describes what it's like working for Elizabeth (O'Reilly), an incompetent young mother who plans to have another daughter because the daughter she already has is unattractive. Minny describes being fired by Hilly (Howard), the quietly racist, fervently superior, self-appointed ringleader of the young women in town, for using the indoor toilet during a tornado instead of the outhouse.

The story is predictably emotional at times, treading exquisitely close to melodrama, while mixing in equal parts entertainment and humor. This movie is blessed to have a competent director and eagle-eyed editor, who understand the heart of the story and let it shine through any fluff. The script is sensational, brought to life by superb acting. Viola Davis does a phenomenal job; her expressive face and subtle movements (a shift in body weight, a hesitance in her response) are able to convey incredibly complex feelings. Bryce Dallas Howard gives a riveting performance that combines charm and slime to create a wholly unlikeable young matriarch. But the movie is about more than racism and more than events in the past: it is about parenting, about unexpected relationships, and about the courage and sacrifice required to do the right thing. This is a gripping film from beginning to end and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/

The Debt (2010)

4/5

The Debt is a compelling mystery thriller about missed opportunities and making up for past mistakes. The plot follows three Mossad agents 30 years after killing the Nazi war criminal known as the "Surgeon of Birkenau" (Christensen). Rachel (Mirren), Stephan (Wilkinson), and David (Hinds) have been continually venerated for their contributions, giving talks to the military and television show hosts for years. The movie starts at a release party for a new book, written by Stephan and Rachel's daughter Sarah (Aboulafia), based on their perspective. It then backtracks several times to the events that transpired 30 years ago, and we get to witness the almost-romance between Rachel (Chastain) and David (Worthington) and the truth behind their legendary acts.

The movie works on just about every level it aspires to. It is gripping and tense, keeping you on the edge of your seat with your heart pumping adrenaline into every artery of your body. The directing and editing are calculated and precise, giving us just the right amount of story arc and excitement in each time period before switching back over. The story is thought-provoking and engaging. Though the details of their situation will almost certainly never come up in your life, everybody eventually must grapple with similarly complex ethical dilemmas. The characters are fascinatingly intricate, but hindered by uneven acting that felt too simplistic at times and too complicated at others. The poor casting decisions didn't help; there was a striking similarity between the old David and young Stephan that made it difficult to follow. And while this movie works as a character study, a mystery thriller, and a provocative parable, it is by no means a masterpiece on any of those genres. Still, The Debt is a well-made movie that scores high marks all around.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1226753/

The Tree of Life (2011)

1/5

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is quite possibly worse than Audition. This movie is terrible from beginning to end. I don't remember another time I felt so assaulted by the inane and banal. Quite frankly, I don't know what the plot is, or even what the movie is "about." It plays a lot like David Gordon Green's George Washington, detailing a youth's summer(s) and attempting to evoke some sort of nostalgia in the audience without actually having any story. In The Tree of Life, there seems to be no real dialogue. Nobody says anything to other people. And when people do mutter something, they always whisper in raspy voices (because apparently that makes it more profound). There is an unannounced 30-minute segment detailing the origin of life, starting from the Big Bang and advancing from single-celled organisms to preposterous imaginary dinosaurs. There are random shots of the most disturbing painted clowns I have ever seen. There is no coherency and no meaning. Unfortunately, I don't think Terrence Malick is aware of that; instead he feels he needs two and a half hours to show precisely that. Ugh.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/