The Imitation Game (2014)

4/5

The Imitation Game tells a fascinating story spectacularly well. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Alan Turing, a British math professor who gets enlisted into a covert military mission to break the Nazi's Enigma Machine and help win WWII for the Allies. (Spoiler alert: he succeeds.) He plays the role to perfection, although I fear that Cumberbatch is well on his way to getting typecast. Here he plays an unlikeable genius lacking any interpersonal skills, nearly identical to his equally uncharming title role on BBC's Sherlock.

The writing somehow simultaneously represents the best and worst aspects of the movie. It is expertly paced, engaging from beginning to end, continuously drawing you in. But the timeline is also unnecessarily complicated, going back and forth between three distinct time periods much too frequently. Also, the film seems to use Turing's homosexuality sometimes to great effect and sometimes for shock value. It ends the movie in a surprisingly sad light and gives the title enormous new weight, but it also deviates from the character study we signed up to watch to tackle Britain's abhorrent policy on the matter.

There was also a little too much old timey footage, and its inclusion feels more like laziness rather than value-added benefit. Or maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, like unnecessary voiceover narration. Still, The Imitation Game is an engrossing and compelling watch. Highly recommended.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

1/5

Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman is an abhorrent exploitation film masquerading as a delightful action flick. The movie serves as a modern send-up of the British spy movies from the 60's, but it does everything it can to distance itself from James Bond. It trades in dry humor for vulgar jokes, action for violence, and style for looks. It's self-referential in a way that outdoes even the countless satires of the genre. It's funny and fun until it's not. It takes a sharp turn and quickly becomes dark and disturbing. The ultra-violence is grotesque and nauseating, seemingly thrown on screen with gleeful abandon and disregard for taste. It's hard to imagine a world where people enjoy the stomach-churning images and call it entertainment, but the success of this film means that we are apparently living in it right now.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802144/

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 Guard (2011)

3/5

The Guard is an independent Irish movie about Boyle (Gleeson), a local sergeant in the law-enforcing Garda who stumbles upon a violent murder in a sleepy town in Ireland, and Wendell (Cheadle), an FBI agent tracking down drug-runners with a cocaine supply worth $500m. They discover the two events are interconnected and must team up to take down the baddies, one of whom (Strong) has become nostalgic for the days where his occupation was a difficult and dangerous endeavor.

The movie is a fish-out-of-water tale combined with odd couple dynamics within a black comedy atmosphere. Usually when I throw in multiple genres, I describe movies that fail to satisfy on many (if not all) fronts. Here, it is a bit different because the movie aspires to none of those individual formats and instead hopes to just be true to itself. It succeeds. It doesn't feel like a clone or a Frankenstein, but a wholly and completely fresh world.

The plot is fairly basic without any real intrigue or suspense, but that is not why you watch the movie. The cinematography contains that quirky indie obsession with transforming the ordinary into the beautiful (sometimes successfully, sometimes not), but that is not why you watch the movie. You watch because of the people. It relies on its characterizations, which are a strange combination of stereotype, archetype, and oddball fascination. They're certainly different, but I don't think they offer anything truly arresting as far as character studies go. The thick accents add a little Fargo-esque humor but also make the dialogue difficult to understand. Honestly, it's a solid, off-the-wall black comedy that sits alone in its indie corner, and wouldn't be too upset if nobody else liked it as much as it likes itself.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540133/

The Young Victoria (2009)

4/5

Going into the movie, I did not know anything about The Young Victoria. But it surprised me in ways I never expected a movie like this would. It is a period piece set in the early 1800's, as the young Princess Victoria (Blunt) takes on her role as England's new Queen at the age of 18. New and inexperienced, she enlists the aid of Prince Albert (Friend) of Belgium and the Prime Minister of England Lord Melbourne (Bettany). People become concerned that she may be manipulated to do their bidding, and indeed the political intrigue is present for those who like that kind of thing. She grows close to Prince Albert but appears to trust Lord Melbourne more, and indeed there is romance for those who like that kind of thing. But it does not fit snugly into a single genre, and that is what I liked most about this movie. It is simply a retelling of what happened in Queen Victoria's early life, and does not cater to plot conventions and predictable story arcs.

On to the technical aspects: the costuming, makeup, and set design were appropriately detailed for being a period piece, but this movie had so much more to offer. It is superbly directed. The cinematography is spectacular, made even more captivating by the impeccable editing. As complex as the editing can be, it is never confusing (at least, after the first 30 minutes of learning everyone's name and royalty status). The acting was equally remarkable, especially the sensational performance by Blunt. I had seen her before only in bits and pieces of The Devil Wears Prada, but here she was wholly convincing as the independent, unyielding new Queen. She manages to bring empathy and awe to the role of someone struggling against those who would have her do their bidding (quite the opposite of the puppet that Helen Mirren played in The Queen). However, the movie seemed a bit short and a little incomplete. It felt like a slice of life and, quite frankly, it left me wanting more. This movie is exquisitely crafted and intelligently told. I highly recommend it for those looking for good editing, good writing, or just plain good acting.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0962736/

Kick-Ass (2010)

3/5

Kick-Ass tells the story of a normal high schooler (Johnson) who reads comic books and wonders why no insane prepubescent kid has ever tried being a superhero like in the comics. So he decides to try it. And gets his ass kicked. So bad, in fact, that most of his body is replaced by metal plates and his nerve endings are destroyed. But he gets videotaped defending a stranger and becomes famous via YouTube and MySpace, which attracts the attention of two real life superheros: Big Daddy (Cage) and Hit-Girl (Moretz). Things spin wildly out of control and what started as an experiment quickly turns deadly.

The movie has graphic violence and language. Their presence in and of itself does not concern me. What bugs me is that they use it repetitively for comic effect and, quite frankly, it gets old. Hearing an 11-year-old girl swear is only (potentially) funny the first time. As is seeing her disembowel someone; seeing it more than once makes it seem like she has a weird fetish or something. The piece's writing was fairly solid. The jokes were great (although some were quite predictable) and Cage's intonation and prosody were absolutely hilarious. The acting was surprisingly good. However, Kick-Ass's real life relationship just didn't strike me as very compelling or original. I just didn't care about what was going on in his personal life. All in all, however, this movie is engaging and exciting. It takes a relatively old genre and spins it in a new direction. And it does so with humor and no sense of boundary. And for that it deserves at least some credit.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1250777/

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

4.9/5

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes lived up to all my expectations, and I was expecting a lot. The plot follows Holmes (Downey Jr.) and Watson (Law) after they capture Lord Blackwood (Strong) and turn him in to the police for sacrificing people in black magic rituals. He is sentenced to death by hanging and Dr. Watson himself pronounces him dead, but Lord Blackwood rises from the grave a few days later and the otherworldly killings begin again. To make matters worse, one of Holmes's old love interests, Irene Adler (McAdams), comes back into his life after being hired by a mysterious professor to ask him to locate a missing scientist. Everything eventually ties together at the end, but a new mystery emerges that will likely be tackled in a sequel. A sequel that I will be first in line to watch.

For fans of Guy Ritchie or fans of Robert Downey Jr., this is a match made in heaven. This ranks up there as one of the absolute coolest movies either of them have done. As an action movie, we get to see Holmes's deductive reasoning in action--literally--in some awesome fight sequences. The difference between this and Guy Ritchie's earlier movies is that here he has excellent source material to provide well-developed characters that round out the over-stylized action. All their flaws and complexities are explored so we can see with absolute clarity how annoying Holmes can be and how angry Watson can get. I'm a sucker for con movies, sweet action flicks, and Guy Ritchie pictures; in Sherlock Holmes I can get all my desires satisfied. Highly recommended.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988045/

RocknRolla (2008)

4/5

Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla is pretty much the same movie as all of Guy Ritchie's other gangster movies. The complicated and confusing plot is made more imperceptible by thick, obfuscatory British accents. And while it started out with a story that seemed uninteresting and unengrossing, there was just enough innovation and cleverness to make it fresh and new. The cinematography, style, and editing all feel the same as his earlier movies (which is a compliment). The decidedly quick-witted humor is also back, and in full force. Guy Ritchie knows British movies, British actors, and British sensbilities, but not American ones. Jeremy Piven and Ludacris felt a little out of place here. Still, RocknRolla is an altogether enjoyable film that is on par with Snatch. I recommend it to anyone who knows and enjoys Guy Ritchie.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032755/