Serena (2014)

Score: 1 / 5

It's as if no one in the film read the book.

Before you call me a hypocrite for comparing a book to a film adaptation, let's get one thing straight. If you're making an adaptation and you have a perfect roadmap (from which you are adapting your work), why wouldn't you follow it? The only reason I can logically get behind is if your adaptation works on its own terms. If your adaptation effectively and artfully explores its own themes and style in a way that maintains some honor as well as integrity.

This doesn't.

Susanne Bier's film of Serena is a mellow melodrama with little historical relevance, almost no worthwhile thematic elements, and only mildly convincing performances. The cinematography is confused and confusing, shaky and unfocused, and what are supposed to be shots of sweeping majesty fall hopelessly flat as there is no drama under the visuals. It's overscored, overedited, and underwritten, and our stars' performances suffer as a result. What were apparently very effective rehearsals in emotional connection (chemistry, so to speak) are washed over onscreen simply because there is so little for our stars to dig their teeth into. Rhys Ifans gives the only compelling show, and he only pops up in a handful of scenes.

The worst sin here, though, is that the story just doesn't work. We are given an initial shot of two strong women, Rachel the dutiful worker and Serena the upright equestrian. From there, each dissolves into wispy figures awash in blood and fatigue, fearful and insecure, waiting helplessly to be delivered by the men around them. Even those men are strictly divided into the bearded strong men of the timber industry and the hairless wimps who deserve their sorrows. It's a sort of romance, I suppose, in that it raises questions of how far one will go for love, and yet all ends in bizarre, unconnected loss and failure. But by the end, we also don't really care, because the film has shown us remarkably little to gain our sympathies with any of them. Even J-Law's self-immolation (oops, spoiler alert, if it matters) was so ridiculous that I started giggling. I'm guessing that's not the point of the scene.

In case you haven't read it, let me give you a super brief concept of Ron Rash's novel. It's Macbeth in Depression-era Appalachia, where our title woman and her hubby establish their timber empire and ruthlessly remove all obstacles and annoyances (meaning traitorous business partners and incompetent lackeys) from their path to power, wealth, and glory. Serena is a perfect character, a goddess incarnate as well as a living, breathing nightmare of the heteropatriarchy. Ron Rash imbues her with superhuman qualities and extends this magical realism to the environment, allowing the wooded mountains of North Carolina to become their own character, sentient and divine at once. Much of the dialogue, narration, and plot/character devices mirror Shakespearean style, including the chorus of lumberjacks and the soothsaying old woman, which is also a reflection of archaic Appalachian culture.

Just so you know, almost none of this makes it into the film. Moments are stolen, but they are hodge-podge and so unclear that even someone familiar with the source material might miss them. There's a shot in the middle of the picture of Serena on horseback with the sun streaming through the morning mist about her; I think it's a reference to one such icon in the novel that suggests her divinity, but the images lasts less than five seconds and the background of the shot quickly trivializes the visual, and nothing significant happens before or after, so it doesn't really matter as a moment. Another example: Late in the film, our pseudo-hero comes calling to old widow Jenkins (the soothsaying archetype, who has until that moment not been seen or mentioned explicitly), only to find her dead on the floor, presumably a victim of our anti-heroes. The whole scene takes less than two minutes (probably less than one), and there is no exposition at all. No context at all. No drama at all.

The film, on the other hand, is anything but a reflection of the culture, the aesthetic, or the themes it pretends to invoke. In fact, I might argue that it is an artistically lazy film, a sappy and pathetic romance, a borderline misogynist (and not-so-borderline classist) story, and ultimately a waste of time.

IMDb: Serena

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Well, there it is. The franchise I never knew I wanted.

Cloverfield, in all its post-9/11 horrific glory, stole a bit of my heart way back eight years ago, but I never really thought it would become a franchise. It's a good solid flick on its own, deceptively simple and daringly, well, daring. I figured, if anything, a sequel would follow [REC]'s example and maybe just do a sister film, a comparison point with similar found-footage style camerawork and repeated themes. But after so many years -- and a fairly polarized audience, with horror fans either loving or hating it -- I don't think any of us saw this coming.

Going in, you need to know a couple things about 10 Cloverfield Lane. First: Don't even think about comparing it to its sister picture. Whereas Cloverfield took Blair Witch into breakneck big-scale horror territory, keeping close to the roots of its real-life horror in senseless, monstrous death and destruction in NYC, this new film instead plays on psychological horror in the vein of home invasion thrillers with a dash of post-apocalyptic spice. Most of the film takes place in a fallout bunker under a conspiracy theorist's rural house, where the owner has locked himself and two young people in out of fear that the outside world has come under biological attack.

The film unfolds fairly quickly, with wildly unpredictable beats and turns. I don't mean "unpredictable" in the sense that you don't know where it's going. It's a bleak enough film to know full well what will happen. But first-time director Dan Trachtenberg does some really amazing emotional work here, mirroring the intense and complex psyches of his characters in the pacing, cinematography, lighting, and editing; he focuses so intently on the people that it's easy to feel more claustrophobic that the film really is. It's a dazzling example of how a director can perform his job with integrity and bravery, undiluted by a previous film, and perfectly balance technique, spectacle, and honesty.

And the performances he captures are, if possible, even more astounding. John Goodman is electrifying as the bestial conspiracy theorist who locks in two helpless young people. In his nightmare-inducing (yes, I had nightmares last night) turn, Goodman is as surprising and vicious as Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight, completely insane yet making perfect sense, burning with his inner passions and concealing particularly insidious demons under his baleful visage. Matching him in energy and wit is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, a shining star of female power in a genre that often subjects such figures to pain, fear, and torment. Winstead carries the film, ceaselessly strong and smart, never sexualized or victimized, an action hero struggling - nay - demanding to be treated as such from the men both on screen and behind it. Her bright, wide eyes reveal far more of her character than her dialogue or even her action choreography, though she delivers in both those realms with admirable ferocity.

It's one of those rare films where every single element joins together in perfect harmony to create a transcendent experience, one that had me shrieking and laughing often at the same time. It's a taut thriller, to be sure, but one with unexpected humor and vast thematic implications. It's also one of those rare sequels that, to my mind, surpasses its predecessor in ways technical and emotional, and also as a result of its being so very different. I might also add that the pacing and overarching drama of the film feels distinctly mixed-genre: The first four-fifths of the film are a sort of home invasion/post-apocalyptic psychological thriller. The final fifth is something else entirely. It's even filmed very differently. Like how in the end of The Cabin in the Woods the thematic import of the film skyrockets into implausible chaos, the end of this film rapidly spirals into a frenzied fever dream of special effects and sci-fi violence. Before you say that's weird and doesn't make sense, I mean to assure you that it works. I don't know how, exactly, but it's not done over-sensationally; at least, not more so than the rest of the film. It fits, and it is profoundly effective in revealing the greater elements of chaos at work in the world of the film. It's operatic, it's enchanting, and by the end of the film, it feels strangely epic in intellectual scope.

But do we see the monster? You might be wondering if this film answers any of the questions posed by the first, and frustrated with the lack of overt monstrosity in the original film. I have an answer for you.

But first, a question: Why does it matter? Perhaps we never saw the huge monster in its entirety in Cloverfield, but doesn't that make it far more terrifying? We saw plenty of its offspring (or whatever they were). We saw all of the death and destruction it caused. I challenge you to go back and watch the news footage from 9/11. Isn't the whole point of horror in the last fifteen years that death is not predictable or just? That's the new face of horror. Terrorism. Biological warfare. Crumbling towers, alien invaders, undead armies, cataclysmic apocalypse. The age of seeing a specific monster (Dracula, the Blob, Michael Myers) is over; now it's religious extremists, political idealists, shadowy terrorist regimes. There's a reason the villains in last summer's continued spy sagas were called Rogue Nation and Spectre.

My answer: No. We don't see "the monster". We see several. We see a gun-toting, amoral conspiracy theorist and control freak who demands absolute power in his little microcosm of people he "saved", who is revealed to be exactly what we suspect from the beginning. We see an alien monster beast attacking our hero near the end. We see a giant flying alien/monster grab our hero and attempt to eat (?) her. We don't see "the monster"; there are many. Which is more horrifying? I couldn't say, though my nightmares were about a human, not a slimy monster with too many teeth. As the tagline says, monsters come in many forms.

I might also add that if you only want to see a movie because of its monster, that says far more about you than the movie. Selah.

IMDb: 10 Cloverfield Lane

Macbeth (2015)

Score: 2 / 5

Confession: If you start your movie with a child burning on a pyre (or, for that matter, getting mashed to a pulpy skin cream, a la The Witch), I'm definitely going to watch. I'll probably like.

And like Macbeth I most certainly do. It's a nightmarish descent into the psychological depths of what might be Shakespeare's darkest play. Not unlike the Fiennes film Coriolanus (my favorite Bard adaptation by far), this Scottish play/movie works best in its visuals and physicality. It gets us inside the world it presents. The production designers and art directors deserve most of the praise for their incredibly detailed work on this film, and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (True Detective, Top of the Lake) presents us with a vibrant, dreamlike approach to the bleak atmosphere of war-torn Scotland highlands. I'd compare his technique to that of Nicolas Winding Refn (Valhalla Rising, Only God Forgives) in its stylized poetics as well as its bloody realism. Beautiful and haunting, this vision of hell won't let you look away until after the crimson-lit climactic battle. Light thickens, as Mac would say.

But as a piece of Shakespeare, this movie is no more than disappointing for me. It holds so little of the original dialogue that half of the scenes barely make sense, and that's saying a lot, considering that this is one of the Bard's shortest plays. It's almost as though director Justin Kurzel and his writing team used a search engine to find the most familiar lines in the show and then strung them together piece by piece, weaving together their own story in the gaps. And before you roll your eyes at my purist leanings, consider the almost absent issue in the play of Mac's childlessness. It's almost disturbingly absent in the play, which is what makes his "tomorrow" speech, or his wife's "I have given suck" moment so mysterious and suggestive. But in this film, we start with the death of their child, we see a young man die in battle who later reappears to haunt Mac, and Lady Mac's climactic "sleepwalk" scene is reworked into a strange sort of confession in a church where she's doused with pale white light as if emphasizing her barren nature.

And that is just one example of a rabbit-trail theme in this movie. There are some gems,though, perhaps the best being Macbeth's apparent PTSD as he groans that his mind is full of scorpions through gritted teeth and vein-bulging expression. And maybe I'm being too picky. I just don't really know why you would do a Shakespeare adaptation, and then not use your greatest tool: the language! If you wanted to do a surreal or metaphysical version, why not take out all the dialogue? That would be a trip, which would be totally appropriate for this movie. Who needs dialogue when you could see the visions Mac and his wife describe so beautifully? Maybe that film will happen some day. I'm down. But here, the visceral visuals serve only to pump up the experience of the play, rather than taking the reins entirely, and so the lacking dialogue and plot results in failure to remind us of why this story is so haunting and memorable at all. 

And -- this is totally personal preference -- the wickedly thick accents actually hinder the clarity of the words and the already murky motivations (a result of the butchered script). Kurzel seems to have coached his actors on delivering the lines in conversational and naturalistic tones, and that totally stops the drama from moving, much less lifting off. I've almost never been so bored with the Bard. After MacB slays Duncan's guards and declares as much to the others, one of them stares at him, completely deadpan, and slowly and flatly intones, "Wherefore did you so?" It's laughably dull, and doesn't make sense. I suppose it would if the movie had a faster pace or if the visuals were consistently over-the-top. But it doesn't, and they don't, and what we have instead is a bizarre combination of the two extremes. If the visuals are operatic, shouldn't the performances be, too? I think so.

This just felt half-assed and unsure of its focus, leacing us with a confused mishmash of sight and sound and fury that ultimately signifies little more than the thick fog rolling across the battlefield. Turn, hellhound.

IMDb: Macbeth

My Top 10 Favorite Films of 2015

In honor of awards season drawing to a close, I thought it was about time to remember my favorite films of the past year. This isn't necessarily a consideration of the "best" films of the past year, nor is it by any means all-inclusive. There are several I still haven't seen yet, including Straight Outta Compton, Inside Out, and Trumbo, any and more of which could easily influence this list.

I hope that my opinions are informed by a wider appreciation of film than personal preference. But since this is my page for regurgitating my thoughts, ultimately this is all subjective and personal. Hence, "favorite", not "best". xoxo

10. Crimson Peak. Not scary, as many may have wanted, this vision of Gothicism is both a bleeding romance and a tasteful ghost story. Out of place and time, the film manages to do several things surprisingly well, especially in its rich atmosphere and production design. Crimson Peak is a love-letter to the genre, rife with references, bursting with sexual passions and evil secrets, and darkly operatic in its emotional scope.

9. It Follows. Probably the closest thing I'll ever get to seeing the seedy B-horror movies of the '70s and '80s, this calculated and disturbing film is preposterous and absurd, but a natural extension of the horror felt by a society of sexual morality in the throes of adolescent hormones. A chilling look at the nature of modern horror through the lens of timelessness, It Follows does a rare thing in contemporary horror by earning your fear.

8. Steve Jobs. An opera of dialogue, this three-act drama mines the rich psyche of a man battling others and himself. Steve Jobs gives us a cautious tale of the cost of genius. It's a mesmerizing film, as infuriating and complex as it is theatrical and fun; its self-aggrandizing importance is hammered home in its intimate editing and camera style, which reduces it to a classy, taut chamber piece, musical in its verbosity, a masterclass in specificity as well as universality.

7. Carol. This film lives up to its groundbreaking source material. One of the first major mainstream romances that features a queer couple who actually live to see the end, which is also happy and affirming, Carol is a remarkable testament to how far we've come. Unfortunately, it also shows us how far we have yet to go, as apparently even the sumptuous production design, script, score, acting, editing, and camerawork were not enough to deserve a Best Picture nomination.

6. Spotlight. One of those surprising movies that comes along every couple of years that is both unbelievably good and startlingly important. Of course its source material is indisputably critical, all the more so because it is an ongoing crisis around the world. Where Spotlight is most worthy is in its attention to detail and exact characterizations, refusing to give in to anything salacious or lurid, and refusing to allow its team of unlikely heroes to be lionized. Because, as the film so starkly declares, we are all to blame for these tragedies.

5. Room. The understated surprise this year, Room is a strange answer for last year's Boyhood in that it accomplishes the rare feat of effectively showing the world through a child's eyes. As the child grows and learns more about his world, we mature and change with him. It's a sly conceptual feat, and one that perfectly directs the sights and sounds. A fierce and haunting vision of Plato's Cave, this is one of those movies that will change you almost as much as it changes your concept of what film can be.

4. Jurassic World. Nostalgic, vibrant, fresh, and intense, this movie is a everything I hoped for. For a sci-fi action adventure, it's got great acting, effects, and music. More importantly, it's got visuals that transcend its own genre, placing it alongside Prometheus as a rare big-budget summer flick that can expand and improve upon its premise and cater to the masses while simultaneously entering a realm of art and beauty. Plus, it's got dinosaurs.

3. Ex Machina. A modern masterpiece of science fiction, this quiet film loads us up with images and themes and then lets us make our own conclusions. Cold and calculated, Ex Machina shows us the vast scope of science fiction, both its optimistic beauty and its chaotic horror, while also daring us to question where the lines between god, man, and machine are actually drawn. Perhaps more subtle and poetic than scientific, the film nevertheless brings science fiction dangerously close to stark reality, which might be scarier than anything else we saw this year. It also has this moment, which I can't argue with...

2. Sicario. This year's severely underrated thriller that is almost too timely, Sicario presents us with horror as it exists in the real world. Both unflinchingly brave in what it shows us and brutally cruel in what it doesn't, the film takes on a war in which neither side can claim innocence. Its implication that the crisis is without a solution is all the more damning. It's a taut thriller, beautiful and haunting, that takes on an epic scale as it launches itself - and us with it - to the threshold of hell.

1. The Revenant. A violent, terrifying film that carries the weight of an epic. The story of a man's soul as it journeys from life to death and back again, filmed in much the same way. It's a perfect movie. 

What do you think? Got any other favorites from this past year? Comment below and let's get talking!

The Witch (2016)

Score: 5 / 5

Wow.

The Witch is one of the most complex, profound, and haunting pictures I've ever seen. Subtitled "A New-England Folktale", the film combines its various elements into a deceptively simple story that opens the door for hours of discussion after, with room for all kinds of interpretation. In fact, writer/director Robert Eggers (in his directorial debut) has crafted the movie to be so understated and chilling that it feels less like a feature film and more like a hushed tale told around a campfire. I don't know how it works its magic, but I left the theater totally spellbound.

Set in the early 17th century, the film follows an isolated Puritan family in the New England wilderness, who practice their rigid religious discipline even though it apparently caused them to be banished from their village. Each family member has their secret sins, and one by one each comes to light. Patriarch William (Ralph Ineson) fights his fierce pride, eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) exhibits her dangerous independence and autonomy, and son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) navigates his burgeoning sexual curiosities. When infant Samuel is stolen away under Thomasin's watch, the family slowly descend into madness, led by mother Katherine (Kate Dickie) as tragedy after tragedy befalls her loved ones. Though they first suspect a wolf, one by one the family turns on each other, shifting suspicions of witchcraft quickly and with increasing consequences.

Of course that sounds like a great story. Because it is. It's been done before, albeit on a much larger scale. But where this film differs from The Crucible is that we also see the evil that is literally preying on the family from without. Early on, we see it is not a wolf that takes baby Samuel, but indeed an old woman in the forest who proceeds to murder the child and bathe in its blood. Later, we see another woman seduce young Caleb; soon after, the apparently possessed boy delivers a devastating and movie-stealing performance as his parents pray over him. Still later, we see the family goat Black Phillip rise up and attack with demoniac precision. There is never a doubt in the film that very real and very evil villains lurk just beyond tree line.

We could go on and on about the layers to this movie. Psychological horror, a breaking family, coming of age, feminism, religion, the nature of evil, history. My favorite elements are those that are painstakingly historically accurate, especially the dialogue and accents, both bewilderingly thick. I also love Eggers's obvious affection for the period and the tone of the horror involved. The opening sequence speaks immediately to the ambivalence Puritans felt for the untamed wilderness, a place of God's creation that nevertheless held indomitable evil. The devil himself lurks in the woods outside of town, and as our outcast family ventures into the trees, it's hard not to seek out monstrous shadows in the brush.

So complete is the director's control that I felt totally immersed in the world he crafted. He never sacrifices a moment of screen time, the editing is clear and precise, the shrieking music never overpowers, the lighting is kept low, and the effects never take away from the drama. His slow and deliberate pace will no doubt frustrate people who want to see a "scary" movie, because he is far more interested in the slow, dreadful climb to a place of relentless horror. Don't be deceived: There are plenty of shock-scares that work best because of their novelty and relevance. But for the most part, the scariest parts are the things we don't exactly see, but that the film suggests.

IMDb: The Witch

Deadpool (2016)

Score: 3 / 5

Subversive. Daring. Antihero. Naughty. If you've heard anything about this movie, these are some of the words you've heard slung around. And while Deadpool is anything but your typical Marvel fare, I'm not sure that even half of its hyped-up, commercialized descriptors are accurate. It's rude, crude, fast, and furious, to be sure, but its fevered hilarity is about the only thing that makes the film work.

Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), diagnosed with cancer, seeks a cure from a shady figure that leaves him scarred and imbued with superpower; he spends the rest of the movie seeking revenge and to reclaim his love interest (Morena Baccarin). That's it. That's the plot. Nothing subversive. Nothing novel or intriguing. But then, the skeletal plot is surely necessary for its tone to shine through, carried with madcap grace by its star. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have done a rather remarkable thing in crafting the film's rakish, jokey tone. Maybe I'm just not used to this kind of comedy, but the rapid-fire dialogue, outrageous one-liners, campy fourth-wall breaking, and meta references are far more engaging and entertaining than any of the action sequences.

Of course, the movie sells its tone far more successfully than any of its particular jokes. Sure, there are several gems delivered by a pitch-perfect Ryan Reynolds. But the vast majority of quips and jabs fall like rain on a flood; I mean, there are really only so many times you can hear queerbaiting dick jokes in a movie before it gets annoying. In fact, director Tom Miller and his team seem to be desperate to make us like the movie, firing so many consecutive "money shots" (as Deadpool would say) at us that sometimes I found myself laughing at the sheer audacity of Marvel rather than any particular feature on screen. My favorite scene to this end was the one in which Deadpool attacks Colossus (made of metal) and ends up shattering his limbs in the process. It's that kind of self-aware, violent charisma that is so intoxicating, I found myself crying from laughter for minutes afterward.

For all its tonal naughtiness, though, there is little else noteworthy here. And maybe there doesn't need to be. The Deadpool we see is anything but an antihero, and there's nothing particularly subversive or profound going on. Where we all might have hoped for a turning of tables, a film in which the superhero genre was cast aside and mayhem ensued, what we get is a straightforward origin story with a heteronormative (albeit sexually confident and adventurous) hero who, though he is a fan of violence and murder, is justified in terms of the film and earns the sympathies of the audience.

Maybe a sequel will do those things. Maybe this one just had to stretch the mold before it makes a life of its own. Maybe I should just be happy that this movie succeeds where all too many other superhero movies fail. Maybe I should just be happy that this one doesn't take itself too seriously. Maybe this is the superhero movie we deserve, but not the one we needed right now. Maybe I got that backwards.

IMDb: Deadpool

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

Score: 3.5 / 5

I'll say a few things right off the bat. I loved this movie. I loved Seth Grahame-Smith's book. I love mashing genres together. I love the cheeky, naughty, silly awesomeness of this kind of artwork. I'm not a fan of much comedy in general, but this is exactly the sort of sassy, irreverent humor I crave. It's why I play few video games other than the Lego actions games of popular franchises. It's why I loved Cowboys and Aliens. It's why I'm crazy about Grahame-Smith's other books.

For those of you who may not know, or are too lazy to guess, the film is essentially (very essentially) the plot of Jane Austen's classic romance with the added element of brain-eating zombies taking over 19th-century England. That's it. Very simple. From what I've read and heard, a lot of viewers felt let down by the movie because it's not as high-brow as they were expecting. To be fair, the book is a conceptual coup, with Grahame-Smith pirating large sections of Austen's work (never fear, she is credited with co-authorship), mimicking her style in others, and wholly inventing new horror in still more. The film, by nature as a film, can't do the same; what it does do is take the concept and adapt it to a more or less straightforward action/horror film while retaining the romance, drama, and vicious wordplay of Austen's classic.

Much like the recent adaptation of another Grahame-Smith book -- Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter -- this film takes great liberties with the source material. Though this one is directed by Burr Steers (17 Again, Igby Goes Down) and not Tim Burton, it's still a notably more Gothic vision than I expected, littered with bodies and smeared in gore. A leather-clad and moody Darcy, played by Sam Riley pretending to be Hugh Jackman a la Van Helsing (2004), leads the battle against the undead, while the silly, corseted Bennet sisters avoid their mother's schemes to marry them off. When newcomer Mr. Bingley (the handsome Douglas Booth) throws a ball and zombies invade the kitchens, the sisters seize the moment to show the villagers their fearsome prowess as masters of the sword.

Not long after, we begin to see that the sisters -- actually, pretty much just Elizabeth -- is no less a master of propriety and conversation than with a blade. In perhaps the most effective scenes of the film, the direct confrontations between Darcy and Liz and later Lady Catherine and Liz, our young hero thrusts and parries both her body and her words in fearsome combat that is at once outrageously funny and terrifyingly violent. Bravo to Lily James (Downton Abbey, Cinderella) for mastering the material. The other two perfectly cast actors, to my mind, would be Charles Dance as the Gothic version of Mr. Bennet, and Matt Smith, as the silly and stupid Mr. Collins (though, regrettably, his end in the film is nothing like in the novel, a scene I was particularly anticipating).

The film begins to falter, however, when it tries to make larger departures from the source material and, in doing, takes itself far too seriously. The siege of London, the escape over the bridge, the fairytale ending, and the weird mid-credits wannabe cliffhanger all point to a design that seeks to fashion a blockbuster franchise. The filmmakers should have left well enough alone and made the film the material deserves. For the most part they did, but it's in those final scenes that they were obviously trying too hard and grasping for handholds beyond their reach.

But, then, the film itself says, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

IMDb: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Score: 4 / 5

Hail, Caesar! takes us back to a golden era of moviemaking, when Hollywood was an empire in its own right, and the people who ran it, eccentric as they were, grappled with scandal, fame, and fortune on a daily basis. We follow Ed Mannix (Josh Brolin), head producer at Capitol Pictures, in his exhaustive efforts to save his stars from their own scandalous behaviors, knowing full well that as the 1951 studios begin to break up, the future of moviemaking, his company, and his livelihood hang in the balance. As he maneuvers between oddballs and screwballs and criminals, he is forced to examine his own economics, values, relationships, and ultimately theology. It's a moving movie about making movies, and one that stole its way into my heart.

What's that you say? That doesn't sound like the movie Hail, Caesar! to you? Why do you say that?

What we have here is a problem with marketing. I thought -- along with several other people I've heard from -- that this movie was going to be a raucous, irreverent, madcap comedy bubbling over with slapstick and irony and all the things listed so perfectly in its trailers. Guess what? It's not.

Sure, it has a few of these elements. The casting is brilliant, the script is fierce, and the production design is simply perfect. The film makes reference after reference so quickly that it took me hours afterward to remember some; each reference is so cheeky that I often laughed aloud and missed the rapid-fire dialogue. We see everything from Ben-Hur to Gene Kelly, and from Esther Williams to Carmen Miranda. It's a glorious celebration of the industry.

But it's not a madcap caper film about a bunch of zany moviemakers banding together to save their iconic leading man (obviously played by George Clooney, because who else?) from his untimely abduction. I was expecting the enormous cast of stars to share a lot of screen time and a lot of laughs as they fashioned a comedic heist, like a silly, campy version of Argo. And it just doesn't happen. Ever.

Sure, the performances are great, but they are relegated to brief scenes. Each character, besides Brolin and Clooney, gets only two or three scenes each, and these are usually one-on-one with either Brolin or Clooney. Those scenes are jam-packed with a showcase of the actor's talents, but we never really get much else, let alone interaction between them. And as for all of them banding together to save the star, it's almost laughable: I think only about three characters besides Brolin even know that Clooney has been abducted, much less offer aid.

I may feel a little bitter about the more or less "epic" comedy that doesn't exist here, but there are a lot of great things to be said for the movie that we got instead. It's a glorious testament, riddled with nostalgia and wit and charm, and showcasing some of our brightest modern stars in period performances. Channing Tatum steals the movie away with his song and dance as Burt Gurney, a Gene Kelly homage. Tilda Swinton would have stolen the movie had the film given her more screen time as twin sister, rival gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker. The effects are all old-school, with long takes to show off dancing and comedic skills and the use of miniatures and backlot sets where we might otherwise have wasteful CGI (I'm thinking of the anti-climactic scene with the submarine). And, finally, there's the script that, typical of the Coens, is about far more than it initially suggests. It's about religion and economics and history and politics and all sorts of complicated things that it never really resolves but Brolin's character manages to work out for himself. I think his priest would be proud of him.

IMDb: Hail, Caesar!

The Walk (2015)

Score: 4 / 5

I didn't see it in 3D, though I'm sure it's one of those rare examples of nearly perfect delivery. But even flat on the big screen, The Walk is a dazzling visual rollercoaster. Helmed by visionary director Robert Zemeckis and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (a personal favorite), this biographical drama takes its audience on a journey through light and space that rivals recent epics like Gravity and Life of Pi. Rivals, I should say, in vision; its drama leaves somewhat more to be desired.

The story is, of course, the famed walk of French high-wire artist Philippe Petit between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Typical of Zemeckis's work, the climax literally swoops around the titular event in dizzying, vertigo-inducing images of beauty and tension. It is, simply put, one of the most impressive sequences on film last year. Perfectly balancing the various elements of camerawork, visual effects, and underlying score, the film crafts a dreamlike sequence that is equal  parts fantasy and reality, allowing us inside the artist's head to appreciate the culmination of his young life's work.

The rest of the film is a strange mixture of comedy, drama, and slapstick that, together, form something that could be called a fairytale adventure. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is pitch-perfect as the little Petit (*chuckle*), breaking the fourth wall to narrate his own story. He fashions it as a dream -- compare if you will to Tom in The Glass Menagerie -- a specifically American dream that will bring meaning and accomplishment to his life. He leads us, perhaps a little to briskly, through his young life as an amateur juggler and wannabe circus performer, overcoming difficulties and failure through resourcefulness and determination. Gordon-Levitt brings incredible humor to the character, his eyes sparkling like diamonds and his manic antics prancing their way into our hearts. It's impossible not to like him, even when we probably, like his friends, want to slap him and tell him to get his head out of the clouds. He wears madness like a fashion, and it's catching.

There's not much more to say. As a drama, I'd say it's particularly weak in breadth and depth. As a coming-of-age fantasy adventure, it's breathtakingly effective. The film suggests more than it explores, a risky gamble that I'm not sure it won. But it makes one suggestion repeatedly that I think hints at Zemeckis's true feelings about the material: the images of the Twin Towers are so beautiful and, no doubt, laboriously perfected, that the film feels rather like an homage to their memory. In many ways, both before and after September 11, 2001, the towers represented a form of the American identity and dream, and in repeating their image -- bathed in sunlight or starlight, rising against the cityscape, swaddled in ethereal clouds -- Zemeckis is saying a lot about the nature of our dreams and the lengths to which we go to achieve them. The final moments of the film are of Gordon-Levitt, perched atop Lady Liberty with the towers in the background, saying that Petit's daring walk won him a free pass to the observation decks from the manager, on which the expiration date had been crossed off and changed to "forever". As the sunlight reflects off the towers, the screen fades to black. That, I think, is where Zemeckis enshrined his true emotional climax.

IMDb: The Walk

Room (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

A coming-of-age family drama. A psychological thriller. A black comedy or romance. I don't really know how to describe Room other than to say it's less of a film and more of an experience. In many ways, it's not dissimilar to last summer's Boyhood, in that you follow a child coming into his own, and through the troubles of his life he finds growth, love, and hope. Monsters lurk outside, shit happens, and our heroes overcome through wit, grit, and guts.

Nothing about this film is simple, though a brief plot summary might suggest otherwise. Joy and Jack (played with impossible nuance and love by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay) are held by their abductor in a small, dank shed they call "Room", having been there seven years (and Jack is only five). Joy has put up a good fight, attempting to remain optimistic and supportive of Jack even as the two suffer from malnutrition and their captor rapes her by night. No doubt due to their monstrous situation, Joy has taught Jack that Room is the only reality, and that their television shows only falsehoods and entertainment. The opening scenes set this up brilliantly, and it's hard to fight back the tears as we see the two enact their routine lives in the cramped quarters. At the same time, the film succeeds in fashioning a more complex emotional structure out of the comedy that inevitably arises from the same conditions. And it's hard to not feel inspired by the creativity and resourcefulness these two people exhibit on a daily basis, to help pass the time.

It doesn't take long for Joy to hatch an impressive, daring plan for escape. Heating up her son with hot water as he cries for reprieve, she manages to convince their captor that Jack needs to be taken to a hospital. When that fails, she convinces Jack to play dead, wraps him in a rug, and demands that her captor take him away to be buried. In one of the most thrilling scenes I've ever seen on screen, Jack rolls his way out of the rug in the back of the villain's truck and jumps off. Of course, the poor boy has no idea where he is, or how any of the things he sees can be real. His fear alerts passerby that something is amiss, and soon the police gather enough information to rescue Joy as well. Eventually, the two are returned to Joy's family and learn how to navigate the real world once again.

Not a particularly messy plot, especially considering that that climax scene comes only halfway through the picture. But the point of this movie isn't the escape. The point of this movie is how we all build our own little prisons around our consciousnesses and pretend that those boundaries make up the universe. When we break through, as in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, we must re-learn the reality of things that, before, we only understood as shadows. I'm not just talking about Jack here, who has never experienced even sunlight or grass, let alone hospital beds or human interaction. I'm talking about Joy, who has trouble reconnecting with her family. And Joy's father (William H. Macy), who can't even look at Jack, as he was fathered by the monster who took Joy from him.

Actually, this film is pretty much an extended version of Plato's Cave, now that I think on it. Jack has some initial trouble in understanding that the world is far more vast and wondrous than he could even imagine, but eventually he opens up and connects with family and new friends. Joy, on the other hand, suffers in seeing how the world has continued without her, and attempts to kill herself. Jack helps her through her recovery. In the end, Jack wants to return to Room, presumably as a form of closure. They visit it, escorted by police, and Jack comments on how small it is, saying that it isn't really Room with the door open. But rather than closing the door again, the two say their goodbyes to Room and leave.

I could go on about the brilliant script, the perfect acting, the amazing score, or the impeccable production design. I think the film's ultimate success, though, is like Linklater's in Boyhood, in that as time passes in the film, director Lenny Abrahamson allows his style to change, encompassing the various ways in which the characters view the world around them. At first, everything is presented straightforward, dimly lit, and with a tense energy that belies fear and claustrophobia. But in the moments when Jack first sees direct sunlight, during that climactic truck ride while the music swells, the screen pulses with colors and contrast. The camera becomes more fluid and unfocused, adjusting to the world like Jack's own eyes might.

I'd be lying if I said I cried through the whole damn thing. I did cry (rather more than usual, for those of you who know my tendencies), but I also laughed a lot. It's funny, sad, troubling, haunting, and ultimately uplifting. I had no idea that this movie would do all that and more, but it does. Do yourself a favor and visit Room. It will change your life.

IMDb: Room