Don Hall and Chris Williams’ animated adventure Big Hero 6 (B-) is a triumph of style over substance, with an amazing hybrid metropolis imagined as a cross between San Francisco and Tokyo and a Marvel comic inspired origin story about a sextet of superheroes. There’s an Iron Giant-style central relationship between boy and gentle robot that provides much of the film’s comic and emotional heft, and there’s a sinister scientific subplot that propels the rise of a super villain. The characters are out of central casting, and there’s no breakout voice talent, prompting the most joyous parts to be the chase sequences through the cool cityscapes. The story is rather routine, down to the training montages and climactic showdown. Really, this is all about the action and the visual spectacle, and those elements are grandiose. It’s startlingly original for a Disney film but not that trailblazing otherwise.
All posts by Stephen Michael Brown
“Birdman” is Style Over Substance
First things first, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s tragicomic backstage character drama Birdman (B) is often brilliantly bonkers, and Michael Keaton gives a command performance at the film’s core as a fading Hollywood film star trying to reinvent himself on Broadway while suffering an all-out mental breakdown. With long tracking shots through claustrophobic corridors, a percussive jazz score rat-tat-tatting through the spiraling series of devolving events and tidbits of comic book flourish and fantasy that would be at home in a Terry Gilliam film, this dark delving into the damaged psyche of a thespian on the brink of obscurity pounds its themes with a bit too much prescience. The film comes most alive in its moments of inspired mania that spring from real-life conflicts such as dealing with harsh critics and handling acting egos with kid gloves. Quite frankly, supporting performances by Ed Norton as an obnoxious actor in the on-stage drama and Emma Stone as Keaton’s real-life daughter steal the show a bit with audacious turns of their own. Stone gets a great soliloquy encapsulating the essence of modern-day relevance. The film is a brittle amalgam of too many themes boiling in one big pot; but its insider’s take on exorcising one’s demons, conquering the temptations of fame and reconciling the notions of love and admiration is likely to appeal to artists’ temperaments more than the mainstream. It’s a treat to see Keaton get to sink his teeth into such a flight-of-fancy performance, and both West Coast and East Coast entertainment industries get their share of skewering in this uneven but often shrewd satire.
“Pride” (2014) an Inspiring Tale of Community
Matthew Warchus’s Pride (B-) is a delightful true story about a group of London-based gay and lesbian activists who raise money for families affected by the British miners’ strike in 1984. When the national union passes on their support, the activists take their donations directly to a small mining village in Wales, resulting in an alliance between the two oppressed communities and of course a bit of fish-out-of-water culture clashes. Many popular British stars are on hand, with Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Dominic West providing some familiar faces for the festivities. But it is Ben Schnetzer as the ringleader and Georgia MacKay as the reluctant hero who shine in central roles. The same formula that worked for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Full Monty and countless others works for the most part here. The period detail is a highlight, and the film is a stirring tribute to outcast communities banding together. The film could have had a bit more meat on its bones to sustain the final reel, and you can see many of the conflicts from a mile away, but it’s a good-hearted romp and a nice surprising history lesson to boot.
Luc Besson’s “Lucy” Languishes
Luc Besson’s Lucy (C-) has momentum and drive and a super-cool premise; it just doesn’t really know where to start or end. The film theorizes that if people could harness one hundred percent of the potential that lies in the human brain, they would be omniscient, omnipresent and a little nuts. As the titular character, Scarlett Johansson has to singlehandedly carry a lot of the film’s far-fetched notions on her slim shoulders as she’s made an unwitting drug mule for a substance that allows the mind to be used to full capacity. Her backstory is uninvolving, and her quest is never really properly revealed. She’s seemingly on a race against time to beat Besson’s incessant title cards that keep showing the percentage of her brain that are now in full effect. Stock mobster characters and a ponderous Morgan Freeman as a university scientist studying this very phenomenon seem to be the most obligatory of elements in the film. Some of the action and effects are pretty nifty; some are even mildly mind-blowing. But with the brain all revved up with no place to go, it’s a pretty spectacular letdown to find the film isn’t half as smart as it thinks it is. 60%?
“Gone Girl” Sometimes Rises Above Pedestrian Material
Director David Fincher’s brilliant career has been marked by incredible displays of calculating gamesmanship, manifested in modern-day classics such as Se7en, Zodiac, Fight Club, The Social Network and, well, The Game, so it’s not altogether inconceivable that he’d adapt a twisty thriller based on a popular novel about the chess match of modern marriage in Gone Girl (C+) but alas it’s not altogether successful. Told in alternating accounts from co-stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, the film feels a bit like a soapy ’90s holdover from the files of Disclosure or Indecent Proposal, heaping more guilty pleasure than gravitas into the cinematic canon. The first hour is pretty solid, with Affleck’s post-modern emasculated husband good for a few laughs and ultimately some raised eyebrows. Tables inevitably turn, and much of the fun is trying to get into the characters’ heads to unravel the mystery of the murky marriage. Many intentions are left unexplained, and tonal shifts are par for the course in a world that can’t resolve if it is Stepford or Anywhere USA. It all seemed a little sloppier than Fincher’s usually exacting enterprises. Some bright supporting performances by Carrie Coon as Affleck’s relatable twin sister and Kim Dickens as a sympathetic cop enliven the proceedings. Tyler Perry as actor gets some nice bits about what to reveal for the scrutiny of the media camera, and there are some clever riffs on what it means to be trapped in defined roles in a relationship. Affleck’s character jokes at one point that he feels like he’s on an episode of Law & Order, but I suppose the joke is on us that we’re paying for the privilege. The mid-point plot shift is pretty cool, but the film’s balance goes off the rails for the final few acts. Ultimately the characters’ fatal flaws were just too obvious to illuminate many universal themes and the story sometimes too ludicrous to consistently entertain.
“Skeleton Twins” Offers Strong Dramedy
Craig Johnson’s dark comedy-drama The Skeleton Twins (B) is like a Hallmark Card series launched by The Addams Family: a veritable arsenal of pick-me-up announcements from occasions such as suicide attempts, abandonment, abuse and infidelity. The fact that this tragic terrain is so skillfully navigated by typically comic actors Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader is a testament to the range of their craft. As Wiig’s good-natured husband, Luke Wilson is also effective as an everyman foil. After nearly a decade without speaking, a botched suicide attempt brings the titular adult twins back together to experience why they can’t live with or without each other. Drunken mishaps, terrible truth or dare games, a great karaoke sequence and a fun Halloween outing string together some of the threadbare plot and themes. The tonal shifts come as fast and furious as the characters’ mood swings; and you simply have to be prepared to not know where the journey will take you. The film depicts lots of lows and very few highs, very true to life for characters in the mental state that these are experiencing, and much of the humor comes in their macabre sarcasm. Johnson’s film portends exciting future works to come.
“Maze Runner” is Bottom-Drawer YA Adaptation
There’s an intriguing story buried within the Lord of the Flies/Hunger Games/Prison Break mashup that is Wes Ball’s The Maze Runner (C-), but boy is the execution a tedious zig zag tracing some well-trod lines we have seen many times before! An all-teen-boys village of the future requires runners to scope out a maze each day in hopes of finding a pathway to escape (maybe they think there are girls on the other side?) There aren’t Minotaurs in the labyrinth but rather a selection of sinister electric spiders that attack at night if you get trapped in the maze’s doors that close at sunset. A preposterous young adult novel plot really needs an amazing lead actor to add gravitas to the proceedings, and alas the stoic Dylan O’Brien fails to fill the screen with charisma as the new man on campus. The entire ensemble, to be fair, is really quite dreadful in both talent and appearance, representing each cliche available for the dead sprinters’ society and clad in Gap outfits that don’t give one the sense that the costume department really thought out what the dystopian future really looks like. Where is the White Squall casting director when so desperately needed? When a female character (Kaya Scodelario) finally shows up to add some much-needed gender politics to the Katniss Ever-Peen mix, she’s as cardboard as the rest and gives the affair all the excitement Smurfette provides to a Peyo tale. To the film’s credit, there are several really heart-stopping action moments and a few elaborate set pieces of note, although nothing much better than you’d find on a typical episode of Lost. The doubting antagonists are insufferable, the Piggy-esque sidekick grating and the multiple trick endings stupefying. The final reel felt like a big set-up for a better sequel when the cast members have all completed their acting boot camp. There are endless possibilities about how this film could have been rendered with more panache.
With This Cast, “This Is Where I Leave You” Should Be Better
Somewhere on the sliding scale far down from Terms of Endearment and even a few notches down from Beautiful Girls is Shawn Levy’s you-can-go-home-again comedy-drama This Is Where I Leave You (C); and despite often amusing and sometimes touching ensemble work, it doesn’t necessarily add up to a cogent success or complete payoff. Faring best are Jason Bateman, Rose Byrne, Adam Driver and Jane Fonda in some affecting and bawdy bits. The very loose plot involves a family being grounded together for a week after the death of its patriarch right as their lives are unraveling and they really could use some good advice. The best parts of the movie are often told in the margins, which makes it a bit touch to break through Levy’s overproduced hucksterism. Dare I say on the first weekend of its theatrical release that it might make a nice rental?
“Hundred-Foot Journey” is Kinda Bland
It’s too bad the Michelin ratings system for restaurants doesn’t apply to movies, because Lasse Hallström’s The Hundred-Foot Journey (C+) is hovering between two and three stars. Although sentimental and sure to please folks in search of a formulaic adult crowd pleaser amidst summer blockbusters, it’s missing the ingredients of something truly scrumptious as the director throws in every flavor but subtlety. Helen Mirren channels Cruella de Ville as the owner of a classic French restaurant; and she slings rather than delivers pies to her new neighbors, a culinary family from India. It’s confit versus curry as a battle of restaurants commences, with Om Puri meeting Mirren’s tit for tat with the dramatic range of a sledgehammer. Only two young spice whisperers at rival restaurants played earnestly by Manish Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon bring a few acting bonbons to this cliché soufflé. Most of the film is middlebrow, saccharine and predictable. Even the food porn is soft core (c’mon, le directeur du Chocolat!) although the film’s settings are often pretty as a postcard. Hoping there would be a bit more pillage in the village, I just kept thinking there must be more than this provincial lark.
“Begin Again” Shows More Bonding Among Music Makers
Lightning does not strike twice for Once writer/director John Carney as he brings his wounded souls bonding over music motifs Stateside in the NYC-set drama Begin Again (B-). Mark Ruffalo is a down-on-his-luck producer and Keira Knightley the unlucky-in-love songstress who catches his attention. Together the maven and his muse create an album on the streets of New York and rediscover their stride. It’s often affecting and means perfectly well, but the music never rises to the level nor the milieu to the moment to render a result as uncommon as its makers seem to imagine. Carney coaxes viewers a bit into the fact they’re watching a musical; and this camouflaged concoction filled with recording sessions, crooning and concert sequences occasionally swells to its raison d’être. Ruffalo and Knightly are charming as the chaste protagonists, and Adam Levine is serviceable in the role of a rock star on the rise. Other supporting cast members are given short shrift and are as misplaced as Manhattan by a director who better staged a similar tale among the buskers of Dublin.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014) a Delightful Cosmic Surprise
Beaming onto a screen near you is a vaudeville starship troupe milking about five jokes for all they’re worth in James Gunn’s aimless but often joyful space opera comic book adaptation, Guardians of the Galaxy (B). A smuggler out of the Han Solo playbook, Chris Pratt continues his awesome year with crowd-pleasing snark on a mission to keep a mysterious orb out of the clutches of baddies. His companions including an endearing tree-man and a wise-cracking raccoon (voiced by Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper) who each get some great laughs in mischief-making derring-do. The intergalactic plot? Kinda lost in space. The film deserves kudos in the Marvel canon as a lively lark even if it uses up its clever action conceits in the first hour. The planetary effects are as triumphant as the tone ribald. Motown tracks and monster ballads also add some lift. It’s much more style than substance but filled with the tart nihilism of a cherry bomb that detonates when you least expect it. Side note: On the schawarma scale of consequence, the very brief epilogue will ruffle some feathers.
“Boyhood” a Magnificent Movie Miracle
Writer/director Richard Linklater has created the movie miracle of the year with Boyhood (A+), a powerfully stirring journey that rivals its extremely original high concept. This first-ever fiction experiment with newcomer actor Ellar Coltrane actually aging more than a decade in the role from childhood to high school graduation is matched by the emotional wallop and moving issues revealed in the human adventure. Surprisingly free of smugness or gimmickry, the auteur also plucks outstanding wounded performances from Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as the protagonist’s divorced parents. This basically redefines the coming of age movie; and in dinner table and campfire chats, it reveals glimpses of the meaning of life. Linklater’s penchant for smart dialogue and characters works alternately as a love letter to Texas and to rock and roll, as a veritable mix tape turned playlist unspools from shortly after 9/11 to present day. Boy, did they find a charmer in Coltrane who exudes not a single false note as he grows up right in front of our eyes. He’s a stand-in for what has become one of the preeminent voices in cinema, reflecting advice he receives from a community of dazed and occasionally confused elders who don’t really know their way either and looking for a way to express his singular art that puts an imprint on the world. The production values are uniformly superb, and parents in the viewing audience who can withstand some of the film’s salty language will be enriched and left with eyes full of glorious tears. Passionate and purposeful, this film joins another favorite of mine, Memento, in the category of films that should not work but do. It’s a tribute to masterful editing. Like all great movies, you’ll have a hard time not seeing a little of yourself in this one.