The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Those of the mind to see the final chapter of Peter Jackson's fairly bloated staging of Tolkien's The Hobbit must come to peace with the film being good but not great (by Jackson's standards), too "spectacular" by half and an unblinking bore in the final reel. Jackson and his team of screenwriters have hammered a decent screen narrative but the core struggle of one man's, er, dwarf's battle with his inner demons is overwhelmed by too much swordplay and an irritating clownish hamming. As Thorin, the British actor Richard Armitage has three or four solid Macbethian moments as his greed for the golden riches within the mountain chambers once guarded by the dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) turns him ever more indifferent toward his kin and paranoid. But once the dragon is defeated, the former flotsam of Middle Earth come a-knocking. Thorin's  moments of introspection are replaced by the Sturm und Drang that both of Jackson's trilogies have centered around, that is, scads of indistinguishable grotesqueries battling on one side against the scrubbed beauty of the Elves, led by the effete but deadly Thranduil (Lee Pace), his son Legolas (Orlando Bloom also of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) and the dashing she-elf Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly of Lost) and on the other by the hapless though hearty forces of mortal men, led by the archer Bard (Luke Evans). As always Ian McKellen's Gandalf is on hand to dole out wisdom and crack a few skulls with his staff and Martin Freeman's amiable Bilbo Baggins, the Hobbit of the title, provides ample heart to help keep the magical mayhem grounded.  Recommended.

Top Five

Chris Rock's Top Five is the densely comical and thought-provoking story of a former standup comedian and costumed film star whose "funny" was stolen by alcohol. (Whisky shtick?) On the wagon now with the help of his babalicious reality TV star fiancee (Gabrielle Union), Andre "Dre" Allen (Rock) is celebrating both the release of his first dramatic feature -- Uprizing, an unintentionally ludicrous recounting of a slave revolt  in Haiti, the first such revolt in the Western Hemisphere -- and his marriage to his Dream Girl. Allen is being interviewed by a skeptical and, herself, "recovering" New York Times arts writer played by Rosario Dawson. After they lay down a few ground rules about the interview, they have some interesting conversations about fame and family, love and trust, sex, sanity and sobriety. These Rock has explored in his stand-up routines for years. Rock, who also has written and directed this entertaining romp, is offering two things to his fans: (1) a soulful and insightful statement about celebrity, and (2) a house party to which he has invited a couple dozen of his favorite people -- Cedric the Entertainer, JB Smoove, Jerry Seinfeld, SNL's Lisa Jones, Kevin Hart, Tracy Morgan, among them. Rock smartly maneuvers this picture between the rocky shoals of race, class and gender politics and comes out, in the end, with an enormously enjoyable piece of work. Highly recommended.

The Theory of Everything

James Marsh's beautiful but occasionally overwrought The Theory of Everything is the biopic of renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking and his devoted wife, Jane. It is stirring and inspiring and will wrench tears nearly from start to finish. Cinephiles, however, might find Marsh's narrative choices a bit dusty despite having highly engaging dual protagonists played masterfully by Eddie Redmayne (Les Miserables) and Felicity Jones. We are introduced to young Hawking (Redmayne) in the '60s as an awkward though brilliant Cambridge doctoral student who takes a fancy to a lovely poetry student (Jones). The scenes of Hawking's courtship of Jane Wilde are utterly charming.  So much so that when ALS finally enters the frame -- presented in an artful passage just 30 minutes into the film -- the audience is as startled and despondent as Hawking. Most of the film, which is based on Jane Hawking's memoir of her life with the physicist, recounts the couple's early struggles to manage Hawking's disease, which his physicians said would kill him within two years. Redmayne's contorted figure as the wheelchair-bound Hawking is pure perfection, as he portrays genius locked inside a crippled body. ALS has not killed Hawking and the audience is left to wonder why or accept that, ironically, sometimes science simply gets it wrong. Highly recommended.

Bill Cosby

I recall interviewing a young woman from Irmo some years back who had recently started her modeling career. Soon she would be off to New York to take acting lessons, etc. I got a note from her a few months after the piece ran that she'd landed a non-speaking part on The Cosby Show. She would be a young pregnant woman in Cliff Huxtable's waiting room reading a magazine.  I tuned in and, sure enough, there she was.

I have no idea if Bill Cosby is guilty of what he's accused of. Maybe I would be less circumspect if I didn't appreciate him so much. I think he's contributed a great deal to how we think about the world and race and class. Positive contributions. He put a lot of young black faces on television and probably made a good many of them wealthy. Fat Albert is the creation of a funny, smart, intuitive and generous man, a doctor of education. He introduced much of the world to the beautiful art of Varnette Honeywood by displaying it on his shows.  I think the tremendous donation to the Smithsonian Institution from him and his wife is truly remarkable. It is so hard for me to fathom that the same man who did all of these things (and more) was also a demon. If it is somehow proven true, I will be terribly, terribly disappointed and sad.

Beyond the Lights

Nina Simone's Blackbird (as different in tenor and affect from the Beatles' Blackbird as night is from day) is featured prominently in writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood's Beyond the Lights.  We first hear it as a 10-year-old Noni Jean (India Jean-Jacques) takes wing in song at a talent show in London. We hear it again, near the end of the film, after hip-hop diva Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) has nearly crashed and burned from the demands of stardom. Noni's earlier attempt to end her torment is prevented by L.A. cop and political hopeful Kaz Nicol (Nate Parker), who sees a damaged soul under the street swagger. Noni hires Kaz as her bodyguard over the objections of his father (Danny Glover), her mother (Minnie Driver, where have you been?) and unbeknownst to her boyfriend, Kid Culprit (played by Cleveland rapper MGK). And, as the kids say, "shit go bad, for real for real." Prince-Bythewood (The Secret Life of Bees, Love and Basketball) doesn't avoid film cliches entirely (I would love to get through an urban melodrama without somebody on-screen getting slapped) but the freshness she does offer -- many insights on identity and contentment -- makes up for the more predictable passages. And besides, Mbatha-Raw (Belle) and Parker (The Great Debaters) are sizzling hot. There are worse ways to spend your time than watching impossibly beautiful people romp in the surf in T.J. Recommended.

The Book of Life, Big Hero 6

Jorge Gutierrez's The Book of Life and Don Hall's and Chris Williams' Big Hero 6 are mind-bogglingly complex animated treats that are also interesting studies in cultural diversity. 

The Book of Life (principal voices by Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum and Ron Perlman) is the fanciful Mexican tale of the competition between two boyhood friends (Manolo the singer and reluctant bullfighter and Joaquin the town hero) for the affection of a third friend, the lovely and fiercely independent Maria. The story, written by Gutierrez, weaves the dark elements of deals between and pacts with underworld into an amazingly ornamental tapestry that celebrates and extols Latin culture but does make one wonder, as one of the characters in the film does, "What is it with Mexicans and death?" The film features several styles of animation but showcases dazzling, textured characters and backgrounds that have the grainy, wooden appearance of marionettes. It's a stunningly detailed piece of work, with a sophisticated view of adult themes, but whose darkness might be a little too upsetting for the youngest ones.

Big Hero 6 is set in an Amerasian metropolis called San Fransokyo and stars a Amerasian genius named Hiro (voiced by Ryan Potter) whose brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) attends the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. Hiro finished high school at 13 but rather than go to college he builds robots and enters them in bot fights. Tadashi turns his younger brother onto the possibilities of serious robotics by introducing him to his invention -- an outsized, huggable mass of TLC called Baymax, who diagnoses and treats human injuries and ailments. (Another truly inspired character from the folks at Disney.) When a tragic accident delivers a huge dose of reality, young Hiro springs into action with the aid of his robotically modified, inflatable buddy and a colorful crew of students from the institute. The film has some weaknesses, narratively, but I can't imagine anyone not loving the relationship between this boy and his battle-ready nurse. Splendid.

Birdman

Mexican film auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is a festival of emotional and physical kinetics that will exhaust even as it delights. Michael Keaton stars as Riggan Thomson, an actor whose celebrity was earned as a motion picture superhero called Birdman. The intervening years have not been kind to Riggan (thickening waist, thinning hair), and he hopes to turn himself around by directing and starring in a play he's adapted from a Raymond Carver short story. His venture is complicated by his slow descent into madness, his mercurial co-star Mike (Edward Norton) and the show's two leading ladies, his girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) and Mike's lover (Emily Watson). Shot almost exclusively in the interior of the St. James Theatre on Broadway, the movie has the feel of an unbroken reel as it follows the players down the narrow corridors to the dressing rooms, into the wings, onto the stage, up on the roof for battles royal. Iñárritu borrows heavily from the magical realism literary tradition to depict Riggan's unraveling but telekinetic mind. Keaton is marvelous as are all of the supporting actors, especially Zack Galifianakis as Jake, the show's frazzled producer, Amy Ryan as Riggan's ex-wife, and Emma Stone as his insouciant daughter. The film will likely resonate more with theater folks but Keaton's identify crisis will surely connect with anyone who is haunted by the spectres of their youth.

Interstellar

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar has substantial amounts of wit and wisdom but a windy ending that will tax the patience of all but the most stalwart of fans. The film, written by Nolan's brother Jonathan, tells the near future tale of a widower farmer and father of two named Cooper, who is also a grounded NASA pilot (Matthew McConaughey).He's grounded because the nation's resources are needed for the raising of crops and not for space exploration. Some natural scourge called "blight" has devastated most food sources and enormous dust storms threaten to choke the rest of life on the planet. Cooper and his adoring daughter Murph (played as a child by Mackenzie Foy) stumble across a scientific anomaly in the child's bedroom and discover, rather miraculously, that lines in the dust are geographic coordinates. Off they go, tossing caution to the wind, following the coordinates and discover the dusty remains of NASA, headed by a physicist named Brand (Michael Caine) and his daughter (Anne Hathaway). After the brothers Nolan scatter the requisite Stephen Hawking / black hole folderol about for a bit, Cooper, the daughter Brand, two other space explorers (Wes Bentley and David Gyasi) are off on an expedition to another galaxy via a wormhole. They're in search of a planet that could be colonized (Plan A) or serve as an incubator for human life (Plan B). The space travel set pieces are marvelous and the planet visits supply sufficient thrills but for some reason the many narrative tendrils don't come together completely. It's not that questions are left unanswered. It's that the answers aren't especially deep. A parallel storyline that involves an adult Murph (Jessica Chastain) and her brother, played by Casey Affleck, as they wait for either a sign from heaven or a dusty death feels peculiarly uninvolving. Even so, the movie is imaginative and at times quite provocative. What's out there? Maybe that's the wrong question to ask.

John Wick

Keanu Reeves  has kept his amazingly inscrutable face. While it was once a distraction -- and a point of derision -- it perfectly suits the character John Wick, a former gangland assassin who retired to marry and take a stab at a normal life in the New Jersey suburbs. Unfortunately, the son a Russian mobster steals Wick's prized vintage Mustang and kills his dog, just weeks after Wick's wife dies of cancer. So, Wick gets pulled back in, which means the bodies pile up pretty quickly in cleverly choreographed gunplay scenes courtesy of directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski. The Russian mobster (Michael Nyqvist) and Wick have history, which makes all of this even more personal, and so begins a game of cat and mouse played out in a number of crowded upscale venues in Manhattan. The bloody violence is nearly unchartable and pushes the film, undoubtedly a franchise for Reeves, into the realm of the cartoonish. Most definitely not fit for young ones.

Nightcrawler

Screenwriter Dan Gilroy's directorial debut, Nightcrawler, is a scalding treatment of the "bleeds and leads" dictum in big city broadcast news that will be an Oscar-contender because of the wonder of Jake Gyllenhaal's performance. In a role that raises his game substantially, Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a cunning and resourceful shyster who is as oily as his hair. Gyllenhaal is all method acting and immersion as a textbook sociopath who turns away from theft when he discovers a more lucrative game, that of a night owl freelance videographer who feeds ratings-hungry stations with grimy footage from roadway accidents, house fires and assaults. Bloom finds a willing mark in fourth-place KWLA news director Nina Romina (Rene Russo, who is married to Gilroy), whose response to the query "what is news" is "a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut."
Bloom is an amazingly quick study, which is typical of arch manipulators, and admits to having had little formal education. He learns from the Internet and from aping others and his speech and manner befit one so detached from real human interaction. The genius of Gyllenhaal's portrayal -- and it is genius -- is the paradoxical "rational madness" behind Bloom's forced sociableness. He does what he must to get what he wants at the time. He's a liar and, as we discover in the final reel, is completely lacking in empathy and compassion.
The brilliance of Gilroy's writing and directing is in the gradualness of this reveal. The pacing is superb and the tension is unrelenting. A pivotal scene midway through the film has Lou and Nina meeting over drinks and dinner and Lou laying out -- coldly, without a hint of the empathy that keeps "normal" people from imposing on others -- what Nina will deliver to him without question -- opportunity, money and sexual favors. It's a jaw-droppingly forward move brought to life by two actors who are perfectly pitched. The gambit -- and the scene -- work so well because Nina (and the audience) is convinced Lou is not your garden variety loony. His is a very special kind of madness -- the kind that will undoubtedly make him rich and famous. Highly recommended.

St. Vincent

Theodore Melfi's St. Vincent is a less introspective Alexander Payne film that features high-caliber performances from A-listers (Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts) in a story about miserable people behaving badly. And as is true of Payne's movies (Nebraska, Sideways, About Schmidt) what is delivered, though serious, is often quite funny. Murray plays a lonesome Brooklyn crank who has a fondness for slow racing ponies, his white Persian cat and a pregnant Russian hooker and pole dancer (Watts). Into his life comes new neighbors young Oliver (the totally winning child actor Jaeden Lieberher) and his divorced mom Maggie (the reliable McCarthy). Oliver is a runty but perspicacious lad who takes to grumpy old Vincent, despite the man's protests, after Mom hires the old guy to babysit Oliver while she's at work. Vincent's idea of babysitting is hauling the kid to the track, giving him pointers on fighting dirty and, oddly, taking him on visits to a nursing home in the city. In many ways, the story's arc is pretty conventional and the last 10 minutes are calculated to wring the tears but that can be forgiven because Murray is marvelous as a pugnacious mess of man who simply wants this bitch called life to cut him some slack. Highly recommended.

Fury

In most ways, David Ayer's Fury is like other latter-day war movies. It's a story of men and machines that celebrates brotherhood and sacrifice. Fury, starring and exec-produced by Brad Pitt, is no jingoistic rave. In fact, it's a grim tale of a well-bonded tank crew led by Pitt's Sgt. Don Collier, who is hell-bent on eradicating the Nazis and all that comes between him and that mission. Because the humanitarian Pitt is attached to the film, one can be sure the picture will  be peddling much more than blood and body count heroics. To my mind and eye, it goes deeper than Band of Brothers bromides and invites audiences to reflect on how much is lost when battling evil. The film, which was also written by Ayer, opens with Collier and his crew members (Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal) having just lost their driver in a skirmish. They are regrouping with what remains of their company in Germany. Collier and the other American tank commanders are out-gunned but must press on, recover stranded infantrymen and stall, capture or destroy what's left of the German forces, including the barbaric Waffen-SS. An untrained young clerk (Logan Lerman) is assigned to Collier's crew, and it is immediately clear there will be many kinds of battles waged in the film. Ayer has a sure and expressive style; his most powerful scenes take place in the close quarters of the tank where the visceral horrors of military engagement are viewed through scopes and where crew members barely maintain control of their fear and their despair. Ayer's vision of war is grisly but not gross and is often layered with nuance, as in a brilliant set piece toward the middle of the picture that features Collier, his crew, and two German women. I feel all of this is in service to  the film's larger goal of examining how conflict too often interweaves valor and debasement, the innumerable ways men lose their souls in battle. Highly recommended but not for the squeamish.

Dear White People

Writer / Director Justin Simien's debut feature, Dear White People, is a hyper-literate and often intriguing satirical treatment of race appropriation and disgruntlement. It's not about "racism" really -- though one could sit through the entire film believing it is. To me, this artful movie is actually about racial fixations -- mostly among black folks.  The film stars Tyler James Williams (best known for the comedy series Everybody Hates Chris) and Tessa Thompson as black students at the fictitious Winchester University, where a campus radio DJ named Sam White (Thompson) pokes and prods the majority white student body (the Dear White People of the title) and the university's administration with quizzical remarks and bon mots about racial identity and oppression. A budding, bushy-headed journalist named Lionel, (Williams) tries to infiltrate Sam's closed circle to tell her story but is blocked by his own tentative racial and sexual identity. Sam's latest crusade is a campaign by the university administration to abolish the tradition of resident houses that has allowed students to segregate themselves by race and class. Some of the black students, led by Sam, feel this threatens their already tenuous grip on healthy black consciousness and so they oppose it, framing it as more BS from the man. Others, most notably the blue-contact / fall-wig wearing beauty Coco (Teyonah Parris) and Troy (Brandon P. Bell), son of the dean of students (Dennis Haysbert) see the push for integration as a natural occurrence in Obama's evolving post-racial America. This movie has a lot on its mind and much to say but Simien, unlike Spike Lee, keeps the story from spinning out of control though the last act might frustrated some who, perhaps naively, want resolution to the weighty questions raised in the film. I'm not sure who the audience is for this insightful and imaginative work. I believe many blacks, and cosmopolitan whites, will find the politics espoused by the characters familiar while others might find a lot of the talk pedantic. I must say I was delighted to see so many young performers of color on the screen. Recommended.

The Equalizer

I don't rush to see Denzel Washington's pictures. It's been a while since I have. It's not because I'm not a fan; I'm a huge admirer of his work. And it's not because he makes poor choices in films; he does not. It's oddly because he's so reliable, dependable, trusted that I'm never eagerly anticipating his latest film because I might be surprised. I'll eventually see all of his pictures and I enjoy them, and, well, that's about it. I don't talk about them for days.

Washington's latest film with director Antoine Fuqua, Equalizer (based on the Edward Woodward series of the '80s) is fiercely entertaining and highly watchable, with winning performances from Washington, Marton Csokas as the Russia killing machine Teddy, and Chloe Grace Maretz as a feisty young Russian hooker named Teri.  Washington plays Robert McCall, a widowed, anal retentive home improvement retail clerk with a murky past and a soft spot for troubled souls. His well-ordered life of midnight tea and classic literature in a neighborhood diner is disrupted by a battered Teri, whose two-fisted pimp works for a Russian mobster named Pushkin.  When McCall makes a call on Teri's battering handler to try to purchase her freedom, the visit ends with five men dead and the cold-blooded sociopath Teddy on the hunt for the weaponless ghost. The film, tautly directed by Fuqua (Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen), plays to the audience's outrage and, yes, bloodlust and features a clever climax in a darkened hardware store -- death by lawn and garden supplies.  Recommended but not for kids or the squeamish.

Gone Girl

For Gone Girl, David Fincher shelves the acrobatics (Fight Club, Benjamin Button) and the schematics (Social Network, Panic Room) for a cagey thriller that bristles with media-age cynicism. Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike lead a pitch-perfect cast in this film treatment of Gillian Flynn's novel, which tells the story of an under-achieving writer and bar owner, Nick Dunne, whose author-wife, Amy, disappears on their fifth anniversary. Because of the film's narrative structure, the audience is never quite sure if Nick is innocent or delusional. At the same time, it's quickly revealed that he's a snake and maybe his wife had reason to be wary, as she wrote in her journal. Still, the lady has vanished, curiously incriminating clues are found, the police converge and then .... Tight, menacing thrillers that don't traffic in gore and mayhem are as rare as hen's teeth these days. Fincher's Gone Girl is an intoxicating cocktail, that's blessedly free of frills. It's a straight whodunit and it's terrific. Highly Recommended.

Walter White

Breaking Bad's meth chef Walter White's drug of choice was much more addictive than his signature blue crystal. He got his first whiff of it when he met the psychopath Tuco Salamanca in the drug lord's barrio headquarters to get paid for the meth Tuco had stolen and to avenge Jesse. The fulminated mercury that nearly levelled Tuco's building was a "crystallization" of Walt's delusion that his brain would win the day over the world's brawn. He would finally get he recognition he deserved. After he and Jesse escaped from Tuco's clutches and he launched the infamous fugue state canard, he was hooked. Every close call, every fabrication, every probing heart-to-heart with the conniving Gustavo Fring and, of course, Heisenberg's eventual destruction of the great man all fed his delusion that he was unstoppable, invincible, imperial. In the final season, Walt's narcissism was in full bloom and he grew more and more incautious, testing the limits of his luck with the railroad heist, or, perhaps, tempting fate with the giant magnet scheme. But why? Walt's greatest frustration was that he was all power and no glory. He could not tell the world how great he was. They would never know how he had outwitted the devil himself, built an empire that spanned the globe, cheated death time after time. "I'm the one who knocks," he told Skyler, showing a bit of the bristling arrogance that lay just below the surface and daring not to reveal more. He ached to be known and celebrated for the mastermind that he was. Early in Walt's descent into the pits, he showed his infant daughter stacks of money -- hundreds of thousands of dollars -- he had crammed between the insulation in the walls of his home. "See what your daddy has done for you," he cooed. Pitiful, heartbreaking and chilling. When Walt (Bryan Cranston) came back from New Hampshire to set things aright, he'd taken on the bearing of the fiends he'd been supplying -- gaunt, wasted, depleted. Poetic justice? Perhaps. Say my name? You goddamn right.

The Drop

Belgian director Michael R. Roskam's terrific crime puzzler The Drop stars Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini and Noomi Rapace in the screen adaptation of a bleak Dennis Lehane story titled "Animal Rescue." Hardy and Gandolfini, in his last performance before his death last summer, are cousins (Bob and Marv, respectively) who run a Brooklyn bar owned by Chechen mobsters and which serves as one of several "drops" for the mob. After the bar is hit by masked robbers, the Chechen gangsters order the two to get the money back or else. Message received. One afternoon, Bob, a deceptively simple chap, finds a battered pit bull pup in the trash can of a neighbor Nadia (Rapace), who's had her own abusive encounters. She convinces the perplexed Bob to take the dog and promises to coach him in pet care. It's the closest that the eternally dour screenwriter Lehane (author of Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone) gets to meet-cute. It becomes apparent fairly quickly that Nadia's past is her present and it's tailing her. Roskams' washed out palette, the wintry sidewalks, cluttered interiors and the ominous presence of Roskam's fellow Belgian Matthias Schoenaerts as lunatic stalker Deeds signal that none of this will end well. Dark and thoroughly entertaining.

Mike Ehrmantraut

With Gus Fring's demise at the end of Season Four, the series needed a new foil for Walter White's increasingly reckless Heisenberg. Fring enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) was the man. Strong but sympathetic, taciturn but trusted, Mike was a solid Omega to Walt's rising Alpha. Unlike Walt, Mike was not a deep thinker but that's not to say he was dim. He was dutiful and disciplined, the epitome of efficiency. He was an assassin, after all, a job that required resourcefulness and cunning. And, luckily for a series that was getting close to being oppressively dour whenever Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) wasn't on-screen, Ehrmantraut was funny ... really, really funny.  Who knew? His best scenes, in my view, were with the perpetually harried Madrigal inside woman Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Laura Fraser), whom he really, really wanted to shoot in the head. (I'm glad he didn't because that character was a treasure.) A bit of a sentimentalist, Mike's doting grandfather became a surrogate father to Jesse as Walt's monomania pulled him further and further away from his protege and deeper and deeper into his own obsession. Mike's disappearance at the end of Season Five left Jesse, once again, adrift and lonely. And, once again, we felt his pain.

Gale Boetticher

Breaking Bad's guileless geek Gale Boetticher (David Costabile) was Season Three's most interesting featured player for me. An avowed libertarian vegan and Walt Whitman enthusiast, Gale was recruited by Gus Fring to build a master lab in which he would learn to cook master meth from master chef Walter White. And eventually, we came to realize, Gus would dispose of Walter, permanently, and promote Gale. Gale's character, though he only appeared in a couple of episodes, was so richly constructed and embroidered that I wondered if he was creator Vince Gilligan's alter ego. From his Birkenstocks to his throw rugs to his infra-red kitchen thermometer to hs Pillsbury Dough Boy giggle to his love of musical esoterica, Gale was one strange dude. But he added his own beautiful counterpoint to Walt and Gus's strident fugue. I loved his character, as I think many viewers did. Perhaps mostly because of the effect he had on Walt. Walter White wanted a friend, someone who didn't threaten him, who understood his passion for the "chemistry," who he did not resent. Gale was the closest thing to a friend that Walter had. Gale's gifting Walter with an inscribed copy of Leaves of Grass suggests that he may have been a little smitten by Walt and that made Walt's betrayal even more painful to watch and Gale's execution by his rival so shocking. And yet it was also quite fitting for a series where no one ever gets what they want.

Gus Fring

At the end of Season Three of Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman shot meth geek Gale in the face to save Walter White from being killed by Gus Fring's henchmen Mike and Victor. At the start of Season Four, Fring slit Victor's throat with Gale's boxcutter in front of Jesse and Walt, trumping their move and showing both of them what a grown-up sociopath looks like. While gripping Victor's bleeding, convulsing body, Fring trained his eyes on Jesse as if to say, "Who's the man?" In my estimation, Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) was the man that Walt would eventually become -- deliberate, remorseless and calculating.  After Fring was obliterated, Walt seemed to adopt a few of the great man's fastidious affectations. An interesting narrative move. Did Gus's spirit take up residence in Walt's body? Series creator Vince Gilligan made an exception with this terrific character of Gustavo Fring by offering insight into Fring's war with the Mexican cartel and the murder of his "Chicken Brother," Max. While watching Max's blood pour into Don Eladio's pool, we begin to realize that Fring's entire operation, the enormous investment of time and treasure into manufacturing and distributing crystal has all been about his friend. And in that way, Gus was not like Walt, at all. Gus was never about empire-building; he was about revenge. And unlike the food he served at Los Pollos Hermanos, that meal was served ice cold.

Skyler White

Breaking Bad's Skyler White was no Lady Macbeth ... and that's no dig. Her ruthlessness was born not out of greed or ambition but something much more complex --  an insatiable desire to cheat fate, avoid the inevitable. Over the course of the series, Skyler (Anna Gunn) went from hausfrau to money laundering mogul who knew that any misstep would mean her world would come crashing down around her ears. Yes, she was a bitch -- solid gold. But, it seems to me, she came about it honestly. A very telling moment in a series full of them came when we're shown in flashback Walt and Skyler looking at their Negra Arroyo Lane home while Skyler is great with their first child, Walter Jr. She's talking sensibly about affordability and Walt is complaining that the house is inadequate, too small for what their life will become. More, more, more, he seems to say. As we know, Walt never delivered, swapping what would have been a multi-million dollar bonanza with Gray Matter for a few thousand dollars to pay the mortgage on their "inadequate" starter home. Pride goeth before destruction. Skyler, trading tchotckes on eBay to help with expenses, knows how tenuous and uncertain life can be. She gave birth to a child with cerebral palsy, after all. And, she knows her brilliant though underachieving high school chemistry teacher husband who moonlights at a carwash is offering less, less, less. That is until he becomes a meth cook and loads the entire family into a van on the road to hell. So, we can forgive her if she, as tightly wound as she had to be to keep her family together, was a nag and a scold and a closet smoker and adulteress. Carpe diem.

Jesse Pinkman

What a grand creation is Breaking Bad's Jesse Pinkman. Stuttering syncopation, juvenile bravado and arrested emotion wrapped in B-boy swagger. How I loved listening to this guy talk.  All frenzy and ellipses. Pinkman would offer rapid-fire delivery that merged hip-hop and Valley Boy and then stop, leaving one word dangling ... alone. It was  like jazz riffing. As with the other major characters on this remarkable show, Pinkman was a neurotic enigma. And we were left to wonder, or not, how he came to be who he was. Why was he so viscerally homophobic? Was it street hustle or overcompensation? Why did he break bad so early? One thing was clear to me -- Jesse had two, true loves in the series. Both he lost to drugs -- Jane and Walter. Yeah, he cared deeply for Andrea and Brock Cantillo, but by the time he met the young mother and her son he had already been transformed into the "Bad Guy." His attachment to them was not about love but about redemption. But Jesse LOVED Jane Margolis. She cut through all of his residual Cap'n Cook BS and found the kid who loved to draw and imagined that he was special, in some way. She affirmed him and, yes, hurt him, and he loved her deeply. Walt he loved despite the manipulation and condescension. He loved Walt because Mr. White wanted him to be better, to try harder, to apply himself dammit. And when Walt hurt Jesse, turned on him, or let him down, the wound went deep. Pinkman's most powerful scene, at least to me, was delivered in Season Three from the hospital bed, as he was recovering from Hank Schrader's beat down. His denunciation of Walt's million dollar offer was his moment to hurt Mr. White in the way that he, Jesse, had been hurt so many times in his life -- by rejection. "You don't give a SHIT about me," Jesse spat, his face horribly swollen. It was a masterful performance by Aaron Paul, who truly deserved every accolade he's received for his work in this series.

Hank Schrader

Fans of Breaking Bad know DEA agent Hank Schrader, brother-in-law of Walter White aka drug lord Heisenberg. Recent reports attributing the high rate of suicide among men under 50 to their feelings of isolation reminded me of Hank and that character's obsessiveness, insecurities and anxiety. Hank was a lumbering mess of blustering impropriety whose apparent lack of an off-switch hid his nagging lack of confidence. He was an insightful investigator who refused to dig into his own dysfunction. Series creator Vince Gilligan never explained why Hank (or any other major character for that matter) was the way he was. Hank was Hank -- a fine drug enforcement agent who in Season Three was crippled less by the unsuccessful hit by the Salamanca cousins than his own brutalizing rage and self-pity. His wife, Marie, was his occasional confidante but he kept his most important and crucial demon battles to himself -- even after he discovered Walt's big secret. Keeping up appearances, as he told fellow DEA agent Steve Gomez, was of utmost importance. Living that code nearly killed him. Such a rich and remarkable character.

Marie Schrader

Vince Gilligan wasn't much interested in examining the emotional and psychological pathology woven throughout  Breaking Bad.  In fact, Gilligan wasn't much interested in explaining much of anything in the world he created, aside from Walt's cancer, and even then little screen time was given to the man's illness and treatment, lending early credence to Walt's final season confession that his meth cook exploits were all about him.  And, of course, as with much of what was presented in this brilliant show, the lack of exposition was deliberate and, to me, intriguing. Once Walt's cancer was arrested and he was off to the races with Jesse and Gus and the rest, the damaged psyches of the show's other characters were thrown into greater relief. Walt's sister-in-law Marie (Betsy Brandt) was such a bundle of repression and rage that her venomous meltdown after husband Hank's shooting was, at least to me, the character's most revelatory moment. It was clear to me that Marie was blistered by her resentment of her husband, his work, her work, her sister, and all of life, really. Oh, if she could only get that townhouse in Georgetown. Not a single moment was spent explaining this spiteful woman, in an effort to get us to understand her. She was who she was -- a bewildered, isolated, kleptomaniac out to piss off the world that had dealt her a handful of nothing.

Walter Jr.

I never really warmed up to Breaking Bad's Walter Jr. aka Flynn (R.J. Mitte) though friends of mine say he was everything from the moral core of the otherwise sick White household to the innocent victim of his parents' disabling dysfunction. I didn't agree with these characterizations because I always felt those calls were too easy and conventional for a series that was anything but. I've been re-watching the series lately and I have a better idea of where I am with Walter Jr. now, and it actually has more to do with all of the other players in the drama than with him. Like other minor characters (and I mean minor as in age and not necessarily importance) on television, Walter Jr. was not an active player; he responded to what the loony adults around him did, often with irritation and opprobrium. That's not to say he was unimportant,  just that he was not an agent and so it was difficult for me to emotionally invest in him. I never really knew what he wanted from life except a "car" and a "six pack of beer." His only friend, Louis, was a cipher, without context or connections. The only time we saw Walter Jr. with other friends, they were trying to get an adult to cop beer for them. Their interaction was brief and unproductive and we never saw the friends again. In short, Walter Jr. was a device. He was a tool (and in this case I mean both in attitude and in application). Maybe the audience was to take his cerebral palsy as the reason for his ill-temper and snarkiness.  I had a tough time buying it. I thought the kid was a prick and probably would have been even if he did not have those challenges. I did buy that he was the reason his parents were so indulgent, and used him as a chip to control one another and their in-laws. It actually may be a common occurrence that people use their children to threaten one another in this way. If so, I think that is terribly sad. But, in the case of Breaking Bad, because Walter Jr. was someone to be indulged and protected, I don't think Skyler and Walt Sr. ever felt like his parents, this was probably more true of Walter than of Skyler. The dynamic between Walter Jr. and Uncle Hank is revelatory, and contributed to Walt Sr.'s rashness and monomaniacal drive to outsmart his DEA agent brother-in-law.  I also thought the bonding that developed between Walter Sr. and his meth cook partner and surrogate son, Jesse Pinkman, was compensation for the disconnection he felt with his own son, who seemed to prefer another "dad" to him.