Foxcatcher

Much of Bennett Miller's unswerving psychodrama Foxcatcher is tough to watch. It's not bloody or violent even though it is set in the world of championship wrestling and has Valley Forge as a backdrop. It is difficult -- but essential -- viewing because it reminds us that once all material desires have been sated the wealthy too often turn to owning and controlling people. Steve Carell stars as John DuPont, a scion of that legendary dynasty, who is an egregiously unaccomplished and unattractive middle-aged man living with his mother (Vanessa Redgrave). He fancies himself a molder of men though there is no evidence he's ever done so and he is himself a phantom of contrivances and vanity. DuPont holds target practice on his estate with members of the local constabulary, buys himself a tank and two Olympic gold medalists, the Schultz brothers, first Mark (Channing Tatum) and later older brother David (Mark Ruffalo). The brilliance of this tragic and true  story is in Miller's slow reveal of how those who value little often destroy what they own, even if those possessions are other people. Highly Recommended.

12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet’s stirring motion picture about injustice, 12 Angry Men, was released in theaters in 1957, after incarnations on the stage and television. Written by Reginald Rose, the film follows a jury’s deliberations over the guilt or innocence of a young man charged with stabbing his abusive father. The original dozen “angry men” were white, reflecting the reality of America’s judicial system in the Eisenhower-era, even in New York City, where the story is set. (When it was restaged for television in 1997 -- several black men were on the jury panel and the judge was a woman.) The accused, a young man of unspecific ethnicity, is seen only at the beginning of the film as the judge, in an oddly insouciant manner, gives the jurors their charge. This indifference is the earliest suggestion that something is amiss.

Juror #8, played by the ever-earnest Henry Fonda (who also produced the film with Rose), lets his fellow jurors know that he is not interested in rushing things. He wants to talk about the case. A boy’s life is at stake. Most of the other jurors display a detachment from the defendant that mirrors the judge’s; they resist the call to talk but cannot return anything less than a unanimous decision to the judge. Slowly, with Juror #8’s patient prodding, they examine their own assumptions and biases, and the “shadow of a doubt” begins to descend.

Juror #8’s prime nemeses during the deliberations are an inflexible brute, Juror #3 (George C. Scott), and an elderly bigot, Juror #10 (Ed Begley). Rose puts words of such hateful trenchancy in these men’s mouths that compassionate viewers will likely feel shame for them rather than anger. At one point near the end of the film, Juror #10 rails against “scum” with such vile contempt that the other men rise and turn away from him. It’s an elegant moment that, typical of Lumet’s best work, is powerful because it is understated.

This remarkable picture's commentary about prejudice and conscience is just as searing today – maybe more so, in light of recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York. Despite the weightiness of the issues raised in 12 Angry Men, the film never preaches. It pricks, leaving the heavy lifting to the caring viewer's own conscience.

Inherent Vice

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice pairs the hyper-literate cogitations of Thomas Pynchon with Anderson’s own rhapsodic storytelling. This film is based on Pynchon’s 2009 novel about a 1970 LA stoner/private investigator named Doc (Joaquin Phoenix), who is commissioned by his ex-girlfriend (Katherine Waterston) to foil a plot to commit her current lover (Eric Roberts) to a mental institution. Conflicted about her request but rendered cooperative by drugs and hope, Doc investigates and stumbles upon dirty cops (Josh Brolin) missing persons (Owen Wilson), dead informants, Aryan Nation bodyguards, pervy dentists (Martin Short)  and a mysterious shipping enterprise named Golden Fang. All this may or may not be connected to anything of significance — in fact the story itself may be more about the journey than the destination — but it’s a trip watching it and hearing Pynchon’s wonderful prose (or Anderson’s approximation of it). Anderson has not directed nearly as many feature films (7) as I feel he has. I think his impact outweighs his output because his productions are evocative and provocative, colorful and dense. Maybe in some cases too layered, containing one ironic moment or coincidence too many. Inherent Vice, the term refers to the nature of an object that renders it uninsurable, is a fresh cinematic experience that is probably best enjoyed as free jazz — as waves of creative expression. Recommended but contains carpet and drapes nudity, sex talk and endless drug use.

Foxcatcher

Much of Bennett Miller's unswerving psychodrama Foxcatcher is tough to watch. It's not bloody or violent even though it is set in the world of championship wrestling and has Valley Forge as a backdrop. It is difficult -- but essential -- viewing because it reminds us that once all material desires have been sated the wealthy too often turn to owning and controlling people. Steve Carell stars as John DuPont, a scion of that legendary dynasty, who is an egregiously unaccomplished and unattractive middle-aged man living with his mother (Vanessa Redgrave). He fancies himself a molder of men though there is no evidence he's ever done so and he is himself a phantom of contrivances and vanity. DuPont holds target practice on his estate with members of the local constabulary, buys himself a tank and two Olympic gold medalists, the Schultz brothers, first Mark (Channing Tatum) and later older brother David (Mark Ruffalo). The brilliance of this tragic and true  story is in Miller's slow reveal of how those who value little often destroy what they own, even if those possessions are other people. Highly Recommended.

American Sniper

In Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Bradley Cooper plays real Navy SEAL marksman Chris Kyle, who did four tours of duty in Iraq before leaving military service, physically whole but emotionally ruined. Kyle’s rise to glory as a sniper is of legend; he’s hale and hearty, tall, brave and handsome. He’s a patriot who learned love of country at his daddy’s dinner table and to aim and shoot while hunting deer with his old man in the woods of Texas. He’s the manliest of manly men. When Kyle is stateside with family, however, he is absent, even when present. His fall into despondency is not pathetic; it’s tragic because the reason for his sacrifice, those unseen injuries, and that of his SEAL buddies is unclear, the battle seemingly unwinnable. 

Playing opposite Cooper, who is terrific, is Sienna Miller as Kyle’s wife, Taya, a distressed dynamo who watches helplessly while her husband retreats into the hell of PTSD. She fell for a rodeo cowboy, married a fighter, but lost him to a military campaign that Eastwood, who has filmed some of the most compelling war stories in recent memory, has long viewed as senseless. Taya recognizes she has only part of her husband’s heart, the rest belongs to SEAL team but that doesn’t make watching him pack for another tour easy, just inevitable.

In many ways, the themes in American Sniper are familiar. Eastwood’s presentation is as efficient as most of his other films — the narrative is crystal clear, the performances are top drawer, and void of politics, perhaps to make room for the human heart. Highly Recommended but bloody. Not for children.

Selma

Ava DuVernay's Selma is stylistically riveting and has a narrative complexity that raises it from "theater of the aggrieved" onto another iridescent plane. Of the three main bio-pics I've seen this season -- the others being The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game -- Selma is the most elegant in dealing with its lead character's flaws. A brief but powerful scene between Martin (a mesmerizing David Oyelowo) and Coretta King (the lovely Carmen Ejogo), on the eve of yet another confrontation between black citizens and Alabama police, has the couple engage the civil rights leader's infidelities without rancor. This is not to say the moment is painless, for Coretta is clearly wounded and Martin, decisive in his dealings with President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), is cowed not so much by his wife's injury or disapproval but, it seems, by his own sinfulness. Masterful. Yes, the film is about King's efforts to rally a somnolent nation to force Selma to do the right thing and stop blocking blacks from voting. But, the greater the distance from that event and the heroism reflected in facing down hate, the clearer the picture becomes of the levels of engagement needed to get hundreds of people over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 and on to freedom. Highly recommended.

PK

Before Rajkumar Hirani’s PK, the closest I got to Bollywood was Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Boyle’s superb film, whose honors included Best Picture and Best Director at the 2009 Academy Awards, was a sprawling and engrossing movie about India’s human clutter and the desperation of the exploited children in its teeming slums — and it was musical, brilliantly so.

So is Hirani’s PK, which tells the story of a big-eyed, jug-eared alien astronaut (Aamir Khan) who lands in Rajasthan and is immediately robbed of the jeweled amulet he needs to return home. (E.T. can’t phone home.) Because of his odd behavior, the alien is named “Tipsy” by the constabulary and frequently jailed as he learns how to survive while searching for his purloined property. Eventually, Tipsy finds his way to Mumbai and then to New Delhi, for he has been told that God will return what was stole. He is has in search of the Creator.

This movie is not a pilgrim’s journey, however, but Hirani’s clever exploration of man’s own creation — God, in all of its Indian manifestations. Accompanying Tipsy on this disruptive quest is a beautiful and disillusioned television reporter (Anushka Sharma), whose love life is collateral damage in the war between Hinduism and Islam, India and Pakistan.

Most assuredly, PK is not for all tastes. The merging of music, drama and comedy might be off-putting to some but I found PK a spangling gem of a movie.

The Gambler

Rupert Wyatt’s remake of Karel Reisz’s 1974 film The Gambler is a pendulous story that swings between gangsters and Gurdjieff, that is, between the material and the immaterial. Mark Wahlberg stars as a casino-addicted, possibly suicidal professor of literature, Jim Bennett, who values little — neither money nor status nor affection nor even his own life. His inability to win and walk away has indebted him to ruthless bookies (Michael Kenneth Williams) and gambling den lords (Alvin Ing) — and they want to get paid. Bennett seems incapable of making sound decisions; he bullies his students, and treats his wealthy but weirdly contemptible mother (Jessica Lange) with, well, contempt. Much of this movie feels flighty and random, but Bennett’s conversations about life’s meaning and actualization with an eager young coed who moonlights as a casino waitress (Brie Larson), a conflicted basketball player who wants to quit school (Anthony Kelley) and a doughy but deadly loan shark who seems to want to save Bennett from himself (John Goodman) are actually well-written and insightful. 

The Imitation Game

Danish director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters) and screenwriter Graham Moore have set at the center of this remarkable World War II period film several puzzles. One relates to the German’s Enigma device, which every day generated the codes the Nazis used to relay messages and orders to military forces. The British war department had found the code formidable but were determined to give a team of mathematicians and logicians led by the human conundrum Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) a chance to break it. And therein lies the second puzzlement: what could Turing — an inapproachable and mercilessly disapproving cuss — have possibly told Prime Minister Winston Churchill to convince him to hand over more than 100,000 pounds so that Turing could build a decoding machine that no one except Turing was sure would work. The audience is never told directly, although the answer is hinted at during a conversation Turing and the lone woman on his team, Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), have with MI6 liaison Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong). For you see, in that world of secrets and subterfuge,Turing, a closeted homosexual during a time when British laws were especially draconian, surely knew how to guard confidences. Moore’s brilliant screenplay is based on Andrew Hodges book and elegantly weaves three stories — the code breaking challenge, another from Turing’s schooldays and the third that recounts his arrest on a morals charge in the early ’50s. Each of these three tales reveals a different aspect of Turing’s genius, his obsession and, ultimately, his unrelenting pain. Highly recommended.

Into the Woods

Rob Marshall’s Chicago won honors from the Oscars and Golden Globes in 2003. It was hailed as having, miraculously, revived the moribund Hollywood musical. To my ears and eyes, Chicago was a surreal. high-wattage spectacle of music and dance that retained much of the original Broadway show’s contagious staginess. Marshall’s film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods is not nearly as fresh and electrifying (no pun intended), and for one who holds great affection for the stage version of this cagey show, Marshall’s picture feels enervating and forced. It’s not a bad film, and it has the blessing of both Sondheim and James Lapine who wrote the book for the stage show and the screenplay. It’s just that it seems out of place and out of step on the screen. Probably my bias. Yes, all of the principal players in this fantastic (and insightful) story of quests for wish fulfillment are fine. James Corden and Emily Blunt are particularly good as the childless baker and his wife. Their duet “It Takes Two” is the high point of the movie for me. (The moms in the audience seemed to delight in Chris Pine’s and Billy Magnussen’s dreamy narcissism as miserable princes in the duet “Agony.” Me? No so much.) Still and yet, Meryl Streep seems a lazy choice as the vengeful witch whose charge to the baker and his wife to go “Into the Woods” to lift a curse starts the play’s fateful events. Of course, she hits the notes and her marks but what’s the fun in that? She’s a world-class performer when an unknown would have added spice. See it if you must but rent the DVD of the 1991 stage production with Bernadette Peters as the witch and Joanna Gleason as the baker’s wife, too.

Big Eyes

A sad irony rests at the center of the story of popular painter of saucer-eyed waifs Margaret Keane and her Svengali of a husband Walter: though Margaret (played by Amy Adams) believed the eyes were the “windows of the soul” she managed her career with a frightful lack of self-awareness, naivete and untoward trust in the charming Walter (Christoph Waltz). Set in San Francisco in the late ’50s and ’60s, Tim Burton’s Big Eyes borrows a bit from the Douglas Sirk (All That Heaven Allows) playbook in its color-saturation and celebration (and criticism) of mid-20th century middle America. Margaret meets Walter while drawing $2 portraits at a street fair. She and her daughter Jane (Delaney Raye) were on their own after fleeing Margaret’s stifling husband. Walter purports to having studied at Beaux-Arts in Paris and to knowing gallery owners and art patrons. Margaret’s desperation is palpable and soon they’re wed. Walter takes over the promotion of Margaret’s big-eyed paintings and quickly realizes that her work is more evocative (and marketable) than the pedestrian streetscapes he has been hawking. When a sniggling newspaper columnist (Danny Huston) overhears an argument between Walter and a local clubowner (Jon Polito), the painter and the doleful children he claims to have painted become causes celebres. Margaret goes along with the ruse for the sake of peace and profits but soon begins her slow descent into regret and recrimination. This is not particularly edgy material as compared to Burton’s other works but it is a credible and, yes, artful treatment of fraudulence and authenticity. 

Wild

Director Jean-Marc Vallee’s Wild is revelatory in ways Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007)  was not, though I think the latter film may be the more popular of the two. Penn’s movie, which starred Emile Hirsch, was the true account of a foolishly adventuresome man who wandered into the Alaskan wilderness with more guts than luck and perished while there.  In Wild, which is based on the memoirist book by Cheryl Strayed, Vallee tells the stark though compelling story of the loves and losses of a young woman from Minnesota (Reese Witherspoon) who confronts self-destruction by hiking the 1,100 miles of the Pacific Coast Trail from Mexico to Canada. Heat, hunger and thirst effectively exorcise many of her demons and strip away, at times literally, the calloused layers of her own disaffection and self loathing after a family tragedy. Vallee weaves through flashbacks Strayed’s story of abuse (domestic and drug), her failed marriage and promiscuity and her loving and contentious relationship with her remarkable mother (a stellar Laura Dern). The film’s exteriors are lovely but its interiors are not pretty and our heroine stinks (literally and figuratively) but all of it feels real from start to finish. Witherspoon is intrepid in her depiction of Strayed, who now lives in Portland, and is resolute in this journey to self. I asked my viewing companion if she thought Wild was a women’s picture. In doing so I was wondering if the pain that drove Strayed to tackle those many miles might be unfamiliar to man — much like the pain of childbirth. My friend said she thought the meaning was transcendent. I agree but also think men won’t connect with it as much, perhaps, as women who have known the fears and losses that Strayed shares in her story. Highly Recommended.

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings is a long movie that does little. Because this umpteenth retelling of the battle between Pharaoh Ramses II (Joel Edgerton) and his adopted brother Moses (Christian Bale) is such a familiar tale, Scott needed much more than a few new  tricks -- in exposition AND execution -- to make the film worth its nearly 2 and half hours. Although the picture is pretty (how could it not be?) and the recreation of the plagues on Egypt is thrilling, I was frustrated and peeved that the story was so thin, the personal intrigues vaporous and talent wasted unchartable. It's been a while since so many people gave so much for so little. Biblical epics often resort to "proverbial" dialogue -- that rarefied cadence and text in which the characters talk in aphorisms and inscriptions. It was pure camp when DeMille staged it in The Ten Commandments. But not so much here. The script is not so much about art-speak as it is about shadowy nods (Ben Kingsley as Nun), knowing glances (Aaron Paul as Joshua) and fiery interjections (Sigourney Weaver and nearly every other credited actor in the cast). That's the main problem for me, I fear. In this age, big pictures are relying less on denseness of story or richness of character than on an unending parade of cinematic acrobatics and magic -- in this case, repulsive flies and frogs, boils and bugs. And that's a shame. The movies that linger longest with me touch my heart; they don't trigger my gag reflex. I have to hand it to Scott though. It took real stones to cast God's heavenly messenger Malak as a petulant 10-year-old boy. I would say "Good show, Sir Ridley!" but it's not really.

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.