Joy

Even David O. Russell's weaker films are interesting and fairly idiosyncratic in that they challenge viewers to work a little harder than they must for conventional film fare. Such is the case with Russell's Joy, which stars his usual posse of players -- Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. Russell seems drawn to stories about failed (or failing) people whose lives are truly studies in interpersonal conflict and complication. These characters are mostly sympathetic, like the hardworking divorced mother of two of this film's title, but the lead character's gullibility or greed or lack of healthy boundaries makes them also a bit tarnished and pitiful. Joy (Lawrence) is an imaginative, resourceful but duty-bound young woman, locked into familial commitments but struggling, when she has time, to find a way to make her life less miserable. She gets loving encouragement from her grandmother (Diane Ladd) but little from the other members of her family -- her insensitive father (De NIro), self-involved mother (Virginia Madsen) or envious half-sister (Elizabeth Rohm). Her stargazing, under-employed ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez) offers her moral support and little else that's bankable. Joy's ingenuity leads her to design a product that she fully expects will change the lives of American housekeepers and, ultimately, her own. But, alas, her plans for financial independence are threatened by the world of commerce, which she, frankly, doesn't understand and swindlers eager to take advantage of her ignorance. Russell's Joy is an often entertaining but not entirely satisfying fable about a modern woman who refuses to succumb to circumstances or the limitations of the imaginations around her. Recommended.

Concussion

Journalist and filmmaker Peter Landesman's Concussion will no doubt resonate with those who love tales about waging the good fight on behalf of those who cannot fight for themselves. In this story -- adapted from a GQ article on the rising frequency of suspicious, seemingly self-inflicted deaths among veteran NFL players -- Landesman sets at center stage a meticulous Nigerian immigrant pathologist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who conducts the autopsy on former Steelers center Mike Webster (David Morse). Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) finds anomalous injuries in Webster's brain that were either ignored or hidden by team physicians and which, he is convinced led to Webster's madness and death. He shares his findings with the county coroner (Albert Brooks), who supports Omalu's investigation of other NFL deaths despite the inevitable shitstorm in the league's universe his findings would turn up. Omalu finds a few friends in his quest to be heard, among them, love interest Prema (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and former players physician Dr. Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin) but he also finds himself outmatched by the NFL, which, as Brooks' character says, "owns a day of the week." But Omalu asks, genuinely mystified, why the league commissioner would not want to know the truth and protect the players. The answer is obvious to all who grew up in America, but not so clear to a relatively new arrival, and, further, might make the question even more pressing. Landesman has an ear for story and an eye for the intimate elements contained therein. Scenes between Smith and Mbatha-Raw (Belle, Beyond the Lights) are radiant and in one instance late in the film, heartrending. It would be difficulty for me to overstate how terrific I found Smith to be in this picture. Maybe the real-world celebrity marital / parental drama clouded my memory of just how fine an actor he is when he's got a character to pour himself into (Pursuit of Happyness, Seven Pounds) and he has found another here. Highly recommended.

The Big Short

Adam McKay's name has been attached to Will Farrell's Anchorman series, which McKay wrote and directed. Though the subject of his latest film is high finance, McKay's comedic sensibilities are not entirely benched for The Big Short, which is by turns delicious and disheartening. 

McKay's film is a treatment of Michael Lewis's bestselling chronicle of the chicanery that led to the implosion of the American housing market and the world economy in 2008. Because Lewis's book drilled deep into Wall Street's byzantine money-making mines, McKay stages hilarious and helpful explainers delivered either by one of the picture's primary characters (mainly Ryan Gosling) or guest presenters (among them chef Anthony Bourdain and singer Selena Gomez). 

'This exuberant movie has two settings -- simmering contempt and roiling outrage -- funneled through Christian Bale's Michael Burry and Steve Carell's Mark Baum, both independent financial investors who in 2006 detected the stench of corrupt mortgage lending practices and bet against the continued growth of the subprime housing market, convinced it would implode in a matter of months. 

Though all indications were that this was a certainty, it didn't come when expected, which revealed another layer of corruption -- complicity between Wall Street and "independent" ratings indexers who refused to downgrade the bundled subprime mortgages (as one character describes them "dog shit wrapped in cat shit"). 

As history has shown, the whole affair ended with bank failures and bailouts but no arrests of those who lied and cheated the American public, costing millions of people their livelihoods, homes and retirement funds. 

McKay's The Big Shot is smart, layered and, hopefully, instructive. But don't bet on that. 

Highly Recommended.

Room

Irish director Lenny Abrahamson puts a lot of devastation on the screen in his remarkable film Room. But, for me, the picture's resonating power lies in what is not told and the deep sadness that comes from trying to assemble the pieces. Abrahamson has filmed fellow Irelander Emma Donoghue's screenplay of her bestselling novel of the same name. She tells the story of a young mother (Brie Larson), known only as Ma, and her 5-year-old son (Jacob Tremblay) who are captives of a terrifying man called Old Nick (Sean Bridgers). Ma has been locked in Old Nick's garden shed for seven years; her son, all of his life. The circumstances of the boy's birth, how he and his mother have been sustained, how they came to create the worlds that keep them sane are weighty imponderables.  Abrahamson has crafted the first half of the film so carefully that these claustrophobic confines never feel oppressive, primarily because Jack's innocent wonder about life, as stiflingly artificial as it is, is so genuine and marvelous -- and, yes, tragic. When Ma finally decides they have to escape, the viewer is torn because in doing so she must dismantle Jack's world. The scene of his tearful rejection of her talk of "the world" is nearly more than one can stand. But escape they must and do and that sequence is wrenching and terrifying. The two are finally reunited with family (Joan Allen, William H. Macy and Tom McCamus) but this new chapter feels as perilous for Jack and Ma as their imprisonment had been. Such a beautiful, heartbreaking story.

Chi-Raq

Spike Lee's films are often honest and artful, but rarely at the same time. This usually results in movies that have colliding tones and atmospheres -- the serious and the comic, the theatrical and the dogmatic. In that regard, his films are more like Kevin Smith's than Quentin Tarantino, with whom he has been compared. All three are auteurs, though Smith's work tends to be more purely satiric, not as political, than the others.Tarantino's more violent and less intimate.

Lee's best ideas and images are inspired by the lunacy he finds in governmental corruption and political perfidy and in the conflicts that arise among the races and between the sexes. Confict is at the core of his latest film, Chi-Raq, the name given to inner city Chicago where gang wars have torn communities apart and have been especially deadly for children, innocent bystanders killed by stray bullets fired by bangers who, frankly, couldn't care less. Warring chief bangers, Chi-Raq (Nick Cannon) and Cyclops (Wesley Snipes), spew bullets and rhyming invectives as those around them scurry for cover and the unlucky are laid to waste. When the daughter of a young mother (Jennifer Hudson) is killed, the community, led by a firy Catholic priest (John Cusack) will not be stilled and the molls of the beefing thugs borrow an idea from Greek playwright Aristophenes and agree to withhold sex until guns are surrendered and peace is declared.

The head of the women's movement, Lysistrata (the captivating Teyonah Parris) orders a take-no-prisoners posture, commandeers the National Guard Armory with nothing more than a winsome smile and a thong, and faces down every male opponent from horny husbands to befuddled city police. Her "No Peace / No Pussy" campaign sparks an international "withholding" movement and, in pretty short order, shit gets real.

When Lee is not painting scenes and characters with the broadest of strokes or staging rousing dance numbers, he's preaching, not altogether effectively but certainly fervently, to stop the violence. He and co-screenwriter Kevin Willmott (CSA:Confederate States of America) merge their polemics with poetics, in keeping with the classics model, and cast Samuel L. Jackson as big pimping narrator Dolmedes. (South Cackalackey makes it into the film, quite explicitly, with reference to the Emanuel 9 and Dylann Roof.)

Chi-Raq is a generally entertaining mishmash of ideas but, frankly, most of Lee's films are. If one understands that, and knows, further, that the film will both delight and frustrate then the moviegoer will not be disappointed. Recommended.

Creed

Gifted young writer / director Ryan Coogler scored big two years ago with his first picture, Fruitvale Station, and scores again with Creed, his homage to the spirit the Rocky film franchise embued, if not the movies themselves. Coogler has cast Fruitvale leading man Michael B. Jordan to tell the story of the illegitimate son of Rocky fixture world heavyweight boxing champ Apollo Creed. Creed was Balboa's early opponent and later friend who died in the ring during a fight that Rocky wishes he had stopped as Creed's trainer. Jordan's character goes by Adonis Johnson, at once rejecting his father and desiring to embrace him by abandoning a respectable nine-to-five in a bank to train for the professional boxing ring. Johnson leaves the Los Angeles home of his adoptive mother, Mary Anne Creed, Apollo's wife (played by Phylicia Rashad), and moves to Philadelphia to learn from Rocky (Sylvester Stallone). Johnson keeps his parentage secret from everyone for a while, even the braided beauty (Tessa Thompson) in the apartment below his, whose brass turns him on. The two meet cute and their courtship is sweet and provides the film with some nice grace notes to offset the battering bluster in the bulk of the picture. The scenes between the craggy and inimitable Stallone and the truly adonic and chiseled Jordan drill deep into the heart of what this often savage sport means to those who are drawn to it and suffer from it. In that regard, the real beauty in this impressive movie is in the ring -- in the unsually intimate training sequences and, of course, the last reel bout between Adonis and the mouthy Liverpudlian boxing champ, "Pretty" Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew). All of it's brutal and bloody and boffo. Highly Recommended.

The Night Before

The holiday music playing in my favorite hummus and tabbouleh restaurant this morning put me in the spirit so I went to a screening of Jonathan Levine's The Night Before to get out of it. Levine's movie of three best friends facing their last semi-raucous Christmas Eve outing before one of them becomes, albeit reluctantly, a father stars Seth Rogen as the dad-to-be, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a stunted, lovelorn musician of sorts and Anthony Mackie as a late-blooming professional football player with a social media addiction and mommy issues. For this last go-round, Gordon-Levitt's character scores tickets to New York's most exclusive and secretive Xmas Eve party, but God and his angels (metaphorically speaking, sort of) seem determined to keep the boys from attending. What starts out as an "innocent" adventure turns into a fiasco, a Red Bull stretch-limo charging through Brooklyn. Still, if it's a Seth Rogen bromance a couple of things are sure bets: (2) there will be pot, and (1) James Franco will make an appearance. In fact, not since Pineapple Express (2008), which costarred Rogen and Franco, have I witnessed such seemingly endless, blissful reefer toking in a movie. The contact high created a giddiness in the audience at the screening I attended that might not have been wholly deserved but the film is such brainless fun that you hardly notice how ridiculous it all is. The scene that features Rogen's Isaac, who is Jewish, attending, disastrously, midnight Mass with his Baby Mama (Jillian Bell) is brilliant. Recommended for those who like their comedy broad and vulgar and don't mind sexting images of, supposedly, James Franco's junk.

Spotlight

Actor / writer Tom McCarthy doesn't direct a lot but when he does the product is usually pretty terrific (The Station Agent, The Visitor). McCarthy's is a familiar face and voice, and his films are becoming just as recognizable -- smart ensemble pieces that combine the public and the personal. His latest film, Spotlight, is the story of The Boston Globe's Pulitzer-winning investigation into reports of children being molested by Catholic priests in Boston and the church's efforts to cover up the assaults. Though the Globe had spottily covered one case of a pedophilic priest who was reassigned in the '90s, no follow up reporting was conducted and information forwarded to the paper by survivors and other interested parties was ignored or lost. In 2001, the Globe's investigative team, named Spotlight, was charged with revisiting the matter after the paper's new executive editor arrives from The Miami Herald, reads a column about another predatory priest and asks the question voiced during the Watergate probe: Who knew what and when did they know it? The ensemble of performers is worthy of McCarthy's methodical and engrossing screenplay (written with Josh Singer)  -- Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery and Brian D'Arcy James. His direction is crisp and the design will be familiar to former journos -- and there are many of us -- who know how its feels to get a great story, tell it well, and, hopefully, make the world a better place. Highly Recommended.

Truth

James Vanderbilt’s debut as a director, Truth, is a stiffly earnest film that features a fine performance by Cate Blanchett but surprisingly inert turns by the rest of the cast. Blanchett stars as Mary Mapes, a producer for 60 Minutes who spearheaded the program’s 2004 investigation into President George W. Bush’s military record and reported that he had received favorable treatment as a member of the Texas National Guard. The news story was based on documents passed along to Mapes by a former military officer (Stacy Keach) who vouches for their authenticity. Though Dan Rather (Robert Redford) has concerns about the story, his confidence in Mapes leads him to green light the piece even while CBS fact checkers raise red flags. In the end, the story is discredited, the officer who leaked the memos recants some of his remarks to Mapes and the reporting team and anyone associated with the piece is canned. The film is based on Mapes’ account of the affair and attributes the debacle that led to Rather’s resignation from CBS to a convergence of haste, hubris and corporate cowardice. Sections of the film reflect a preachy self-satisfaction that rings dully because the aftermath was so devastating.

Steve Jobs

Director Danny Boyle’s latest motion picture, Steve Jobs, includes the Apple pioneer's infamous boast that while his engineering cohorts – Steve Wozniak and Andy Hertzfeld – were skilled “musicians” in the computer world symphony – he, himself, was the conductor who played the orchestra. A claim of startling arrogance but delivered with such brio that it is tough to deny. The musical analogies do not stop there in Boyle’s terrifically enjoyable film based on the biography by Walter Isaacson. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has written a set of beautiful chamber duets that showcase his sparkling, incisive and bristling dialogue. Boyle and Sorkin have constructed this baroque film in three movements, each corresponding to the premiere of a new Jobs’ product – 1984’s Macintosh, 1988’s NeXT cube and 1998’s iMac. Most of the film’s action is set in the wings of the hall where the product is being introduced and where Jobs (a masterful Michael Fassbender) demeans technicians (Michael Stuhlbarg), spars with corporate handlers (Jeff Daniels), cajoles and dismisses allies (Seth Rogen), but lovingly waltzes with his tireless marketing manager (a marvelous Kate Winslet). A leitmotif regarding Jobs' paternity is woven nicely through the three movements and moves to center stage in the film's exuberant and touching finale. Audience members may not like Jobs much after the film but they will certainly love the picture. Highly Recommended.

Bridge of Spies

Steven Spielberg's best movies are generally about decent men doing extraordinary things. They're rarely about women although women are vitally important to the decent men. In Spielberg's latest film, Bridge of Spies, Tom Hanks, a trusted Spielberg collaborator, stars as New York insurance attorney James Donovan, whose firm is asked to represent a Soviet spy (Mark Rylance) who is caught by American G-men in Brooklyn. Donovan is reluctant to take the case at first but after meeting the enigmatic, taciturn Rudolf Abel commits to offering top drawer representation. Because it is the late 1950s and the U.S. is mired in paranoia and fear of the Reds, Donovan finds himself alone in providing what the Constitution guarantees even enemies of the state -- a fair hearing. Still, the jury finds Abel guilty of all charges but the judge, rather than ordering him executed, sentences Abel to 30 years in prison in hopes, as Donovan pointed out ex parte, that such mercy might be viewed favorably if an American was ever captured by the Soviets doing just what Abel was doing. From his mouth to God's ear for shortly after Abel's sentencing, an American pilot (Austin Stowell) is blasted out of the sky high over Russia while shooting film of the terrain (a thrilling set piece BTW). The pilot is taken into custody, tried and imprisoned. Simultaneously, an American economics student (Will Rogers) studying in a disintegrating Berlin is detained and accused of spying by East Germany. Donovan is approached by the CIA and agrees to go to the Soviet Embassy in Berlin to negotiate an exchange of Abel for the American pilot. He agrees but insists on adding the student to the trade, a condition everyone around him believes will kill the proposition. Donovan won't be dissuaded and the second half of the film -- the Cold War showdown -- is riveting. This is a rich and fascinating tale, based on actual events and written for the screen by the Coen Brothers, masters of taut, complex narrative. Hanks appears comfortable in the role of this highly principled and selfless man -- he's no stranger to such parts, after all -- and delivers a performance that is assured and captivating.

99 Homes and The Walk

99 Homes and The Walk are two marvelous films that feature remarkable performances by their lead actors but are still difficult to watch. Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes stars Andrew Garfield (a fine actor) as a construction worker in Central Florida who is trying to hold onto his family home even as foreclosure looms. The angel of death finally arrives in the form of a cold-blooded, unscrupulous real estate scarfer named Rick Carver (a superlative Michael Shannon) who meets Garfield's Dennis Nash on the latter's doorstep during an eviction. Nash had been assured by a judge the day before that he had 30 days to appeal the eviction. Carver claimed to know nothing of this extension and has his goons toss Nash, his 10-year-old son, Connor (Noah Lomax), and his mother (Laura Dern) into the street. This early scene is one of the most disturbing I've seen in film this year, and it is only one of several that feature Garfield's Nash trapped in the grip of a vise that pressures and twists him torturously until he doesn't recognize himself. This is a thoughtful and sensitive film that is both a searing critique of those who preyed upon Middle America before and after the economic collapse of 2008 and a morality tale of how one man lost his home and his way and nearly lost his soul. Highly recommended.

Few actors are as amiable of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and he pours all of his preternatural likeability into his role as high wire walker Philippe Petit in Robert Zemeckis' vertigo-inducing The Walk. (It must be seen in 3D.) Petit was the subject of the 2008 documentary Man on Wire, which won the Oscar for best documentary feature in 2009 but there is little similarity between the two films. Zemeckis' imaginative and romantic retelling of Petit's high wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 is the story of man's love affair with "the void," the gulf that lies below the high wire. It's not that Petit courts self-destruction. It's more that he knows his life belongs to the wire but he enjoys teasing and enticing the void. As the Frenchman Petit, Gordon-Levitt, a fully engaged (and engaging) performer, recounts the original inspiration for the feat and his recruitment of "accomplices" (principally Charlotte Le Bon and Clement Sibony) in Paris and in New York to pull it off. Yes, Gordon-Levitt is terrific but the stomach-turning recreation of the infamous walk between the towers is astonishing. Highly recommended.

The Martian and Sicario

Ridley Scott's interplanetary Robinson Crusoe tale, The Martian, is a crowd-pleasing nail-bitter that borrows from Ron Howard's feel-good playbook -- maybe a little too much. Scott was once an edgy visionary (Blade Runner, Alien, Thelma & Louise, American Gangster) but this film is stylistically arresting but narratively safe, few surprises. In Scott's latest picture, Matt Damon plays a member of a six-person NASA exploration team on Mars who gets left behind by his fellow crew members because they presume he was killed in a violent storm. He indeed survived and must devise ways to keep himself alive and communicate with Earth. The film has a great deal of star power propelling it -- Jessica Chastain, Jeff Bridges, Chiwetel Ejiofor, head the cast -- but most of its bang is in the science that Damon's Mark Watney brings to bear on his otherworldly predicament. The film invests so much in the mechanics and in the international sensation the eventual rescue mission attracts that there is no doubt all will end well. Still, it's an entertaining ride. Recommended.

Denis Villeneuve's Sicario (Spanish for "hitman") is a thrill ride of another sort entirely and, in the end, a better film than The Martian, I feel. In it, Emily Blunt plays FBI agent Kate Macer, who is fighting the drug war in Arizona, with little to show for her efforts. She volunteers for a special interagency team to capture the Mexican drug kingpin whose murderous enterprise is spreading rapidly in the U.S. The mysterious crew is run by a tousled hot dog named Matt (Josh Brolin) who gets lethal assists from a dead-eyed enforcer named Alejandro (a wonderful Benicio Del Toro). Nothing about the operation feels right to Kate and when she brings in her partner (Daniel Kaluuya), he smells a rat, too. The truth is slowly revealed during agonizingly intense scenes, the staging of which are truly masterful because they suggest much more than they show. Villeneuve's Prisoners (2013) was an engrossing exploration of obsession and vengeance. Sicario contains those elements, as well, in its chilling, unblinking treatment of a war that seems to have no end -- only mounting casualties. Highly recommended but bloody.

Pawn Sacrifice and Grandma

A couple of quick hits:

Edward Zwick's entertaining but not totally satisfying Pawn Sacrifice tells the parallel stories of American grandmaster Bobby Fischer's simultaneous ascent into the stratosphere of world championship chess and his descent into stifling paranoia and how these events fed each other. It's quite a ride and Tobey Maguire is quite good as Fischer, but the film is somehow not as absorbing as Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind (2001) or this year's Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy (directed by Bill Pohlad) -- both of which examine the connection between genius and madness. Zwick's film lacks the  grace notes and elegance of the other two -- it seems to be all intensity and frustration and very little tenderness. Fischer's (in)famous rivalry with Russian champion Boris Spassky (played with humorless deliberation by Liev Schreiber) during the early '70s is the dramatic core, but it's Maguire's deepengin disconnection from reality even as he lays opponents to waste that drives the picture. Maguire is finely supported Peter Sarsgaard as a former chessmate now Catholic priest who is Fischer's second on his tour and by Michael Stuhlbarg as a lawyer / patriot who is charged with keeping Fischer in the game until he trounces the Russians for God and Country, mostly Country. Recommended.

Lily Tomlin is not a great actress. She doesn't have the range of a Judy Dench or Meryl Streep or Helen Mirren. But she IS a wonderful performer to watch because she seems to fully inhabit the roles she's given, becomes these women. Most of her work has been on television, a medium that calls for smaller, more intimate interactions and it is in these that she really shines in Paul Weitz's Grandma. Tomlin has a deadpan delivery (except when she's cursing) that rather than evoking irritation she draws out our empathy -- she's so beat down by life -- and we understand. Tomlin's retired college professor finds herself miserable and brittle one year after the death of  her life-partner, pushing away another, younger lover (a wonderful Judy Greer) and confronting unexpected news from her teenage granddaughter (Julia Garner) that she is pregnant. Tomlin's Ellie Reid is a brisk, dismissive, verbally abusive mess who, while trying to help her granddaughter find the funds for an abortion, discovers just how much of a mess she, herself, is. The film is both caustic and tender and highly recommended.

The End of the Tour

When handled properly, a film that's for all intents and purposes about two people talking can be as engaging (maybe more so) than an action-adventure flick that is about propulsion and collision. James Ponsoldt's The End of the Tour is an intriguing motion picture about a unique sort of propulsion and collision -- that of two writers whose lives are nearly all about interior terrains and observation, artifice and facade. The subject of this film is the late literary phenom David Foster Wallace, whose 1996 masterwork Infinite Jest, an imposingly complex postmodern novel, won him accolades (and a few brickbats) and a grueling signing tour. For the latter part of the tour, Wallace is accompanied by Rolling Stone writer John Lipsky, whose conversations with the oddly reticent novelist is the meat of the film (though never published in Rolling Stone, the interview became the material for the book upon which the film is based). Wallace is played Jason Segel and Lipsky by Jesse Eisenberg, two of the smartest younger actors in film. Segel is probably known best for his roles in Judd Apatow films and for the television series How I Met Your Mother, and Eisenberg for playing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. In this film they are hyper-literate, introspective intellectuals whose navigation of the roles of observer and observed (roles that they occasional trade) is the most fascinating element of this entertaining, and sobering, study of the fallout of fame. Wallace died in 2008, the victim of suicide. Highly recommended.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Guy Ritchie has written and directed a beautiful motion picture with beautiful people in the leads but a frustratingly inert story and, alas, the promise of a sequel. I was a child when the original Cold War spy series Man From U.N.C.L.E. was broadcast ('64-'68) and spawned a weak sister of a spin-off, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. ('66-'67). I ate up the intrigue, clever devices and campy guest stars; maybe I've lost my appetite for this variety of tongue-in-cheek caper films although still devour Ritchie's usual cinematic fare. The film stars three Hollywood beauties -- Henry Cavill as Napoleon Solo, Armie Hammer as Illya Kuryakin and Alicia Vikander as Gaby Teller -- as undercover operatives in beautiful mod fashions trying to wrest a nuclear bomb away from a beautiful and murderous Italian family led by a ruthless aristocratic beauty (Elizabeth Debicki). Despite an interesting set up, the picture doesn't deliver the usual Ritchie punch, in every sense of the word; in fact, it's a Guy Ritchie production seemingly without Guy Ritchie. But, man, is it beautiful!

Straight Outta Compton

F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job) has directed a highly watchable bio-pic of the influential Los Angeles rap group N.W.A that manages to celebrate their individual and collective achievements by using the same elements that made then notorious -- violence, profanity and the objectification of women all to a killer beat. Straight Outta Compton stars a trio of outstanding young actors -- Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre and O'Shea Jackson Jr. as his father, stage name Ice Cube. Gray is peddling naturalism through his street scenes and the characters' Crenshaw argot. The young men's disaffection and cynicism, nearly all because of the horrific treatment they receive from L.A. police, rise and converge in brilliant beats and word play recorded in studios paid for with dollars earned by former dope dealer Eazy-E. Their attitude on record and on-stage swagger attracts the attention of promoter Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti), who wins the group's confidence and ushers them into the big time -- which is not entirely the same as success. Gray is a natural at staging a party scene -- and the film has a surfeit of them, IMO -- but the casual jocularity of the group members rings true and keeps the film from devolving into a succession of music videos. It is unfortunate Gray's creative team fell back on tired black dramatic tropes -- preachy, long-suffering black mothers slapping sense into their children and the near absence of responsible adult men in the lives of the lead characters. The closest thing to a "positive" male role model on the screen is Giamatti's Heller, an aging, shady Jewish pitch man who takes the boys for a ride. Recommended for fans of hip hop or of the era -- mid-80s to mid-90s.

Mr. Holmes

Ian McKellen is near perfection in Bill Condon's imperfect film about an imperfect man, Mr. Holmes. McKellen plays both an aging and aged version of Sherlock Holmes, the famous late-Victorian era detective, wholly the invention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the film, Holmes has retreated to a cottage on the English coast where his sole companions are a housekeeper (beautifully portrayed by Laura Linney) and her precocious son (a remarkable Milo Parker). Holmes, in his 90s, has set for himself the frustrating task of correcting the published account of the last of Dr. Watson's tales of his adventures, which he, Holmes, says he did not actually solve but can't remember why. The detective's deteriorating mind is enlivened by his interactions with the admiring boy, whose curiosity and persistence Holmes finds endearing. In fact, the pairing of McKellen, who is nearly 80, and young master Parker, is this lovely picture's most enduring endearment. Sadly, though, at only 100 minutes, the picture feels rushed and truncated and the child's relationship with his mother (a counterpoint to his friendship with Holmes, which she resents) and the nature of Holmes's important journey to post-World War II Japan are left as, well, mysteries. Still Highly Recommended.

The Gift

What is most unsettling about writer/director/actor Joel Edgerton's nifty little picture The Gift is how cynical we must be that the appearance of an admiring, if needy, old high school classmate sends up red flags. But Edgerton's sad sack-loser Gordo is pitched perfectly and matched, note for note, by Jason Bateman's crass corporate climber Simon and his trusting wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall). A great opportunity has called Simon and Robyn from Chicago to California where the couple runs into Gordo while shopping. And old "friendship" is reignited but Simon, who has a really sensitive bullshit detector, feels something's not right about Gordo. Robyn thinks he's sweet and harmless. They're both right and wrong and therein lies the real beauty in Edgerton's story. Yes, it's genuinely creepy, has a couple of solid twists and offers homages to some classic thrillers -- including Rosemary's Baby. Recommended.

MIssion:Impossible -- Rogue Nation

Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie won an Oscar for The Usual Suspects nearly 20 years ago. Needless to say, he knows his way around a double-cross. As the director and writer of Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation (a film title with a bit more punctuation than I'm accustomed to), McQuarrie has concocted a convoluted caper that is as thrilling and globetrotting (London, Vienna, Morocco) as the previous installments in the M:I franchise. Tom Cruise and company (Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner and Ving Rhames) are all back, even though the Impossible Mission Force has been discredited and dismantled (ostensibly) by CIA director Hunley (Alec Baldwin), who believes the body count (and general mayhem that follows M:I field work) is too high. Cruise's Ethan Hunt has been tracking the leader of a terror organization (Sean Harris) who is MI6-trained but, alas, disillusioned by the chaos that the world's superpowers have wrought. When Hunt gets word of M:I's fate, he, of course, ignores it and sticks to the trail, pulling his cohorts in with him. Harris's Lane wants to wreak a little havoc of his own and enlists the assistance of British double-agent Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) to steal and deliver a file that contains information on accessing billions squirreled away by MI6 for a rainy day.  It appears at first that McQuarrie has front-loaded his picture with Cruise hanging onto the side of a jet that's taxiing and then taking off but there is plenty more derring-do in this flick, and in Cruise. Whether he's battling an opponent in the fly space above the stage of the Vienna Opera House or zipping through Moroccan markets on a motorcycle, it's clear that Cruise (and his popular franchise) still has a lot of life in him. Recommended.

Southpaw

Antoine Fuqua is a reliable, if not artful, film director. He smartly chooses material with a strong, centering presence -- Denzel Washington in Training Day and The Equalizer, for example. In his latest film, Southpaw, Fuqua directs Jake Gyllenhaal, who is both reliable and artful, in the starring role of New York boxing champion Billy Hope, who knows how to take a licking and keep on ticking, if a bit more slowly of late. Gyllenhaal, famously immersive in his preparation for roles, is ripped and rocking as Hope, whose wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams), wants him to step away from the ring so that there will be something left for her and their daughter, Leila (child actress Oona Laurence). After Maureen is shot in an incident that's far too street for this picture, IMO, Billy descends into drug addiction and self-destruction. His manager (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson) dumps him for a bankable pugilist, his daughter is taken away by child protective services, he's tossed out of his mansion, his automobiles are repossessed and the poor orphan from Hell's Kitchen is out on the street. A judge orders him to clean up or risk the permanent loss of his child, and Billy goes to a boxing gym run by Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker), the personification of all that Hope (no heavy symbolism there, huh?) lacks in his life -- discipline, focus, integrity. Wills takes Hope on, helps him learn how to defend himself in the ring (and out) and dispenses valuable wisdom. All of this, of course, leads to a Las Vegas showdown between Hope and his nemesis Magic Escobar (Miguel Gomez). A predictable tale, no question, but Fuqua is such a masterful storyteller -- and Gyllenhaal and Whitaker are so good -- that you won't mind you've seen this a hundred times before. Recommended.

Ant-Man

I don't know if the actual universe is expanding but the Marvel Cinema Universe is growing unabated. The latest Marvel star is Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, cat burglar turned super hero Scott Lang. Rudd is a beguilingly self-deprecating comic actor, whose character is enlisted by aging genius inventor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and, reluctantly, his daughter (Evangeline Lilly) to don a miniaturizing suit and lead an army of ants against former student and present nemesis Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who wants to militarize Pym's research and score a big payday. Veteran TV director Peyton Reed crafted this film with an eye toward the natural incongruities -- hardscrabble con artist and thief working with former S.H.I.E.L.D. operative -- to impressively comedic effect. Speaking of effects, the opening set piece that introduces our hero to the wonders and dangers of an insect-size existence are, er, Marvelous, which is to say this often uproarious movie is best enjoyed in 3D.

Trainwreck

Judd Apatow's latest addition to his stable of vulgar artists is that filly named Amy Schumer, a comedian of some repute in certain quarters. I will admit to not knowing much firsthand about Ms. Schumer before seeing Trainwreck, which, as is true for most Apatow films, has its moments, despite being about half as nasty as any of his other films that had male leads -- for example, Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin. That's not to say Trainwreck -- the story of a New York magazine writer with daddy issues and a fear of intimacy -- isn't filthy. It is. Wonderfully so. But it also has genuine moments of tenderness -- which kind of means we get to care about this foul-mouthed, miserable sexpot and the sports doctor she's fallen for (Bill Hader). It's a good show. Apatow's movies always score major points with supporting players, in this case with Tilda Swinton as a wickedly unfeeling magazine publisher and a surprisingly entertaining LeBron James as himself. Recommended.

Amy

British documentarian Asif Kapadia's film on singer Amy Winehouse's tragic and precipitous drug- and alcohol-induced fall from stardom is riveting and nearly unbearably depressing. Comprising mostly the personal video shot by Winehouse herself and her friends and concert footage, the film traces in unblinking detail the Grammy-winner's steady rise from obscurity as a club act to international superstardom and every false move and bad decision she made, most of which involved the parasitic men in her life. Winehouse's death in 2011 at age 27 was sudden but not entirely unexpected as much of her notoriety was rooted in her seemingly self-destructive addictions. Though she was working through a recovery at the time of her death, the damage had been done and her heart gave out. Kapadia makes it clear in his fine picture that Winehouse was genuinely loved by most people in her life but she could not manage to love herself.  Recommended but terribly grim.

Magic Mike XXL

Channing Tatum is eminently watchable even when he's acting badly, which he does often (White House Down) but not always (Foxcatcher). But Tatum is most watchable when he's dancing. He's leonine grace wrapped in B-boy swagger. He's always been pretty fly for a white guy, and he marshals his XXL amiability and athleticism as he returns to the role of Mike Lane, a former Tampa "male entertainer" named Magic Mike who reunites with his unique band of brothers (Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash, Matt Bomer and Adam Rodriguez) for one last hurrah at the annual stripper convention in Myrtle Beach. Lane has been out of the game for a few years building a custom-made furniture business when he gets a call the boys' former leader (played by Matthew McConaughey in the first Magic Mike [2012]) has died. The call is a ruse to lure Lane back into the game. It works and off the merry band go for a July Fourth weekend of bonding, teasing and tantalizing -- with one another and assorted women along the way. As they make their way from Tampa to Jacksonville to Savannah to Charleston and finally the Grand Strand, the Kings of Tampa visit two powerful women played by Jada Pinkett Smith and Andie MacDowell, who lend the film a refreshing air of feminine affirmation that isn't rooted in motherhood or martyrdom. Smith and MacDowell are both terrific. The dancers, who seem to revel in their sexual objectification, try to heal broken women while embracing their own fractured and fragmented natures. Reid Carolin's script has its moments of zen and it's pretty gay-friendly but the final act is a little, well, limp after a pretty scorching buildup. Still, it's worth a few bucks.