Review: Calvary

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) presides as the local priest at a small Catholic church in a small, picturesque Irish city by the sea. With high, green rolling hills and narrow, cobble stone roads leading down to the water and through the town, it looks like something out of a poem or travel guide for visiting the green isle. The idea of Lavelle's character and role in the town sounds like something even more poetic, but the reality of his mission and life is far less romantic and much more tiresome than one would think. For he is surrounded by a motley crew of parishioners and citizens, none of whom seem to show any actual interest in the church or faith. In fact, there seems to be a general feeling of resentment towards the Catholic church even though Lavelle insists time and again that he does not pretend to speak for or represent the entire church.

Review: The Rover

A24

It's nearly impossible to classify The Rover into any genre. I've been telling my friends it's a dark, morbid, Australian, dystopian, neo-Western. Or that it's a cross between The Road, Mad Max, and The Proposition with hints of Once Upon a Time in the West thrown in there with that barren, silent countryside that is the Australian Outback. I think director/writer David Michod is well aware of all these influences but he refuses to let any of them define his own bleak tale of a future, lawless humanity. After all, Michod spent the early part of his career in film as the editor of Inside Film magazine, stretching his experience beyond filmmaking and into journalistic and academic writing. I'm assuming the knowledge he gained from this has made him acutely aware of genre tropes; especially considering his first film Animal Kingdom in 2010 which tackled the Godfather-esque story of a young man introduced into his criminal family run by his grandmother. In that film as well there are hints of multiple genres and references to Coppola just as there are moments of The Rover that feel very much like Peckinpah. 

2013 Academy Award Predictions

This year is going to be extremely hard to call to say the least. There's 4 or 5 films that easily deserve to win many of the big categories so I don't think it's going to come down to a matter of splitting up the awards. That's what happened with last year's weak turnout of films which resulted in a sort of "everyone's a winner!" ceremony which was extremely frustrating. All the results from the many different guild awards and such point to 12 Years a Slave and Gravity vying for Best Director and Picture, but the rest of the categories remain fairly uncertain with awards spread throughout the nominees leading up to the Oscars. This year is especially hard to call because I enjoyed a number of the films so much and would be pleased to see either win the big awards, but sadly, as is somehow my duty as a film critique, I must make precise predictions. So here we go, and as in previous years I shall differentiate between what I think should win and what will win. Sometimes they are the same, sometimes they are not (and when they're different it's more of a way for me to cheat and be able to make two guesses instead one). I shall skip the "Short" nominations because no normal person like myself could ever see those and/or really care that much.

My Best of 2013

There, that video should get you in the mood for my rather late contribution to the "best ofs" lists of 2013. Unlike most film critics who's lists came out sometime back in December, I do not get paid to see movies and write about them, so I am only coming out with the list now because I feel adequately prepared. I did my best to see the most important and talked about movies of 2013. The one major hole in my viewing is Nebraska which has found its place on many top lists of the year, but I just didn't get around to it. So hopefully I don't see it after a few weeks and decide its the greatest, but somehow I doubt that will happen. I also did not see Blue is the Warmest Color (or as some call it "blue is the longest movie"), but somehow I doubt I would like it that much?

Anyway, 2013 was a pretty darn great year for movies. Things weren't looking so hot (pun!) during the Summer with all the boring blockbusters coming out (Iron Man 3 and World War Z, I'm looking at you). Needless to say, I felt very glad for the friend I had working at the local Regal who made it so I didn't have to pay for nearly all of those films. But then the Fall and Winter season of films and award contenders came out and wow, I was getting flashbacks to 2007 which in my opinion is one of the greatest years for film in my lifetime so far (There Will be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Into the Wild, just to name a few). This year's Academy Awards is going to be a tough one to call in almost every category. Films from genres of all kinds and with all sorts of interesting stories and themes could win big awards this year and it's been a blast getting to watch them all. And with that, I'll get to my list which was very hard to make. So much so that I decided to go with a top 15 instead of the normal 10.

Review: The Wolf of Wall Street

Paramount Pictures

Remember Goodfellas? Remember how that movie transported you into the mafia world of ritzy homes, cars, restaurants, clothes, along with the betrayal, murder, violence? And who could forget that shocking opening scene where Joe Pesci stabs a badly beaten man in the trunk of a car repeatedly with a giant kitchen knife. That movie knew how to shock and entertain unlike any other with brilliant pacing, characters, and multiple unforgettable scenes. Before Goodfellas arrived in 1990, The Godfather stilled ruled the cinema of mafia movies, but Goodfellas put a new twisted edge on things that one might even call comical. Sort of a twisted sense of humor behind Pesci's shocking violence and Ray Liotta's manic paranoia.

And that is all thanks to the legendary talents of Martin Scorsese. Scorsese has been making movies since the early 70s and amazingly enough has only won best director once with The Departed in 2006. There's a sleekness and pacing to Scorsese's films that is undeniable but oft imitated (most recently with American Hustle). However, he's been on a sort of experimental road recently with Shutter Island and Hugo, both quite unusual films for him but both quite good. Still, they weren't like the Scorsese films of old. It seemed that once he finally won an Oscar he decided to let loose for a little while and try something different.

Review: Inside Llewyn Davis

CBS Films

For the Coen Brothers, there's generally three levels for their films: weird, weirder, and super weird. On the weird side you've got films like A Serious Man that aren't overly bizarre but still have a host of very quirky, awkward characters and some ridiculous scenarios, and on the other end of the spectrum you've got films like Barton Fink that almost make no sense at all but are still somehow genius. It's always a treat whenever a Coen Bros. movie comes out because you're never quite sure what you're going to get, but the result is always something unlike anything else that year and often times unlike anything you've ever seen.

There's no doubt that the Coens are some of the best directors working in America today and they've proved it over and over again by tackling a whole host of different genres including thriller, western, film noir, comedy (of course you could say this about every one of their movies), and arguably musical (with O Brother, Where Art Thou?). And that last one marks a significant facet of the Coens' movies I always appreciate: the soundtracks. Composer Carter Burwell generally pairs with the Coens to compose original soundtracks or else the legendary T-Bone Burnett produces amazing folksy, blue-grass tunes. Sometimes there's no soundtrack at all as with the chilling No Country for Old Men. This time around, Burnett teams up with the brothers once again to tell the tale of down-and-out folk singer Llewyn Davis trying to make it in the music scene of 1960's Greenwich Village. 

Review: Her

Warner Bros.

Her takes place in L.A. in a somewhat distant future where not only does everyone dress like hipsters (for some reason, or maybe that's accurate to reality?) but they all wear these little ear pieces seen above. It's a sort of blue-tooth that connects them to an operating system that is voice-automated which allows everyone to walk around essentially talking to themselves as they check their email, make phone calls, etc. Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is just like everyone else in this respect, but he's even more of a lonely and quiet guy when we meet him because he just went through a breakup with his wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara). So it makes sense that he would opt to purchase a new operating system that has intuition and basically functions like a human being except with the capacity to consume information rapidly like a computer. Theodore's "personalized" OS system names herself Samantha (Scarlett Johansson). As Theodore uses the OS system more and more, he begins to fall in love with Samantha and she with him.

These aren't any spoilers because the trailers tell you the same thing. At first glance it seems like a cheesy, pretentious, trite story written to make some point about our consumption and overuse of technology which isn't like director Spike Jonze at all. And since his return to acting, Phoenix seems determined to do only the most unusual and challenging roles. So, everything about the content of Her seems contradictory to the talented team and cast (including Amy Adams, Olivia Wilde, and Chris Pratt) involved in the film.

Review: Saving Mr. Banks

Walt Disney Pictures

Every year in cinema needs a Saving Mr. Banks. Coincidentally, the director of this film also directed The Blind Side which I would call the Saving Mr. Banks of 2009. Each year there's a film like this one starring a famous actor or two that is unabashedly sentimental if not overly melodramatic. The message is clear, the turns in the plot foreseeable, and the kleenex flows freely in theaters across the nation.

Still, I maintain that every year needs a Saving Mr. Banks. As good and challenging as movies like 12 Years a Slave and others can be to our senses, psychology, and understanding of different sides of human nature, reality, etc., you still need a break from them now and then. And when you're in the thick of awards season and an onslaught of such challenging films, Saving Mr. Banks is exactly what you need to enjoy some old fashioned sentimentality and film-making.