There’s few other movie companies with a track record like Pixar Studios.  Groundbreaking and consistently successful at the box office, Pixar has developed into a brand both admired and envied.  Parent company Disney certainly knew what they were doing when they acquired the studio back in 2005, but their partnership goes back long before even that.  Starting with the phenomenon that was Toy Story (1995), Pixar and Disney have continued their win streak for 20 years strong, winning multiple awards and continually breaking box office records in the animated category.  But, even with the hot streak that Pixar has had, it’s by no means a given that everything they touch turns to gold; although for a period in the mid aughts, it certainly looked like that was the case.  In recent years, Pixar has been showing some signs of weakness, at least in the quality of their storytelling (they have still dominated at the box office).  This was clearly evident with the lackluster Cars 2 (2011), the only film made by the studio that was panned by critics and the first instance where it looked like the studio was just lazy.  Hope was high with the follow-up Brave (2012), but sadly that film also disappointed; it was beautiful to look at but hollow and disingenuous as a story.  I enjoyed the film that followed, Monsters University (2013), but a lot of other fans did not as they’ve grown weary of too many sequels dominating the animated landscape.  And to compound the problem for Pixar, they’ve seen a lot more competition from other studios who have upped their game in recent years and are challenging them for dominance in the market; whether it’s rival Dreamworks (How to Train Your Dragon), upstart Illumination (Despicable Me) or Disney’s own in house animation department (Frozen).

So, with a lagging output from their own lineup of films and more competition from other studios, there’s more pressure on Pixar now than ever before to deliver something special.  I think part of what has been Pixar’s problem in recent years is that they’ve become a victim of their own success.  People’s expectations for the studio have become almost unfairly high, and their ability to exceed those expectations is becoming nearly impossible to meet.  But, at the same time, they’ve opened themselves up to disappointment from audiences by relying too heavily on familiarity in their stories.  They’ve always delivered stunningly beautiful animation, but what’s made Pixar different from everyone else has been their emphasis on story and characters.  The best of their movies also feel complete as stories too, making the experiences worthwhile.  But, if your movies lack cohesion and effort, then they feel incomplete or uninteresting.  Pixar seemed to be falling into this trap by delivering things that felt like retreads rather than original ideas.  Cars 2 and Monsters University told us nothing new about the worlds they depict, and Brave was just another fairy tale and nothing more.  It seems from this recent trend that Pixar was just following the market instead of driving it, which is very uncharacteristic for such a groundbreaking company.  Something new and fresh needed to shake things up to get the studio back on track and thankfully acclaimed Pixar director Pete Doctor (Monsters Inc., Up) has just the movie that they needed right now.  That movie is the remarkably original and endlessly intriguing Inside Out.

Inside Out is really unlike anything we’ve seen from Pixar or any animation studio before.  Part of the allure of this movie is the concept behind it, where the human mind is visualized as a fully realized world with different communities working together to form a person’s personality, and all of our key emotions are personified as individual characters.  But, for Pixar, it’s not just about the concept alone; it’s how they use it.  The story rolls out on two levels; one, it tells the story of a pre-teen girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) as her family moves to the city of San Francisco, uprooting her into an unknown and challenging new life, and two it follows the lives of the different emotions inside her mind, who govern all the choices and memories that she makes in her life.  Chief among the emotions is Joy (Amy Poehler), and her team is made up of Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and the troublesome Sadness (Phyllis Smith).  Joy tries her best to keep Riley happy and positive throughout her life, but Sadness wants to help out more, which messes up much of Joy’s plans.  After the two come into conflict over one of Riley’s core memories (which is presented in the form of a glowing sphere), both Sadness and Joy are thrown out of the control room and into the far reaches of Riley’s subconscious mind, leaving only Disgust, Anger and Fear left to steer the ship.  With what seems like an endless expanse between them and home, both Joy and Sadness must overcome their differences in order to return themselves and Riley’s core memories back where they belong.  And the road back is about as complex and treacherous as you would expect the human mind to be.

It’s a pretty heady concept for a movie aimed at kids, but of course this is Pixar we’re talking about; the studio that caters to the child in all of us.  So, how does Inside Out fare against the rest of Pixar’s stable of films?  Pretty well actually.  In fact, I would easily put this in the Top 5 films that they have made.  This is another home run by the studio and is exactly the kind of movie that they needed to get them back on track.  From the very opening shot, showing Joy emerging out of the void to illicit the first squeal of laughter out of a newborn Riley, to the final hilarious montage during the credits, Inside Out is an absolute delight.  It does exactly what the greatest films from Pixar have always done which is take a great concept and make it work with a compelling story and incredible characters.  But, even more remarkable than that is how well they execute the underlying premise of the movie.  Visualizing the human mind as it’s own world is easy enough to comprehend on paper, but to actually make it work on film is another thing.  Making it comprehensible to younger kids is especially challenging, but the movie does a remarkable job of laying out exactly how this world works without ever spoon feeding needless exposition to it’s audience.  In fact, the wonder of this movie is seeing all the clever different ways it visualizes the inner workings of the mind; like having a train of thought appear as an actual train, or dreams being produced inside a movie studio (a literal dream factory as it were).  But, even with all the amazing visuals, Pixar still manages to find the heart at the center of this story and that’s what helps to make Inside Out as special as it is.

Like the best of Pixar’s output, story is paramount to it’s success.  At the heart of it, this story is about polar opposites working together and finding the value in one another.  Although Joy isn’t malicious in nature, she certainly isn’t perfect either, and much of the film’s conflict comes from her unwillingness to let Sadness be a crucial part of the team.  As the story goes along, we see an understanding build between the two, and Joy learns that you need sadness in life in order to appreciate the joy, something in which she had failed to see before.  Essentially, it’s about looking beyond differences just as much as it is about fighting your emotions and finding that right balance.  It also makes us look at complex ideas in a straight forward and entertaining way, which is what Pixar is best at.  Much like how Wall-E (2008) gave us a look at environmentalism, or how The Incredibles (2004) made us look at objectivism, Inside Out makes statements about human psychology and avoids ever trying to lecture to it’s audience.  Pixar has always let the stories carry themselves and statements about the larger world, whether pointed or not, have always seemed like a by product rather than the main focus of their movies.  It’s something that really sets them apart from other, less subtle filmmakers.  And best of all is that it doesn’t distract from the plot either.  Inside Out sticks firmly to it’s goal and that’s to entertain, whether it’s with huge laughs or with tear-inducing heartbreak.

Apart from the story, the other thing that audiences will absolutely love about this movie is the characters.  Each character is instantly recognizable and the look perfectly matches the emotion that they represent.  Disgust of course is green, with a perpetual sneering look of anguish on her face.  Purple hued Fear always looks hunched over like he’s about to roll up into a ball for protection.  Red hot Anger is a tiny ball of rage and literally is only seconds from firing up all the time.  And then we get the key characters of Joy and Sadness, perfectly off setting each other in bright yellow and deep blue.  Each character is distinctive and their personalities are all perfectly realized in their appearance.  The designs are also matched with perfectly cast voices as well.  Saturday Night Live alum Amy Poehler is the natural choice for Joy, as are Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project) for Disgust and Bill Hader (SNL) for Fear.  Even more perfect is comedian Lewis Black as Anger, considering that his comedy act is famously built around his hilarious over-the-top rage, and there are some laugh out loud bits in the movie that exploit that perfectly.  The Office’s Phyllis Smith’s performance as Sadness however may be the strongest, as she makes the character both hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, creating a very well rounded character.  Plus, her comedic timing and line delivery are some of the best parts of the movie.  But, the great character work isn’t just limited to the Emotions.  The human characters are also well done, especially the crucial character of Riley.  She may very well be the best animated human character that Pixar has done to date.  The subtlety of her animation is really astounding, and it makes those bizarre looking human models of Andy and Sid from Toy Story seem very primitive by comparison.  Indeed, these are characters that will absolutely earn their place among the likes of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Dory, and all of Pixar’s other greatest characters.

Now, is Inside Out a perfect movie?  Not quite, but pretty close.  The one flaw I would say that the movie has is the pacing and familiarity of the plot.  Pixar seems to love stories about characters getting lost in an unfamiliar world and finding their true selves on the way home.  We’ve seen it in Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), Wall-E (2008) and Up (2009), and the same kind of story plays out again here in Inside Out.  It’s an unfortunate retread of familiar ground, which has been Pixar’s weakness in recent years.  But the creativity put into the journey helps to make this a bit more acceptable this time around.  I for one didn’t mind seeing Pixar reuse this same type of plot, just as long as it did something fresh with it and added in a few surprises, which it does.  But, even still, there are times when you feel like the concept itself could have been explored differently; that way the end result would’ve felt a little more unexpected.  That would be the film’s only other fault; a very rushed and anti-climatic conclusion, though still with some heartfelt emotion present.  Overall, even with faults in some of the plot, the movie’s high points still dominate the overall experience.  As the story goes along, I forgave most of the faults just because the creativity was strong enough to make those things not matter as much.  At some points, I was also just surprised by some of the risks the movie takes.  Though the movie is light-hearted in tone, it’s also not afraid to go a little dark at some points, even to the point of tragedy.  I’m not going to spoil what happens for you, but there was a moment in this movie that actually brought the audience I saw this with to tears; even openly crying in some cases.  Think on the same level of Bambi’s Mom dying or the opening montage of Up, and that’s what this moment managed to accomplish.  Though sad, it thankfully doesn’t spoil the mood of the movie and actually it does help to enhance it.  After all, this is a story about Joy and Sadness working together, so naturally the movie’s plot should reflect that.  But, even still, be prepared to weep in between the many laughs throughout the film.

In many different ways, this is exactly the kind of movie that Pixar needed to reassert itself as the leader in the animation community, as well as in the film industry in general.  It’s got all the elements of a great Pixar movie, but it doesn’t rest on it’s laurels either.  It takes risks, but without alienating it’s audience.  I am relieved to see this powerhouse studio gain it’s mojo back with this one, and I’m sure that audiences will feel the same way.  It may be hard right now to see exactly how this one will line up against some of Pixar’s other classics, but I can certianly say for myself that it’s among their best efforts.  Wall-E is still my favorite overall, and some of the Toy Story‘s still resonate a little stronger, but Inside Out puts to shame most of the other recent output from the studio.  I only wish that the same care with the story and these characters could’ve been used in something as promising as Brave, which sorely lacks everything that this movie has.  Also, unlike other Pixar movies, which work best as self contained stories, I actually believe Inside Out would be well served with a sequel.  The movie feels like it’s only scratched the surface with this concept, and I would love to see the continuing adventures of these characters.  Who knows; maybe if the movie does well enough at the box office, that could certainly happen.  More than anything, this is almost certainly going to be one of the year’s best films, if not one of the most entertaining. As is almost always the case with Pixar, this will be a movie with timeless appeal that will indeed be enjoyed by audiences young and old for generations to come.  And that’s something that Pixar can absolutely be joyful about.

Rating: 9/10

The future is always unpredictable and most attempts to imagine it in a film usually come up short of matching reality.  Take for instance the dystopian future of Blade Runner (1982) which imagined an overgrown, trash-filled Los Angeles in the far distant year of 2019.  Four years out and Los Angeles, while still big and rough in parts, is not exactly a hell hole yet; and replicant beings like the ones in the movie are nowhere near a reality today.  Why even the optimistic future of Back to the Future Part II (1988) is way off, since it takes place in our current year of 2015 and we still don’t have flying cars.  Even still, pondering and imagining the future is something that has always appealed to filmmakers and it doesn’t stop many of them from making their best guesses.  Filmmaker Walt Disney took an even better approach to imagining the future in his many projects, by not looking towards the things that will be but rather the things that could be in the future.  As an avid futurist, Disney consulted with some of the greatest scientific and literary minds of the 20th century, such as Ray Bradbury and Werner von Braun, and used his expertise and clout as a filmmaker to help spread their ideas and inventions to the world in order for them to take hold in the public consciousness.  His Disneyland television program in particular showcased programs in what he called the Tomorrowland segments that educated the world about science and invention, while at the same remaining entertaining.  This would also eventually manifest itself into the Tomorrowland area found in Disney parks around the world.  The overall effect has both kept optimism about the future alive while also creating a sustaining fanciful concept of what we ourselves can make the future into.

This is an idea that has undoubtedly inspired other filmmakers who have carried on and contributed to the long Disney legacy.  One of those people is Brad Bird, a one-time animator at the Disney company who has since become an acclaimed writer/director in both animation and live action.  Already, he has ammassed an impressive filmography with The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), and his successful leap to live action with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011).  After this successful stretch, Bird could have taken on any project he wanted, and thankfully he set out to deliver something new and original in the live action medium; something that’s been severely lacking in Hollywood in recent years.  He returned to Disney with the idea born out of nostalgia for some of those old Tomorrowland episodes and his source of inspiration stemmed from something found deep in the Disney archives.  That artifact has been dubbed the “1952” Box.  Now, this is purely from the press released about the movie, which could have been fed from Disney’s marketing team, so whether or not this “1952” Box is real or not is uncertain.  But, even if it is, it’s still an interesting discovery, as many of it’s contents present many fantastical dreams about the future, consistent with Walt’s concept of Tomorrowland.  Some speculate that the box’s contents related to the projects that Walt Disney was working on for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, but Brad Bird saw a bit more of a story being told within that box.  And that idea has now panned out into the new film Tomorrowland, which is quite a curiosity not just as a Disney film, but as a work of science fiction in general.

The story follows a young, scientifically minded teenager named Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) who is troubled by the loss of the space program in her hometown of Cape Canaveral, Florida.  Her father (Tim McGraw), a former NASA engineer, tells her that this is the new reality of their lives and that it’s time to let it go, but she refuses give up on her dreams.  After getting caught sneaking into the launching pad facility at Cape Canaveral, she is released from jail only to find that she has a new pin in her possession.  When she touches it, it transports her into another realm; one that only she can see.  This new realm turns out to be the titular Tomorrowland, which is a place where all of mankind’s greatest minds can coexist and have their dreams become a reality.  Unfortunately for Casey, the open door closes on her just as quickly as it opened.  In order to find out what Tomorrowland is and where she can find it, she goes in search of others who know about her pin.  While on her way, she runs across some menacing characters who are hunting her down. They turn out to be robot soldiers, or Audio-Animatronics as they are referred to in the film.  She’s saved from the robots by a mysterious young girl named Athena (Raffey Cassidy) who helps to steer her towards another like-minded soul who has information on the whereabouts of Tomorrowland.  Soon, Casey finds Frank Walker (George Clooney) a former boy genius who has been to Tomorrowland and can help her get there.  The only problem is, he’s been kicked out Tomorrowland before and is now unwelcome.  But, with some motivation, the two make it and soon find that Tomorrowland is not what they hoped it was anymore and is under the rule of the pessimistic Governor Nix (Hugh Laurie).

There is a lot of interesting things that are going on in the movie and it has a message that is very much in line with the optimism of the future that the idea of Tomorrowland represents.  Essentially, what Brad Bird wants to say with this movie is that the future is what we make of it, and he wants to steer us towards looking for ways to make the world a better place with both creativity and curiosity.  One of the things that Bird laments in the film is how people are obsessing about the end of the world and the horrible things that are happening in the environment and political world without ever considering what they can do to change it.  In particular, he highlights the fact that Hollywood’s view of the future has moved away from scientific ingenuity and invention and has instead presented a pessimistic apocalyptic view where either the world’s been destroyed by war, alien invasion or by zombie epidemics.  The byproduct of this, Bird argues, is that fewer people are engaging in scientific curiosity anymore from the media, and that has led to a loss in scientific mindfulness and an increase in uneducated hysteria. This is certainly a very important message to get across, and one that I wish the movie had adhered to better.  Unfortunately, Tomorrowland doesn’t fulfill the promise that it set out to create.  There are great ideas here, but they are sadly undone by the very same conventions that it’s trying to criticize.  It’s a very schizophrenic movie at times, because from scene to scene, it can’t decide whether it wants to be an inspirational movie, or an action movie.  And that whiplash of tone often undermines the potential that it could have had.

I think this primarily is a problem with the script more than anything else.  Brad Bird worked on this screenplay with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, who is one of the more problematic writers working in Hollywood today.  Part of Lindelof’s problem is that he’s got the skills of a great writer, but with none of the restraint.  Sometimes he’ll have many great ideas (too many in some cases) but he can’t always coalesce them into a compelling and ultimately fulfilling narrative.  The most infuriating aspect of his writing is the way he keeps things vague and only teases his audience with the possibility that something extraordinary will happen, but ultimately never does.  Anyone who saw the last season of Lost knows what I’m talking about, and sadly Tomorrowland is built around the same template as all of Lindelof’s other scripts.  We are teased with all the wonders that we might see in the world of Tomorrowland, and the movie takes it’s time getting there, but once we finally arrive at Tomorrowland for real in the story, it’s a letdown because it doesn’t match what we dreamed it would be.  Maybe that’s part of the point, but it flies in the face of what Brad Bird wants us to feel with this movie.  What’s more, whenever the movie seems to find it’s footing, we are suddenly distracted by unnecessary cliches that derail the momentum in jarring ways.  This movie has a lot of explosions and gun-play for a film that’s also criticizing the overuse of them in modern flicks.  The villain, Governor Nix, also has a scene where he’s monologuing his whole sinister plan.  Didn’t Brad Bird destroy that cliche effectively in The Incredibles?

It seems to me that Lindelof is only at his best when he’s reigned in, by either a studio or by J.J. Abrams (and even he began to lose control near the end of Star Trek Into Darkness).  Unfortunately, Brad Bird doesn’t have that kind of control and he was probably too involved in the world building of this movie in order to address the flaws in the screenplay.  But, even with all the problems inherent, it doesn’t turn the entire thing into a disaster.  There are still a healthy amount of good things to like in this movie.  The best thing that Brad Bird has learned from his years in animation is to tell a story with visuals, and that goes a long way to help smooth over some of the movie’s more troublesome shortcomings.  The brief glimpses we get of Tomorrowland in all it’s glory are pretty spectacular.  Bird even showcases the entire place in a beautiful 5 minute long tracking shot, and you already know how much I like those.  He also manages to convey character traits without having to spell things out, either with costume ideas or clever clues from the character’s surroundings.  And while there are tonal inconsistencies throughout the movie, the individual scenes are still well paced and entertaining.  I especially liked the prologue which shows young Frank (Thomas Robinson) attending the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.  Not only does Brad Bird beautifully recreate this real historical event in great detail, including a surprise found in the “It’s a Small World” ride, but it also perfectly sets up the wonder that is Tomorrowland.  If only what followed had the same kind of wonder to it.

What does save most of the movie, however, is the cast itself.  While the roles aren’t specifically crafted for anyone in particular, it does seem perfect to have the key role of Frank Walker played by a star like George Clooney.  He perfectly captures the caricature of a once bright mind that’s been clouded by pessimism and he brings a lot of charm and depth to the character.  While, it’s not his film per se (it’s more about the character of Casey overall), Clooney still adds weight and prestige to this movie that might have otherwise have been too lightweight for it’s own good.  Britt Robertson, though a little too old to be playing a teenager, still carries the film well enough as Casey, and helps to make her likable, even despite the cliched “savior” role that she’s forced to play in this plot.  The best performance and character in the movie, however, belongs to Raffey Cassidy’s Athena.  Those mystical child characters you find in fanciful movies like this are sometimes hard to pull off and usually come off as insufferable.  Athena, however, is by far the best thing about this movie, and Ms. Cassidy brings a surprising amount of charm out of this difficult character.  I don’t want to give away too much, but there’s a lot of surprises revealed about Athena and she consistently improves the film in every scene she is in.  Given all the problems with the story, having a character like her present is a godsend, and one wishes that her story had been better explored.  The one weak point in the cast sadly would be Hugh Laurie as the villain.  Laurie is a reliably talented actor, and his performance here isn’t at all bad.  It’s just that Governor Nix is too much of a stock villain to be taken seriously.  In fact, he’s not even overtly evil enough to make us care about what he does in the film’s disappointing climax.  He’s just misguided, but with no real context to his character, so there’s no reason for us to fear him or understand him.   Still, it’s more the script’s problem, and not the actor’s, and he tries his best with what he has to work with.

I have to say, as both a Disney fan and as someone who wants to see movies that can inspire great minds to achieve great things again, I was saddened by how disappointing this movie was.  Believe me, I really wanted to love this movie; and I tried.  Tomorrowland could have taken us into a brave new world of science fantasy, and sadly it never gets even close to reaching it’s potential.  Maybe I expected too much, like seeing something that could end up being Stanley Kubrick meets Lewis Carroll, but Tomorrowland is far from Wonderland.  The movie sadly ends up falling into the same cliches that the filmmakers are also lamenting in their film, which makes the whole thing a tad bit hypocritical.  Part of the problem is with the uneven script, but the general problem with the movie is that it doesn’t seem to fully commit to anything either.  Tomorrowland as a place is only teased at, and the ideas (as good as they may be) are half-cooked and never fully explained.  Walt Disney used his Tomorrowland program to both educate as well as entertain.  Tomorrowland can entertain, but the education falls flat, which is a shame because it’s a lesson that needs to be taught.  But, as disappointed as I was, I can’t dismiss it either.  It’s still a beautifully crafted movie with some very strong performances by it’s cast.  Also, even though this may be Brad Bird’s least effective movie to date, there’s still a lot of creativity to behold.  Look for some of the clever Easter eggs throughout, like the hidden A113 that always appears somewhere in Bird’s movies, and also the the hidden Space Mountain that appears in the wide shots of Tomorrowland.  Though the movie is flawed, it’s also harmless too, and could be a fine source of entertainment for family audiences.  It especially works as a source of nostalgia for Disney fans, given it’s exploration into the company’s history with the scientific advances and explorations of the last 50 years.  I just wish that a more compelling story could have materialized out of all that dreaming.

Rating: 6.5/10

Nothing has been more miraculous in the last few years of cinema than the development and execution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Not only has Marvel Comics successfully translated many of their properties to the big screen, but they’ve managed to also intertwine the whole of them into a continuing, larger narrative and sustain it for nearly a decade now.  It has been a tall order to make sure everything falls into place and to have the payoff be worth it in the end, but so far things have worked out for the best at Marvel.  Under the supervision of Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige and backed with the financial support of parent company Disney, the MCU gamble has turned into the envy of every other studio in Hollywood.  Now, everyone is trying to launch their own cinematic universe based around their own properties, including a Ghostbusters universe over at Sony and a Movie Monster universe at Universal.  Marvel rival DC Comics is also amping up their long dormant characters for a cinematic universe that they hope can capitalize on the same success that Marvel is experiencing.  But the reason for the success of the MCU is not just with the characters alone.  Extensive planning has helped to make the MCU grow and sustain itself, and this has largely been executed to perfection by building up the universe in Phases.  Each phase of Marvel’s master plan does two key things; one it establishes new characters to help populate the universe and let’s them live out their own stories, and two, it plants the elements within each story that will interconnect with the others at some point and ultimately tie each character together into one team.

Though each character’s story stands well on its own, Marvel’s ultimate plan is to have the inevitable team-up of characters, which happens in this Avengers series.  When the first phase of the MCU came to an end in 2012, with the release of the first Avengers, many people were skeptical that it could be pulled off.  For one thing, an ambitious team up like this had never been done before and putting all these larger than life characters together could have proved overwhelming. Not only that, but the duties of bringing the whole mess together was given over to Joss Whedon, a television producer who had never done a movie on this scale before.  But, as it turned out, Whedon was the best possible choice for the job. His years in television, making cult hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, helped to refine his ability to balance multiple ongoing storylines and put them all together into one narrative. His Avengers pulled off the impossible, having all these monumental characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk share screentime and still manage to get their shining moments in the spotlight.  The result was a monumental hit, becoming the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time (behind Avatar and Titanic) and it gave Marvel the confidence to move forward with Phase 2.  The second phase of course continued to do the same thing that Phase 1 had done; pressing ahead with the continuing storylines of each Avenger team member, while also establishing new characters, whether as a new sidekick (The Falcon in Captain America) or a whole other team entirely (Guardians of the Galaxy).   And now, three years later, Phase 2 is coming to a close with The Avengers once again assembling in the inevitable sequel; Age of Ultron.

Age of Ultron doesn’t pick up where the last one left off, for obvious reasons, but anyone who hasn’t kept up with the MCU won’t be lost either.  The movie immediately thrusts the audience into an action scene, with the Avengers teaming up to take down a base of operations for the sinister HYDRA organization.  Within their stronghold, the Avengers find artifacts collected from the alien invasion of the first movie, including the staff used by the first film’s villain, Loki.  When Iron Man, aka Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) researches the staff, he learns of its highly advanced data properties and sees a way he could use it to bring to life his Ultron program, which he envisions as a way of using artificial intelligence to program Iron Man drones across the world as a peaceful replacement for the Avengers.  The plan goes awry when Ultron (voiced by James Spader) comes to life on his own and decides that the best way to save the world is to destroy mankind.  After their base is attacked, Stark and the other Avengers, Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johanssen), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), quickly scramble to follow Ultron and try to stay one step ahead of him.  Unfortunately for the Avengers, Ultron has also put together a team of super powered beings himself; the HYDRA enhanced twins, Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen).   With a super intelligent and powerful robot creating havoc across the world with two superhuman twins by his side, the Avengers are brought to the brink of their capabilities and even begin to doubt one another, especially when another wild card is brought into the mix in the form of the android hybrid, The Vision (Paul Bettany).

Just like the first Avengers, this movie is also a big gamble.  Not only must it live up to the lofty reputation of the original, but it has to tie in everything else that has happened in the Marvel Universe to date.  And given how complicated things have gotten in Phase 2, that’s easier said than done.  So, taking into account all of this, it’s actually quite amazing how well this movie works as it does.  One thing that Joss Whedon does exceptionally well is character interactions and building towards a climax, both of which are the highlights of this sequel.   There’s no shortage of witty banter between the characters (especially the one-liners delivered by Tony Stark), but there’s also a lot of clever nods and references to everything from other Marvel properties to even Archie comics and Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), something that’s a trademark of Whedon’s style.  He also manages to pay off a lot of loose threads from the Marvel cinematic universe and also plant the seeds for the future in a way that feels both rewarding and exciting. Essentially this is a movie made by fans of the comics for fans, and probably the only place where fan service is not only welcomed, but encouraged.  Even if it’s something that doesn’t have anything to do with the larger narrative, like the numerous cameos from secondary characters of the MCU (and yet another from Marvel Generalissimo Stan Lee), it’s still is a welcome inclusion that adds to the enjoyment of the whole.  But even with all that, the movie works well on its own as an action movie.  The film’s big set pieces are exciting without ever being flashy, which helps the audience keep track of what’s going on.  It runs the fine balance within the plausible impossible, where over-the-top things happen throughout, but never in a way that defies logic, at least in a comic book world.

But, even with all the great elements throughout, it’s not free of flaws either.  While still a worthy edition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I wouldn’t exactly consider it the best we’ve seen from Marvel to date either.  If anything, I’d say it achieves the goal of being a worthy follow-up to the first Avengers, and nothing more.  The most problematic thing about the movie, and what keeps it from being absolutely perfect, is the fact that it has way too much going on in it.  Essentially the plot is one long string of action sequences, with very few breaks in between.  Now, connected with all the other movies in the MCU, this relentless pace might make more sense, because it works as the climax for all of Phase 2.  But as a standalone movie, there’s not enough time for the plot to catch its breath and develop an identity for itself.  Some of the rich character history has to be sacrificed and plot arcs that usually take up entire acts are instead condensed into a single sequence.  The creation of Ultron is especially rushed in this movie, and he goes from gaining consciousness to enacting his sinister plan within a matter of moments.  Now, with a movie as packed as this one, you obviously have to cut down quite a bit to make everything fit, but one can’t help but feel that something also gets lost in the shuffle.  Also, the fact that so much has to be set up for future movies can also be a distraction, especially for those in the audience who have no connection to the comics whatsoever. The references to the Infinity Stones will almost surely please anyone who’s a fan of the comics, but any other casual viewer might come away from this film scratching their heads.

One thing that proves to be both the film’s strength and a problematic element is also the characterizations. When you’ve got a jam-packed cast like this, some character development is going to be lost. Hopefully most of you will have already seen the previous Captain America and Thor movies, because both characters are given almost no character development here.  And sad to say it Marvel, but Fox made a better and more entertaining Quicksilver than you in their movie X-Men: Days of Future Past from last year; despite a noble effort by actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson.  There’s also some shaky attempts to try to make up for lack of character development by throwing in a romantic plot thread in there for Black Widow and Bruce Banner, which is charming but doesn’t really fit into the plot. But what does save the movie from its shortcomings are the performances.  Everyone here is comfortable enough with the characters by now and that maturity helps in a long way to move the movie along.  Probably the character who benefits most in this sequel is Hawkeye, who actually gets a big boost in screentime.  Jeremy Renner’s grounded performance really helps to make his Hawkeye stand out from the rest, and his courage in the face of overwhelming odds helps to underline the mission of the team itself; something he even states in a perfectly delivered monologue late in the movie.  James Spader also brings in a lot of personality into the villain Ultron, and helps to save the underdeveloped character from being a disappointment overall, thanks to some very snarky wisecracks; although it does minimize the menace of the character, which is something of a negative.  Probably the best addition to the cast, however, is The Vision.  He comes into the movie late, but boy does he leave an impact, and Paul Bettany plays the character to perfection.

If there is anything that does get improved upon from the last Avengers, it would be the sense of scale.  The first film was exciting, but lacked any real visual punch, except maybe in the closing battle scene.  Here, the movie opens up and takes the Avengers on a globe-trotting adventure.  There are no longer any long stretches confined to a single location, like where half of the first movie was set on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.  The Avengers do battle in places as diverse as a cityscape in an African metropolitan city, the secluded woods of a fictional Eastern European nation, and even on a floating rock in the sky. Visually, it also looks like Joss Whedon has learned a few a lot more tricks since his first cinematic outing with these characters.  The original film was shot in the confining flat aspect ratio of 1.78:1, but here he shot the movie in the widescreen 2.40:1 ratio, which gives Whedon a wider canvas to work with.  The whole movie is all together more interesting to look at and shows that Whedon is no longer working in the mindset of how his project will look on television but instead is focused on making it look as epic as possible.  Though the process of getting from one scene to another is on shaky ground, each scene still is worth the wait and pays off in a big way.  One especially high point in the movie is the showdown between the Hulk and Iron Man wearing his Hulkbuster suit, and it’s a visual feast that lives up to the epic potential of that match-up. If there’s anything that Joss Whedon can be proud of with this film, it’s that it’s shows his maturity as a filmmaker and that he indeed can have a visionary style that can stand up beyond what he’s able to do on television.

So, even with all its shortcomings, Avengers: Age of Ultron is still a worthwhile film to see and a great way to start off this summer movie season.  Is it perfect?  No, but given all the complications and pressure put upon it, it’s still remarkable how well it does work in the end.  Sadly, the overwhelming success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has raised the bar so high that it makes it nearly impossible to clear nowadays with every new entry.  Ultron may not be the best, but it comes close enough to that high bar to be worthy of the legacy.  I certainly was smiling throughout most of the movie, but part of that is because I’ve followed along with every Marvel movie to date, so I understood every inside reference and plot thread that relates to the larger universe.  Casual viewers may not understand it at all and wonder what all the fuss is about.  But even still, I doubt very few people are going to come away from this disappointed.  It’s still got all the great character interactions and action set pieces that define a great Marvel movie, and even a few pleasant surprises.  Not only that, but the spot on casting of the characters continues to pay off for this series, and it only makes me excited to see the team grow even more as Phase 3 gets started, leading us ultimately to the much anticipated two-part Infinity War.  It may not be Marvel’s crowning achievement to date (for me, that would be the more tightly plotted Guardians of the Galaxy), but still it’s worth the long wait. When the world’s mightiest heroes assemble together, how can anyone not want to see them in action.

Rating: 8.5/10

There has been a long history of movies centered around fast and powerful cars. Going back to the Rebel Without a Cause (1955) days, and following through to the heyday of the 1970’s with great vehicle chases in The French Connection (1971) and Bullitt (1968), audiences have always loved seeing big stars having fun in big cars. Specifically, cars have had a long association with depictions of masculinity on film, having the vehicles themselves work as an extension of the male characters strength and confidence, or perhaps an indicator of their insecurity depending on how much you read into it.  This has been especially true with many action film s in recent years, which has usually come to feature a car chase or two at some point in their running times. The resulting trend has been commonly referred to as the “dick flick,” which is a twist on the phrase associated with films that cater to the female demographic.  While “chick flicks” are mostly sweet natured and romantic, “dick flicks” tend to be aggressive and unsubtle, and like most other film types that cater to a specific audience, you get a few good entries as well as a whole lot of trash.  Just as “chick flicks” has its Bride Wars (2009), the “dick flick” has its Transformers (2007).  But, even with all the garbage out there, some audience pandering films do hit their mark and can even lift the genre as a whole for the better.  That has been true, for the most part, for the Fast and the Furious franchise, which has performed consistently well since its debut fourteen years ago in 2001. Though by no means one of the greatest franchises in history, the series has built momentum in recent installments which is unheard of for a long running franchise. And this year, it again reasserts its dominance as a franchise with its seventh entry, Furious 7.

The Fast and the Furious is not the kind of movie that you could see turning into a long lasting franchise.  It was entertaining alright, but not particularly groundbreaking. Still, it spawned a sequel, which underperformed and should of killed the franchise off but didn’t. A spinoff/sequel followed and then a reboot with the original cast came shortly after. It wasn’t until the fifth entry, Fast Five (2011) that the franchise started to find it’s mojo and become a megahit. That has continued through Fast & Furious 6 (2013) and now again with Furious 7, which I’m certain wil go on to huge box office numbers. It’s stamina for a franchise that is unheard of. Usually by the time a franchise is seven films in, it’s run out of fuel (pun intended). But, Fast and the Furious is thriving right now and that’s largely due to a reimagining of its basic premise and embracing the absurdity of the genre. The first couple films stuck mostly to genre norms and were about as basic as you could expect.  The last three films have dropped all logical expectations and have become increasingly over the top. Probably taking a cue from the James Bond franchise, which ironically itself is becoming more grounded, Fast and the Furious is embracing the absurdity of its premise and exploiting it for all its worth. And as a result, it’s made the franchise a lot more fun and less generic. The car chases are no longer the run of the mill kind of stuff; now they included machine guns, explosions and martial art smack downs.  But, even with all the extra bits added to the mix these last few entries, does this particular movie still work on it’s own.

The story pretty much picks up where the last one left off. Hot rod driving mercenaries Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Connor (the late Paul Walker) are settling back into a normal existence after their ordeal in London from the sixth movie. O’Connor is trying to live a normal family life with his wife (Jordana Brewster) and son, while Dominic is helping his girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) readjust to normal life after loosing her memory. Unfortunately, the problems of London have come home as they brother of Fast & Furious 6 villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), seeks revenge against Dominic and his crew. Government contact and Dominic’s ally Agent Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) becomes the first victim, showing that Deckard is a menace that they need to take seriously. Meanwhile, Dominic and his team are recruited by high level CIA commander Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) to help rescue an expert hacker held hostage by Aftican warlord Jakande (Djimon Hounsou) who seeks to retrieve a highly prized hacking software called God’s Eye. What follows is a globe-trotting mission that of course involves the use of some amazing cars.  Along for the ride are the rest of Dominic’s team which includes tech expert Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), wisecracking Roman (Tyrese Gibson) as well as Letty, who slowly remembers her life with the team the further into the mission they go.

Truth be told, I have not seen every film in the franchise, so I don’t know exactly how to place this new film within the context of the series as a whole. I can only judge it based on it’s strengths as a standalone movie. I will say this, it was a vast improvement over the last Fast and the Furious movie I saw, which was the 2009 reboot Fast & Furious.  Sadly, I have not seen the last two movies, which I’ve heard are the best, though I’ve seen bits of those two which indicate to me the over-the-top direction that the franchise has taken. This film, however, was mostly a mixed bag. Was it bad?  Absolutely not.  But, it didn’t grab a hold of me either. For me, it was a lot of stop and go while watching the flick. Whenever it was in an action sequence, which are pretty spectacular, the movie was very enjoyable.  But all the plot and dialogue scenes in between dragged for me. It’s something that I still don’t think the franchise has managed to figure out, but then again, I’m only working with an incomplete knowledge of the franchise as a whole.  For this movie at least, the slow parts still felt really slow, and I was just left waiting for the action to start up again. Now, I know that this isn’t Shakespeare and that more of the focus is meant to be on the benchmark action sequences.  But at the same time, I want to be invested in the characters story, and here it’s just filler until the next action scene starts. There are way too many scenes of the characters all sitting around discussing what they are going to do and not enough character development that matters. Seriously, half of the movie is made up of the cast just sitting around in meetings. Character moments are brief and well appreciated, but when the movie allows for too much of its runtime dedicated to planning out each action scene, then it seriously drags down what could have otherwise have been a wall to wall great thriller.

But, I credit that more to a problem with the script than with the direction itself. The Fast and the Furious franchise has long been shepparded by film director Justin Lin, who is credited for having reimagined the series as the over-the-top, spy caper behemoth that it is now. But, Lin sits this one out possibly due to conflicting projects (he’s been tapped as J.J. Abrams replacement for the Star Trek franchise), and directorial duties have been given to horror filmmaker James Wan.   Wan is best known as the creator of the Saw franchise and has recently garnered critical praise for his horror hit The Conjuring (2013). Furious 7 marks his first foray into action movies and for the most part, he makes the transition well. There’s a lot of flashy direction in the action sequences, as well as in the few party sequences throughout the film, which feels right at place in this franchise. I’m especially impressed with his sense of scale, because many of the sequences show a great sense of awe-inspiring visuals that you don’t normally get from a first time action director. One particular sequence involves Diesel and Walker’s characters escaping a high rise building by speeding their car out the window and jumping it into the next building. It’s a spectacular sequence that really displays Wan’s abilities to keep the grandioseness and absurdity of the franchise in tact. I also like the fact that Wan holds the camera still when he needs to, and doesn’t try to show off his direction in some of the quieter scenes; something that a lot of young shaky camera-loving filmmakers unfortunately don’t often do. Even though the story falters, the direction still stays strong and I give parent studio Universal for handing the reins over to a director who could still deliver a solid film without shattering the foundations that the franchise was built on.

Another bright spot of the film is the cast. While most of their acting abilities are a mixed bag (because some are better actors than others), they all still remain likable and are worth following along. Vin Diesel once again proves to be a valuable presence, and it’s understandable because this franchise is his bread and butter.  Other returning cast members also offer some solid support, even if the script leaves them with some rather clunky dialogue. Dwayne Johnson is especially entertaining as Agent Hobbs, and he manages to go from being chill inducing intimidating one moment to enormously charming in the next with great ease. Also, wait until you see how he takes out a predator drone in this movie single handedly. Newcomers are also welcome as well, especially action movie icons Jason Statham and Kurt Russell. While Russell doesn’t have much to do in the movie, it still is a treat to see the one-time Snake Plissken pull out his gun and start taking shots at bad guys again. Even better is Statham, who makes a very effective villain here, even if he pops out of nowhere sometimes. His showdown with Diesel at the very end is especially worth the wait and is probably a fight that action movie fans have long waited for.  I also give the movie credit for making the cars characters themselves.  There’s a special bit of nostalgia in the movie when you see Diesel take his original “muscle car” out of the garage for “one last drive” in the film’s climatic scene.  Even more spectacular is what he ends up doing with the car in final showdown. While there’s lots to like about the action sequences on their own, the cast involved does their best to make the human element work as well as it can and indeed a veteran crew like this does deliver in the end.

But, what ultimately is going to set this movie apart from the rest of the franchise, and what is ultimately the movie’s greatest triumph was the way that it dealt with the passing of one of its key cast members. The tragic death of actor Paul Walker in a car accident happened in the middle of this movie’s production, leaving what would end up being his final film performance incomplete. But instead of cutting him out of the movie altogether, the filmmakers worked around the issue and actually gave Walker a respectful send off that’s worthy of his memory. Amazingly, they managed to include Walker in every sequence of the film with the help of body doubles (Walker’s own real-life brothers) as well as some pretty seamless CGI facial replacement. Honestly, I couldn’t tell which scenes included the real Paul Walker or his stand-ins; its that good.   And while this helps to complete the work that Walker started, the movie also does it in a respectful way, letting the character be an active contributor to the plot rather than be sidelined in a rewrite.  The finale, however, is where the filmmakers should be absolutely praised.  They send off the character as well as honor the actor in a beautifully done memorial scene. I won’t spoil it for you, but the last five minutes of this movie didn’t leave a dry eye in the theater. Something you never thought you’d see a Fast and the Furious ever do, but it absolutely happened. Sometimes it’s tricky to work around an actor’s performance after they’ve died during production, but this is one example of how to do it respectfully and with a lot of grace. And as a result, it is by far the best thing about this movie.

So, is Furious 7 something I’d recommend.  Only if you’re a fan of the franchise itself, of which there seems to be increasingly more of. I for one thought it was just okay. Though I do admire the work put into the spectacular action sequences, the overall plot was just too inconsistent for me to really love this film. That being said, as a representation of the “dick flick” genre, it certainly could have been a whole lot worse. I do like the goofiness that the franchise has seemed to embrace and the fact that the filmmakers actually made an effort to make the action scenes comprehendable.  Yes, there’s some sequences that have a very music video flashiness to them, but it’s supported by well executed and visually stable action and dialogue sequences as well. The movie also does a commendable job of honoring a fallen comrade with a touching tribute, which could have been clumsily handled in the wrong hands. Overall, this won’t be a stumbling block for the increasingly popular Fast and the Furious franchise.  In fact, it could even be their biggest hit yet. But, I’ll have to watch all the movies together in order to see where it places in the franchise as a whole. As a standalone flick, it was amusing but unspectacular. If you love these movies, then I’m sure you’ll love this one too. In the end, it’s harmless entertainment that leaves audiences happy instead of assaulted with crude imagery and gratuitous action. And that’s a good a good mark to leave behind in this genre.

Rating: 6.5/10

If there’s one thing that Disney has managed to perfect over it’s long history, it’s being able to bring classic fairy tales to the big screen.  Starting with their beloved first film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) all the way up to their recent megahit Frozen (2013), Disney Animation has proven time and again to be the go to people for traditional fairy tale entertainment. And it’s easy to see why.  Fairy tales lend themselves perfectly to the animated medium, which perfectly renders all the flights of fantasy to its fullest potential without having to live by the rules of the real world.  But, given the success of some of Disney’s films over the years, there also comes the pressure of having to top that success with something better. Walt Disney was strongly resistant to creating sequels to his movies, instead choosing to look ahead to the next project, which meant that most of Disney’s animated output was made up of one and done story lines, and not all of them were huge successes right away.  It’s been a practice that Disney Animation has mostly stuck to long after Walt’s time, which has been beneficial for them since it’s allowed them to grow their stable of characters every year, instead of just rehashing the same ones to the point of irrelevance. But, in order to keep some of their old classics still fresh in people’s minds, Disney has also taken the sometimes controversial step of remaking their films, but in the live action medium. This has developed mostly in recent years, and unfortunately the end results have been mixed.  Though the movies have done well at the box office, the quality of the storytelling is usually subpar, at least compared to the originals.  Some are merely just okay, like 1996’s slapsticky 101 Dalmatians, or misguidedly dark and unappealing like 2010’s Alice in Wonderland or 2014’s Maleficent.  Because these movies have done well despite the negative reviews, it has convinced Disney to look to even more of it’s classics to be given over to the live action medium regardless of the outcome.  And this year’s newest entry to the field is a remake of their 1950 classic Cinderella.

Now, if you’ve read my review of last year’s Maleficent, you’ll know that I’m not too happy with these recent remakes of Disney classics. In particular, I hate the way that they’re taking the original stories and try to force some kind of “edginess” into it.  While this was a nuisance in Tim Burton’s Alice remake, it can be seen as understandable given Burton’s style. Maleficent on the other hand made the big mistake of trying to force an action adventure narrative into a traditional fairy tale, and try the not-so-clever spin of reversing the roles of the heroes and villains. That plan backfired with the new takes on the characters never quite carrying the film and leaving the whole picture a disgraceful shell of what had come before.  Mainly the problem with these movies is that they do what is commonly seen as the cliched trope of making the heroines in these stories edgier by putting a sword in their hands. This is an unfortunate by product of the success of movie series like The Lord of the Rings and Narnia, which has led to the mistaken belief in Hollywood that every fantasy film needs to have an epic battle scene in it, whether it’s there in the original story of not.  And Disney is not alone having fallen into this trap; Universal made the same assumption when they released their own “edgy” fairy tale Snow White and the Huntsman (2013).  So, it actually comes as a blessing when watching Disney’s new film Cinderella, because it avoids that cliche completely, and ends up making the story work well on its own merits.

The story should be familiar to anyone who has heard the original fairy tale, or has seen Disney’s original animated version. Young Ella (Lily James) grows up in a happy upper middle class household in a fictional, unnamed European kingdom. When her mother suddenly is taken ill and passes away, she and her father try to cope with the loss in the best way possible. In time, Ella’s father decides to remarry, bringing in the vain and greedy Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett) into the household, along with her two ugly daughters Anastasia and Drisella (Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger).  Not long after, Ella’s father also dies unexpectedly, and Lady Tremaine begins to take charge of the home, forcing Ella into servitude in her own home. In order to keep warm at night, Ella sleeps by the fire and ends up with cinder soot all over her skin, leading the stepsisters to jokingly call her Cinderella.  Soon, all Cinderella has for company are her animal companions, whom she carries on one-way conversations with. But, that changes all maidens in the land are invited to attend a ball at the palace, as a means to help the Prince (Richard Madden) choose a bride.   Lady Tremaine forbids Cinderella from going, but with the help of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother (Helena Bonham Carter), she manages to go anyway.  The rest of the story is wha you’d expect, including the significance of Cinderella’s iconic glass slippers.

This new version of Cinderella on the surface doesn’t look like anything special. And on paper, I’m sure that’s how it would appear as well. It doesn’t do anything groundbreaking or original with the story.  It just follows the blueprint without deviation. And surprisingly, that’s what makes it work in the end.  This movie is a wonderful retelling of the classic fairy tale, with all the familiar pieces in tact with no needless and distracting additions.  It’s almost so ordinary that it’s revolutionary.  After the boring and needlessly complicated plots of Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent, it’s nice to see Disney actually deliver a worthy remake this time around.  I believe that a big part of why this movie works so well is the combination of a smart and witty script by Chris Weitz (American Pie and About a Boy) and imaginative direction by Kenneth Branagh. Weitz in particular had the daunting task of trying to bring new life into an already too familiar storyline, and he managed to pull it off by not trying to make it too complicated.  It’s a simple retelling that’s avoids the pitfalls of adding too much plot detail, and instead leaves more room for the things that matter in a script, like character development as well as a healthy helping of wit and charm. Kenneth Branagh also feels right at home with this material. Famously known for his lavish Shakespearean productions, Branagh brings a strong sense of visual splendor to his film, while never losing track of the characters or the story either.  Together, the director and the writer make familiarity a great asset with this story and present Cinderella with all the grace it deserves.

Probably the biggest reason why the movie works so well, beyond how well it is written, is its visual extravagance. This movie is a stunning visual treat. It’s not surprising given that Kenneth Branagh is behind this film, since he brings almost operatic grandeur to every production he does, whether it’s his four hour long staging of Hamlet (1996), or his venture into the Marvel cinematic universe with Thor (2011). Cinderella continues that stellar track record with colorful cinematography and eye-catching production design. The ball scene alone is an unrivaled visual feast.  But, even with the incredible work put into the production, it doesn’t overwhelm either. The film manages to keep itself firmly grounded and doesn’t try to distract you with its visuals either. Really, some of the best parts of the movie actually take place in some of the darker settings, like a late confrontation between Cinderella and her step-mother in the attic, which has a nice gloomy atmosphere to it. But, when the film calls for it, the epic grandeur delivers beautifully.  It also takes its cues from the classic Disney version as well, trying to match some of its most standout visual moments in th same way. There’s a scene when Cinderella arrives at the ball which calls to mind the same moment from the animated film.   It’s not trying to copy it shot for shot, but rather invoke the same sense of wonder, and it manages to do it very well.  The production design and costumes were done by multi award winning veterans Dante Ferretti and Sandy Powell, and Cinderella represents the two working at their highest level.

Anoter thing that helps to make the movie work especially well is the performances.  One of the saving graces for most of Disney’s live action remakes has been their castings, especially in the villain roles.  Glenn Close delivered a delightfully over-the-top performance as Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians, while Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent was that movie’s only redeemable feature.  In Cinderella, the cast is top to bottom exceptionally well-rounded, especially with the two leads.  Lily James (who’s been recently seen on Downton Abbey) manages to bring a lot of depth to a character that’s notoriously hard to get right in a performance.  How do you make such a subservient character relatable and complex? In this film, Cinderella is instilled with the lesson of having strength through kindness, and it’s a character trait that Ms. James perfectly brings out in the character.  She remains kind and noble, even against overwhelming hatred, and that’s where her strength as a character comes alive.  But, even she is overshadowed in the movie by a knockout performance by Cate Blanchett as the villainous Lady Tremaine.  Blanchett shows once again why she is one of our greatest living actresses by taking on the role of the wicked stepmother that we all know, but also finding the depth behind that villainy as well.  She chews up the scenery like nobody’s business and commands every moment.  Naturally, she’s a big name that Disney always tries to go for with these important character roles, and it’s nice to see she’s not wasted here. The rest of the cast also is very strong. The two step sisters are hilariously over-the-top, and Helena Bonham Carter manages to deliver a nice subdued turn as the charming Fairy Godmother.  And speaking of charming, Richard Madden (of Game of Thornes fame) is able to make the most of a character who has very often been underwritten in most retellings of the story, including the animated version. His Prince character actually is given a worthy arc to go along with the story that compliments Cinderella’s story very nicely.

If the film has a flaw at all, it might be with some of the visual effects. The grounded visuals of the film, which relies heavily on practical sets, are so well done, that it actually becomes distracting when you see an out-of-place CGI effect put into place. Not all the visual effects are terrible though. Some of the set extensions are stunning to look at, and there is a jaw-droppingly gorgeous moment when Cinderella’s dress is transformed by the Fairy Godmother into the ball gown. But what doesn’t work so well is the animation used on the animal characters, particularly the mice.  I know the mice where important characters in the original film, and their presence her is a nice nod to the classic. But, the film here chooses to portray them as realistic looking mice, animated through CGI. Unfortunately, as hard as they tried, the animators could not pull off the trick. The CGI mice still just look too fake, and unfortunately lack personality.  The animation looks even more distracting later in the film when the animals are transformed into Cinderella’s coach horses and footmen.  The end result just comes off as a bit too rubbery.  Still, I don’t fault the filmmakers so much as just the overwhelming reliance that the industry puts on CGI tinkering. For a film that does so well with practically built visuals, it’s somewhat unnecessary to include so much computer enhanced imagery.  It doesn’t spoil it too much; it just becomes something of a distraction over the course of an otherwise tightly controlled production.

Overall, I am very pleased to see Disney finally get the formula right for a change. After coming up short so many times before, it’s great to see a remake from the House of Mouse that is actually worthy and respectful to it’s source rather than exploitive. A lot of credit should go to director Kenneth Branagh, who brought his usual visual flair to a story that was perfectly suited for it, as well as to writer Chris Weitz who managed to bring a great deal of depth and wit to this retelling; something that the other fairy tale remakes have been lacking. As someone who grew up with the classic Disney versions of these fairy tales, and one who has been incredibly disappointed with the remakes so far, it pleases me enormously to see that Cinderella was given a worthy treatment. The story itself is simple and uncomplicated and it’s a pleasurable experience for all audiences. Clearly it’s targetted towards the young girl demographic, and it hits that target with sniper like accuracy, but audiences of all kinds will still find a lot to enjoy in this movie.  Of course, this won’t be Disney’s last live action adaptation of one of their animated classics.  Some of the adaptations do look promising (like Jon Favreau’s Jungle Book in 2016) while others are not so much (Tim Burton’s recently announced Dumbo remake).  At least now we have an example of how to do it right. So, if your nostalgic for some classic Disney storytelling, or just want to see a lavishly put together big screen fairy tale, then you should defiantly check out this new version of Cinderella.  It’s further proof that assured direction and thoughtful storytelling can indeed deliver something magical.

Rating: 8.5/10

Biopics have often been an awards season favorite for many years.  Considering that the motion picture Academy is made up mostly of veteran actors and actresses, it’s easy to see why they award so many of their peers when they take on a role of impersonating some great historical figure.  Sometimes that actor or actress pulls off the role in convincing fashion (like Daniel Day-Lewis in 2012’s Lincoln) or it can come off as phony and cartoonish (Leonardo DiCaprio in 2011’s J. Edgar). Clint Eastwood has developed a reputation as a director for bringing simple yet elegant techniques into his often very quiet yet endearing films, and some of his recent movies have indeed tackled real life subjects.  Some of his historical films have been interesting windows into both old and recent history, like 2006’s Letters From Iwo Jima and 2009’s Invictus.  But his record with biopics hasn’t been quite as strong.  His J. Edgar, for example, was a messy and convoluted take on the life of the notorious FBI founder, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio’s less than effective impersonation performed through some of the worst old-age make-up ever seen on film. Eastwood’s newest movie, American Sniper, again puts the director into the position of telling the story of a real life and controversial American icon, only this time, the end result is a much more assured and captivating story.  Recounting the true life story of Chris Kyle, a navy seal sniper credited with the most confirmed kills of any American serviceman in military history, Clint Eastwood has managed to craft a compelling account of the life of a modern American soldier, and how his experience is indicative of the world that we live in today and how it will continue into the future.

What’s most interesting about the movie itself is not the quality of its filmmaking; we already know that Clint Eastwood is capable enough to tackle this kind of material.  No, what’s really interesting is the subject himself.  Chris Kyle isn’t particularly the kind of person that Hollywood usually lionizes as a hero.  Kyle in real life was a staunch right-wing,  gun loving and militaristic Christian conservative; someone Hollywood would usually cast as the villain in their stories.  But Eastwood’s portrayal of the man is much more sympathetic towards the his life and is far more interested in showing the extraordinary things that he accomplished within and outside of combat.  Some more liberal audience members may find this kind of portrayal too reverential and off-putting, but I would argue that American Sniper is not a whitewash of a controversial figure either.  Though Easwood’s own personal politics do lean closer to Chris Kyle’s than to the rest of Hollywood, he still has been sharply critical of both Republican and Democratic administrations with regard to US policy in the Middle East, and some of that frustration comes out in a subtly drawn anti-war message behind this movie.   For Eastwood, the film is less about the combat and more about the side effects, particularly with regard to the psychological consciousness of those fighting in it.  And in this regard, Chris Kyle proves to be an ideal subject for examination and reflection of the cost of war.

Adapted from Chris Kyle’s own auto-biographical account of his war experiences, American Sniper covers nearly fifteen years of the man’s life; from his recruitment into the elite Navy Seals team to his post-war experience and his tragic assassination in 2013.  Chris Kyle (an almost unrecognizable Bradley Cooper) is first shown as a rodeo cowboy who is sprung into signing up for military service after seeing the embassy bombings in Africa and Afghanistan in the late 90’s. Hoping to push himself harder and closer to the front lines, Kyle signs up for the Navy Seals, and proves very quickly to be a reliable marksman shooter; a distinction that earns him the position of combat sniper in his unit. In the middle of his grueling basic training, he meets Taya (Sienna Miller) the woman who would become the love of his life, whom he marries just before heading off to his first tour of duty in Iraq.  While on tour, he quickly becomes a legend amongst his fellow soldiers, amassing a significant body count in his time there.  Once back home, Kyle welcomes the birth of his children, but also reveals to his wife an uneasy amount of bottled up tension.  Kyle, over time, becomes more and more obsessed with getting the job done over in the Middle East, which in turn causes him to feel more isolated and prone to erratic behavior, which puts both him and his units in far more precarious situations.  After four tours, Chris Kyle ends his time in Iraq and tries to settle into a normal life back home, which he soon finds to be increasingly difficult.  And part of that feeling of unease is built upon his belief that all his hard work still did not do enough, which then springs him into becoming an active voice for his fellow wounded soldiers, which in turn helps him to recover a bit of his own sanity.

Like I said before, Chris Kyle’s life is not one you would usually see given such a complex and compassionate treatment.  If given to someone on either extreme on the political spectrum, American Sniper could have become a far less effective biography of an interesting individual.  Either the movie could have been too reverential or too critical for its own good and Chris Kyle would have become more of a strawman for either side’s political agenda and less of a fully dimensional character.  Thankfully Clint Eastwood doesn’t delve into politics with this story, and instead portrays the man as a multilayered individual, warts and all.  Chris Kyle is shown to be an American hero, both on and off the field, and the movie honors the hard work that the man had accomplished in his life.  But at the same time, it also shows Chris Kyle as a vain and stubborn individual, with instances where his arrogance sometimes causes disunity in both his combat units as well as in his marriage.  While Kyle still remains a likable and resilient guy throughout, the movie rightfully avoids the trap of turning him into a saint  The story works because of this complexity and it manages to accomplish what most great biopics should do, which is portray the man and not the legend.  Because of this, we are able to put away any of our preconceived notions of who Chris Kyle was, and examine instead the conditions that made the person that he is.  Overall, it gives the movie a remarkably introspective look into the psyche of an Amercican soldier and what goes through their mind as they face almost certain death during combat.

Mainly the reason why this works so well in the movie is because of Bradley Cooper’s standout performance.  Cooper gained nearly 40 pounds of extra weight and muscle in order to play the physically imposing Chris Kyle, and the transformation is remarkable, especially when you compare the two side by side.  Cooper was attached to this film at a very early state in production, even before Chris Kyle’s untimely death, which probably gave him a very deep insight into the mind of his character.  You can see the hard work he put into the role throughout, not only in trying to look like him, but also getting his mannerisms and Texas drawl down perfectly.  Even with the imitation perfected, Cooper still needed to make the character come alive and compel us throughout the entire movie, and he accomplishes that spectacularly well.  His performance is actually at its best in the quieter moments, where he’s called upon to drop the swagger and show the inner turmoil under the surface.  I especially like the way he shows Chris Kyle’s reserved isolation, as he tries his hardest not to show weakness in front of others, even though it’s taking it’s toll on his mental well-being.  Sienna Miller also proves to be surprisingly effective in her role as Taya Kyle.  She matches Cooper’s subtlty quite well in a part that could have easily been lost in lesser hands.  She also hides her natural British accent very well and makes Taya just as much of a force in the story as Chris Kyle, acting as his anchor to reality.  Eastwood’s always been good at getting subtle and effective performances out of his actors, and this movie continues that strong trend.

The movie is visually a very strong one as well.  It’s remarkable that at the age of 84, Clint Eastwood is still making movies with this kind of scale and complexity.  The battle scenes in particular are all really well staged, and show a side of the director that we haven’t seen before. War movies are nothing new to Clint Eastwood; he acted in quite a few (1970’s Kelly’s Heroes for example) and directed a couple as well (his Iwo Jima duo).  But his direction here is far less about the bigger picture and much more intimate, putting us right in the middle of the action from Chris Kyle’s point of view.  It gives the movie a much more visceral feel, much like how Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2009) got us up close to wartime combat.  But, even still, this does feel like a Clint Eastwood movie, with the muted color palette and the workman-like approach to framing the shots. It’s distinctively his style, but it’s also neat to see the Hollywood legend flex his cinematic muscles a bit more in order to do what’s right for the scene.  One particularly memorable set piece is a spectacular shootout in the middle of a sand storm, which is grandiose in all the right ways, but never distracts with anything too over the top. And again, this is a Octogenarian filmmaker coming up with this grand vision, showing that good filmmakers always stay strong even into their twilight years.  Eastwood also makes good on the subtext behind the movie, showing the cost of war, without ever getting preachy or too one-sided.  Given strong support from a production crew that he has collaborated with for many years now, all delivering some of their best work to date, American Sniper definitely stands well amongst Eastwood’s whole body of work.

I’m sure this will be one of the most hotly debated movies of this upcoming Awards season, as well it should be.  Some may not like it’s politics, while others may view it to be much more complex than they first realized.  I for one found it to be a very rewarding cinematic experience.  Is it Clint Eastwood’s best movie?  Probably not.  I would have liked there to have been more time devoted to showing Chris Kyle’s pre and post-war lives, especially with regard to his work helping wounded veterans after he returned home; something that actually led up to his untimely death, as he was gunned down by a mentally disturbed veteran he was trying to help.   That part of the movie felt rushed in the end, but it’s not something that spoils the rest of the story.  It’s still a captivating experience and without a doubt the best biopic that Eastwood has ever directed.  I am happy that the movie has already begun to get some Award season recognition, especially for Bradley Cooper’s transformative performance.  It may not be the victor in the end, but it is neat to see that Hollywood still is able to honor challenging films like this with a nomination.  If this movie had come out earlier, it may have ended up on my list for the best films of last year, but since it’s out now in wide release in early January, it’ll probably be the best option available to you right now at your local multiplex.   It works as both an effective documentation of modern wartime combat, and as a multilayered character study, and is well worth exploring if you’re already a fan of Clint Eastwood’s work.   And probably most effectively, it puts the spotlight on a group of individuals that should never be ignored, that being the soldiers returning home from war both emotionally and physically scarred.  Even with an unconventional subject at its center like Chris Kyle, the message at the center of American Sniper will still ring true for all audiences.

Rating: 8.5/10

Oh what turbulent December it has been for this movie.  It’s almost beyond belief that a movie like this could have caused this much trouble, both culturally and politically.  And yet, in the last few weeks we’ve seen a major studio brought to it’s knees by anonymous online hackers acting on the behalf of a despotic rogue nation, all with the purpose of removing this movie from public view.  The totality of all this actually sounds even more far-fetched than the premise of this purposefully over-the-top movie, and yet this is what happened.  Whether writer and star Seth Rogen and his directing partner Evan Goldberg saw this coming or not, their movie now stands as one of the most controversial films of all time, taking a place alongside strange company like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), and even D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915).  Now, on the surface, The Interview probably shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as these movies, and yet it has followed in their footsteps by having been censored because of the objections of powerful influences.  In this case, it was the government of North Korea, who objected to the portrayal of their leader Kim Jong-un in the movie, believing that the whole film was making a mockery of him, which is technically true.  Not to mention that the whole plot centers around his attempted assassination.  But, even though a movie causes a stir elsewhere doesn’t mean it’s deserving of censorship here.  Thankfully American cinema is welcoming to most button pushing movies, and any inflammatory film can still find an audience beyond the pressure of outsiders.  This one however seems to have been pushed to the brink.

Unfortunately for The Interview, their target in question is as humorless and unpredictable as you can get in this world.  Sony Entertainment, which is the parent company of Columbia Pictures, went forward with this movie despite the objections of North Korea.  In their eyes, they saw no problem, given that the film-making duo delivered very well on their last project, 2013’s This is the End.  Unfortunately for the studio, North Korea was not bluffing about their threats towards Sony and the United States.  In the last couple months, a deluge of leaked emails and confidential documents from Sony Entertainment have been made public, putting the company into a maelstrom of controversy.  Many of the leaked material purposely puts Sony in an unflattering light, which the news media jumped upon quickly and fanned the flames even further.  Now, previously respected industry insiders like studio head Amy Pascal and uber-producer Scott Rudin are struggling to clear up their public images, and in Pascal’s case fighting to keep her job, after off-color remarks have surfaced in their private exchanges.  Sony’s private payroll breakdowns have also created a PR nightmare for the company, which has left them crippled in the industry due to their loss of trust and credibility.  And then came the threats of public attacks on movie theaters if they were to show The Interview on it’s Christmas release date, which soon led to the choice by many large theater chains to not show the movie as planned.  For a brief window of time, The Interview fell into a movie limbo, with no future plans for release, thereby giving a victory to the hackers working on behalf of the North Koreans.

Thankfully, independent movie theaters across the country stepped in and offered to screen the film as planned, ignoring further threats made by anonymous online terrorists and displaying a strong commitment to freedom of speech in this country.  I for one don’t blame the big chains for pulling out though.  After the massacre in Aurora, Colorado during the midnight screenings of The Dark Knight Rises back in 2012, movie theaters can no longer ignore threats like this anymore, especially when it comes from people who have already caused so much trouble to a major studio.  In this case, the movie theaters did the right thing and put safety over profits.  Sony Pictures, likewise, may have a whole lot of internal issues right now, but I think they deserve credit for sticking by this project for as long as they have, and by allowing a limited showing in select theaters on the planned release date, they are showing a surprising amount courage as well.  If there are any people that have done a disservice to our culture over this whole fiasco, it would be the tabloid news media, who basically gave the cyber-terrorists a power base by regurgitating the leaked material and driving the controversy further with their buzzy headlines.  Seth Rogen himself took the media to task over this in an interview he conducted on Sirius XM’s Opie and Jim Norton Show before the movie’s release, saying that people in the news media effectively did exactly what the criminals wanted them to do and that the news essentially became a “pawn shop selling the public stolen goods.”  Seth pretty much nailed it right there.  The first step the media should have taken was to inform the public about what had been stolen from Sony, and how that could affect our own internet security, but instead they focused only on the scandalous material found in the leaks, thereby emboldening the effectiveness of the cyber-attack.  It’s another sad reality of our media driven culture that the outrage became misplaced and that cyber-terrorism won because our news media didn’t do it’s job.  And yet, with all this controversy surrounding it, and perhaps even enhanced by it, The Interview went from just another movie into becoming a cultural event that could not be ignored.

So, for now I’m going to stop talking about what I thought about the controversy surrounding the picture and actually get down to how the movie stands on it’s own.  Is it really as dangerous as you would be led to believe given all the controversy?  For the most part, not really.  If you have seen any of Seth Rogen’s other films in the past few years, you pretty much know what to expect from this movie.  And in that respect, it actually works quite well.  Though the movie was also made available online the same day that it was released quietly into theaters, I still chose to see it on the big screen, which was thankfully available not too far from where I live.  The audience experience may have helped to enhance my reaction a bit, but even still, I found myself laughing quite frequently.  At the same time, I also recognized that it wasn’t really that scandalous a movie.  For the most part, the film actually plays it safe with their concept, never quite making any inflammatory statements about world politics or saying things about North Korea that we didn’t already know.  It pretty much is just another showcase for Seth Rogen’s sophomoric style of humor, which admittedly he uses well here.  Overall, I’m more shocked than anything that this was the movie that nearly brought down a major studio and made international relations between the US and North Korea further strained.  This.  A movie where one comedy bit involves a character (played by Seth Rogen himself) inserting a metal capsule into his rectum to hide it.  This was considered dangerous.  The movie is absurd by design, but the controversy now, in retrospect, seems even more absurd.  President Obama even had to make a statement regarding the status of this film, which just shows you the full breadth of how far all this went.  It remains to be seen how long lasting the ramifications of all this will be, but from what I saw, it ended up offering a funny diversion on a cold Christmas morning.

The plot, in case you were wondering, involves a successful talk show host named Dave Skylark (a hilarious James Franco), who has become noteworthy for getting his A-list guest stars to spill revealing hidden secrets about their lives on his live air show.  Dave’s trusted friend and show producer Aaron Rapaport (Rogen) unexpectedly gets a call one night from a representative of the North Korean government, asking for Skylark to come to the hermit nation and sit down for a one-on-one interview with their reclusive President Kim Jong-un (Randall Park).  The two colleagues see this as a big opportunity and quickly make plans for their trip.  Before they leave, however, they are visited by CIA Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan), who enlists the two men into a secret plan to take assassinate the dictator covertly on their trip.  The two agree to go along with the agency’s plans, but once in North Korea, ego and incompetence start to get in the way.  All the while, Kim Jong-un proves to be a more cunning diplomat than the two men thought, quickly winning over the dim-witted Skylark with his charm and very big and dangerous toys.  Rapaport on the other hand tries to keep the watchful eyes of North Korean propaganda minister Sook (Diana Bang) and Kim Jong-un’s security team from discovering their secret plan while at the same time trying to talk some sense into Skylark before his friend loses himself completely.  As you can see, the movie is less of an examination of US and North Korean relations than just a high concept setting for some ridiculous comedy bits.

Setting an absurdist comedy around such a volatile political situation may seem like a case of welcoming the fox into the hen house, but Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are not without company.  Indeed, Hollywood has been poking fun at dictatorships abroad for many years, no matter how intimidating or dangerous or genocidal they may be.  Look at all the propaganda films made around WWII for example.  The image of Adolph Hitler in many of our wartime movies contrasts sharply with those in the post war years.  During wartime, Hitler was mocked relentlessly as a mad buffoon who incited nothing more than our ridicule at his pathetic attempts at world domination.  Charlie Chaplin’s classic comedy The Great Dictator (1940) perfectly lampoons the image of Hitler in these early years, showing the absurdity of Hitler’s grandiose ambitions in a sharp satirical way.  However, this kind of practice became less popular once knowledge of Hitler’s true atrocities in the Holocaust came to light.  In the years since, it was seen as a dangerous practice to openly mock sitting foreign governments in movies, because some feared that it might spark international incidents in that volatile peacetime period.  Of course, once counter-cultural New Hollywood started, those old-fashioned notions started to go away as new satirists like Mel Brooks showed that you can make fun of dictators again and more importantly, make it acceptable.  Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1967) not only showed that satire about world politics was necessary, but also that the notion of ignoring it was also absurd.  Since then, mocking dictators has become largely commonplace, from Saddam Hussein in Hot Shots Part Deux (1993) to Kim Jong-il in Team America: World Police (2004).  And it’s mostly become helpful that until now, Hollywood has never received backlash for mocking world leaders.  I guess it only took that one person who didn’t get the joke.

And it’s a shame that politics ended up trumping artistic expression in this case; although I wouldn’t classify this movie as high art.  The movie is mostly geared towards making you laugh at it’s main characters self-absorbed antics rather than the political implications of their situation.  But, even still, it did make me laugh consistently throughout.  The only times when I thought that the movie hit a very introspective point was actually when they made statements about the role of media and public image, which is ironic given what’s happened because of this movie.  I believe there was an intentional connection made in the film’s plot where the attempted shutting down of the titular interview by Kim-Jong-un’s government officials is not all that different from a run-in with a celebrity publicist early on in the movie, making it one of the movie’s sharper observations.  The rest of the enjoyment in the movie more or less hinges on the absurd antics of the main characters, who most certainly do a great job here.  James Franco in particular steals this movie, playing one of the most entertainingly confident idiots I’ve seen in a movie in a long time.  Seth Rogen also gets a few good laughs throughout, even while acting as the straight man to Franco’s zanier performance.  However, special recognition should go to Korean-American actor Randall Park for his surprisingly nuanced performance as Kim Jong-un.  He helps add surprising layers to this real life dictator and actually makes him more than just a generic villain.  His scenes with Franco’s Skylark are definitely the film’s highlights and overall help to make this movie resonate more than it normally would have.

So, in the end, is The Interview this groundshaking-ly dangerous movie that we’ve all been led to believe it is?  No, it’s just a harmless, goofy comedy; but, still one that took some guts on the filmmakers’ part to pull off.  Overall, I’m glad that I took the opportunity I had to go see this.  Is it something must be seen now, given all the controversy?  Well, if you feel like you want to make a statement about free speech and show that you will not be bullied by cyber-terrorists, than you should put your support behind this movie.  But, at the same time, it’s not really a patriotic duty to go see it either.  In the end, I’d say that it’s worth watching just for a good laugh.  Yes there are some moments that make you see why it would draw the ire of international parties (particularly with the ending), but it’s also nothing really worse than most other political satires that we’ve seen over the years.  I think that more focus should be put on how we present ourselves as a culture, and that we shouldn’t let outside forces dictate what we can and cannot watch.  Cyber-terrorism is unfortunately a reality of today’s world and one that we’re still trying to understand.  But, the last thing we need to do is to embolden these attackers by doing exactly what they want us to do and abandoning our freedoms.  In the years form now, the movie may be overshadowed by the controversy that surrounded it, and oddly enough we may even see a movie made based on this whole event itself.  But, until we retrospectively examine this in the future, let me just end by saying that The Interview is still an enjoyable film to watch and worth seeking out if it’s playing at a theater near you.  It’s a well executed and funny presentation of a hilarious “what if” premise, and I’m sure most of you will get a laugh or more out of it too.  You’ll certainly never listen to Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” the same way again after watching it.  It may not be the funniest movie ever made, but it certainly has already left it’s mark as one of the most important, which in of itself is hilarious to think about.

Rating: 8/10

Once again we have arrived at the end of a remarkable cinematic journey that has taken us to the far reaches of the fictional land of Middle Earth.  The place dreamed up in the mind of J.R.R. Tolkein and brought to cinematic life by New Zealand-born director Peter Jackson has become one of the most fully realized worlds ever put on the big screen, giving us all great entertainment as we explore deeper with every new adventure.  When Jackson undertook the adaptation of Tolkein’s novels in the late 90’s, he was heading into an unexpected journey that would not only redefine his career, but cinema as a whole.  The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a monumental cinematic achievement, earning a whole bunch of acclaim and Oscar gold, as well as influencing a whole new generation of tech savvy filmmakers who were blown away by the groundbreaking visual effects in those films.  Given the success of the movies, it seemed logical that a film adaptation of Tolkein’s other works would follow.  Unfortunately, years of legal tie ups with competing studios and with Tolkein’s estate prevented a quick follow up from happening.  It wasn’t until nearly a decade later that we would see the world of Middle Earth back on the big screen.  And of course, the most natural way to follow up the story of The Lord of the Rings is to adapt it’s predecessor, The Hobbit.  Tolkein’s grand vision actually began with this modest sized fantasy tale of Bilbo Baggins, only to be expanded upon in one of the grandest sequels ever concocted with Rings.  And though The Hobbit is smaller in size and scale on the page, expectations were high for a cinematic retelling that could match the grandeur of Rings, and even surpass it.  It was a daunting challenge that director Peter Jackson faced, and in the end, it was one that really showed his best qualities as a filmmaker.

Though originally planned as a two parter, The Hobbit became such an overwhelming project that the decision was later made to expand it out into a trilogy just like The Lord of the Rings.  What’s most interesting about these Hobbit movies is that unlike Rings (which was already structured as a three part story from the beginning) they didn’t have the blueprint for exactly how to split the story.  It was largely determined by Peter Jackson as to how the story should be taken apart and spread out over three separate release dates.  For some, this was a terrible decision, because they saw The Hobbit as just a standalone story, and not something that had to follow the same formula as Lord of the Rings.  But, there were many others, like myself, who found this to be an interesting experiment.  Like Rings, every film in the trilogy has it’s own character and the expanded story-line actually helps to improve upon some things that were missing from the books; namely extra development for some of the secondary characters.  And there is textual basis for many of the additions that Jackson put into his movie.  Tolkein himself was always rewriting and expanding on his previous works, even years after they had first been published.  The Hobbit utilizes many of the extra notes that Tolkein had added over the years to help make this story feel more complete as well as more true to the larger world that the author had created.  And as a result, Tolkein’s original Hobbit has now become a great cinematic epic on it’s own, becoming a worthy follow-up to the enormous success of the Rings trilogy.  Following the success of An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Desolation of Smaug (2013), we are now treated with the closing chapter, and it may very well be the final tale of this series as a whole; The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

Five Armies is an interesting entry into this series, because unlike the other movies, it was titled something else for the longest time; being renamed only a few short months ago.  Up until this summer, the movie went under the name There and Back Again, which given the restructuring of the trilogy, really no longer made any sense.  As we learned at the conclusion of Desolation of Smaug, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and the band of Dwarves he has traveled with have already made it “there,” so the title no longer had the same significance.  The “there” in question of course is the great Lonely Mountain of Erebor, home of the greatest Dwarf kingdom in Middle Earth.  At the end of the previous film, the Dwarves successfully expel the evil dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), only to lead him towards destroying the nearby human settlement of Lake-Town.  There Smaug levels the city and leaves thousands homeless, until he is brought down by the skilled bowman Bard (Luke Evans).  Seeking restitution for the loss of their home, the men of Lake-Town travel to Erebor in hopes that the Dwarves would honor their promise of riches.  However, once there, the men are shut out by King Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) who has become consumed by greed after returning to the mountain.  Matters are made even worse when Elven King Thandruil (Lee Pace) arrives to stake his own claim on the mountain’s riches.  And unbeknownst to all is another army of killer orcs coming down from the north, led by the fierce Azog (Manu Bennett).  Caught up in all the fierce fighting is an overwhlemed Bilbo, who only seeks to ease the tension between those who should join together.  Meanwhile, wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan) learns of an even greater danger that he knows could lead to even worse problems for Middle Earth in the future.  All of this sets up for the titular Battle of the Five Armies, which serves as the climatic completion of this epic story, as well as the bridge into what happens next in The Lord of the Rings.

In the last couple of years, I have enjoyed this series immensely.  The Hobbit may not hit the same cinematic highs as The Lord of the Rings, but I don’t believe it was ever intended to.  Rings is the bigger story, and always has been.  It was colossal by design and was meant to take what was set up in the Hobbit to the next level.  Yes, Peter Jackson spread the story out into a trilogy, but story wise it still captures the same narrow focus of the original book, which is where it should be.  In The Hobbit, we don’t cut back and forth between different factions and different points of view; everything still ties together into Bilbo’s story, and comes to a climatic skirmish that resolves everything together nicely.  What worked in Rings  doesn’t work the same way in Hobbit, and I’m glad that Peter Jackson found an effective medium to tell the story in a way that helped this trilogy work on it’s own.  Not only that, but the movies also work well as standalone films in addition to being part of a larger narrative.  I especially found that to be true with last year’s Desolation of Smaug, which had probably the most interesting story structure of the entire series, being the middle chapter.  The Battle of the Five Armies takes everything that the other movies were leading up to and gives us a spectacular finish that hopes to resolve all the loose ends of this grand epic.  And did Peter Jackson manage to stick the landing?  On the whole, I would say that he absolutely did.  Armies is a spectacular closing chapter to this series that should satisfy anyone who’s been a fan of the series.

But, I should stress that even though the movie is a rousing adventure that will keep you at the edge of your seat, it is also the one movie in the series that has the most structural problems.  Not that they ruin the film by any means, but this movie unfortunately feels the least defined of the entire trilogy.  My gripe about the structure is mainly due to the fact that unlike the other Hobbit films, this one doesn’t quite stand alone as well. With Journey and Desolation, you could easily come into those two features with little knowledge of what comes before or after and still get swept up in the overall flow of the story.  With Battle of the Five Armies, I think the movie unfortunately becomes the only victim of Peter Jackson’s restructuring of the narrative.  While still engaging, Armies unfortunately feels more like an extended epilogue than a fully realized three act structured film.  Not to mention, the movie leaves nothing left for the viewers other than to see what amounts to one single climatic finale, which of course is the “Battle,” which makes up the majority of the film’s run-time.  This leaves little room for character development and world-building, which the previous films did so well leading up to this.  So, if you’re a casual viewer who has never seen one of these Middle Earth set films before and you go into this one cold, this movie more than the others will leave you confused as to what’s going on.  But, if you’re like me, and you’ve followed the movies from the very beginning, then you’ll still come away satisfied, as this movie works best when combined with the others.  I’ll be interested to see how this movie plays with the other five “Middle Earth Saga” films.  My guess is that it will serve as a perfect conclusion to Bilbo Baggins’ story line, as well as a great introduction into the beginning of the Lord of the Rings.  I just wish the restructuring hadn’t stolen away some of the movie’s identity as a singular piece.

But, even if the story is lacking in some of the elements that made the previous films so engaging, there is still a lot to enjoy in this movie overall.  Namely the performances by the actors, who have really made this series work splendidly over the years.  I actually hold a controversial opinion about this, in that I believe that the performances in The Hobbit trilogy have been stronger and more consistent on the whole than those in The Lord of the Rings.  I know some of you might think different, but there’s no denying that this series has been perfectly cast all around.  This is especially true with actor Martin Freeman, who has been pitch perfect in the role of Bilbo Baggins.  The greatness in his performance comes from the little gestures he adds to character during the quieter moments, showing just how great an improvisational performer he is.  Here he shows even more brilliance as Bilbo stands out as the voice of reason in a growing chaotic world.  And while his performance is great, it is actually overshadowed in this movie by Richard Armitage’s work as Thorin.  Armitage has been good in the series up to now, but here in Armies is where he really shines.  He brilliantly captures the tragic elements of the character, almost to Shakespearean levels, as Thorin falls deeper into madness once he’s gained his crown.  If a character benefits from more development in the crowded film, it’s definitely Thorin, and Richard Armitage utilizes his screen-time to full advantage.  The supporting cast also lends strong support, especially Luke Evens and Lee Pace as the opposing kings in the story.  Returning Rings stars Ian McKellan and Orlando Bloom also shine as Gandalf and Legolas respectively.  If there are any parts of the cast that don’t work, it probably be the underdeveloped Lake-Town characters, like comic relief character Alfrid (Ryan Gage) who feels a bit out of place in this film.  Apart form that, it’s another superbly acted film in the series from a very praise-worthy cast.

Of course, under the direction of Peter Jackson, we expect this movie to feature a lot of eye candy, and it doesn’t disappoint.  However, unlike the last films, this movie doesn’t take us anywhere new, and instead just retreads already familiar ground.  This may be disappointing for fans of the series who were hoping to see more of this amazing world explored, but Jackson still manages to use what he has effectively.  The titular Battle takes place at the very door step of the Lonely Mountain, and while it may not have the same scale as the Battle of Pelannor Fields from The Return of the King (2003) or the tension of the Battle of Helm’s Deep fro The Two Towers (2002), it still is an impressively choreographed scene that keeps you invested throughout  What Peter Jackson does very well here is to break up the huge army clashes with more intimate moments within the battle, like with smaller fights happening within the ruins of the human city of Dale, or the one on one battles between heroes and villains.  Fans of Legolas in particular will be pleased to know that the character once again delivers some more amazingly acrobatic combat tricks in his fight scenes here.  The films prologue, which picks up right where the previous film left off, is also stunning to look at, and gives the character Smaug an impressive sendoff as a perfect starting point for the rest of the movie.  Peter Jackson may not be hitting the same heights as he did with Lord of the Rings, but he’s not trying to either.  Here, I think he accomplished a respectful adaptation of Tolkein’s story by telling it to it’s fullest extant while at the same time improving on it’s potential.  It also helps that he’s maintained the same production team all these years later who also bring their A-game material to the crafting of this picture.  Whether it’s the wizards at Weta Workshop and Digital or Howard Shore’s rousing score, everything works together to create a rousing and beautiful picture.

So, in the end, The Battle of the Five Armies completes what I believe to be a very satisfying trilogy of fantasy films.  It may not be up to the level of  Lord of the Rings splendor, but what else is?  The last decade has been full of plenty of failed franchises that have tried to capitalize on Rings success, so I think Peter Jackson deserves a lot of praise for even trying to go there and back again into Middle Earth and get it done right.  But, even though the series comes to a pleasing end, there is also the unfortunate feeling of knowing that this will be the end of it all.  We will never see this version of Middle Earth realized on film ever again.  I know there are people out there that believe that Tolkein’s further writings about Middle Earth in The Simirillion will make it to the big screen someday, but if it does, it won’t come under the direction of Peter Jackson.  Jackson even wanted to stop his input on the series after Lord of the Rings, instead handing the reigns over to director Guillermo del Toro at one point in development.  But, once del Toro dropped out, Jackson took it upon himself to see this thing through and I’m so very happy he did.  I think these Hobbit movies, along with The Lord of the Rings, make up a remarkable 6 part story-line that will be unparalleled in all of cinematic history.  But, even with all this, I can understand if Jackson chooses to leave Middle Earth behind now.  Sadly, it appears that our journey into this remarkable world comes to a close with Battle of Five Armies, which in the end makes for a stunning final chapter and a great seg-way into what comes later in Lord of the Rings.  Is it the be all and end all of the entire series?  Not quite; The Return of the King is a much stronger climax and of course is the end point for the story chronologically.  Still, it is a superbly crafted film and one of the best experiences at the movies I’ve had this year.  But, if this is where we leave this version of Middle Earth for good, than I view it as a journey well taken.      

Rating: 8.5/10

The vast openness of Space has inspired some of the greatest works of art known to mankind.  Whether it is in paintings, or literature, or film, contemplating the cosmos has driven people to dream big and that ability to dream in turn inspires others to go further.  Jules Verne’s classic novel From the Earth to the Moon conceived of a journey to the moon out of a capsule fired from a giant cannon.  This imaginative story of exploration then inspired French artist and filmmaker Georges Melies to craft his own take on the story with 1902’s A Trip to the Moon, which was one of the early benchmarks of silent cinema.  Melies imaginative film has since become one of the first of a whole new genre that we now know as Science Fiction, and it’s a genre that continues to inspire not just the minds of other like-minded storytellers, but also those in the scientific field who work hard to create fiction into fact.  Jules Verne probably never would’ve believed that only 100 years after his novel was first published that it would become a reality, but that’s exactly what happened when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the lunar surface.  But, even after conquering the achievement of landing on the moon, mankind still has a thirst for further exploration of space that is very much reflected in the art of the 20th century and beyond.  Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) took the boldest step forward in theorizing where mankind would head next in our quest to learn about the fabric of Outer Space, and his movie continues to remain influential to this day.  And just like how Verne inspired Melies to carry the dream of Space travel further, Kubrick’s masterpiece has inspired other filmmakers to look to the skies and imagine even greater tales to tell.  And one such filmmaker who has taken up that challenge is Christopher Nolan with his new grand scale picture, Interstellar.

Interstellar is unmistakably inspired by Kubrick’s 2001, with many references throughout the movie; some blatant, some subtle.  It’s clear that Nolan is particularly fond of Kubrick’s movie, and Interstellar may in fact be the biggest and most expensive fan film ever made.  But, although Nolan’s directorial mark is all over this movie, it actually didn’t start out as one of his projects.  The script was initially written by Christopher’s brother Jonathan Nolan (whom he has shared writing credit with on 2001’s Memento and the films in the Dark Knight trilogy) with Steven Spielberg attached to direct.  Spielberg remained involved in the development of the project for many years, but ultimately he dropped out in order to pursue other projects.  Jonathan hoped to have another prestigious director pick up his ambitious script quickly thereafter, and luckily his own brother became available soon after the completion of The Dark Knight Rises (2012).  After a rewrite with both Nolans involved, the project moved ahead towards completion.  What’s interesting about this collaboration is that it marks a significant departure for both Christopher and Jonathan.  Most of their work up to now has been grounded in reality, with maybe The Prestige (2006) being their only previous work of Science Fiction, and that one still had a very earthbound footing.  Inception (2010) had it’s flights of imagination, but it existed in the realm of dreams, which helped to place the film in a still realistic place and time.  Interstellar departs significantly from previous Nolan films in that it takes us beyond the natural world that we know and understand and explores the unknown, albeit in a very scientifically minded way.  Did this departure create something bold and new for the Nolan brothers or was Interstellar a gamble that didn’t pay off?  Like the movie itself, the answers are not all that simple.

Though the movie has an original story-line, it’s concept is actually based on the writings of theoretical physicist Dr. Kip Thorne, who has become a leading voice in the study of Wormhole and Black Hole physics, and the developer of the “warped space-time” theory.  Thorne has theorized that Wormhole anomalies in Outer Space are capable of transporting matter across great distances, essentially by folding time on itself.  If mankind were to cross through the threshold of a black hole, they would come out on the other side in a part of space that would be far out of reach in the short life-span that human beings exist within.  It’s a theory that opens up many possibilities about what and where human beings in the future may explore and that is the central basis that Interstellar follows through most of it’s plot.  In the near future, the Earth is slowly becoming inhabitable because of climate change, and the remaining humans on Earth are running short on time.  What remains of NASA hopes to explore possible livable worlds that exist in another galaxy that has become accessible to them through a wormhole sitting next to the planet Saturn.  Expert pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is selected through an extraordinary set of circumstances to lead the expedition.  Accompanying him is physicist Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), the daughter of the head scientist (Michael Caine) who conceived the overall mission in the first place.  Cooper leaves behind his life and family in the hopes of finding a way to save the future for all mankind.  The mission takes them to the limits of Space, testing both their resolve and their grips on reality, especially when one visit to a planet cause time to accelerate to the point where one hour to them equals ten earth years.  At one point, Cooper watches the life of his family forward in an instant, and the daughter he left behind has now become the same age as him; played as an adult by Jessica Chastain.

The movie definitely creates the scenario laid out by Dr. Thorne perfectly, making the exploration scenes the real standouts in the film.  Unfortunately, the movie also suffers from an unfocused main plot, as it tries to be to many things all at once.  I think that this is mainly due to the transition between this starting out as a Spielberg project and then turning into a Nolan project.  There’s no doubt that some of the grittier, more information driven moments are perfectly handled by Nolan as a director, but they are interspersed with sentimental moments dealing with Cooper’s relationship with his daughter.  The sentimental moments in the film would’ve been absolutely nailed by someone like Spielberg, who has become a master at sentimentality in movies.  In Nolan’s hands, they seem a little less effective.  Not that he does a bad job with them, but in Interstellar, they feel a little disjointed from the rest of the movie.  I believe that when the movie went from one director to another, there was an attempt to try to preserve what was there before, and unfortunately Christopher Nolan just can’t do sentimental the same way that Spielberg does.  The moment when Cooper says goodbye to his family, in particular, feels rushed and less realistic than it should be, especially given all of Nolan’s attempts to make this movie feel as authentic as possible.  Though none of these moments completely derail the experience, they nevertheless make what could have been a great story feel more like an okay story-line, and that’s somewhat of a letdown for a director like Nolan who has become such a groundbreaking storyteller over the years with unconventional plots found in movies like Inception and Memento.

But, what the movie lacks in story, it more than makes up with it’s visual experience.  Nobody out there right now does epic scale better than Christopher Nolan, and Interstellar is a visual experience that is unlike no other.  Believe me when I say that you will be taken on a ride with this movie, especially if you watch it in IMAX.  Christopher Nolan has been a long time champion for large film formats, and Interstellar is no exception.  Filmed in true 70MM IMAX, Interstellar must be seen on the biggest screen possible in order to get the full experience.  When you see the vastness of the outer reaches of space depicted in this movie, it will take your breath away.  And Christopher Nolan deftly handles the huge scale of this production with incredible precision, whether it is the quiet cruising past the orbit of Saturn (which feels very Kubrickian) or the harrowing perils that the explorers face as they investigate each new world.  The scale of the movie is as massive as you would expect it to be, and really only the IMAX format can capture the true experience that Nolan was trying to convey with this picture.  If you thought the city-scape folding in on itself in Inception was breathtaking, than wait until you see tidal waves the size of mountains or clouds frozen in midair, which Nolan vividly brings to life here.  Even if the plot is lacking in some areas, there are going to be very few complaints about the visuals in this movie, and it will deservedly be up for many technical awards at the end of the year.  What’s more amazing is that Nolan tried to use as little digital effects as possible, instead shooting as much as he could with physical elements.  This is very impressive work, especially in the scenes within the cockpit of the space ship.  The aural experience of the movie also helps to heighten the overall film.  Believe me, many theaters across the world better have a good subwoofer in their auditoriums, because it will get a workout with this movie.  Pretty much everything you can say about the look and feel of this movie can be summed up as massive.

But at the same time, the movie does manage to give us characters that we can care about.  Apart from Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, his movies haven’t been really driven by the characters that exist within them, but were instead defined by the actors that portrayed them.  Interstellar is no differently, featuring a well-rounded cast of A-List stars all holding their own against the vast scale of the production.  Coming out of his recent Oscar-winning past year, McConaughey continues his recent resurgence with a very restrained performance as the main protagonist Cooper.  Within this role, McConaughey makes Cooper more than just a good pilot, but also a very thoughtful and intelligent human being who is more than capable at getting the impossible done.  It may not be Christopher Nolan’s most standout character, but he doesn’t need to be.  He doesn’t have many demons to overcome and his strength is more in his unwillingness to give up, which McConaughey delivers perfectly.  One particularly powerful moment that the actor nails is when he watches videos of his family captured over the last 20 years that he had missed during the exploration.  There were very few dry eyes in the theater that I was at when this scene played.  Even better though is Jessica Chastain’s wonderful performance as Cooper’s daughter Murph in adulthood.  The character is a tiny bit underwritten, but Chastain makes the most of her time, delivering a performance that really in fact balances the whole movie.  Showing us what’s going on back on Earth, her story works perfectly in conjunction with what’s going on in space.

There are also a pair of robots that help Cooper’s team on their mission, both of which were clearly inspired by Kubrick.  Sort of combining the artificial intelligence of HAL 9000 with the stark rectangular shape of 2001‘s enigmatic monolith, the robots are interesting characters of in of themselves.  The most notable one is named TARS, and he is programmed with a sense of humor setting, which makes him a much needed comic relief in the movie.  Voiced by actor Bill Irwin, TARS is the exact opposite of HAL 9000, being resourceful and good-natured as opposed to homicidal.  The other robot CASE (voiced by Josh Stewart) is less defined, but works off of the wise-cracking TARS perfectly.  Nolan regular Michael Caine is perfectly fine in his limited role, and actress Ellen Burstyn delivers a memorable moment in the film as an elderly Murph near film’s end.  There’s also an appearance from a big A-List actor half-way through the movie that took me by surprise, as this person remained un-credited through most of the production.  Unfortunately, the actors who seem to get the short-end of the stick are Cooper’s fellow crewmen.  Anne Hathaway does her best, but her character is the most thinly drawn of the whole film.  The same goes for the other members of the team, who are obviously being set up as the casualties.  But I think the fault is more in the writing and less in the actual performances, as every does the best they can.  Overall, the performances are excellent and help keep the movie grounded, which is impressive given the scale of everything.

So, the movie overall is a solid effort, if not an absolutely perfect one.  I still had a extraordinary experience watching this movie, and I strongly recommend it for that alone.  But the movie is already starting to have it’s detractors out there, and I would be lying if I said that they weren’t making some valid points.  The story-line is a little shaky and it is less assured than some of Christopher Nolan’s other movies.  I still view Inception as his masterpiece, and his Dark Knight trilogy is still a monumental achievement.  But even if it is B-grade Nolan, that still means that it is far better than most other movies out there.  I think that Nolan has just become a victim of his own high standards and for some good enough is not nearly good enough anymore.  But even still, the movie is a visual wonder and is still an expertly crafted piece of cinema.  Like Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, it portrays the emptiness of space better anyone had before, and perfectly portrays mankind’s tinniest controls over it.  Whats more, it also inspires that same sense of wanting to explore further that has also inspired the likes of Verne, and Melies, and Kubrick.  Space is definitely the final frontier for mankind, and hopefully a film like Interstellar inspires other to take that next step forward as well.  It’s amazing to think that a dream imagined on cinema could become a reality in the span of less than a century, but we  saw men walk on the moon, so hopefully Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar will inspire the explorers of tomorrow as well.  If that can be possible, Interstellar could end up being Nolan’s most important film in the long run.  Regardless, it still stands as an impressive, albeit imperfect, cinematic experience that has to be seen to be believed.

Rating: 8/10

Taking on an adaptation of a runaway best-seller novel can be a daunting task for any filmmaker.  On the plus side, you are bringing something to the big screen that already has name recognition, but the downside of this is that the same audience is going to hold the material up to high standards, putting a whole bunch of extra pressure on your translation.  That almost certainly had to be the case with David Fincher’s recent adaptation of author Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel Gone Girl.  The novel was a smash hit when it first was published, spending eight weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.  And while the novel itself certainly has been branded within the mystery thriller genre, it has also often been praised by fans and critics alike for it’s unexpected twists and unconventional plotting.  Naturally, this instant success led to an immediate acquisition of the film rights by 20th Century Fox, who quickly moved the adaptation of the novel into production.  Flynn herself was hired on to adapt her own work into a screenplay.  Naturally, for such a high profile adaptation of the novel, Fox would want to get someone on board who could do the material justice, without alienating too much of the built in audience.  Fincher is already a well respected filmmaker, but Gone Girl seems like a departure for the man who brought brilliant oddball features to the big screen like Seven (1995) and Fight Club (1999).

And yet at the same time, Fincher is actually perfect for the film.  For one thing, he has become the go to guy for bringing almost un-adaptable novels to big screen and making them work.  That was definitely the case with the gonzo Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club, or the oddly themed F. Scott Fitzgerald classic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).  These two novelizations almost defy any filmmaker’s notions of trying to make them into a coherent movie, but Fincher managed to find a way.  He has also proven himself to be qualified to take on popular best-sellers as well, as he did with The Social Network (2010) which was based on the popular Ben Mezrich novel The Accidental Billionaires, as well as his 2011 adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  But, unlike these other novels, Gone Girl is far more conventional and less flashy.  Some would say that Gillian Flynn’s novel is more or less an “airplane read;” good for passing the time, but nothing that really defies conventional standards otherwise, like the majority of Fincher’s adaptations usually do.  But in the hands of David Fincher, audiences will soon learn that there is more under the surface in Flynn’s novel than meets the eye, and it shows how one artist can actually elevate the work of another, and bring out the best of both worlds.  Indeed, Gone Girl may seem like another conventional thriller on the surface, but in the hands of some truly talented people in front and behind the camera, it becomes anything but conventional.

The story involves a failed writer named Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) as they try to make life in small town America work after Nick has lost his cushy job in New York City.  Naturally this has put a strain on their marriage.  One day, on the eve of their fifth year anniversary, Nick comes home to find his living room in shambles and his wife nowhere to be seen.  He contacts the police and is soon visited by Detective Rhonda Boney, who quickly begins an investigation into the disappearance of Amy.  The investigation quickly gains traction in the press, due to Amy’s status as a quasi-celebrity, being the inspiration for a protagonist in a series of childrens’ books written by her mother titled The Adventures of Amazing Amy.  Nick remains cooperative with the authorities and the media, but after a couple of days, he soon discovers that the focus has shifted away from finding Amy and more towards pointing the finger at him.  Soon accusations start to fly at Nick, which he is unable to shrug off, and dark secrets about his marriage start to come to light.  Even his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) begins to believe the worst.  It all leads to where you might expect a typical missing person scandal would go, but as readers of the novel know, all of this is just half of the story.  From the point where Nick seems to hit a wall and appears to be the untrustworthy psycho that the whole world believes him to be, the story suddenly shifts focus and we soon learn that there’s a whole other side to the story that I can really get into without spoiling some of the most unexpected plot twists.  Suffice to say, there’s a reveling exchange that sums up the whole story when Det. Boney is told by her deputy that “The simplest answer always seems to be the right one” to which she answers, “Actually, I’ve never known that to be true.”

So, as far as adaptations go, was David Fincher the right man for the job here.  Though the material may be more conventional than the typical Fincher flick, he still managed to make this film adaptation work for him.  There are plenty of Fincher touches throughout, though he seems to have abandoned the flashy camerawork that defined most of his early career.  Here, his style comes through in the editing and the composition of shots, which are all exquisitely done.  Fincher has achieved that rarefied place in cinema where his style can work with just about any story-line, and Gone Girl is no exception.  Indeed, if any other director was tasked with adapting this novel to the big screen, I don’t think that it would’ve gone over as well as it does here.  Probably one of the most helpful elements in the adaptation was having the author around to help shape the story to fit Fincher’s vision.  Gillian Flynn started out as a television critic for Entertainment Weekly, so she already knows the game about taking material from one medium to another, so it probably led to fewer conflicts of interest that usually plagues many big screen adaptations.  And indeed, both director and author have managed to work together well here.  Fincher gets to satisfy his cinematic intentions while Gillian Flynn’s story is maintained with all of the memorable twists and turns preserved.   And when those twists come to light, it is exploited perfectly by the film.  The third act in particular is where the movie really crosses over into Fincher territory, with some truly unexpected flourishes that helps to make this movie stand apart from other mystery thrillers.  Some may be put off by where the left-field turns this movie makes, but I for one felt that it was what ultimately elevated the movie as a whole in the end.

If there’s one thing that Fincher’s adaptation manages to improve upon in his adaptation, it’s the commentary about the media.  Flynn’s novel also touches upon the abuses of tabloid journalism, but Fincher brings those themes to new light by presenting the full extant of their impact on the ordinary citizen.  Indeed, the harshest criticism of the movie is saved for the vultures in the media who exploit crime investigations for ratings and those who pass judgment on a case without taking in all the facts, which anyone who has seen the cable news networks in the last couple of years will know what I’m talking about.  In fact, there is a character in the movie named Ellen Abbott (played perfectly by Missy Pyle) who is obviously supposed to be a very thinly veiled representation of notorious media vulture Nancy Grace, complete with Southern drawl, which helps to relate this movie with the media’s disgraceful current state.  While the plot has it’s own intrigue to it, it’s the underlying message that really resonates in the end, and for a movie made by a studio owned by a giant new conglomerate itself, that’s a very bold position to take.  But it’s not just the media that the movie points the finger at; it’s us the audience as well.  The brilliant part of the movie is that it shows us that there are multiple sides to every story, and by showing us only parts of it at a time, through some truly brilliant story-editing, we soon realize how easy it is to be swayed by our own prejudices.  It’s the kind of manipulation that the media preys upon, giving us only the side of the story that they want to satisfy their own agendas.  Overall, I’m very glad that someone like Fincher took the opportunity to take that aspect of the novel and bring it too it’s fullest potential.

Another aspect that has always characterized Fincher’s films is his exceptional choices in casting, and Gone Girl continues that trend.  Ben Affleck has had a hard time convincing people of his skills as an actor, given that his early career was plagued by a lot of bad choices in roles.  But in recent years, he’s been reversing that characterization very effectively, and Gone Girl may be his best role to date.  Let’s face it, he’s perfectly cast here, as someone who is hounded by the media and judged unfairly due to his celebrity status.  Affleck has lived in this world for a long time, and he draws from that perfectly to create a memorable performance as the heavily-scrutinized Nick.  But, an even more revalatory performance comes from Rosamund Pike as Amy.  The British actress has been around for a while, appearing in supporting roles from 2009’s An Education  to Edgar Wright’s The World’s End (2013).  Here, she is elevated to lead status, and she manages to give a knockout performance as the always mysterious Amy.  The brilliance of cutting between Amy and Nick’s stories, and seeing the crime from both points, is that it shows how unreliable they are as protagonists in the film, and both actors brilliantly exploit the flaws and quirks of each character.  Rosamund Pike especially creates a truly memorable and strange character in Amy, and ultimately it’s her performance that sells the movie’s twisted plot and makes it work.  The supporting cast is also great here, especially Kim Dickens as Det. Boney.  And Fincher managed to do the near impossible by getting a good performance out of Tyler Perry (creator of the Madea films), who is actually perfectly cast as high-priced celebrity lawyer Tanner Bolt.

If the movie has a flaw at all it would be in some of the pacing.  It’s something that usually plagues films that are told in non-linear ways, and while it’s not too distracting and doesn’t hurt the movie as a whole, it does detract the film a little in the beginning.  By going back and forth between the past and present in the opening hour of the film, we the audience are bombarded with a lot of information and misinformation, which does lead to a lot of intrigue in the story-line, but it also lags the film as well.  And that can be a problem for a film that runs 149 minutes.  While the first act is interesting, it isn’t until we reach plot twist #1 that the movie starts to find it’s footing, and indeed, the movie becomes a fascinating roller-coaster ride from there.  Not a huge problem, but it does make the film feel just slightly disjointed and makes this film just a little less than perfect.  It does come very close to being perfect however, especially when the movie goes into some truly out-of-left-field places, but when stretched out to 2 and 1/2 hours, there’s bound to be a little flab in the way.  Again, it’s the only flaw that I could see in an otherwise astounding presentation.  Taking a best-selling novel, even a conventional one, and making it work as a film can be hard work, and Fincher’s skills as a filmmaker really come out to shine here, particularly when it comes to staging.  Other directors may have played it too safe or would’ve gone way overboard with adapting something like Gone Girl.  Fincher finds that right balance between reigning in the flourishes at crucial times in the story, while at the same time letting loose when it absolutely needs to go there.  And it’s that balance that ultimately helps to iron over some of the more notable flaws in the overall story.

It may not be perfect, but I can think of few other movies out there right now that will really challenge it’s audience to think as well as Gone Girl does.  Like the mystery at it’s center, there’s more to this movie than what’s on the surface.  And indeed, I do think that this was a great exercise for David Fincher.  It may not be as flashy as something like Fight Club or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but that’s only because the material here needed to be brought to the screen with a subdued tone.  I actually look at this movie as Fincher’s Hitchcockian film.  It’s got the languid pacing, the unexpected twists, and even a mysterious blonde at it’s center just like most Hitchcock films.  And like Hitchcock, Fincher is a director who loves to play around with it’s audience.  The best part of the movie is that it’s unafraid to take it’s audience through all sorts of different emotions.  At some points you’ll feel un-eased and horrified by what’s going on in the plot and then by the next scene you’ll be laughing hysterically by the wild turns that that the plot takes.  That certainly happened in the audience that I watched this movie with.  Again, the wild third act may throw some people off, but judging by the audience reaction that I saw, it looks like Fincher managed to tap into something good here.  I admire a filmmaker who can do that to an audience and that’s why I continually put my trust into David Fincher’s cinematic choices.  Gone Girl may not be the kind of movie you would expect from a director of his caliber, but after seeing the final results, it’s clear that there was no one else better for the job.  And that’s no mystery.

Rating: 8.5/10