Movies of 2013

Memorializing, since I'm about to retire the 2013 sidebars.

• The Wolf of Wall Street (12/30/13)
• American Hustle (12/26/13)
• The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug (12/21/13)
• Thor - The Dark World (11/8/13)
• Gravity (10/21/13)
• The World's End (8/23/13)
• Elysium (8/22/13)
• The Wolverine (7/29/13)
• The To Do List (7/28/13)
• The Way, Way Back (7/22/13)
• Only God Forgives (7/20/13)
• Pacific Rim (7/19/13)
• World War Z (7/6/13)
• This Is the End (6/29/13)
• Man of Steel (6/16/13)
• Star Trek Into Darkness (5/27/13)
• The Hangover, Part 3 (5/24/13)
• Iron Man 3 (5/19/13)
• Life of Pi (2/15/13)
• Zero Dark Thirty (1/13/13)
• Lincoln (1/2/13)

Of course, this doesn't include the dozens of movies we watched on Netflix.  In a separate post, I'll list the best of those.

American Hustle: Missed it by that much

"American Hustle" has been getting some of the best reviews of the holiday season, and is an almost certain nominee for the Best Picture Oscar.  Acting nominations for Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and even Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner wouldn't surprise me.  I suppose even Bradley Cooper could pull one out of the hat, but we'll talk about that in a minute.

First things first - I enjoyed it. The problem?  I didn't enjoy it as much as I expected, and the problems I had with it keep me from placing it in the "great" category.  For the sake of comparison, "The Fighter" and "Silver Linings Playbook," director David O. Russell's two most recent flicks, resonated more with me.  And that's a shame, because the material in "American Hustle" is ripe for the pickings, and I left the theater with a vague feeling that Russell had missed too many opportunities. 

Loosely based on the ABSCAM sting of the late '70s, the movie does a great job of evoking that era, and the "styles" and fashions of late seventies New York City and New Jersey. There's a lot moral ambiguity on display, not unlike that which Sidney Lumet explored in his magnificent "Prince of the City" (admittedly, one of my all-time favorite movies).  The FBI agent played by Bradley Cooper is a self-absorbed prick, and it doesn't take long for the viewer to begin actively rooting against his quest to make a name for himself by snagging some big names in his little caper.  All of the other protagonists are indeed breaking the law in some form or fashion, but none of it feels serious enough to warrant a full-scale FBI operation, a viewpoint well-expressed by the Louis C.K. character, Cooper's immediate supervisor in the bureau.  But again like "Prince of the City," the whole thing takes on a life of its own when someone higher up in the bureau, looking to make a name for himself, green-lights the deal.

All of the players acquit themselves well, but I was most impressed with Bale's rumpled con man, Adams as his partner, and Renner as a politician trying to do all the right things in exactly the wrong ways.  Cooper, I thought, was overwrought in his role, with his big moments screaming "ACTING!"  But for all the talent on display in the leads, it is Robert DeNiro, in a scene that can't last more than 5 minutes, who steals the show as a calm, truly malevolent mob veteran from Miami.  It's always nice to have a reminder that he still has it, and here he does, in spades.

Can you criticize a movie for not being as good as it could have been?  Perhaps that's not being fair, but that's where I am on "American Hustle."

Gravity

There was a time when going to the movies implied that you would experience no small amount of magic.  It's a feeling that is difficult to describe and hard to quantify - but it's the kind of feeling that I got when seeing "Jaws" in the theater for the first time, or "Star Wars," or "The Empire Strikes Back," or even a more dramatic or "serious" film like "The Godfather," "Prince of the City," or "Hannah and Her Sisters."  The feeling that, for two or more hours of your life, you were going to be treated to something special - something that would stay with you for much longer than the time you spent seated in the theater.  I see more than my fair share of movies these days, both at the theater and at home on Netflix or on demand.  But that feeling of magic has seemed to be fleeting in recent years - the last time I truly felt it was during "Inglorious Basterds" - the notion that, as a viewer, you were seeing something new, something fresh and dynamic - and doing so in the hands of a master.

Last night, we saw "Gravity," and it felt like going back to those old times.  First of all, we were lucky enough to score some free tickets at the IMAX, thanks to the local newspaper.  The movie began at 7:30 and we were planning to eat dinner at a restaurant right across the street, but when we got there we saw that a line had already formed (unlike normal procedure for this theater, there was no assigned seating), so we spent more than an hour in line, which was a real throwback to the old days.  And even though the movie has been out for a couple of weeks, few people in the theater had seen it (the hosts asked that question beforehand), so it had a bit of that "opening night" feeling.

And then, of course, there was the movie itself.

"Gravity" was, suffice to say, spectacular.  It's hard to put it into words that don't end up sounding like one of those reviews where the "critic" is more in the business of having his/her quotes included on a movie poster than actually providing cogent analysis/criticism of the movie in question.  But through its 91 minutes, it is fair to say that there is never a moment when the viewer is not on the absolute edge of their seat, coupled with a feeling that you're out there in space with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney (just like you might have felt you were in the water with the young actor who played Brody's son in "Jaws" when the shark swam into the pond).

It's hard to talk about the story without providing spoilers, so let's just say that a team of astronauts is on a space shuttle mission involving the Hubble Telescope, something goes horribly wrong with another nation's attempt to bring down one of their satellites, which leads to a chain reaction that sends what amounts to hellfire careening towards the unsuspecting astronauts.  It's then a survival story with Bullock front and center - and like the unseen truck driver was the seemingly unstoppable nemesis for Dennis Weaver in "Duel," the space debris becomes the nemesis for Bullock's character, Dr. Ryan Stone (or, as others have commented, think Sigourney Weaver vs. the alien in the original "Alien").  Through a combination of guile, heart and sometimes sheer luck, Dr. Stone survives one obstacle after another in her effort to stay alive and get back home.

Visually...well, I don't know that any film, ever, has topped it.  James Cameron himself has said that this was the space film he has been waiting for all his life.  And notwithstanding the likely scientific errors that some have pointed out, this is the first time that I've ever seen a movie where I felt I was feeling what it must be like for those few humans that have had the opportunity and the privilege to venture out beyond our atmosphere.  If the film is even in the ballpark in its depiction of what it is like to be walking in space, then my admiration for what astronauts do is all the greater.

This, folks, is movie magic.  "Gravity" is what going to the movies is supposed to be about.  And when you go, you owe it to yourself to see it at the IMAX, in 3-D.

"Zero Dark Thirty"

I suppose it's impossible to write about "Zero Dark Thirty" without acknowledging the politics that have dominated the discussion about the movie, so I might as well get that out of the way first.

Of course, there's the question of torture.  Does the movie glorify torture?  Does the movie tell a false story with respect to how it links torture (and the information gleaned from it) with finding Osama bin Laden? 

Then there's the question of Hollywood politics.  Was Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar snub due to the perception of Hollywood that she made her movie with the full cooperation of the C.I.A. and/or some other arm of the U.S. government? 

The whole thing strikes me as a little ridiculous, so here are a few personal observations.

1. I was expecting the torture scenes to be much worse than they turned out to be.  More than one of the scenes in "Django Unchained" made me squirm in my seat much worse than anything in "Zero Dark Thirty."  And the line between torture and the successful Bin Laden operation is somewhere between tenuous and indirect.  Information is obtained, but if I followed the narrative correctly, it was not always correct, and certainly not always helpful.  So I'm not sure how that translates into a glorification of torture.

2. One never knows what evil lurks in the minds of Oscar voters, but it is without question a travesty that Bigelow did not receive an Oscar nomination for her direction.  You can reasonably criticize the film's character development and even screenplay, but you simply can't criticize the direction, which is masterful.

And I'm no apologist for any of the foreign policy mistakes the U.S. has made during my lifetime, and I've read "Endless Enemies" so I know that many of the situations in which we've found ourselves on the world front resulted almost entirely from previous mistakes or errors in judgment that we made.   However, none of that stopped me from "rooting" for our side during the movie.

So with all that out of the way, I'll just come right out and say that "Zero Dark Thirty" is a magnificent movie, one that will likely one day come to be regarded as a masterpiece.  It's no small trick to construct a movie around an already known outcome and maintain the tension throughout, but Bigelow manages it while barely breaking a sweat.  Part of the reason for this is that the viewer knows how much is at stake, so even though the movie is "about" the Bin Laden operation, it always feel as if it's focused on something much bigger - nothing less than a war about a way of life.

Jessica Chastain was the perfect choice to play Maya, the intrepid CIA analyst who slowly but surely - through mind-numbing hours of data collections, and soul-numbing moments of "enhanced interrogation" - puts together the information she needs to pinpoint the location of Bin Laden.  Slight in physical appearance, she nonetheless is a force to be reckoned with - and it's no small matter that it is her larger and tougher colleague who ends up back in the States, weary of it all.  In a way, she and her colleagues are almost like the flight crew technicians in "Apollo 13" - not glamorous, but determined and with talents that from the outside are easy for some to miss.

But the entire cast is great - Kyle Chandler as the world weary station chief,  Mark Strong as the middle/upper level manager overseeing the operation against Bin Laden, Jennifer Ehle as Maya's tough-as-nails colleague and friend, Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt (!) as the badass leaders of the Navy Seal team that conducts the operation, even James Gandolfini as "the Director" - and all of them sprinkle their performances with a level of urgency that suits perfectly the material that screenwriter Mark Boal has given them to work with.

And a special shout-out to the movie's final 45 minutes -which depicts the actual operation itself.  This is film-making of the highest order, and when we saw it, the theater was so quiet that you could hear your own heart beating (well, at least I could).  Those scenes reach a level of intensity that have rarely been matched, but they would mean less if the almost 2 hours that preceded them hadn't set the stage so effectively.

Great, great stuff.

Spielberg and Day-Lewis' Masterful "Lincoln"

Whether it is based on the biographies we've read, or the photos we've seen, or even seeing him "live" at Disneyland when we were kids, we all have a vision in our minds of what Abraham Lincoln must have sounded like, how he walked, how he talked, and how he struggled and ultimately prevailed over the crises of the day.

50 years from now, a generation of Americans will base their own mental pictures of Lincoln on Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln."  This is not just the performance of the year - Day-Lewis' rendering of the beloved 16th President is a titanic achievement, and over time Day-Lewis as Lincoln will come to stand with actor/character portrayals like Scott/Patton and Brando/Corleone as the very best that cinema has to offer.  I didn't think it was possible for Day-Lewis to top his performance in "There Will Be Blood," but he does it here.

But a great performance alone does not a great movie make.  Fortunately, that is not an issue here, as the screenplay, the direction, and the supporting performances are all up to the task.  As I'm sure most have heard by now, "Lincoln" is set in the final months of his presidency, and focuses on his efforts to secure passage of the 13th Amendment.  It is a richly detailed and compelling story, and for someone who has spent the better of part of his life involved in or directly working in politics and government, it is also a feast for the mind.  For current pundits and others who decry the current lack of civility in modern-day politics, it reminds us that the American brand of politics has almost always been a coarse instrument, one shaded with gray.  No doubt, there are political theorists past, present and future who will take exception to Lincoln's "ends justify the means" approach to getting what he wants.  For the rest of us, it is a useful reminder that there are always exceptions which prove the rule.

Aside from brief scenes of battle and its terrible aftermath, Steven Spielberg does not try to overwhelm the story with spectacle.  His restrained, sure-handed direction may, in time, come to be considered his best.  Tony Kushner's screenplay does not try to paint the characters as saints or sinners - he just shows us these characters as what they were, and lets the viewer decide on his/her own how they feel about them.

"Lincoln" is also filled with great performances from actors who no doubt felt challenged to prove themselves worthy to share screen time with one of the masters of the craft.  The list is long - Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson as the era's version of lobbyists (well before the advent of bodies like the Fair Political Practices Commission), Hal Holbrook as Preston Blair, reminding us that as we walk through D.C. we are literally walking through the country's history, and David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward, whose relationship with Lincoln is strong enough that he can stand up to the great man when he feels he's gone or been led astray.  And Sally Field, who portrays Mary Todd Lincoln sympathetically (and even heroically, as she has no qualms in standing up to Thaddeus Stevens when the occasion demands it), but also in a way that makes it clear that the crises Lincoln was struggling with were personal as well as national.

It's all wonderful, really.  I have nothing negative to say about the movie, and urge everyone to see it.