Movie Reviews

A Most Violent Year

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  • Title: A Most Violent Year
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A Most Violent YearI’ve never been a big fan of gangster movies. Writer/director J.C. Chandor A Most Violent Year, however, is more a character study than a focus on the questionable business practices of a successful immigrant businessman (Oscar Isaac) during one the most violent winter’s of New York City’s history.

All things considered, Abel Morales (Isaac) is actually a good guy whose ambitions to enlarge the business leave him vulnerable to attacks from his competitors and investigations by the police. He also must deal with the ruthlessness of his wife (Jessica Chastain) and the mistakes of one of his drivers (Elyes Gabel).

A Most Violent Year is a well-made film that, even if it isn’t as satisfying as I’d like, has plenty to recommend. The entire film is built around Isaac’s performance which doesn’t disappoint. Chastain is scary at times in the role of Isaac’s wife and the daughter of a gangster (whose name gets dropped often but never makes an appearance leaving a large piece of the couple’s lives unexplored). Scorpion‘s Elyes Gabel is put to good use as the eager but distrustful immigrant who wants nothing more than to become Abel.

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American Sniper

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  • Title: American Sniper
  • IMDb: link

American SniperAdapted from the autobiographical story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood offers an old fashioned character study with strong patriotic leanings and not as much introspection as one might ultimately like. Bradley Cooper is terrific in the starring role of a soldier obsessed with serving his country and protecting his brothers-in-arms overseas while struggling with even the idea of life back home with his wife (Sienna Miller). The result is an engaging, if incomplete, story as Eastwood careful cuts away anything that doesn’t quite fit Kyle’s heroic narrative including an ending that leaves much unsaid.

Following the soldier’s own interests, the scenes that take place during Kyle’s four tours of Iraq which made him the most lethal sniper in U.S. Military history work better than the limited amount of time we witness him back home. While acknowledging the character’s hero complex, Eastwood mostly shies away from how the length of Kyle’s service effected him emotionally choosing instead to celebrate (one might even argue glorify) the man’s war record. Eastwood tells the story he wants well, even if the result begins to feel a bit too much like pro-military propaganda.

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Inherent Vice

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  • Title: Inherent Vice
  • IMDb: link

Inherent ViceIs hippie noir a thing? Set in 1970 Los Angeles writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon‘s novel of the same name follows the misadventures of pothead private investigator Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix). Doc is hired by his former girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston), whom he has never gotten over, to foil a plot involving the forced incarceration of her current married boyfriend (Eric Roberts) into a mental institution in his family’s attempt to grab his millions.

Filled with oddball characters with distinctive names, Inherent Vice is an intriguing blend of Pynchon’s writing with Anderson’s style featuring an all-star supporting cast of Josh Brolin as a L.A. police detective with an intense hatred for our P.I., Owen Wilson as a presumed dead musician whose wife (Jena Malone) hires Doc to discover the truth about his whereabouts, Hong Chau as “a small perfect Asian dewdrop” working at a massage profile where Doc is temporarily framed for murder, Reese Witherspoon as an Assistant District Attorney and another of Doc’s old flames, and Pretty Little Liars‘ Sasha Pieterse as a young runaway with a drug problem supported by her doctor (Martin Short).

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The Imitation Game

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  • Title: The Imitation Game
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The Imitation Game

Code breaking is an art as much as a science and never was it needed, or more artfully accomplished, than by the British during World War II. Set during the middle of Second World War, The Imitation Game follows an unlikely group of scholars, mathematicians, linguists, chess champions, and intelligence officers who were thrown together with the singular goal of breaking Germany’s unbreakable code known as Enigma. Enter Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) who might have been the biggest hero of the war if every advancement he made in cryptology (including the creation of the first computer) hadn’t been state secrets until well after his death.

Based on the novel by Andrew Hodges and adapted by Graham Moore, the film is anchored by Benedict Cumberbatch who lends a vulnerability to the abrasiveness of Turing whose own co-workers often struggled to get along with. In one of her most understated roles Keira Knightley stars as Joan Clarke, the lone female member of the team to break Engima, even if she had to officially work as a secretary in order to do so.

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Unbroken

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  • Title: Unbroken
  • IMDb: link

UnbrokenMash-up The Bridge on the River Kwai and Rescue Dawn, while oversimplifying it for mainstream audiences, and you’ve got something that looks quite a bit like Angelina Jolie‘s directorial debut. Unbroken isn’t a bad film, but unwilling to color outside the lines Jolie takes a remarkable story and offers us a paint-by-number hero tale that only marginally entertains while struggling to celebrate a man’s inspirational journey as a prisoner of war during World War II.

After clips showing us what a punk kid he was before falling in love with track and field, the film centers around the war experience of former Olympian Louis Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) whose Olympic moments and life following WWII are glossed over and ignored. Instead the screenplay by the Coen Brothers (in the most un-Coen Bros. script you’ve ever seen), Richard LaGravenese, and William Nicholson is a somewhat unfocused look at Louis’ life in war spending an inordinate amount of time focused on the weeks he was lost at sea before skipping ahead to offer highlights of his P.O.W. experience which by on-screen time you may mistakenly feel were of near equal length (rather than weeks on the raft versus the years spent in the camps).

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