Drama

Southpaw

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  • Title: Southpaw
  • IMDb: link

SouthpawDirector Antoine Fuqua‘s Southpaw is a relatively straightforward story of an athlete getting up off the mat after being knocked down by life. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as an undefeated boxing champion nearing the end of his career whose life is struck by a series of tragic events which cause him to reevaluate his priorities, attempt to become a better father to his daughter (Oona Laurence), and reclaim a life, both in and out of the ring, which he once took for granted.

The movie is highlighted by performances by Gyllenhaal, Laurence, and Rachel McAdams as the boxer’s wife. Both Forest Whitaker add 50 Cent a little life to the party as well, but neither is asked to color outside the lines of very basic characters.

Boxing fans are likely to get more out of the movie than others, although I think the first-person perspective used in spots during the climactic in-ring battle is a little disorienting.

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Burnt

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  • Title: Burnt
  • IMDb: link

BurntIt didn’t make me hungry. That’s an interesting response to have towards a film centered around food. Our story stars Bradley Cooper as talented chef, recovering addict, and all around asshole Adam Jones who basically blackmails the old friend (Daniel Brühl) he screwed over in his last job into hiring him as the chef for a mediocre London restaurant. Jones’ motives are two-fold. First, he honestly does want to make amends to those he’s wronged in the past. At least as important to him, however, is the chance to reclaim glory in the hopes of achieving the prestigious three Michelin star rating as one of the best restaurants (and chefs) in Europe.

I joke that the food on display didn’t wet my appetite but Burnt deals with a different side of the retaurant business by focusing as much on its burdens, costs, and obsessive personalities struggling to work behind the scenes as it does about creating the food. Even when the film puts the food first the perspective is always more about the presentation of the meal than the meal itself. Although the film constantly tells us that Jones is culinary genius it rarely shows us actual examples of this on-screen.

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Bridge of Spies

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  • Title: Bridge of Spies
  • IMDb: link

Bridge of SpiesSet in a smaller world during a darker time, the latest collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks takes place at the height of the Cold War and is inspired by the real events concerning Brooklyn lawyer James B. Donovan (Hanks) who found himself thrust into the middle of international intrigue by agreeing to defend Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) in an American court of law. Spielberg’s humanism is certainly on display in a film that feels a bit like a throwback to his movies from the late 90s and early 2000s.

While dealing primarily with Donovan and the effects and consequences of his defense of Abel, Bridge of Spies also introduces two subplots which eventually will be woven into the main storyline. The first of these concerns U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) recruited by the CIA and shot down over the Soviet Union. And the last concerns an American economics student (Will Rogers) studying overseas during the erection of the Berlin Wall who gets in trouble while trying to help the daughter of his professor out of East Germany. Although competently presented, neither is as engaging as Donovan’s tale.

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Sleeping with Other People

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  • Title: Sleeping with Other People
  • IMDb: link

Sleeping with Other PeopleWriter/director Leslye Headland‘s indie romcom doesn’t stray far from the basic formula of the genre. After meeting, and loosing their mutual viriginity to each other one steamy night in college, Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey’s (Alison Brie) paths cross again years later. Despite their mutual attraction, the two agree to keep things platonic given Jake’s womanizing ways and Lainey’s hang-up on an old college ex (Adam Scott) who she still carries a torch for despite how awful he’s treated her over the years.

There’s little to no surprise in Headland’s script and when Sleeping with Other People works it does so on the talent and likability of its stars and supporting cast that includes Scott, Amanda Peet, Jason Mantzoukas, Andrea Savage, Natasha Lyonne, and Margarita Levieva (in an opening cameo so good she nearly steals the entire film). We know where Jake and Lainey are going, how long it will take to get there, and can guess (pretty accurately) on the stops they’ll take along the way. Thankfully the movie’s cast keeps the predictable story from becoming stale and boring. It’s far from a must-see, but if your girlfriend is determined to drag you to a romcom you could do far, far worse.

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Everest

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  • Title: Everest
  • IMDb: link

Everest

Based on a true story, Everest recounts the events of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. There have been plenty of mountain climbing movies over the years and Everest does little to break from the pack. Working against the movie is the extended opening which plays like a Travel Channel infomercial attempting to sell the audience on traveling to Nepal to climb the world’s biggest mountain with the help of experts like Rob Hall‘s (Jason Clarke) Adventure Consultants.

The climbers themselves are the typical hodgepodge of one-note characters you always expect to see in movies like this with a couple of stand-outs (Clarke, John Hawkes, and Josh Brolin) while the rest (Martin Henderson, Tom Goodman-Hill, Naoko Mori, Michael Kelly, among others) quickly fade into the background. The movie picks up a bit once the climbers begin their ascent of the mountain in earnest and the disaster porn part of the plot kicks in.

The film, and the scale of the undertaking, is certainly helped in IMAX 3D. As a theatrical experience Everest does have something to offer (even if the story feels more straight-to-DVD). It’s certainly not a must-see, but it works as escapist entertainment.

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