Drama

Unbroken

/ / Movie Reviews
  • 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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Reese Witherspoon takes a cathartic trek through the Wild

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Wild
  • IMDb: link

WildBased on Cheryl Strayed‘s real-life experience of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, Wild stars Reese Witherspoon as the troubled new divorcee with no real hiking experience who latches onto the unlikely project of a 1,100-mile solo-hike as a means to deal with the mistakes of her past.

Adapted for film by Nick Hornby, Cheryl’s self-driven journey is inter-cut with scenes from her childhood and young adulthood involving her mother (Laura Dern), her promiscuity and drug use, and her relationship with her former husband (The Newsroom‘s Thomas Sadoski).

Director Jean-Marc Vallée offers an interesting character study of a flawed woman’s attempt to achieve a moment of greatness. Dreadfully slow in parts, and often lingering too long on some of its flashback sequences, Wild succeeds as a character-driven drama even if it all feels a bit by-the-book (so to speak). Similar in themes to Into the Wild, Strayed’s story speaks to a rebirth of sorts through nature although without a look forward as to whether or not the transformative journey actually led to lasting change.

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St. Vincent

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: St. Vincent
  • IMDb: link

St. VincentSt. Vincent is a perfectly fine (if all-too-familiar) by-the-numbers dramedy about a grumpy old man’s relationship with a nice kid who, to absolutely no one’s surprise, will show his new friend isn’t as bad as everyone believes him to be. Comparable to last year’s Bad Words, it lacks the dark wit of Bad Santa or the soundtrack and amusing race sequences of Six Pack, and is far less moving than Up, but writer/director Theodore Melfi‘s film does allow space for Murray’s talent to flourish and finds a way to use Melissa McCarthy in a way which reminds us she is capable of acting when not stuck in crappy films such as Tammy, Identity Thief, or The Heat.

The premise is relatively simple, Murray stars as a grumpy bastard with a pregnant hooker girlfriend (Naomi Watts) and general disdain for nearly every other living person. Desperately needing money, Vincent (Murray) agrees to babysit his new neighbor’s (McCarthy) son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) after school. From there Vincent shares with the kid useful, but mostly inappropriate, knowledge that eventually raises the ire of Oliver’s mother and threatens her custody case with her ex-husband.

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The Theory of Everything

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Theory of Everything
  • IMDb: link

The Theory of EverythingTheoretical physicist Stephen Hawking is undeniably one of the brightest minds of our time, a fact that The Theory of Everything struggles to prove while being far more interested in the man’s personal life than his professional breakthroughs. The result is a strong romantic drama between Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) and his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) that is far less insightful of the man’s work.

Dumbing down Hawking’s theories for the audience, the script by Anthony McCarten based on Jane Hawking‘s book spoon-feeds us extremely basic doses of Hawkings theories without ever examining the work that went into studying or proving them. Instead the ideas seem to come from nowhere, take little effort to prove, and are instantly lauded. Does that sound like the cut-throat world of academia to you?

More concerned with showcasing the effects and unique challenges presented to Stephen and Jane after his diagnosis of motor neuron disease, The Theory of Everything succeeds far better here getting the most of its stars (even if the film, intentionally or not, turns Jane into a martyr).

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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Birdman
  • IMDb: link

BirdmanWriter/director Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s tale of a washed-up celebrity’s last chance to reclaim his career is a bizarre look at the life of a man who may, or may not, have super-human abilities who has bet his entire career on a Broadway production that is in continual struggle as opening night looms.

Making good use of Michael Keaton‘s role of Batman back in the early 1990s, Iñárritu casts the actor as Riggan Thomson best known for his role as a super-hero film series star who no one inside the industry takes seriously. Riggan is haunted by his former alter-ego Birdman who continues whispering to him in a gruff Batman tone voicing displeasure about the current state of the star’s life. In a script that ebbs and flows (and often gives us too many first-person walking shots down halls where nothing happens), Keaton keeps Birdman on track delivering his best performance since donning his own tights.

The rest of the cast and crew of the production fall into unremarkable (workmen, staff, etc.) or hopelessly neurotic (Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough) and egomaniacs (Edward Norton).

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