Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance ****1/2
Short Take: In an effort to be taken seriously a former movie star, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, attempts to launch a dramatic play on Broadway.
REEL TAKE: Talk about art imitating life. The casting of Michael Keaton, twenty years after he last wore his caped crusader suit, in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s play-like movie Birdman or The Unexpected Virture of Ignorance was a stroke of genius. And Keaton wasn’t afraid to personalize the experience by sharing his own career highs and lows with his character Riggan Thomson. In a nutshell, Keaton plays a former movie super hero, ‘Birdman.’ Desperate to be taken seriously, he adapts a Raymond Carver short story into a dramatic play for Broadway.
It’s clear from the get go, that Riggan’s psyche is hanging by a thread. He’s haunted constantly by a voice, his alter ego, ‘Birdman.’ Burdened by backstage shenanigans and theatrical catastrophe, production week of the play is destined to send Riggan to the brink of insanity. Think of it as an All About Eve for a middle aged action hero. His fight for clarity and dissent into madness is a fascinating and wild ride and Keaton is all in. His performance is sure to bring him an Oscar nomination.
Iñárritu further accentuates Riggan’s stress by shooting the film to look like one continuous shot. I’ve heard some criticize this aspect, but for me it worked. Every shot is a segue. The result is beautiful and even somewhat theatrical, but ultimately it serves the purpose best because it’s unrelenting. The technical choreography to achieve this must have been a massive undertaking and in the end Iñárritu makes it look so simple.
When I first heard about Birdman, I thought it sounded a bit gimmicky. It may well be just that, but it works. The fun of Birdman is watching it unfold. I could tell you more about the plot, but it’s really not necessary. I will tell you that the supporting cast, including Zach Galifinakis, Naomi Watts and Emma Stone, is excellent. Edward Norton who plays a last minute replacement in the show, and a theatrical prima donna to boot, puts it out there almost as much as Keaton does.
Who knew Iñárritu could do comedy, dark comedy to be sure, but comedy no less. My only real criticism – and it did detract from the film for me – was knowing when to end it and how to end it. Still though, with everything that happens in the course of its running time, I’m not sure how Birdman managed to get off the ground, but it does and it soars.
Rated R for language throughout, some sexual content and brief violence.
Review by Michelle Keenan
Interstellar ****
Short Take: Interstellar is a family friendly, thought provoking but overlong saga that solidly entertains thanks to committed performances, arresting visuals, and some interesting though hardly unique plot twists.
Reel Take: A little background research on Interstellar will tell you that it was originally conceived as a project for Steven Spielberg. This results in the film being a mix of Spielberg and Christopher Nolan, which is a good thing. The shadow of Stanley Kubrick hovers over Interstellar as it is basically 2001: A Space Odyssey for the 21st century. In addition to 2001 there are references to several other movies including Reds, Days of Heaven, The Black Hole, and ____________ (fill in the time travel movie of your choice).
The story unfolds in the not too distant future where a crop blight is turning the Earth into a vast Dust Bowl. Almost everyone is becoming a farmer to try and produce enough food for the world’s population. Matthew McConaughey stars as Cooper, a former astronaut now a farmer trying to survive in these Dust Bowl conditions. One day he and his young daughter Murphy discover lines in the dust on the floor of their home that spell out coordinates. These coordinates lead them to a secret underground NASA base headed up by a Professor Brand (Michael Caine). Cooper is recruited to fly the last space ship to a wormhole in space to look for other habitable worlds. He is joined by Brand’s daughter (Anne Hathaway), two other astronauts, and an all purpose robot called TARS.
There are three potential worlds to visit but only enough fuel for two. The first visit to a planet covered in water ends badly. Thanks to a time-space anomaly, one hour there equals several years on Earth. In their short visit to the surface, many years have passed on Earth. Murph is now a grown woman (Jessica Chastain), and she works to solve Brand’s equation which will allow the Earth’s population to travel to a new home. Back in space, Cooper and Brand’s daughter argue over where to go next. They wind up visiting a planet where an earlier astronaut (Matt Damon) has sent out a welcoming signal. Things there turn out to not be what they expected.
By this time their ship has drifted too near a Black Hole. In order to save Hathaway, McConaughey and the faithful robot TARS send her in an escape pod to the third planet while they journey into the Black Hole. At this point, the movie is only 2/3 over. What happens next? You’ll just have to see the movie to find out, but it’s at this point that the film really becomes interesting.
From my perspective, Interstellar definitely has some issues. First and foremost it’s too long. This is primarily due to extended scenes shot to be shown in an IMAX theater. I am an advocate for a policy where the studios release a non-IMAX version of their blockbusters much like their 2D and 3D versions of a film. This would tighten up a movie by focusing on the characters and story rather than on visual effects. Secondly there is Anne Hathaway’s performance. She isn’t bad, but she seems uncomfortable and ill suited for the role. Finally there is the script’s tendency to spell everything out for us in Twilight Zone or Outer Limits like summations.
In the end, Interstellar is a movie that should definitely be seen. I saw it with a nearly full house of older people, like myself, and they were totally captivated. Thanks to its Spielberg-like aura, the story has a lot of heart and manipulates the emotions in a time-honored way. The performances of everyone (except Hathaway) are engaging and in the case of Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon, and Matthew McConaughey, absolutely engrossing. Bottom line, I liked it while I was there but I won’t be revisiting Interstellar anytime soon.
Rated PG-13 for intense perilous action and brief strong language.
Review by Chip Kaufmann
Rosewater ***1/2
Short Take: Adapted from his memoir, Rosewater tells the story of Maziar Bahari, a journalist covering the national election in Iran in 2009 who was arrested by the Iranian government, charged with being a spy and held in solitary confinement for 118 days. The film marks Jon Stewart’s directional debut.
REEL TAKE: Rosewater is based on the memoir “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival,” written by Maziar Bahari. The film mark’s John Stewart’s directional debut and it is a fitting vehicle for him. The host and creative force behind The Daily Show was closely tied to the source material.
In 2009 journalist Maziar Bahari, a Tehran-born journalist, returned to Iran cover the elections between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Mousavi had quite a movement behind him and it was expected to be a game changing election. When Ahmadinejad’s victory was declared hours before the polls closed, uprisings broke out. Bahari witnessed and filmed the protests and shared the footage, a great personal risk, with the BBC. Shortly thereafter Bahari is arrested at his mother’s home and imprisoned for being a spy. Their proof? An interview Bahari did with The Daily Show, just before the election. The satirical humor wholly lost on them, the Iranian authorities held Bahari in solitary confinement for 118 days. The arresting police officer, identified only as ‘Rosewater,’ interrogated and tortured Bahari during the course of his captivity.
Stewart took a leave of absence last year from The Daily Show to make the film. I, like other Daily Show fans, missed Stewart during that time, but would say that if ever there was a Sabbatical put to good use, this was it. Stewart imbues the film with two key elements that you expect from him, journalistic nuance and humor. It’s also beautifully filmed. Maziar Bahari consulted on the film, as one would expect. I have not read Bahari’s memoir but would hazard a guess that having Stewart at the helm probably created a good balance.
Gael Garcia Bernal plays Bahari. He’s likeable and sympathetic. Kim Bodnia plays ‘Rosewater.’ Interestingly, while the film makes no apologies for him or his actions, he is portrayed somewhat sympathetically, or at least he is not entirely demonized. This was a curious aspect which I found appealing. Both actors turn in fine performances and play well off of each other.
While in captivity, Bahari talked to his late father and sister, both of whom had been arrested at various time in their life for political activities. These ‘vision’ sequences are nice enough, but to me seemed a little contrived. However, who am I to criticize this? It’s Bahari’s story, and if that’s his story, that’s his story.
Rosewater may not be a cinematically important film, but that doesn’t matter in my assessment of it. In the end, Stewart and Bahari succeed exactly where they need to. Rosewater is an important and moving story, a worthwhile effort and a crowd-pleaser.
Rated R for language, including some crude references and violent content.
Review by Michelle Keenan
The Theory of Everything ****
Short Take: Adapted from the book by his first wife, The Theory of Everything tells the story of Stephen Hawking and Jane Wilde Hawking and their 30 years together.
REEL TAKE: Based on the book Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Stephen Hawking’s first wife Jane Wilde Hawking, The Theory of Everything is a romantic drama about their thirty challenging years together. The result is a very well made, nice, safe, pseudo bio pic. As one of my fellow reviewers said, “It’s perfectly fine.”
The film starts in 1963. A twenty-one year old Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is a doctoral student at Cambridge. A gangly, gawky science geek, he manages to attract the attentions of Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones), a lovely English rose studying medieval poetry. In spite of their vast differences and differences of opinion, sparks fly. Meanwhile we see symptomatic glimpses of things to come, before he himself understands what’s happening. Just as he seems to be hitting his stride personally and academically, Hawking takes a fateful fall and subsequently learns that he has a motor neuron disorder (a form of ALS). He is told he’ll be dead within two years.
Fifty one years later we all know he defied those odds, and while the degenerative disease ravaged and contorted his body, his beautiful mind was left unscathed, Many filmgoers, who have only seen Hawking as the crippled genius in the wheelchair with the American-sounding robotic voice, may be surprised and touched to see the story of Hawking as a vibrant young Englishman. The film focuses more on the days at Cambridge and the early years of the disease and his life with Jane, but runs through the course of their marriage and his many scientific milestones.
More than anything else The Theory of Everything is a love story, and what a remarkable love story it is. And that’s what I found somewhat disappointing; in spite of such an amazing story, the film doesn’t engage its audience emotionally or move us as much as one would expect. Director James Marsh succeeds in executing a beautifully made film but a very safe film with little edge and perhaps too much British stiff upper lip. The exception to this is the cinematography by Benoit Delhomme. In the moments of blossoming love and Hawking’s cosmological discoveries, Delhomme’s cinematography imbues the film with movie magic.
Redmayne delivers an elegant performance in what had to be a daunting and challenging task. The result is a performance that plays more to Hawking’s humanity, his humor and his brilliant mind, rather than being too focused on the physicality as to seem contrived or gimmicky. For this, all are to be commended. And for this his performance is Oscar bait. For me however, the film belongs to Felicity Jones who, yes, has an easier time of it, not having to portray a figure as familiar as Hawking, but who has to show us the woman behind the genius for all those years (a task which in real life must have been as daunting for her as the disease was to him).
In the end I drew the same conclusion that I did with Interstellar; Love – unscientific, immeasurable, and transcendent of time – is the greatest force in the universe. The Theory of Everything is simply love.
Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and suggestive material.
Review by Michelle Keenan