Captain America: The Winter Soldier ****

Short Take: A surprisingly serious minded action flick that recalls the paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s.

REEL TAKE: I was not looking forward to seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier based on the previews but, having seen the first film in the series and having liked it, I was the obvious choice to review it. Early reviews praising if for not having the elements that I liked in the first film also made me somewhat wary.

My worst fears were realized when the film opened with an extended, overstaged and overshot prologue involving the hijacking of a secret military vessel. “Here we go again” I said to myself but to my surprise, once the required fanboy rubbish was out of the way, Winter Soldier settled down into quite a good movie where ideas rather than action set pieces were the order of the day.

After another action sequence involving Samuel L. Jackson, Winter Soldier becomes a 21st century update of such 1970s paranoid political thrillers as The Parallax View and 3 Days of the Condor. In fact the casting of Robert Redford as a central figure is no accident and, as if aware of the importance of his presence in the proceedings, he is absolutely brilliant.

The rest of the cast almost rise to Redford’s level which is no mean feat. Samuel L. Jackson’s one-eyed Nick Fury, head of S.H.I.E.L.D. (the organization that all the Marvel superheroes work for in case you don’t know), makes his presence felt early on and then disappears for most of the movie. Chris Evans as Captain America aka Steve Rogers is now completely comfortable in the role and it is his underplaying compared to everyone else (except Redford) that give the movie its heart and soul.

The plot focuses on the creation of a trio of “super drones” which, thanks to direct access to loads of personal and private data, can locate anyone on Earth and eliminate them at the touch of a button. The idea is to profile and then stop potential terrorists before they become terrorists. One character, however, decides to take things to an extreme and overly logical conclusion. “What if you could kill 20 million people in order to ultimately benefit the remaining 7 billion? Would you do it?”

Captain America’s answer is a resounding NO but attempting to stop the drones is a Herculean task. Complicating matters is the fact that he must fight the title character, a man who has been genetically modified like himself and has a powerful metal arm to boot. It also turns out that the assassin is his old childhood friend Bucky (Sebastian Shaw) who has been brainwashed and reprogrammed to kill.

After leaving the theater in a much better mood then when I arrived, I had an epiphany. Since this movie and all others like it are available in 2D and 3D versions, why not put the extended action sequences into the 3d/IMAX versions only so that older people like myself who value character and story over “Biff!”, “Bop!” & “Bam!” can have a movie that they will enjoy and can relate to. It would also make the movie shorter. Just a thought!

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, gunplay, and action throughout.

Review by Chip Kaufmann

Joe ****

Short Take: The gritty and disturbing story of an ex-con with a hot temper and a good heart who becomes a father figure to an abused teenage boy.

REEL TAKE: I think I may have been the only local critic at a recent screening of Joe that genuinely liked the film. Well, it’s not a film one really likes. What struck me about the film was how long it stayed with me after I left the theatre. Ironically it’s a hard film to recommend to many people, and it will have a very limited audience. Be forewarned Joe is a gritty, bloody, dog-fighting, unholy mess of a story.

Joe is a hard drinking, chain smoking ex-con with a hot temper for injustice and a soft spot for the down trodden and abused. He tries to keep his short fuse at bay, living quietly, working hard. He lives in a rural, seemingly forgotten, southern town. It’s a hard scrapple place; ugliness is pervasive in every corner of it, figuratively and physically.

Strangely enough Joe seems like one of the town’s success stories. He has a successful [by this story’s standards] business killing trees (so that the lumber companies can come in and plant better trees for milling). He’s good to his workers, he’s good to his [guard] dog, and he’s good to the local hicks. He’s even good to the local hookers.

When a 15 year old boy approaches Joe’s crew in the woods one day to ask for a job, Joe takes the kid under his wing. Unbeknownst to Joe and young Gary (Tye Sheridan, Mud), he and young Gary will forge an important friendship. Several sub stories threaten to collide with our reluctant hero and his young charge, testing Joes’s mettle and determining his fate through ruin or redemption. One of these sub-stories deals with a long-standing feud between Joe and a southern fried psycho (Ronnie Gene Blevins). The other [incredibly disturbing] sub-plot involves Gary’s abusive, alcoholic, good-for-nothing, thieving and murderous father (played by Gary Poulter, a homeless man who died after the filming completed).

Based on the novel by Larry Brown and adapted for the screen by Gary Hawkins, Joe is directed by David Gordon Green. Green directed the popular mainstream comedy Pineapple Express a few years back, but seems to be returning to his indie and rural southern roots with Joe (Some readers may recall a little movie called All the Real Girls being a bit of a big deal in these parts about ten years ago.). Green makes the most of the story’s strengths, creating an atmosphere that is almost a character in and of itself, but it may ultimately be a story that fares better on the page than on the screen. Once you sink your teeth into it, and chew through the grizzly aesthetics, Joe is fairly predictable, but the performances by Sheridan and particularly Cage are not.

Rated R for violence, disturbing material, language and some strong sexual content.

Review by Michelle Keenan

The Lunchbox *****

Short Take: A quietly perceptive and incredibly satisfying story of a friendship forged through notes when a lonely young housewife’s lunchboxes are mistakenly delivered to a reserved widower on the verge of retirement instead of her husband.

REEL TAKE: The Lunchbox will no doubt be on my Top Ten list come award season. I implore you to see this delightful little gem of a film. It’s a simple story, but its execution is flawless and its depth surprising.

Ila (Nimrat Kaur) is a lonely young, middleclass housewife and mother in Mumbai. She’s hoping to put a little pizzazz back in her marriage by creating a special lunch for her husband. Ila quickly deduces that her food was not delivered to her indifferent husband and sends a note and another meal the next day for whoever is receiving her husband’s lunchbox. The recipient of the lunchbox is Saajan (Irfan Kahn) a quiet, lonely widower on the verge of retirement.

They quickly begin a correspondence and Ila sends him wonderful meals each day. Their notes become more intimate, not of the romantic kind (at least not at first), but of life’s tribulations and worries; each needs someone to talk to. She confides in him about the state of her marriage. She confides in him when she realizes her husband is cheating on her. He confides in her about missing his wife and becoming old.

While all of this is going on Ila is also dealing with her mother and dying father. Meanwhile Saajan is training his over-eager replacement Shaikh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). The latter story is utterly delightful as an unlikely friendship forms between the two men.

Every step of the story unfolds with an elegant grace, a quiet reserve, with compassion and a very natural humor. Ila, Saajan and Shaikh all have their worries, and each of them trying to find their place in the world and in life. The mark each leaves on the other is indelible.

The Lunchbox is a kind hearted and heartbreakingly beautiful film. It brings new meaning to the love letter. It’s the first feature film from Hindi director Ritesh Batra. If this is what he delivers out of the gate, I can’t wait to see what’s next.

The Lunchbox is playing at the Fine Arts Theatre. See it while you can.

Rated PG for thematic material and smoking.

Review by Michelle Keenan

Oculus ***1/2

Short Take: Quality low budget horror film is generally creepy but an overreliance on self mutilation kept me from enjoying it as much as I should have.

REEL TAKE: Whenever I see that a new horror release has an R rating I usually have some qualms about seeing it. That rating generally (but not always) guarantees that it will be an over the top gore-fest and that the use of the F-word will be ubiquitous. It also means that you will usually not be spared from that most tiresome of recent conventions – the “found footage” horror film.

Luckily Oculus avoided the former and had none of the latter, although it cleverly works video footage into its storyline. With all of this going for it, I wish I could say that I liked Oculus better than I did. I really wanted to but one element throughout kept me from doing so. I’ll explain a little later on but first…a digression.

Oculus revolves around a haunted mirror and the effect it has on people who have owned it. I first fell in love with haunted mirror stories at the age of 10 after watching an episode of Boris Karloff’s 1960s television series Thriller. The episode was The Hungry Glass starring a then unknown William Shatner. That was quickly followed by another episode called The Prisoner in the Mirror. A few years later I read The Black Mirror by Belgian fantasy writer Jean Ray.

When I got to college, I got to see the most celebrated haunted mirror story of all time (and it is worthy of its reputation) which is to be found in the 1945 British omnibus film Dead of Night. In 1973 another multistory Brit film, From Beyond the Grave, opened with an outstanding haunted mirror sequence starring David Warner. That and The Hungry Glass remain my templates.

Now back to the present and the main reason I had an issue with Oculus. Although not overly grisly in content, much of the unease factor involves bodily horror in the style of David Cronenberg (remember Jeff Goldblum in The Fly?). Mutilated fingernails, shattered teeth, and in one scene the principal character imagines that she eats a light bulb, give the film a very high cringe factor from my P.O.V. In other words I don’t enjoy bodily horror especially when it’s self-inflicted. Cringe inducing is not the same as being scared.

Setting aside the cringe factor, Oculus is a solid, well made thriller that shows once again that in terms of budget, less is more. The script by director Mike Flanagan is engaging and adds a new twist to the proceedings (the mirror doesn’t just show you things, it alters your perceptions of them). The performances by the entire cast are uniformly fineespecially Karen Gillan (of Doctor Who fame) as the central character trying to destroy the mirror through scientific means and Rory Cochrane as the father who becomes possessed by it.

Oculus deserves credit for doing what it does with its limited resources (the design for the haunted mirror is particularly effective) but, unlike the other examples that I mentioned which I have revisited on a number of occasions, I have no desire to ever see Oculus again. It’s not a bad movie, it’s just not my cup of tea.

Rated R for terror, violence, disturbing images, and brief languages.

Review by Chip Kaufmann

The Quiet Ones ***

Short Take: Disappointing but still an effective psychological thriller of a paranormal experiment gone awry.

REEL TAKE: This is the fifth release from the newly reconstituted Hammer Studios and it loses some of its predecessor’s fighting trim. Let Me In (2010), The Resident (2011), Wake Wood (2011), and The Woman in Black (2012) were all medium budget productions characterized by strong storylines, interesting characters, and solid performances from the actors involved. The Quiet Ones has some of each of these elements but not enough to make it a complete success.

The biggest problem is the screenplay which was adapted from a previous one that had been accepted and then rejected. The adaptation is credited to three writers including the film’s director John Pogue. There are a number of elements that, while interesting by themselves, never seem to jell as a whole. The film was originally advertised as being about an attempt to create a poltergeist under laboratory conditions. That’s not quite the case here.

I got the feeling that early on during the production someone at Hammer noticed the success of the Paranormal films and altered the original screenplay in the hopes of cashing in on that success. What emerges is a scenario that is thoroughly confused with lots of loose ends and bits of dialogue that just don’t make sense. However the film is not a total loss thanks to two wonderful performances from Jared Harris and Olivia Cooke.

Oxford professor Joseph Coupland (Harris) and two students conduct an experiment involving Jane Harper, a mentally disturbed young woman (Cooke). Another student (Sam Claflin) is recruited to videotape the experiment from beginning to end. Coupland’s theory is that any kind of psychic disturbance is simply a form of physical energy that can ultimately be dispersed under scientific conditions. Jane believes she is possessed by an evil spirit which Coupland dismisses as “supernatural nonsense”.

The experiment involves trying to force Jane to materialize her “evil spirit” so that it can be categorized and then eliminated. Forced to leave the University, they continue privately and things spiral out of control as Coupland is determined to prove his theory at any cost. Sessions become more and more intense until a final revelation leaves the two students dead and the girl, the professor, and the cameraman locked in a life and death struggle.

Jared Harris shines in a role that Peter Cushing would have played 50 years earlier, the well meaning scientist blinded by his inability to accept failure. Olivia Cooke is heartbreaking as Jane, wanting to be cured but essentially tortured by those supposedly helping her in the attempt to achieve that cure. Sam Claflin, as the cameraman who falls in love with Jane with disastrous consequences, holds his own but the film belongs to Harris and Cooke.

In addition to the muddled storyline, the other thing that bothered me was the lack of an effective soundtrack for around 75% of the movie. Sound effects and the occasional use of Gregorian chant do not a soundtrack make and when there were sound effects they were way too LOUD! While the lack of music was probably intended to increase tension it wound up having the effect of distancing me from the proceedings.

In the end The Quiet Ones was a disappointment compared to the previous Hammer releases mentioned earlier but it still has its moments. Although I was unhappy with it after I first left the theater, thinking about it later I discovered that a lot of it has managed to stay with me and any movie that accomplishes that can’t be all bad. Cool poster too. Now all I need to do is find out why they called it The Quiet Ones.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and terror, sexual content, thematic material, and language.

Review by Chip Kaufmann

Transcendence ***

Short Take: A well intended, well acted convoluted sci-fi thriller that seems more like a high tech monster movie of sorts.

REEL TAKE: At the start of Transcendence we see a post apocalyptic world (at least technologically speaking), so we know that what we are about see doesn’t end well. Max Walters (Paul Bettany) bore witness to the events leading up the end of the world as we knew it, and serves as the film’s narrative voice.

He takes us back five years; Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the leading researcher in artificial intelligence and is working on his greatest project – a sentient machine equipped with full knowledge and full range and understanding of human emotions. When Will is gunned down with a radioactive-laced bullet by anti-technology extremists and is facing inevitable death, his wife, and fellow scientist, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) has the brainchild to give Will’s machine life by integrating his brain and being with the machine.

Evelyn and Will are the type of scientists that only think about the good that their advancements will bring. Max on the other hand grapples with moral dilemmas posed in the wake of technological advancement. When the machine springs to life with Will’s voice, face, memories and his love for Evelyn, she sees it as Will. Max on the other hand sees it as a machine, not the man they knew, not a human being with a soul.

Max’s intimate knowledge of Evelyn’s experiment and his previously published contemplations make him a desirable ally for the same anti-technology terrorists who killed Will. As the story escalates, electronic Will uses his power and access to everything to make Evelyn a ridiculously wealthy woman, enabling her to buy a town in the middle of nowhere and build an underground research facility to continue their work. As A.I. Frankenstein becomes more and more powerful, our mad scientist becomes a little less enamored with their work. Soon it’s the ‘monster’ versus the good (?) guys.

Transcendence marks the directional debut for Christopher Nolan’s go-to cinematographer Wally Pfister. The visuals are perfect for a sci-fi thriller, and they should be for the price tag on this film. Unfortunately we’re supposed to think it’s cleverer than it actually is, which is ironic because at its core it felt more like a B-movie to me (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The cast is solid, but it’s not enough to elevate the picture. Depp appropriately reigns himself in and delivers an earnest performance. Hall is very good. Bettany is good but under utilized and tasked with keeping some of the weakest points of the movie afloat.

Transcendence poses interesting questions, but gets so bogged down by tabling one contradiction with another and another, the whole scenario becomes an answerable conundrum and ultimately delivers a wholly unsatisfactory ending. Maybe that was the point??

Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence, bloody images, brief strong language and sensuality.

Review by Michelle Keenan