2014

Nightcrawler

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a creepy robot-like unemployed thirty-nothing scamming for any work he can get. He quickly discovers he is good at “nightcrawling”—trolling L.A. for accidents and deaths that he can record and sell to a sensationalist local news station.

Like Taxi Driver, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler paints a scathingly dim picture of urban American life with broad strokes of emotional and moral vacancy. It’s an interesting idea and boasts decent performances, but it moves too slowly too often. Perhaps it was intentional, but something about the look rings hollow and low budget. It didn’t leave a strong impression on me, but I can see Nightcrawler as a late night TV staple for generations to come.

(Home via iTunes) C+

http://nightcrawlerfilm.com

Maps to the Stars

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

David Cronenberg’s satire of the film industry and fame in general. Drifter Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) from Jupiter (Florida, not the planet) shows up in L.A. to hook up with Carrie Fisher—who makes a brief cameo—and is hired as the personal assistant of whack job actress Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore). Agatha has an odd obsession with fading child star Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird), whose father (John Cusack) happens to be Segrand’s “healer.” Robert Pattinson costars as Jerome, Agatha’s hired driver and an aspiring actor/screenwriter.

Hollywood loves to make snarky movies about itself, and this cynical little tale is no exception. Though not the same movie, Maps to the Stars is cut from the same cloth as maybe The Player. The ending left me with a lot of fodder to ponder and discuss, but the story as a whole lacks something– maybe wit? Bite? Excitement? I don’t know, but Maps to the Stars is not Cronenberg’s best work even if it stands on its own. The strong performances all around are what elevate it from what is potentially a low-end David Lynch knock-off.

(Music Box) B-

http://mapstothestarsfilm.com

https://youtu.be/fwxmnyoofPs

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Mary Dore’s documentary about the rise, dissipation, and resurgence of women’s liberation paints a broad (no pun intended) picture of the movement itself while honing in on the many factions within it—lesbians, black chicks, even witches. Thorough, balanced, and fun, Dore’s ultimate point, sadly, is that American society has pretty much come full circle retrograde on many women’s issues like abortion and childcare. Not a dull moment, and well worth the time spent seeing it.

(Music Box) B+

http://www.shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com

What We Do in the Shadows

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA/New Zealand 2014)

Ever wonder what This Is Spinal Tap might look like mixed with Big Brother and, oh, say True Blood? Me, either, but the result, evidenced by this little gem, is pretty damned funny.

A group of vampires of varying ages– Viago (Taika Waititi), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), Vladislav (Jemaine Clement), and Peytr (Ben Fransham)– share a house in a New Zealand city. They have the typical housemate drama: one mate fails to clean up the blood from victims and another gets his roomies into tiffs with rival werewolves. The usual stuff. The storyline here involves the cute but annoying Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), a newbie in need of adapting to the ropes of vampire life, and his best bud, Stu (Stuart Rutherford), on whom the housemates develop a little man crush. Wicked fun!

(Music Box) B

http://whatwedointheshadows.com

 

Red Army

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Never dull or sentimental, this engrossing documentary about the Soviet national ice hockey team focuses on four stars– Viacheslav Fetisov, Anatoli Karpov, Alexei Kasatonov, and Felix Nechepore– who played together from the 70s until the late 80s. The interviews are great, and the former players are fun to listen to as they tell their stories. Paralleling the rigorous approach to the game (it should be “played like chess” and choreographed “like the Bolshoy”) with Communism and maybe human nature in general, Red Army shows, intentionally or not, why Communism ultimately failed. Fun fact: I learned after I saw this that director Gabe Polsky’s parents live one block up from me. Who knew?

(Music Box) B

http://sonyclassics.com/redarmy/

Finding Vivian Maier

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

I had never heard of Vivian Maier. A kooky lady, she was a spinster who bounced around Chicago’s North Shore working as a nanny. Maier was a pack rat and a closet street photographer who took tens of thousands of photos, mostly between the Fifties and Seventies– and apparently filed them away. She died broke and unknown in 2009. A trove of photos and rolls of undeveloped film she shot and left behind was accidentally (or serendipitously) discovered just before being discarded from a storage locker.

The film starts off with her work, which is actually pretty cool. You can see it here:

http://www.vivianmaier.com

Next, it explores the artist’s identity through the eyes of those who knew her, mainly her employers and the children she was charged to watch. An unusual and dark character emerges. Very interesting. Maier will forever remain a mystery, but her work speaks for itself.

(Home via iTunes) B

http://www.findingvivianmaier.com

Leviathan [Leviafan] [Левиафан]

Video posted on by moviebloke

(Russia 2014)

A small village Russian fisherman (Alexey Serebryakov) spars with a corrupt mayor (Roman Madyanov) hellbent on taking his land. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev packs into two hours a ton of melodrama with political and religious undertones. I wish I knew more about Russian history and its current climate because suspect it would have helped me appreciate Leviathan more. Beautifully filmed in drabulous greys and blues, it sure is purty. The audience got on my nerves with their talking and cellphones going off.

(Music Box) B-

http://sonyclassics.com/leviathan/

http://www.palacefilms.com.au/leviathan/

Two Days, One Night [Deux jours, une nuit]

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(Belgium 2014)

Two Days, One Night—that’s all the time factory worker Sandra (Marion Cotillard) has to save her job. On the weekend before her return to work after a leave due to depression, she learns her coworkers are casting votes on Monday to decide her fate—management devised a scheme to eliminate her position. She makes a humiliating sojourn visiting each coworker one by one to persuade them to relinquish their bonuses so she can remain on the payroll. Along the way, Sandra sees the best and worst of humanity, herself, and the impact that one’s choices have on others.

For a simple story, Two Days, One Night is full of suspense and commentary on economics and class. It has a quiet way of keeping one on the edge of his seat.

(Music Box) A-

http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/two-days-one-night/

Still Alice

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Julianne Moore is on a roll, and Still Alice keeps her rolling with one woman’s losing battle against a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Taking a more subtle approach to its subject matter, Still Alice is often difficult to watch even if it isn’t heavy-handed. Episodes of Alice, for example, repeating the same conversation to her son’s date at a holiday meal she prepared, getting lost jogging, wetting her pants because she forgets where the bathroom is, and making a video on her laptop instructing her future self, step by step, how how to commit suicide have an increasingly gnawing, foreboding effect as they pile up. The denouement, however, is restrained: the ending is as subtle and quiet as the rest of the film.

Moore is brilliant, taking us with her as both mind and body break down before our very eyes. She gives a wow performance that evokes sympathy and empathy. Still Alice is so clearly her Oscar stab, with a built-in standing ovation– after Alice lectures about memory at a conference and forgets what she was saying. Alec Baldwin as her husband plays an asshole, a role he has perfected. Like the story itself, though, he plays it with a subtle touch. Ironically or not, he’s totally forgettable here. So are her kids (Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish, and Kristen Stewart, though the last has a few shining moments). A more apt title might have been All About Alice.

(AMC River East) A

http://sonyclassics.com/stillalice/

A Most Violent Year

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Not gratuitously violent as the title might imply. A Most Violent Year is not entirely what I expected, but I liked it. Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), a gangster who’s not a gangster, runs a “clean” operation selling gas. Someone’s got it in for him, though, and a mystery unfolds slowly and deliberately with a few nail biting turns.

It’s a film that makes one think, and I left trying to define “clean.” A Most Violent Year did an outstanding job capturing without going overboard the look and feel of the really early still-70s 80s– before big hair, funky sunglasses, and shoulder pads. Props to Jessica Chastain, who played Morales’s wife with dead-on Jersey mob daughter fabulousness.

(AMC River East) B+

http://amostviolentyear.com