USA

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/

Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

Matthew Shepard’s legacy needs no introduction. This tender but powerful little documentary, however, sets out to show us who Matt Shepard was, as a person. Directed by Michele Josuehe, a friend from his teenage years at a Swiss boarding school, the film is packed with intimate details of his life that have not been shared—at least not on a mass level. Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine shows Matt as an imperfect kid who was searching to find himself, like we all were at his age.

The film bravely confronts topics like Matt’s final hours, how his killers have fared, his parents’ decision to request (successfully) that the death penalty not be imposed, and a painfully uncomfortable interview with a priest about forgiveness. Although it takes a little while to get going and occasionally dips into nostalgia, Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine is a worthy effort.

Screening followed by a live Q and A with director Michele Josuehe.

(AMC River East) B-

http://mattshepardisafriendofmine.com

Funny Girl

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 1968)

Barbra Streisand classic: ugly duckling Fanny Brice (Streisand) makes her way to the top via the stage. In the process, she meets a hot mystery man (Omar Sharif) who is not what he seems. A lengthy Technicolor melodrama in some ways was ahead of its time.

Despite its merits, I got bored: Funny Girl is long, winding, and corny. Plus, Babs gets on my nerves after about an hour and a half. I’ll stick with Madge—her movies suck, but she’s more fun and has more bite.

In 2016, the United States Library of Congress deemed Funny Girl “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).

(Evanston Century) C+

Fathom Events

http://www.barbrastreisand.com/us/film/funny-girl

Match

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

A ballet instructor (Patrick Stewart) at Julliard grants an interview to a “grad student” (Carla Gugino) doing research for a dissertation on the history of dance. Accompanied by her husband (Matthew Lillard), the interview takes a bizarre turn when the topic of the dance scene in 1960s New York City and one of its members is raised.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking story based on director/writer Stephen Belber’s play of the same name, Match ponders sexuality, family, career, and the consequences of choices made in the context of these. Somehow, it’s fun to watch Stewart play an aging gay man who keeps a jar full of his fingernail clippings.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B+

http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/match/

Mortdecai

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

David Koepp’s adaptation of English author Kyril Bonfiglioli’s comic detective novels. The hunt for a lost Goya painting leads a bumbling English art “dealer” (Johnny Depp) and his manservant (Paul Bethany) on a transatlantic adventure. Depp gives more than a nod to Austin Powers in his portrayal of Charles Mortdecai in this silly but fun dope-a-rama that would have made more sense as a summer release. Total fluff.

(AMC 600 North Michigan) C-

http://mortdecaithemovie.com

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

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

Inherent Vice

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice is a total stoner flick. It’s loaded with amusing moments and notable actors—Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Maya Rudolph, and Martin Short to name a few—having fun with their parts. It’s an entertaining farce—entertaining only to a point, that is.

Unfortunately, the plot meanders with spurts of energy and dead stops, and ultimately fails to go as far as maybe it hoped. The running time—two and a half hours!—does not help. I found myself underwhelmed, though I certainly didn’t hate it. Inherent Vice lost me before it got to the end. I’ve never read anything by Thomas Pynchon, and I’m in no hurry to after seeing this.

With Joanna Newsom, Katherine Waterston, Jordan Christian Hearn, Taylor Bonin, Jeannie Berlin, Eric Roberts, Serena Scott Thomas, Martin Dew, Michael Kenneth Williams, Hong Chau, Shannon Collis, Christopher Allen Nelson, Benicio Del Toro, Catherine Haena Kim, Jena Malone, Vivienne Khaledi, Yvette Yates, Andrew Simpson

148 minutes
Rated R

(Landmark Century) C-

http://inherentvicemovie.com

Selma

Link posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

Martin Luther King Jr. lived an amazing life, and it would take volumes to cover it. That’s why it was smart of director Ava DuVernay to focus on one key event—the freedom march on Selma—and not MLK’s entire life.

With Selma, DuVernay does a nice job downplaying the legacy and showing MLK as an imperfect man, flaws and fears and all. David Oyelowo lacks MLK’s intensity, but he pulls off the task of portraying the man. Seeing Oprah Winfrey play an unglamorous old lady is a surprise.

I have two issues here. One is technical: Selma looks and feels like a made-for-cable movie. The other issue is treatment: I would have liked the story to go a little deeper. Still, Selma is a film definitely worth its running time; in fact, it could have gone on and I probably would not have noticed.

With Carmen Ejogo, Giovanni Ribisi, Jim France, Clay Chappell, Tom Wilkinson, Haviland Stillwell, André Holland, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Colman Domingo, Omar J. Dorsey, Tessa Thompson, Common, Lorraine Toussaint, David Morizot, David Dwyer, E. Roger Mitchell, Dylan Baker, Ledisi Young, Kent Faulcon, Stormy Merriwether, Niecy Nash, Corey Reynolds, Wendell Pierce, John Lavelle, Stephan James, Trai Byers, Lakeith Stanfield, Henry G. Sanders, Charity Jordan, Stan Houston, Tim Roth, Nigel Thatch, Tara Ochs, David Silverman, Charles Saunders, Dexter Tillis, Cuba Gooding Jr.

128 minutes
Rated PG-13

(AMC 600 North Michigan) B

http://www.selmamovie.com