Sicario

4 out of 4 Stars


Sicario, the new film by Denis Velleneuve, is a jaw dropping, knuckle-whitening experience. Emily Blunt plays an ambitious, chain-smoking FBI agent assigned to work with the DEA in bringing down drug cartels along the US/Mexico border. As soon as she sees the unorthodox methods used by a swaggering cowboy of a DEA agent (Josh Brolin) and a soft-spoken, yet intense protege (Benicio Del Toro), her outlook on going by the book falls along the wayside. Meanwhile, the film goes back and forth to the daily routine of a hard-drinking local police officer in Mexico going about his private duties leading to a surprising third act in the film.

Not since Traffic has such a film showed the drug trade in an unflinching and suspenseful manner. At times, the film goes into sensory override as you feel and empathize with the anxiety and pressure Blunt's character faces throughout the film. Velleneuve, who gained strong praise with his 2013 film, Prisoners, ups the ante by keeping you on the edge of your seat thanks to Talyor Sheridan's sharp screenplay and Roger Deakins award-deserving cinematography by showing the gore and fury of a world filled with corruption similar to his work with the Coen brothers, be it through close-circuit television sets or night-vision goggles.

Benicio Del Toro gives one of his most darkest and strongest performances in years as Alejandro. His world-weary presence and soft-spoken demeanor is underestimated by a compulsive drive similar to De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Emily Blunt is great as she successfully walks the tightrope between being a no B.S. FBI agent and a lonely woman whose only merits she holds dear are loyalty and integrity. Josh Brolin brings out a wild and beautifully crass performance as a DEA agent who thrives on chaos like a stilted flower relying on rain to survive.

Velleneuve's harrowing vision on the war on drugs is complimented by Johann Johannsson's ominous score as you go into this two-hour abyss of action and suspense. Sicario is nothing short of riveting and raw that it stands head and shoulders over previous films that have dealt with geopolitical themes like Zero Dark Thirty. The film is not preachy as previous drug-war films as Velleneuve objectively looks at the thin blue line between honor and corruption.

Black Mass

3 out of 4 Stars

Black Mass is a straightforward and faithful adaptation of Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neil's book on the infamous Boston gangster, James "Whitey" Bulger and his partnership with FBI agent, John Connelly. From 1976 to 1994, Bulger and his Winter Hill gang ruled the streets of South Boston with violent intimidation and Irish charm. As Connelly, a childhood chum of Bulger's, takes the credit for taking down the Italian Mafia, Whitey's criminal enterprise grows along with his psychotic tendencies. As the body count grows, so does the suspicion over how deep Bulger has the FBI in his back pocket.

Scott Cooper does a solid job in diverting from the tropes of the Scorsese-styled gangster flick by presenting Boston's criminal underworld with a composed and chilling style similar to Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle.  However, the film does veer off into domestic, eye-rolling melodrama reminiscent of Donnie Brasco. Fortunately, the melodrama is overshadowed by the documentary-styled narrative penned by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth along with the crisp and steady cinematography of Masanobu Takayanagi.

Johnny Depp gives a good and non-glamorous performance as Whitey Bulger. Apart from a stake dinner scene reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's flamboyant gangster in The Departed, Depp shies away from a Gonzo-esque performance as he invokes fear with his piercing blue eyes and rough exterior. Australian actor Joel Edgerton swaggers onto the screen as John Connelly with a mix of bravado and paranoia as the FBI agent who made a deal with the devilish Bulger. Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent as Whiteys brother and state senator who tries to look the other way when his brother is in the newspapers. Rounding up the cast are some memorable performances by Jesse Plemons, Peter Sarsgaard, and Rory Cochrane as Whitey's crew.

For publicity leading up to the film, Warner Bros. made Black Mass look like a cross between Heat and The Town, yet the film is calm and reserved to some extent.  Even though there's nothing that really jumps off the screen, the film is a solid piece that combines journalistic inquiry into Boston 's criminal underground.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

3 out of 4 Stars

It's San Francisco, 1976. As the city shifts from the pot-fueled hippie idealism of the late-Sixties to the coke-snorting excess and sexual promiscuity of the disco era, 15 year old Minnie Goetz enters womanhood as if it were a baptism by fire. Based on Phoebe Gloeckner's semi-autobiographical graphic novel, The Diary of a Teenage Girl follows Minnie (Bel Powley) going through a gauntlet of sex, drugs, and comic books as the aspiring young cartoonist loses her virginity to her mother's boyfriend, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård)leading to  a tumultuous affair. Minnie's sexual awakening leads to an array of encounters with men and women causing her freewheeling, yet sedated, mother (Kristen Wiig) and estranged stepfather (Christopher Meloni) to suspect their daughter's sudden transformation.


The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a frank and daring film that looks at the celebration and chaos of a young woman's budding sexuality. Unlike previous films about teenagers indulging in their sexual and excessive appetites- such as the immature American Pie or the scared-straight realism of Thirteen- the film walks the fine line at acknowledging teenage angst and sexuality without becoming exploitative. The sexual activity on the screen may cause some controversy, but it is tame compared to Minnie's highly-detailed sexual exploits in the book. However, the film succeeds in showing the active sex life of a teenage girl as opposed to the majority of films featuring horny young men keen on losing their virginity.

Bel Powley, the 22 year old British actress, gives a remarkable performance as Minnie as she walks the fine line between sexual confidence and emotional vulnerability. Alexander Skarsgård gives a moderately good performance as the perverted and manipulative Monroe that rings similar tones to Peter Sarsgaard's performance as the domineering Chuck Trainor in Lovelace. Kristen Wigg adds another successful performance under her belt as a depressed and inebriated matriarch trying to find love and raise her two daughters at the same time. Despite being on screen for ten minutes, Christopher Meloni managed to use every minute to his advantage playing an academic who pines for her two daughters and a stable family life. 

Marielle Heller, who starred and produced an Off-Broadway version of The Diary of a Teenage Girl years ago, succeeds in making her directorial debut a faithful and audacious adaptation of Gloeckner's raw tale of relationships and growing up. She manages to capture the anything-goes attitude and drug-fueled turbulence of mid-1970s San Francisco by combining live action with Sara Gunnarsdottir's animated sequences. Even though the film could have gone an extra mile in delving deeper into the original text, The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a candid and moving film about the perils of adolescence and adulthood

4K Gold: The Third Man

In the seven years since I have worked on this blog, I’ve rarely talked about the films of the past since I’ve only talked about what’s currently in theaters. Last week, I went and saw a 4K restored version of Carol Reed’s 1948 classic film noir, The Third Man. It’s an extraordinary film that has not aged in terms of Graeme Greene’s brilliant screenplay, Robert Krasker’s cinematography, and Anton Karas’ beautiful, yet chilling, score on the Zephyr. I’ve seen the film five times and introduced it to my film students while I was working as a student-instructor in New Hampshire and it still manages to pack a punch 67 years later. 

For those of you not familiar with the film, Joseph Cotton plays Holly Martins, a down-on-his-luck pulp novelist who goes to Postwar Vienna to work at an unknown job for his childhood friend, Harry Lime. As soon as Holly gets into town, his estranged friend is fatally struck by a car. Trevor Howard plays Calloway, a British military police officer, who convinces Holly that Lime was a criminal and that he should be left as dead.  As Martin’s tries to find his friend’s assailant, the story unravels into deception and greed leading to a suspenseful conclusion within the sewers of Vienna. 

At the forefront of The Third Man is Orson Wells’ performance as the illusive Harry Lime. It has been argued that Wells played significant role in the production of the film and it’s hard not to refute that argument. Carol Reed must have had Citizen Kane on his mind when he decided to shoot The Third Man from tilted angles and from the floor up to the ceiling as Wells did with his director of photography, Gregg Toland. Also, like Wells’ Charles Foster Kane, Harry Lime is an opportunist who wants something more than wealth and companionship; power. 

The Third Man remains a canonical film within the film-noir genre. It’s hard to imagine films like Sunset Blvd. or Chinatown being made had it not been for The Third Man hovering over Billy Wilder and Robert Towne as a source of inspiration. Even Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film, The Departed, pays homage to The Third Man and its chilling ending as Alida Valli walks past the camera before the credits roll. Currently, The Third Man is being shown in selected theaters in the United States and is soon to be released by Studio-Canal on DVD and Blu-Ray. Next to the cuckoo clock, The Third Man is one of the most celebrated works to come out of Vienna.                 

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

3 1/2 out of 4 Stars

One of the few comedies this summer that deals with mortality, Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is hilariously disturbing and disturbingly hilarious. His third film in his cycle of death trilogy, Andersson builds on the humor and absurdity of everyday life like in his previous films (Songs from the Second Floor and You, The Living) by filming 39 vignettes capturing the bleak and funny aspects surrounding monotony and death. If there is a plot in this film, it focuses in and out on two depressed joke shop salesmen (Holger Andersson and Niles Westblom) with such irony and morbid humor reminiscent of characters in a Coen Brothers film. The plot is diverted by Andersson's surrealist visions of singing barmaids, 19th century soldiers taking over a local watering hole, and death by wine bottles. Winner of the Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is as thought-provoking as it is provocatively funny.

In interviews leading up to the film's release, Andersson said that he was inspired by De Sica's Bicycle Thieves while making the movie. The only reference to the film is seeing a cyclist on screen for three minutes. Apart from that, Andersson tips his hat towards the evocative imagery of Luis Bunuel and Terry Gilliam as he captures chaos of industrialist Sweden with static camera shots focusing on the offbeat nature of everyday life. Like Todd Solondz's films, Andersson's morbid humor leaves you embarrassed to laugh at some of the film's most uncomfortable scenes, such as a colonialist army whipping slaves into a revolving furnace or a dying matriarch unable to grasp the concept of "you can't take it with you."            

The humor of Andersson's film is accentuated by the polka and waltz-fueled score by Hani Jazzar and Gorm Sundberg. However, the humor is not as consistent as his 2007 masterpiece, You, The Living. All and all, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is another bold attempt by Andersson to capture death with a macabre sense of humor with a distinctive vision that is as beautiful as it is haunting.

Love and Mercy

3 1/2 out of 4 Stars

Love and Mercy is a beautiful and nuanced look into the creative genius, self-destruction, and redemption of Brian Wilson. Paul Dano and John Cusack both play Wilson at two stages in the musician's life; Dano during Wilson's hectic, acid-fueled period in the late-Sixties recording the Beach Boys' masterpiece album, "Pet Sounds," and Cusack as Wilson during his semi-reclusive career in the late-Eighties in which he falls in love with his current wife, Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) much to the dismay of his  manipulative psychiatrist, Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). Unlike previous made-for-television movies that have tried and failed to capture Wilson's creative process, Pohlad and screenwriter Oren Moverman rely on flashbacks to simultaneously tell Wilson's story as well as 16mm film to give the film a realistic look when Wilson is in the recording studio. The result is a sublime and moving look at the life and work of a musician, whom Art Garfunkel called,  "rock n- roll's answer to Mozart." 

Paul Dano, known for playing second-fiddle against actors like Daniel-Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and Hugh Jackman in Prisoners, gives a remarkable and memorable performance as the young Brian Wilson. Dano channels the angst and isolation he delivered in Little Miss Sunshine and emulates Wilson's child-like energy and ambition based on audio excerpts of Wilson talking to his musicians during the "Pet Sounds" sessions. Cusack gives a solid and idiosyncratic performance as the middle-aged Wilson as he successfully captures Wilson's mannerisms without any grandstanding or melodrama. Elizabeth Banks gives a subtle, yet stoic performance as Melinda Ledbetter as she tries to understand Wilson, his traumatic past, and act as his angel of love and mercy. Out of all the performances, Paul GIamatti is stunning as the paranoid and manic Eugene Landy. Like Laurence Fishburne's Ike Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It?, Giamatti thrives on channeling the ego and control Landy had over Wilson whether it be from forcing a hamburger out of Wilson's throat or his encounters with Melinda. 

The problem with telling the story of Brian Wilson, or any of the Beach Boys for that matter, is that there is so many areas to cover that one loses sight on Brian Wilson's story whether it is his brother, Dennis, being involved with the Manson Family, Mike Love's (Jake Abel) constant lawsuits again Brian over the band's name, or the Oedipal fights between the Wilson brothers and their father/former manager, Murray (Bill Camp). However, Pohlad and Moverman's script does not lose sight over Wilson's manic state and recovery and is brilliantly accentuated by Atticus Ross' score, which emphasizes Wilson's emotional state and inner psyche. Love and Mercy almost mirrors Wilson's canon of music as it is full of good vibrations. 

2015 Oscar Picks, Pisses and Moans

Bust out the bubbly and place your bets because the Oscar nominees have been announced! Yesterday, the nominees for the 87th annual Academy Awards were listed and, as with any post-nominee selection, controversy has filled the air. If it's not AMPAS President Cheryl Boone mispronouncing Dick Pope to "Dick Poop" (insert Beavis and Butthead laugh), than it's Al Sharpton ranting over how the Oscars have become "all white". Apparently, no one told him that 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture last year, or In The Heat of the Night won in 1968, or that Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Sidney Poitier, Louis Gossett Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, Jamie Foxx, Forest Whitaker all have Oscars on their mantles. My point is this, the Oscars will never appeal to everyone since it is a select few having to sift through the films that are award-worthy, which in of itself is subjective.

Nevertheless, here's my usual list of predicted winners along with my gripes over over who got snubbed in the acting and directing categories, as well as which film will win Best Picture.

Best Supporting Actor
Robert Duvall - The Judge
Ethan Hawke - Boyhood 
Edward Norton - Birdman
Mark Ruffalo - Foxcatcher
J.K. Simmons - Whiplash

Who Will Win- The odds in the favor for J.K. Simmons to win for his role as a tyrannical jazz-band conductor in Whiplash and I couldn't agree more since Simmons' gave a game-changing performance from his previous work as a comical ancillary character in the films of the Coen Brothers and the Spider-Man franchise.

Who Got Snubbed- I was surprised Josh Brolin wasn't listed for his role as the tight-assed, banana loving Bigfoot Bjornsen in Inherent Vice. His performance was hysterical and, in brief times, poignant even when he's eating half an ounce of weed. Also, Channing Tatum was seriously robbed for his heartbreaking and intense performance in Foxcatcher. His self-destructive portrayal of Mark Schultz was a Master class in acting. Finally, where is Ellar Coltrane for his naturalistic performance in Boyhood?

Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette - Boyhood
Laura Dern -Wild
Keira Knightley - The Imitation Game
Emma Stone - Birdman
Meryl Streep - Into the Woods

Who Will Win- My gut is definitely saying that Patricia Arquette will win for her role as a single mother in Boyhood. She goes through the emotional gauntlet of separation, abuse, and watching her children grow with such brilliance and stoicism that she will definitely win. If I had to choose a runner-up, it definitely go to Emma Stone for Birdman; her internal struggles along with her love-hate relationship with Michael Keaton is simply brilliant and moving.

Who Got Snubbed- I think Lorelei Linklater's 12 year commitment to Boyhood was seriously overlooked. Why is Meryl Streep nominated again when she already has enough gold to fill Fort Knox? Come on, Oscar committee! We all know and love Meryl Streep, but how about changing it up a little? It's bad enough she won three years ago for The Iron Lady when it should have went to Viola Davis for The Help, but unless she pulls another Doubt or Adaptation, just let her go!

Best Actress
Marion Cotillard - Two Days, One Night
Felicity Jones - The Theory of Everything
Rosamund Pike - Gone Girl
Julianne Moore - Still Alice
Reese Witherspoon - Wild

Who Will Win- This is definitely Julianne Moore's year! She was overlooked many times before for The Hours, Boogie Nights, and a bevy of other iconic performances, so her performance in Still Alice as a woman with early onset Alzheimer's is sure to be acknowledged this year. If I had to choose a runner-up, I would say that Rosamund Pike's chilling and jaw-dropping performance in Gone Girl would be the alternate for getting the gold.

Who Got Snubbed- I was surprised Katherine Waterston was snubbed for her performance in Inherent Vice as the sleek femme-fatale Shasta Fay Hepworth. Her couch confessional to Joaquin Phoenix is reminiscent of Faye Dunaway's breakdown in Chinatown or Mary Astor's performance in The Maltese Falcon as she exudes the classical noir character.

Best Actor
Steve Carell for Foxcatcher
Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game
Bradley Cooper for American Sniper
Michael Keaton for Birdman
Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything

Who Will Win- I am definitely rooting for Michael Keaton for his revolutionary performance as Riggan Thompson in Birdman as he pulls it off with his class comedic chops along with such heartfelt sympathy. Steve Carrell would be a close 2nd since his performance as the wealthy and destructive John DuPont in Foxcatcher.

Who Got Snubbed- I was shocked that Ralph Fiennes was not nominated for The Grand Budapest Hotel. His funny and eccentric performance as the perfume-loving Gustave H. is a tall glass of water compared to the succession of horrific villains he's portrayed in the past.

Best Director
Richard Linklater - Boyhood
Alejandro González Iñárritu - Birdman
Bennett Miller - Foxcatcher
Wes Anderson - The Grand Budapest Hotel
Morten Tyldum -The Imitation Game

Who Will Win- This is the most difficult and competitive list of nominees. In a perfect world, I would give a three-way tie for Richard Linklater, Alejandro Iñárritu, and Wes Anderson. I would be content if either one of those three won Best Director, but I'm sure Wes Anderson will win the Best Original Screenplay award leaving Iñárritu and Linklater a chance to win. All and all, I think the Oscar will go to Richard Linklater just for the fact that he committed to a film for 12 years that has resulted in a groundbreaking epic.

Best Picture
American Sniper
Birdman
Boyhood
The Imitation Game
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Selma
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash

Who Will Win- It's no surprise that this year has been big in the field of Indie cinema, and the film to definitely come out as the best film is Boyhood. It has swept every award in its path, and will sure to be a big winner this year. The only upsets I would expect to compromise Boyhood's  expected big sweep is Birdman since, like Boyhood, it is a film that has redefined modern film-making and storytelling with such humor and heartfelt emotions regarding the human condition.

Well, there's my list of who should be expected to grab the coveted and highly praised award for outstanding film-making despite the fact that this year has a been a bit stagnant in films. The winners will be announced on Feb. 22nd, and I will be giving updates live on Facebook on Sunday night. See you then!