American Sniper review

              Like any movie that embraces the moral ambiguities of a particularly controversial war, Clint Eastwood's “American Sniper” is a difficult film to discuss without drifting into reactionary politics or blame-game finger pointing. It becomes all the more difficult when the movie breaks all kinds of records for a January release—infamously understood as an seasonal lull for Hollywood economics—and the public figure who inspired the story, U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle, had an equally divisive past that challenges the very ethics of the film's supposed hero. An easier admission to make is that on a technical and aesthetic level this is Eastwood's sharpest and most accomplished film in almost ten years and contains hair-raising sequences that rivals just about anything from his past catalog.

            Based on his autobiography, this movie recounts the life of Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), a good ol' boy from Texas who was raised on God, guns and girls, and was personally drawn into military life in 1999 after witnessing on the news the loss of American soldiers overseas. Because his daddy taught him that there are only three types of men, the sheep (the weak and the stupid), the predators (the aggressors) and the sheep dogs (protectors of the weak), Kyle makes it his personal mission to keep his fellow soldiers on the battle field safe, creating a superman complex that would increasingly haunt his psyche once America was called to action in the middle-east. His wife Taya (Sienna Miller) does her best to raise their children alone while Chris does four successive tours in the war-torn streets of Iraq, leaving the bulk of their relationship attended over voice mails and the occasional phone call.

            Locked within a distinctly American depiction of a troubled war started on shaky reasoning and based on a book that was written by a man who posthumously lost a defamation case against a blow-hard Minnesota wrestler turned governor, this film struggles to be everything for everyone. It wants to do right by the now deceased soldier, who, while protecting the lives of his fellow troops was responsible for the deaths of over 160 enemies, including women and children. At the same time, while never showing his duties as anything but well-intended and heroic, the film also surrounds Kyle with multiple characters who question the logic of the war their fighting and their value within it.

            During the emotional climax, when Kyle finally faces off against an Iraqi sniper who killed many of his best friends, the battle field is struck by a blinding sand storm, which seems to suggest a divine or natural dissension over the mounting violence justified by earthly ideologies... Or maybe it doesn't mean that at all, but because of the movie's vague and waffling point of view it only augments the individual viewer's political leanings. Whether you walk into this thinking it's a pro-war propaganda piece, an anti-war character study, or a patriotic tribute to a lost American folk hero, you'll ultimately leave with your original judgments and expectations intact.

            Questionable thematics aside, nobody should deny Eastwood's return to form here, as he demonstrates that he can carefully and sensitively build tension within each high-stakes shootout and create a palpable haze of paranoia over the final scenes where Chris Kyle can barely make sense of his civilian life after returning home to raise his family. Likewise, Bradley Cooper is fully committed to the role and plays the charismatic sniper without any apology and bravely lets the audience into the mind of his character's fractured world-view. Unfortunately we can never truly know if the internal struggle that complicates the ideological mine field exists outside of the dramatic padding of this movie universe.

Grade: B-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2015

My Top-10 films of 2014

If I were to identify a theme present in most of the films on my top-10 this year it would be genre films that managed approach things from an interesting angle or simply films with familiar trappings that completely subverted my expectations. I guess as someone who see's a lot of movies, reads about a lot of movies, and ends up writing about a lot of movies, I want to be surprised, and this list consists of the ten best surprises I encountered this year.

10 – Dear White People

Forget the loaded titled that sparked a short-lived Twitter campaign, this debut feature from writer/director Justin Simien is one of the sharpest and smartest comedic satires about race since Spike Lee's “Do The Right Thing."  “Dear White People” examines culture-clash in a post-racial America through a nuanced lens of youthful identity panic and turns what could have been a simple and predictable story about a racially divided college into a universal message about learning how to define yourself instead of living up to the expectations of others.

09 – Snowpiercer

From South Korean genre director Bong joon-ho comes his first English language film, a multinational post-apocalyptic action thriller about a team of survivors fighting their way through a train that separates the worlds population by class as they get closer to the engine room. There they hope to find a path to freedom and equality. This is an unapologetic, bleak vision of our world's current Geo-political mess, in which joon-ho refuses to supply any easy answers. Filled with shocking blasts of action violence and beautifully arranged set-pieces, “Snowpiercer” takes the tropes of a familiar hero story and forces the audience to examine difficult political questions.

08 – Blue Ruin

Set in small town, rural America, this mini-budge revenge tale is another film that leaves you guessing all the way through. Almost a Coen Brothers archetype, our protagonist is an unassuming, ill-equipped nebish who takes on more than he is capable of dealing with when trying to right the wrongs between two warring families. While the tone or look of the film never suggests overt comedy, the priceless scenes of actor Macon Blair fumbling through learning how to shoot guns, dispose of a bodies and hide from his pursuers creates a nervous laughter throughout.

07 – The One I Love

There have been plenty of indie flicks about young couples who're stuck in a vacation home to work through their relationship problems, but never one as chilling and surreal as director Charlie McDowell and writer Justin Lader's “The One I Love.” Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss are sent to vacation house per recommendation of a counselor and after some drinking and music they find that the house provides a type of strange existential therapy that can't easily be explained. I don't want to say too much because going on the ride is all the better when you don't know anything about it. All I will say is that the movie takes an absurd premise and follows it to it's natural extremes, and does so without overshadowing the original theme of what it takes for a young marriage to resolve problems of trust and communication.

06 – Gone Girl

David Fincher's adaptation of Gillian Flynn's popular airport novel “Gone Girl” also examines trust issues between sorted lovers. Fincher is a master at work here, as he takes what could have been a overwrought and over-written B-movie, and through his own cinematic brilliance, he confidently guides us through a brooding noir yarn that somehow manages to jump the shark three times and recover just as quick.

05 – Only Lovers Left Alive

Indie veteran and uber-cool NY hipster Jim Jarmusch made a film about rock and roll, vampire junkies and reworked a well-worn and tired cinematic myth to create a sarcastic and post-modern world of his own. Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are captivating as bored shut-ins who have to live their lonely lives away from the public that worships them. Jarmusch's romantically lit vision of the deteriorating industrial neighborhoods of Detroit also suggests that these character's observations about the generational and economic changes in high/low culture has had a measurable effect on America's global relevance.

04 – Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal gives his best performance yet in Dan Gilroy's black-as-coal media satire “Nightcrawler.” Here he plays Luis Bloom, a desperate and eager swindler who goes to uncomfortable lengths to film the fallout of crime scenes before his competitors get there first. Gilroy compares the hunger to succeed with a sociopaths lack of empathy, creating a nocturnal LA milieu where the loners and losers rule the city.

03 – Whiplash

Forget those warm and fuzzy flicks about an older mentor and his younger talented protegee looking for words of wisdom. Damien Chazelle's “Whiplash” re-examines this familiar set-up as an abusive and epic power struggle. Miles Teller as the masochistic and ambitious college jazz drummer and JK Simmons as his Hannibal-Lector-like teacher steal the air from every scene as they fill their spaces full of raw and tangible tension, boiling to a fever pitch until arriving at one of the best movie ending of last decade.

02 – Boyhood

Richard Linklater's twelve year project about a Texas boy growing up in a broken family creates an emotional scope far larger than the average coming-of-age drama usually aspires. By watching these actors age on camera and by composing each scene as a mini narrative within the larger context of someone's life, this movie becomes a living photo album full of the key memories that define who we are--be it the big moments that change everything or the small, insignificant moments that we forget as time passes.

01 – Under the Skin

Unlike anything else this year, this intimate sci-fi horror slinked it's way into brain and never let me go. Scarlett Johansson says very little as a predatory vixen who roams the poorly lit streets of Scotland looking for her prey. Without explicitly trying, British director Jonathan Glazer illustrates a compelling allegory about sexual power dynamics and gender politics, wrapped in a sensual thriller that will possess a patient audience with it's icy atmosphere and nightmarish visuals.

Honorable Mentions:

Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Stranger by the Lake, Birdman, Foxcatcher, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Obvious Child, Locke

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2015

Into the Woods review

        After the awards buzz and accolades that surrounded the 2013's cinematic adaptation of “Les Miserables,” it was only natural that another well regarded Broadway production would make it's way into the next year's crop of holiday releases. Disney's reworking of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's “Into the Woods” is a gleefully traditional musical comedy full of big stars doing big hammy performances, and it's camera-winking dorkiness is probably the most endearing thing about it. Though director Rob Marshall ("Chicago," "Nine") uses his mouse-house money to fully realize the fantasy world in which these intertwining stories take place, on some level, the movie still operates like a high-budget, high school musical staring the most popular jocks and cheerleaders of Hollywood, and within that tonal imagining there's definitely a charm to be had, but the film never quite makes the impact that the cast or the budget would suggest.

        In an extended overture we are introduced to this fairy tale mash-up world where in the same village lives Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) and the Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp), Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) and Prince Charming (Chris Pine), Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy), and Jack of the beanstalk fame (Daniell Huddleston). In the background while these stories play themselves out more or less like we have seen before, the primary plot focuses on baker and his wife played by James Cordon and Emily Blunt, who desperately want to have a child and who find themselves manipulated by a witch (Meryl Streep). Together they orchestrate all of these tales in such a way that they can obtain the items they need to perform a fertility spell. It's all very convoluted and for the most part incidental when giving in to the mindless joy of watching our favorite Grim's fairy tales unfold this ironic, post-modern context. Later, when the second half kicks into gear and adds a 'be careful what you wish for' twist to every premature happy ending, the movie oddly runs out of creative juice and the amicable tone of the first half of the film is replaced with ponderous and severely unearned character dilemmas.

         The cast is obviously having fun here and are given license to fully send-up the cliches attached to their stories and their character's. Chris Pine's turn as the egomaniac Prince Charming and Streep, who's doing her best Margaret Hamilton impersonation, keep things lively and funny. Blunt and Cordon also do a fine enough job working as the glue that keeps these dispirit plots from overwhelming the spinal narrative, but it's Marshall's lackluster visual design and directorial blandness that chains this movie to the floor and keeps it from fully taking flight. Much of this production is lit in muted blues and grays and creates for a dreary, damp looking post-Burton conceptual expression that doesn't reflect the buoyancy of the performances or Sondheim's varied musical numbers. Many scenes are shot in traditional coverage, composed mostly of simple masters, close-ups and over the shoulder shots, without hardly any swooping cranes, impressive single-takes or even occasional grandiose establishing shots that would open up the frame, resulting in musical set-pieces that feel small and televisual.
       Far less melodramatic or irritating as last-year's overlong “Les Miz”, and with sing-along musical sequences that are more confidently and skillfully performed, recorded and mixed, “Into the Woods” is a benign, if somewhat banal, movie going experience. Family's who're looking to escape the polar-vortex and/or the discomfort of having to talk to each other will most likely enjoy the majority what they see here, even if by the last thirty minutes they might be thinking more about their holiday dinner leftovers than how the movie will be resolved.

Grade: C+  

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2015