Review: The Fifth Estate

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

I remember there being some discussion several years back about how effective a movie about people sitting around in front of computer screens would play for an audience. Of course, the movie in question at that time was David Fincher's "The Social Network," which was my favorite film of 2010 that went on to get robbed by the Academy Awards.

Now, we have Bill Condon's "The Fifth Estate," which tells the purportedly - and I say that due to its subject's insistence that it does not tell the full story - true story of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his squabbles with then-partner Daniel Berg (Daniel Bruhl). The film's subject matter is inherently interesting - and yet, the film feels as though we're watching people doing a lot of sitting in front of computer screens.

And whereas Mark Zuckerberg's alleged loneliness and outsider-ness made for a compelling psychological profile that drove Fincher's film, Assange's "back story," if you will, is not as convincing in explaining why he comes off as a well-intentioned egomaniac.

Part of the problem is that Assange is only marginally fleshed out and that the filmmakers have given just enough evidence for both sides of the argument on the man's worth that they appear to take no side at all. In other words, what do the writers and filmmakers think about Julian Assange? Yes, they make it clear that he's brilliant and, sure, he comes off as pompous and self important. But as to whether he should have leaked documents that put lives at risk, the film is frustratingly opaque. You could make cases for both sides of the argument, but this film does not.

That's not to say that "The Fifth Estate" is without its pleasures. Cumberbatch, who provided some solid supporting work in "12 Years a Slave," inhabits the man as well as the screenplay allows. And the subject matter itself is quite harrowing. And there's a subplot here involving Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci as Department of State workers attempting to handle the media following Assange's release of highly classified documents that is pretty interesting throughout.

But the picture could have been a whole lot more. "The Fifth Estate" poses some interesting questions on the state of 21st century journalism and what exactly is important for the public to know. But anyone can pose a question. It's making the case for your answer that tends to prove more riveting.

Review: 12 Years a Slave

Image courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave" is an often horrifying experience to which many viewers may not want to subject themselves. But like Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," it is a film that all should see.

And like that aforementioned film, viewers will not only be affected by the raw emotion of its story, but also by its incredible artistry and, in the case of McQueen's film, the bravery of its performances.

McQueen began his career as a film instillation artist before moving on to features, which include the haunting Bobby Sands picture "Hunger" and the provocative sex addiction drama "Shame." But "12 Years" puts him in an entirely other class.

Here is a film that I'd have to imagine will be the movie about slavery just as "Schindler's" is the most significant about the Holocaust and Paul Greengrass' "United 93" is - at least, in my opinion - the best about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

At the film's beginning, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a free black man - and musician - living in Saratoga, New York, with his wife and two young children in the 1850s. The horrors of the Civil War and the slave trade seem far away from Northup's doorstep.

Two white men arrive to enlist Northup to perform a concert in Washington D.C., where he is then drugged and sold into slavery under the name Platt, first being auctioned and sold to a plantation owner known as Mr. Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) and, later, to a violent man known as Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), whose wife (Sarah Paulson) is nearly as dangerous as the plantation's owner.

During his stay at the first plantation, Ford is taken by Platt's intelligence - of course, not knowing that he is, in fact, a free man from the north. Platt argues with a fellow slave named Eliza (Adepero Oduye, in one of the movie's terrific supporting roles), who has lost her two children, about what he describes as Ford's "kindness," referencing the fact that the plantation owner gave him a violin to play and shows him favor. Eliza's response puts things a bit more in perspective.

At this first plantation, Platt draws the ire of a nasty overseer named Tibeats (Paul Dano), who is angered by the slave's intelligence, which is clearly greater than his own. A fight between the two leads to one of the film's most horrific - but brilliantly executed - sequences during which Platt has a noose around his neck, standing on tiptoes for an entire day, attempting to balance on the mud beneath his feet so that he does not choke to death.

Ford tells Platt that he is impressed by his intelligence, but that "no good" will come of his staying on at the plantation. So, he is shipped off to work for Epps, a vicious sadist who takes pride in the horrific violence he unleashes on his slaves and quotes scripture to justify it. His wife is equally as evil, taking out her anger on a young slave woman (Lupita Nyong'o in a performance that has Oscar written all over it) who has attracted the attentions of her husband. It is at Epps' plantation that the real heart of "12 Years" lies.

There's not a single wasted performance in the film, from Ejiofor's remarkable lead role to Fassbender, Paulson, Nyong'o and Cumberbatch's excellent work. And the film, despite that it's often so difficult to watch, is frequently filled with beautiful images and powerful shots, from a torrent of red berry juice washing around on a plate, serving as a symbol of the blood shed by Platt and his fellow slaves to a long take of Platt joining in a hymn during a burial ceremony.

And the film's screenplay by John Ridley makes the language of 1850s America come to life, whereas it could have sounded stilted in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. And, as critic Glenn Kenny recently pointed out in an essay, the film's dialogue is often remarkable because of what the film's characters are implying, rather than outwardly saying.

"12 Years a Slave" is an unforgettable film - and one that should launch McQueen to the top of the heap of directors to watch. Although we can never truly know whether a film captures the essence of an era that has only been captured through the printed word, I'd have to say that McQueen has done just that in this movie. This is a difficult, extremely powerful and truly remarkable film.

Review: Machete Kills

Image courtesy of Open Road Films.

Just because a film aims to be bad does not give it a pass. Robert Rodrigue's "Machete Kills" is a sequel to 2010's "Machete," a somewhat forced feature length film of the director's clever fake trailer of the same that accompanied 2007's vastly underrated double feature, "Grindhouse."

If the original trailer was witty and entertainingly ludicrous, then its full length result was a bit labored, if moderately amusing. But this sequel, which features a cast full of wasted talent, is leaden, gory for the sake of being so and not particularly fun.

Danny Trejo resumes the titular role as a Mexican badass who was once a federale but is now, as one character puts it, the living embodiment of revenge - in this case, for a woman he loves who is killed at the picture's beginning.

There's no point in going through the various plot elements of "Machete Kills," but suffice it to say he is sent to his home country by the president (Charlie Sheen) to retrieve a very dangerous man (Demian Bechir) who threatens to launch a nuclear weapon at the United States.

There are a myriad of villains played by Cuba Gooding Jr., Antonio Banderas, Lady Gaga, Sofia Vergara, Amber Heard and Mel Gibson, all of whom barely register.

There are guts galore and blood splattering all over the screen throughout the course of the film's seemingly epic - or, rather, endless - hour and 45 minutes.

In fact, the only enjoyable moment in the whole enterprise is the opening trailer - "Machete Kills Again... In Space," which - God forbid - also threatens to become its own feature film.

Robert Rodriguez is responsible for his share of entertaining low budget mayhem, from his "Grindhouse" contribution "Planet Terror" and "Sin City" to the first two in his "El Mariachi" trilogy. But "Machete Kills" falls flat. It's an unnecessary sequel to a movie that didn't necessarily need to exist in the first place.

Review: Captain Phillips

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

Paul Greengrass' "Captain Phillips" is a tense, often claustrophobic, political thriller that aims to make sense of the complicated world in which we live. In fact, the film's lead, Rich Phillips (Tom Hanks), has a discussion on that very matter during the picture's opening sequence as he drives with his wife (Catherine Keener) to the airport.

Phillips will travel to Africa - Oman, specifically - and take charge of a massive cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, which will make its way down the coast through Somalia and, eventually, to Mombasa. For those unaware with the real life story of this voyage, Phillips and his crew will be visited by Somali pirates, who, first, board the ship before later taking the captain hostage in a dinghy.

Greengrass has carved a successful niche for himself as a director of intense political thrillers that happen to be based on true incidents, such as the powerful "Bloody Sunday" and the remarkable "United 93," as well as others that might as well have been based on true stories, such as the Iraq War drama, "Green Zone."

His latest makes use of the style of camera work that he employed in his "Bourne" films, but the cinematography is used here less as a means of jarring our senses amid frenetic action and more to create a sense of tight quarters, in which the story takes place.

After the opening sequence during which Phillips and his wife discuss the changing nature of the world and their children's role in it, Greengrass gets down to business. Phillips and crew board the ship and, several minutes later, the captain spots two blips on his radar.

During a tense sequence, Phillips and crew attempt to ward off two boats full of Somali pirates with radio tricks, hoses and ship maneuvers. The pirates board the ship and Phillips does his best to keep his crew hidden. Eventually, the Somalis take $30,000 from the ship and Phillips along with them. As you might know from the real encounter, Phillips and his captors were involved in a standoff with the American military, who surrounded a dinghy carrying the captain and four Somalis.

While "United 93" played out in a documentary format, giving little characterization to the people in the film - a bold, but necessary, move - and appropriately did not involve politics whatsoever, "Captain Phillips" includes some subtle, but effective, ideas.

The key to the film is the relationship between Phillips and Muse (Barkhad Abdi), the skeletal leader of the pirates. During two exchanges - one in which Phillips asks whether fishing and taking hostages is a viable way to live and another when Muse talks about robbing a Greek ship - Greengrass puts the story of the Maersk Alabama in a wider context about the current state of the world and the U.S.'s role in it.

And it should be mentioned that Hanks gives one of his best performances, certainly his finest work in more than a decade. The actor displays some serious gravitas throughout the proceedings, especially during a scene in the film's finale as he is treated by a doctor who is searching for signs of stress. I'd be shocked if Hanks doesn't have some nominations in his future.

Review: Runner Runner

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox

It's not that Brad Furman's "Runner Runner" is a bad movie. It's just by-the-numbers and fairly uninspired. It's a movie about taking risks that takes none of its own.

In the film, Justin Timberlake plays Richie, a graduate student at Princeton University who can barely pay off his student loans. We are told he had a previous career on Wall Street, but was then screwed over when his company went belly up.

Richie gets the shaft again after losing all of his money in an online poker game, but he recognizes that he was cheated and, like any of us would naturally do, boards a plane to Costa Rica to track down one Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), the mysterious operator of the website who has made millions through online gambling and is persona non grata in the United States.

Block seems to lure Richie into his operation, giving him a high-powered position and feeding his ego. Block is a manipulator and Richie - surprisingly, for a guy who is supposed to be pretty smart - is easily manipulated.

It must be the money that draws Richie in because it's not Block's charisma. Affleck plays the heavy for the first time and while his over-the-top portrayal is often amusing, his character is not as enigmatic as the screenwriters appear to think he is.

Richie is approached by an FBI agent (Anthony Mackie), who wants him to feed information about Block's enterprise. And wouldn't you know that a girl (Gemma Arterton) is involved who may or may not be trustworthy? And then, of course, there's Richie's dad (John Heard), a gambling addict whom Block uses as a bargaining chip at one obvious point. No cliche is left unused.

That's not to say that "Runner Runner" is that bad of a film. There are few surprises, but it handles its material with a certain level of professionalism. If that sells you on seeing it, you might possess a certain risk taking quality that the film itself is lacking.

Review: A Touch of Sin

Image courtesy of Koch Lorber Films

Jia Zhang-ke's "A Touch of Sin" is a brutal and unsettling omnibus film that tells four stories of the links between violence and materialism in modern day China.

For those unfamiliar with Zhang-ke's work, the director is one of the nation's most lauded filmmakers, whose "Platform," "Unknown Pleasures" and "Still Life" comment on globalization and alienation in the China of the 21st century, often employing long takes and a documentary style approach to filmmaking.

"A Touch of Sin" marks a notable change of pace for the filmmaker, first because of the relentless violence included in its four chapters, but also because of its stylized photography and occasional drift into the realms of the surreal.

In the first - and most powerful - chapter, a man named Dahai (Wu Jiang) is fed up with the village chief and local boss, who have obtained wealth through selling off collective property for which the villagers have not seen a penny. Dahai confronts the authorities, threatening to expose them, but is mostly written off as the village fool - that is, until he is attacked violently by one of the local boss' goons.

In a startling turn of events, Dahai removes a shotgun from his closet and enacts his revenge. Although the plot of this first sequence may sound like your standard Hollywood revenge fantasy, the violence is approached from a realist standpoint, making it all the more disturbing.

In a second - and not as successful - tale, a young man named Zhou San (Wang Baoqiang) returns to his home along the Three Gorges region after having gunned down three boys who attempted to rob him. His family acts distant, very possibly because they figure he is involved in some shady dealings.

Zhou putters around, spending time with his son and wife before engaging in the film's second shocking act of violence that includes a robbery.

We move on to the third - and second best - of the stories in which a young sauna receptionist named Xiao Yu (Zhao Tao, Zhang-ke's wife) carries on a relationship with a married man, is attacked by that man's wife and then enacts her revenge against a group of unruly men at her sauna.

This sequence has its share of surrealistic moments, including a dreamy sequence in a van during which a woman's feet are surrounded by snakes. Xiao Yu's revenge is carried out during a scene that could have been found in one of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films and, very possibly, pays homage to King Hu's kung fu classic "A Touch of Zen," after which Zhang-ke may have titled his own picture.

The fourth story held my interest, but it may be the weakest. It involves a young man who become involved with a teenage girl who works in a brothel after having fled the factory at which he worked. At moments, this sequence is powerful, but a bit inconclusive.

Zhang-ke ends his picture with a scene during which one of the film's characters watches a Chinese opera on a street and the camera cuts to a crowd of civilians as a character in the opera discusses the notion of sin. Zhang-ke's latest may not be his best, but it still has an urgency in its portrayal of characters trapped in a nation that the director hints may be changing for the worse.

Review: Gravity

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" is an exhilarating work of visual genius and a rare example of a film that makes a good case for the 3D experience.

The picture, which moves by at a brisk 91 minutes, is a thrilling tale of survival and quite unlike anything I've seen before. And while the film's storyline is fairly simple and, you could argue, routine, the way this story is told is anything but.

The setup is uncomplicated: A small crew of astronauts, led by pilot Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), are sent to fix a Hubble telescope. Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a first-time space traveler, but also the person best equipped to fix the telescope.

The film opens with a gorgeous view of the Earth and, just slightly, we begin to hear voices. A speck in the distance reveals itself to be a space ship around which the astronauts float weightlessly, working on the telescope. As we pull in closer, their voices become clearer.

Stone tells Kowalski that she likes the silence of outer space, but she's not too convincing. Both the seasoned astronaut and the doctor keep up constant banter during the movie's first 30 minutes, most likely to ward off their fear. Kowalski is jokey, rehashing old stories to ground control at Houston (voiced by Ed Harris) and talking about how he wants to break a space walking record set by a Russian astronaut. Stone, on the other hand, is all business.

Word comes from Houston that debris from a satellite that had been struck down by a rocket is heading in the astronauts' direction. From here on out, "Gravity" is a taut tale of survival that rarely lets up.

I won't give away too many details, but suffice it to say that Stone must fend for herself in one agonizingly tense sequence after another. During one particularly stunning sequence, she floats through the interior of a space craft, navigating her way head-first through its corridors, only to end up combatting a fire that breaks out.

In the film's coup de grace, Stone must flee her ship and untangle an escape pod's parachute as a second round of debris heads her way. The scene is a triumph of special effects, but also a great advertisement for 3D, of which I must admit I've become increasingly wary. There are only a few films that have truly utilized 3D to its full potential - I'm willing to include "Avatar," but am much more enthused by Martin Scorsese's "Hugo." Cuaron's film, however, uses the format brilliantly. Watching the picture through 3D glasses actually adds to the experience, which is more than I could say for a majority of 3D films.

And Bullock is her own force of nature. She may have won an Oscar for her performance in "The Blind Side," but her work as Stone is easily a career high for the actress. Bullock has been stuck, for years, in mostly lightweight - some enjoyable - comedies, but her performance in "Gravity" proves she has gravitas.

The film's final sequence gives new meaning to Neil Armstrong's famous quote, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

In recent years, it's become a rare thing that big budget special-effects heavy pictures have made it onto my list of the year's best films. As technology has become more advanced, storytelling has seemingly taken a back seat. "Gravity" is proof that blockbuster-style filmmaking does not have to be brain dead. This is a smart, extremely intense, well acted, emotionally satisfying and visually stunning film. For those thinking about seeing it, I'd urge you to see it on the big screen and with 3D glasses.