Review: Anomalisa

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Screenwriter and occasional director Charlie Kaufman has one of the most unique voices in the current cinema. His screenplays for "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" are among the best of the past 20 years. His directorial work has been a little more hit-or-miss for me. I admired, but never quite warmed to, his acclaimed 2008 film "Synecdoche, NY" and his latest "Anomalisa," which I think is the better of his two directorial efforts, is certainly good, if not great.

To reiterate, it has been said that there are basically seven original movie plots - and then there are Kaufman's works, which defy what we believe a movie can be about. His latest, which happens to be an animated movie co-directed by Duke Johnson that utilizes puppets, is a brief dramedy about a lonely and depressed writer named Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) who spends a soul crushing weekend in Cincinnati, where he is to give the keynote speech at a conference on workplace constructiveness.

Stone, who is British but lives in California with a wife and children who are not seen until the film's culmination, is sad and apparently missing something in his life, so no sooner does he check into his hotel than he is on the phone with an old flame who happens to live in Cincinnati, whom he meets for an extremely awkward drink that lasts a mere matter of minutes.

Shortly thereafter, he weasels his way into the immediate orbit of two women who happen to be attending the conference and, having read his book, are slightly awed by his minor celebrity. One of the women is Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh), a painfully shy person whose last romance was many years in the rear view mirror.

Michael not-so-subtly gets Lisa to agree to accompany him to his room, where they talk before engaging in a sex scene - with puppets, mind you - on which much has already been written. If you're thinking the sequence is along the lines of those in "Team America: World Police," you'd be incorrect. Rather than play it for laughs, the coupling of Michael and Lisa is handled with great tenderness and even a touch of melancholy, for both characters are people who feel they do not belong.

Some slight surrealism follows as Michael has a bizarre dream involving the hotel's manager and, after leaving Lisa behind for the moment, he fumbles his way through an awkward speech at his conference. The film, which I've mentioned is a very brief 90 minutes, then comes to a rather brisk end.

If I appreciated the obvious thought and effort that went into "Synecdoche, NY" while not exactly endorsing the picture as a whole, I felt that "Anomalisa" finds Kaufman in a position of slightly increased directorial control, even if the film is narratively more simple. It's a good movie and one that, I believe, does a nice job of capturing the depressive state. The film is thoughtful, funny and occasionally moving.

I still believe that Kaufman's collaborations with other filmmakers - Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, for example - are stronger than his own directorial work, but with "Anomalisa," it strikes me that he is taking a step in the right direction. Kaufman is a singular artist and his sophomore film is certainly of a piece with his overall body of work.

Review: Concussion

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Peter Landesman's "Concussion," based on a 2009 magazine article, is a fairly straightforward whistle blower drama that features a solid performance that could revive Will Smith's career, which had become bogged down in big budget star vehicles.

Here, he plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, a good-hearted forensic pathologist who, while working in Pittsburgh for the coroner's office, discovered CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), an injury that he noticed in deceased professional football players that had been caused by years of blunt force against the players' heads.

Omalu is a man who truly believes in the American Dream and, as he tells Prema (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the young African woman whom he agrees to sponsor, he is surprised when men in power take exception to his discovery and attempt to silence him. Those men would, naturally, be representatives for the NFL, whom this film suggests attempted to cover up CTE, which they feared would get in the way of their bottom line.

Similar to other films of this sort, the corporation does all it can to bring down the little guy who is waging a righteous war against it. They stalk his wife, attempt to discredit his work, scare him with immigration issues and, in one of the more extreme moves, try to bring up federal charges against his employer, Dr. Cyril Wecht (Albert Brooks).

But Omalu has several on his team, including Mbatha-Raw, who becomes a romantic interest, Brooks' Wecht and Dr. Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin), who had previously treated NFL players and understands not only why Omalu must push forward with his research, but also how the football league will react to the findings.

So, while "Concussion" doesn't exactly tell us anything we don't already know, it's a good star vehicle for Smith, who gives a very good and subtle performance as Omalu. Although Smith's biggest successes have been blockbusters such as the "Men in Black" pictures and "Independence Day," he frequently shines when given meatier roles, including his work as Muhammad Ali and in "Six Degrees of Separation."

And considering that much of the film involves Omalu and company looking at slides through microscopes, while actual football action is few and far between, "Concussion" is fairly suspenseful and engaging. Although it uses a familiar formula to tell its story, the professionalism on display and Smith's strong work carry it across the finish line.

The Best Movies of 2015

Spotlight. Image courtesy of Open Road Films.

2015 ended up being a good - if not quite great - movie year and my top 10 included several surprises - in other words, films that weren't exactly on my radar at this time a year ago.

My best of the year list includes some familiar faces - directors who often make my top 10 - as well as some newcomers, an animated picture and one directorial debut. Also, a horror movie cracked my top 10 for the first time in years.

Here's my top 10 movies of 2015, plus my 10 runners up (numbers 11-20). I'd love to hear from you, so tell me what your favorite movies of the year were in the comment section.

Note: As of Dec. 31, I have yet to see Charlie Kaufman's "Anomalisa" and Andrew Haigh's "45 Years," both of which have been highly acclaimed and appeared on many top 10 lists. I intend to see both this weekend and will update my top 20 accordingly, if necessary.

Review: The Revenant

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's intense and brutal sort-of western "The Revenant" gives new meaning to revenge being a dish best served cold as Leonardo DiCaprio's Hugh Glass, who gets my vote for the most physically tormented cinematic character in recent memory, gets beaten and battered against the frigid backdrops of the Dakota territory.

The film is a pretty basic revenge story, but one in which nearly every frame is filled with jaw dropping visual wonderment. It's without a doubt the most gorgeously filmed picture of the year and one of the all-around best.

Melding together such unlikely bedfellows as the visual style of Terrence Malick, the man vs. nature elements of Werner Herzog and the body horror of David Cronenberg, "The Revenant" is a visual feast that's often difficult to watch, due to the agonizing violence perpetrated against DiCaprio's body by bears, falls off cliffs, puncture wounds made by knives, waterfalls and cinders used to heal ripped flesh. Other characters are scalped, stabbed, have their throats pierced by arrows, hanged and lose fingers. It's one of the year's most violent films, but whereas most Hollywood pictures use stylized violence and cartoonish gun play, every gouge in Inarritu's film is realistically rendered.

Glass's story is a true one that has already been told in 1971's "Man in the Wilderness," but is relayed much more viscerally here. The frontiersman and fur trapper leads a group of men through South Dakota in the early 1820s, where they are attacked by Native Americans and forced to leave their furs behind, the remaining men first trekking downriver in a boat before hoofing it on foot.

While out scouting, Glass is mauled by a bear in one of the most frightening sequences you'll likely ever see that is impressive due to both its flawless special effects and one-take shot without edits or cuts. As far as I'm aware, there's nothing else quite like it in the history of film.

Glass's humane captain (Domhnall Gleeson) believes the trapper is a goner, so he pays a few men - including Glass's Native American son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), a novice named Bridger (Will Poulter) and a man with antipathy towards Native Americans known as Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) - to stay behind, care for Glass, who can barely move, and give him a proper burial when the time comes.

Fitzgerald wants Glass to die as quickly as possible, so he can bring back the furs and recoup his losses and convinces Glass to let him smother him on the grounds of saving his son since the Sioux could be approaching, but Hawk misinterprets the situation, intervenes and is fatally stabbed by Fitzgerald, who then halfheartedly buries Glass alive and swindles Bridger into fleeing.

Most of the rest of the picture involves Glass digging himself out of his grave and literally crawling and then, after healing, walking back to Fort Kiowa to track down Fitzgerald and avenge his son's death. Along the way, there's a subplot involving a missing Sioux chief's daughter, some French traders and Glass's running into both that plays into the film's climax.

So, while the story is mostly a fairly straightforward survival and revenge tale, the camerawork is truly incredible. The picture was reportedly one of the most difficult shoots in history as Inarritu, in the style of Herzog, took his crew into unpopulated wilds, where they braved the elements and the film gives off the mad genius vibe that permeated other difficult-to-make classics such as "Apocalypse Now" and "Fitzcarraldo."

And DiCaprio, whom the Academy Award has eluded all these years, should finally get the credit due to him. This is one of the most physically challenging performances I've seen and he rises to the occasion. Hardy exudes menace as Fitzgerald, while Poulter provides the right amount of naivete and, then, maturation as Bridger.

Inarritu, whose early films were primarily intersecting triptych films, has branched off into new territory, first with last year's dizzying dramedy "Birdman" and, now, the gorgeously harrowing "The Revenant." It's one of the most impressive cinematic rebirths of recent years and one that I hope continues onward with the director's next film.

Review: The Hateful Eight

Image courtesy of The Weinstein Company.

Only Quentin Tarantino could get away with and successfully pull off a gory, three-hour western that is mostly dialogue-driven, screened in 70 mm and complete with a roadshow presentation that includes an overture and intermission.

The filmmaker - whose love for cinema history, especially spaghetti westerns and a variety of less reputable genres, has been well documented in his previous seven features - really goes for broke with "The Hateful Eight," which is simultaneously one of his darkest, most violent, disturbing and socially conscious.

The setup is fairly simple: a group of eight strangers find themselves snowed in at a tavern in the middle of nowhere in post-Civil War Wyoming and more than a few of them have something to hide. In the style of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians," the characters begin to unveil their nefarious purposes and the body count stacks up.

Although the setup is familiar, the influence of spaghetti westerns obvious and the scenario inspired somewhat by John Carpenter's creepy 1982 remake of "The Thing," Tarantino's latest is the first in a while that does not overtly reference other movies. And although Ennio Morricone's haunting notes can be heard throughout the proceedings, the director has not sampled the maestro's previous works as he has done in the past, but rather convinced the iconic composer to create a new score for his film.

The cast is pretty terrific. Kurt Russell plays John Ruth, a bounty hunter known as the Hangman, who displays the valiant traits you'd expect in a western hero, that is, until he repeatedly punches and slaps around the prisoner - one Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) - he is hauling to Red Rock to be executed. On the road to Minnie's Haberdashery, he picks up two passengers - the racist Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), the son of a marauder who terrorized blacks in South Carolina during the Civil War, and Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a bounty hunter who had also enlisted in the war, but to kill racist whites.

Once they reach the tavern, they find a who's who of potentially dangerous characters - Bob the Mexican (Demian Bichir), former Confederate general and bigot Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), actual hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) and Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a soft spoken cowboy who claims to be writing a biography. Other characters pop up during the course of "The Hateful Eight," but saying anything more about them could give away the film's secrets.

Tarantino revisits some tropes those familiar with his oeuvre might recognize - there's an extended flashback halfway through the film, the picture is divided up into amusingly titled chapters and long stretches of the picture involve lengthy monologues, the most outlandish and wildly inventive of which involves Jackson's taunting another character with a speech about how white men are intimidated by the loins of black men.

But there's also some profundity to be found in the film's dialogue, especially in regards to matters of race relations. Goggins' racist sheriff notes at one point that whites feel safe when blacks are afraid, which is later countered by Jackson's assertion that blacks are safe when whites are unarmed, which is prescient considering that the script, written several years ago, seems not only to foreshadow the numerous shootings of young black males by white police officers, but also is ironic considering that police unions have vowed to boycott Tarantino's film after he marched in a protest against said shootings. However, Jackson's Warren notes that he unarms - or, makes comfortable - white folks with a letter he carries around written to him by President Abraham Lincoln.

The film also - and not surprisingly - looks great. It is the first picture to be shot on 65 mm film using Ultra Panavision 70 - which is the ultra-wide aspect ratio used on films in the 1950s and 1960s such as "Ben-Hur" and "Battle of the Bulge" - in 23 years and the result is a gorgeous looking film, despite most of the story being set in a one-room bar, although the movie also includes one of the year's best shots involving a cross bearing Jesus in the snow.

The violence in "The Hateful Eight" is a little unnerving, especially some extremely gory and brutal use of physical force against women, however, similar to the sinister characters in "Django Unchained" and "Reservoir Dogs," the characters behave in ways that would seem true to their natures. Then again, most of the characters - both men and women - whose number is up die particularly violent deaths in "The Hateful Eight."

Tarantino is one of American film's most unique and talented voices and "The Hateful Eight" proves once again that he can deftly blend genre riffs with provocative material. There's a concept on display in the film that - at least, in the case of this narrative - hatred and bigotry can be overcome when people unite to fight against other kinds of evil. Tarantino's film is dark, violent, button-pushing and one of the year's best.

Review: Joy

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Part drama about a businesswoman coming into her own and part wacky comedy about a royally dysfunctional family - oh yeah, and also the story about the creation of a mop - David O. Russell's "Joy" is a little all over the place. But while it's far from being one of the idiosyncratic director's best movies, it's undeniably filled with solid performances, amusing flights of fancy and the work of a singular vision.

The picture follows the true - well, at least, partially - story of Joy Mangano, a Long Island woman who invented the Miracle Mop, but also apparently holds more than 100 patents. She is played here by Russell muse Jennifer Lawrence, who gives some gravitas to the character, while letting the rest of the cast play for laughs.

Her mother (Virginia Madsen) stays in bed all day and watches soap operas, which occasionally take center stage in the story, while her serially betrothed father (Robert De Niro), who is divorced from Madsen's character, moves back into the house and lives in the basement with his nemesis, Tony (Edgar Ramirez), Joy's ex-husband and a wannabe Tom Jones. There's also a jealous sister, a grandmother (Diane Ladd) who is always attempting to boost Joy's confidence and our heroine's two young daughters.

As the film opens, Joy - who works odd jobs to feed her children - has recently seen one of her inventions flop, but she is inspired after being forced to clean up a mess with a mop, leading to her hands being cut by broken pieces of glass. Therefore, she comes up with the idea for the revolutionary Miracle Mop, which enables users to mop up an entire floor with its yards and yards of cloth, which can be thrown in the laundry, and prevents its owners from having to get their hands near the cleaning end.

To get started, Joy loans money from her father's new girlfriend (Isabella Rossellini), who was formerly married to a successful businessman and requires Joy to answer four ridiculous questions before getting the loan. She takes her concept to Neil Walker (Bradley Cooper), a soft spoken but excitable executive at QVC, who finally agrees to give her some airtime, where her mop takes off.

From the start, Joy finds herself in constant struggle not only with her adversaries in business and manufacturers, who attempt to rip her off, but also her own family. Her sister attempts to undermine her, her father says aloud how little confidence he has in her and Rossellini's Trudy immediately wants a return on her loan.

Russell has said that he meant for "Joy" to be thematically in line with such classics as "The Godfather" and "Citizen Kane" and there's a final passage in the picture that is obviously an homage to the former, although it also seemed to give a nod to "There Will Be Blood," but bowling pins were thankfully not utilized.

"Joy" often veers wildly in tone, from wacky comedy to a serious drama about the dark side of American capitalism. There's always a fair amount going on and not all of it works. The scenes involving the soap opera are good for a laugh at first but, perhaps, are a little too in abundance and Ladd's character is originally established as the film's narrator, although this is dropped fairly early in the picture and only moderately brought back at a later point.

Aside from the quirkier aspects of the film, what makes "Joy" ultimately work is Lawrence's great onscreen presence and strong work here. There are a number of scenes where she shines, but two of my favorites are one in which she freezes up while live on TV attempting to sell her mop only to regain her composure and another during which she learns how to be tough and scares a guy trying to swindle her in a hotel room without even having to be menacing.

As I'd mentioned, "Joy" is not one of my favorite Russell films, whose best work includes "Three Kings" and "American Hustle." But similar to his other movies, it's a compelling and offbeat tale of dreamers and oddballs and, quite possibly, the only movie ever made about a mop.

Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

The anticipation among some quarters for J.J. Abrams's first entry into the continuation of the wildly popular "Star Wars" saga likely reached such a fever pitch prior to the film's opening this weekend that a letdown was likely in store for some. However, I'm glad to say that not only was I not disappointed in the first of the new trilogy - which picks up 30-some years after "Return of the Jedi" - but I wholeheartedly enjoyed it. It's the first blockbuster that I've genuinely cared about in some time and it's due to the film's intent to recapture some of the magic of George Lucas's groundbreaking original trilogy.

While we see some old familiar faces - Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) as well as R2-D2, C-3P0, Admiral Ackbar and Nien Nunb - much of the focus in "The Force Awakens" is on the newbies.

As the film opens, a hotshot pilot named Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is following a clue on a distant planet as to the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who has been missing for years after an attempt to train a new generation of Jedi went bust. Dameron is soon captured by the sinister Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who has a connection to some of the film's older characters that I wont spoil, but the pilot first manages to send off his small, roly-poly droid BB8 with the clue to Skywalker's locale.

BB8 is discovered by a spunky young scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley, a genuine find) and she is soon joined by Finn (John Boyega), a former stormtrooper who deserted on the grounds that he wasn't down for massacring entire villages of people. After stealing the Millennium Falcon, the pair run into... well, take a guess.

In the years since "Jedi" ended, the rebels have become the Resistance and the Empire has become a fascistic outfit known as the First Order that is led by the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), whose nefarious plans are carried out by Kylo Ren and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), a sniveling villain whose Nazi-esque speech to a massive crowd of stormtroopers is one of the film's few silly sequences.

Meanwhile, Leia wants to find her brother, whom she believes can bring peace to the galaxy and enlists Rey, who discovers she has some powers of her own, in the task. There are some tender moments when Ford's Han Solo reunites with Fisher and, later in the picture, at least one or two others that will likely leave a knot in your throat.

The visual effects are terrific and, for the most part, they feel more similar to Lucas's original trilogy, rather than the prequel trilogy, which relied heavily on CGI. There's a sequence in a bar involving Han Solo, a pirate voiced by Lupita Nyong'o and our young cast members that acts as a throwback to the iconic bar scene in the original "Star Wars" and I admired that so many characters appeared to be in costume, rather than created through digital wizardry.

It's been said that "The Force Awakens," in a sense, remakes the original "Star Wars" and, to an extent, that's true. Rey is partially Luke and Han Solo, while BB8 is R2-D2 and Finn and Poe are also sort of Han Solo. Kylo Ren is obviously Darth Vader and Snoke draws parallels to the Emperor. The bar scene, as I'd mentioned, harkens back to the original film and there's a standoff on a high beam that reminded me of Obi-Wan's fight against Darth Vader.

But while the sight of some familiar faces and plotlines that recall the original trilogy are present, the young cast members breathe new life into the series. Ridley is another great female heroine in a year full of them (Charlize Theron in "Mad Max" and Amy Poehler in "Inside Out," not to mention the great leads in "Brooklyn" and "Carol"), while Boyega displays deft comedic delivery and Driver is fairly menacing as the picture's villain.

And as for the familiar faces, it's great to see Ford step back into the shoes of Han Solo, one of the series' absolute best characters. Here, he plays a wiser, older Solo who can still toss out a one-liner with his characteristic smirk, but also reminds us why we loved the character so much all those years ago. By taking on the role once more, Ford gives one of his finer performances of recent years.

"The Force Awakens" is a very good start to this new series and the film's literal cliffhanger ending should provide a wealth of material when the second installment comes out in a few years. As I've gotten older, admittedly, blockbusters have held less appeal to me. Although there have been some good ones now and then, they typically fail to capture the magic of films such as the original "Star Wars" or "Indiana Jones" movies. But this one does and I'd highly recommend it.