Quest Love

The Walk (2015): adapted by Robert Zemeckis and Christopher Browne from the non-fiction book by Philippe Petit; directed by Robert Zemeckis; starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Philippe Petit), Ben Kingsley (Papa Rudy), Charlotte Le Bon (Annie), and James Badge Dale (J.P.): Robert Zemeckis has used his later career to good, often startlingly uncommercial advantage. Good on him. The Walk is a slightly fictionalized account of a real even previously detailed in an award-winning documentary, Man on Wire. 

The film details the attempt by French aerial artist Philippe Petit to high-wire walk between the recently completed World Trade Centre towers in 1974. It's a charming, vertiginous movie about Art with a capital 'A'. All the primaries are good, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a credible French accent. And it all manages to remain vertiginous, even on the small screen. Recommended. 

Watership Down (1978): adapted and directed by Martin Rosen from the novel by Richard Adams; starring the voices of John Hurt (Hazel), Richard Briers (Fiver), Michael Graham Cox (Bigwig), Ralph Richardson (Chief Rabbit), Harry Andrews (General Woundwort), and Zero Mostel (Kehaar): Lovely hand-drawn animation is used to adapt Richard Adams' out-of-nowhere 1970's bestseller about heroic rabbits. The rabbit creation myth, done in extremely stylized animation at the beginning, is a stunner and a beaut. The rest of the movie is good too. Adams combined the animal fable and epic fantasy in a way that no one managed before or since. 

The movie is a bit short, but exciting and affecting. The voices, especially John Hurt as the leader of the rabbits who leave their burrow because of a prophetic dream by visionary rabbit Fiver, are all top-notch. Well, Zero Mostel goes a bit overboard as a helpful Greek seagull. Only an occasionally incongruous score detracts from the proceedings, but otherwise this is a terrific, forgotten work of fantasy. Highly recommended.

Interstellar (2014): written by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan; directed by Christopher Nolan; starring Matthew McConaughey (Cooper), Ellen Burstyn, Jessica Chastain, and Mackenzie Foy (Old, Middle, and Young Murph), John Lithgow (Donald), Bill Irwin (Voice of TARS), Anne Hathaway (Dr. Brand), Wes Bentley (Dr. Doyle), Michael Caine (Professor Brand), David Gyasi (Dr. Romilly), Casey Affleck (Tom), Topher Grace (Dr. Getty), and Matt Damon (Dr. Mann): Christopher Nolan's love letter to epic science-fiction films and the Power of Love is visually stunning, especially when one discovers that many of the effects involve old-school models and not CGI. Matthew McConaughey continues his run of excellence as the pilot charged with leading a somewhat convoluted mission to save humanity from the dying Earth. And boy, the science goes completely screwy once a black hole shows up. 

Nolan's tendency to bury dialogue behind Hans Zimmer's bombastic sound stylings can grate at points. And in another Nolanesque moment, Michael Caine delivers an almost incomprehensible death-bed confession while talking through what seems to be a mouthful of marbles and oatmeal. Still, the alien vistas and space sequences are impressive. The plot even makes sense if you assume that beings in the future are stuck enacting the convoluted and somewhat ridiculous humanity-saving plan in the movie's present because that's how things happened. They would have made things easier, but time is a flat circle, baby. Recommended.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015): adapted by Jesse Andrews from his own novel; directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon; starring Thomas Mann (Greg), RJ Cyler (Earl), Olivia Cooke (Rachel), Nick Offerman (Greg's Dad), Connie Britton (Greg's Mom), Molly Shannon (Rachel's Mom), Jon Bernthal (Mr. McCarthy), and Katherine Hughes (Madison): Excellent teen-centric movie based on an acclaimed Young Adult novel and adapted for the screen by that novel's author. Thomas Mann , RJ Cyler, and Olivia Cooke do great, funny, and sensitive work as the (respective) characters of the title. The adult characters are a bit more humourously two-dimensional, which is how teens often see the significant adults in their lives. For a movie about death and loneliness, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is awfully funny and surprisingly wise. How this wasn't a hit is beyond me. Though maybe all the Werner Herzog jokes curtailed its earning potential. Highly recommended.

Adam Raised A Cain

Frailty: written by Brent Hanley; directed by Bill Paxton; starring Bill Paxton (Dad), Matthew McConaughey (Meiks), Powers Boothe (Agent Doyle), Matt O'Leary (Young Fenton), Jeremy Sumpter (Young Adam), and Derk Cheetwood (Agent Hull) (2001): Bill Paxton's feature-length directorial debut should have resulted in more directorial opportunities. Set in a small town in Paxton's home state of Texas, Frailty is easily one of the ten best horror films of the last twenty years. It also features Matthew McConaughey in his finest acting performance prior to the recent McConnaissance. 

But even with praise before its release from Stephen King, James Cameron, and Sam Raimi, Frailty never got the audience it deserved (and still merits). This is a genuinely great work of very specifically American horror, with that American-ness expressed in everything from the details of small-town Texas life to the peculiarly literal-mindedness of American fundamentalist Christianity.

McConaughey narrates events to FBI agent Powers Boothe in the (then) present day in order to explain the identity and origin of a serial killer dubbed "God's Hand" who has murdered six people over the past few years. The bulk of the movie occurs in 1979, as McConaughey explains the role he, his brother, and his father play in the history of God's Hand.

McConaughey's widower father, a small-town auto mechanic, rushes into the boys' shared room one night to tell them that one of God's angels has appeared to him in a vision. The Apocalypse is close at hand, and Paxton and his sons have been drafted into the war. Paxton is to find three magical items and, having found them, await another vision that will tell him what to do next.

What comes next is a list of demons Paxton has to destroy (not kill but 'destroy'). But the demons live among humanity and look like people. However, as Paxton has been given their names and the ability to not only see them for what they are but to also see the atrocities they've committed, he can track them down and destroy them. And Paxton's character is convinced that his sons will also gain the ability to see the demons, as God's plan also involves the boys carrying on this new family business.

So clearly Paxton's character is a loon. And the revelation of the magical items -- a pair of work-gloves, an ax, and a length of pipe -- doesn't make him seem any more believable. One son believes him from the beginning; however, McConaughey tells us in the narration, he himself never believed his father, and would eventually either have to find the courage to stop his father's string of murders or at least run away.

Paxton's direction isn't showy, as befits the tone of the material: this is a tale of the normative surface of things under which, in men's minds, swim terrible creatures in dangerous depths. The actual killings are never shown in all their bloody detail; Paxton leaves it to the mind of the viewer to imagine what's happening just outside the frame. There's a verisimilitude to Paxton's depiction of the day-to-day lives of this strange family, a lived-in, working-class aesthetic to the way things look.

Everything would fail, however, without the performances of Matt O'Leary and Jeremy Sumpter as the two boys in 1979. Paxton gets terrific, believable performances from both of them. They anchor the movie. They also present the two sides of the mental conflict going on: one is convincing as a True Believer who loves his father, while the other is equally convincing as a horrified child who also loves his father, and thus finds it difficult to act against him at first. 

In the frame narration, McConaughey delivers a subdued, haunted performance, without a glimmer of that RomCom smarm that derailed his career for more than a decade. And as the initially skeptical FBI agent, Powers Boothe also shines. McConaughey's detailed story gradually convinces Boothe's character about the reality of the identity of the God's Hand killer, leading to a strangely convincing conclusion that's been carefully and fairly set up by everything that's been shown and told to us.

In all, this is a great movie of horror and madness and the bonds of family. While much of the film plays out with growing, horrific inevitability, Frailty also presents some startling surprises, including a scene of awful pathos involving the family and the arrival of the town sheriff at the one boy's request. Brent Hanley's script is terrific, and there's an attention to period detail that makes 1979 seem like 1979. Highly recommended.

The Ocean and All Its Containers

Dallas Buyers Club: written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack; directed by Jean-Marc Vallee; starring Matthew McConaughey (Ron Woodrof), Jennifer Garner (Eve), Jared Leto (Rayon), Steve Zahn (Tucker) and Denis O'Hare (Dr. Sevard) (2013): There's something uneasy-making about an AIDS docudrama set in the 1980's that doesn't have any major gay characters. Jared Leto doesn't count -- he's clearly established as a pre-operative transsexual, though the movie itself (and not the era depicted) seems to be a bit unclear as to whether or not this makes Leto gay.

The narrative instead focuses on Ron Woodrof, a heterosexual Dallas-area rodeo cowboy and electrician whose HIV diagnosis sets him off on a quest for better drugs to combat HIV and AIDS at a time when the U.S. medical establishment was fumbling in the dark.

McConaughey's Oscar-winning performance is fine, in that creepy Machinist way that relies an awful lot on our body horror at an actor's Methodistic emaciation. I'll be damned if I know how Leto won an Oscar for Supporting Actor, though. Oh, right. He played a guy who wants to be a woman in a movie based on a true story. Though apparently of the three leads (sexy, button-down doctor Jennifer Garner being the third), only McConaughey is playing an actual person.

Really, the movie succeeds or fails on how much one enjoys McConaughey's performance. And it is fine, though it's very much in line with the history of his performances in all those terrible Romantic Comedies he's inhabited like a plague for more than a decade. He's a bad cad who learns better. And a homophobe who, through discrimination against himself, becomes a heroic pariah. And he will ride that bull again!

Is there something morally dubious here in making a heterosexual male (who in real life was purportedly bisexual) into the hero of a movie about the early days of the AIDS crisis? I'm not entirely sure. Per Oscar Wilde, if it were a better movie, I probably wouldn't be asking these questions. There are no moral or immoral books. Except when there are. Lightly recommended.

All is Lost: written and directed by J.C. Chandor; starring Robert Redford ('Our Man') (2013): Perhaps a bit more grueling than is workable, All is Lost nonetheless is a worthwhile journey into apparent doom. The obvious model for this story of Robert Redford vs. The Ocean is Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. However, Hemingway's fisherman had a giant fish to get home. Redford's unnamed character is just trying to survive after his one-man sailing trip across the Indian Ocean goes increasingly FUBAR.

Much of the cinematography is haunting as we alternate between a lot of very close camerawork on Redford and a series of establishing and re-establishing shots of the ocean, the sky, and the surface of the water shot from below. The contrast between claustrophobia and the Sublime works wonderfully at points. The soundscape of the movie also works marvelously, with a particularly effective scene set on a rapidly sinking sailboat that groans and moans like the walking dead.

As Redford almost never talks in the film (his character isn't a self-talker, and he doesn't have a volleyball or a parrot to hang out with), pretty much everything rests on his physical acting, his physical presence. Well, and one drawn-out 'Fuck!' that's both funny and heart-breaking.

Does it all go on a little too long? Yeah. There's at least one false climax too many. But Redford, 77 and apparently unafraid to look old, holds the screen throughout the ordeal. His character does pretty much everything right (or a lot more right than most audience members who aren't experienced sailors would) while things go increasingly wrong. As Hemingway had one of his characters note in The Old Man and the Sea, it's better to have luck than to have skill. Recommended.


Midnight Run: written by George Gallo; directed by Martin Brest; starring Robert De Niro (Jack Walsh), Charles Grodin (Jonathan Mardukas), Yaphet Kotto (Alonzo Mosley), John Ashton (Marvin), Dennis Farina (Jimmy Serrano), and Joe Pantoliano (Eddie) (1988): One of the five or ten great comedies of the 1980's was a cult hit at the time that's grown in stature over the years to also become one a handful of the great Odd Couple movies in the history of cinema.

Do I even have to give a plot synopsis? Bounty hunter De Niro must find and return accountant Grodin to Los Angeles by midnight Friday to collect a $100,000 fee from a bail bondsman who set bail for the subsequently-gled Grodin. The Mob, the FBI, and another bounty hunter are also after Grodin, who stole millions from mobster Dennis Farina and gave most of it to charity. He's now the key material witness against the mobster.

Because the movie is two hours long, things obviously don't go smoothly. There are lots of great scenes both action- and character-related. There's fine supporting work from everyone involved, and a fun, piquant script from George Gallo. Martin Brest, who directed the first and best Beverly Hills Cop movie, does solid work. His characters have time to breathe, and if the police chases get a little Blues Brothers at times, they're at least funny and not tiresome.

But everything really comes down to the chemistry between De Niro as the terse, eternally F-bombing bounty hunter and Grodin as the soft-spoken, sarcastic accountant. It's a great comic bromance. Grodin, underplaying in his usual way, is great, and De Niro would never be (intentionally) funnier. Highly recommended.

Thrillogy!!!

Unknown, written by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell, based on the novel Out of My Head by Didier Van Cauwelaert; directed by Jaume Collet-Serra; starring Liam Neeson (Dr. Martin Harris), Diane Kruger (Gina), January Jones (Elizabeth Harris), Aidan Quinn (Martin B), Bruno Ganz (Jurgen), and Frank Langella (Rodney Cole) (2011): Serviceable action-thriller with Liam Neeson as a man who wakes up in a hospital after an accident to discover that no one seems to know who he is -- including his wife. Coincidences and absurdities abound and proliferate, and the whole thing seems to have been Frankenstein-assembled from parts of Total Recall, Regarding Henry and Frantic. Still, mostly competent and enjoyable, with excellent supporting turns from a weathered, mournful Bruno Ganz as a former Stasi investigator turned P.I. and Frank Langella as one of Neeson's university colleagues. Lightly recommended.

The Lincoln Lawyer, written by John Romano, based on the novel of the same name by Michael Connelly; directed by Brad Furman; starring Matthew McConaughey (Mick Haller), Marisa Tomei (Maggie McPherson), Ryan Phillippe (Louis Roulet), William H. Macy (Frank Levin) and Frances Fisher (Mary Windsor) (2011): Solid legal procedural makes excellent use of McConaughhey's somewhat seedy charm, casting him as an ambulance-chasing defence lawyer who finds himself belatedly fighting for actual justice. Director Furman keeps everything moving nicely, and the whole thing feels like a throwback to the 1970's, when thrillers didn't involve massive explosions and giant robots. A talented cast certainly doesn't hurt, with Phillippe, Tomei, and Macy doing superlative supporting work. Recommended.






Limitless, written by Leslie Dixon, based on The Dark Fields by Alan Glyn; directed by Neil Burger; starring Bradley Cooper (Eddie Morra), Robert De Niro (Carl Van Loon), Abbie Cornish (Lindy), and Anna Friel (Melissa) (2011): Failed writer Eddie Morra gets an IQ-boosting pill from an old acquaintance and suddenly turns into a hyperactive super-genius. Director Burger does a solid job of conveying the fast, weird rhythms of Morra's altered state of consciousness, and there are a number of clever setpieces. The ending is far too pat, and a major plot thread never gets resolved. Still, an enjoyable time-waster. Lightly recommended.