The Reel World

Whiplash has gotten so many raves that I want to make sure I address the things that are bad as well as the things that are good about the film. First thing I will say is that the movie is implausible, and I had a hard time to totally buy into it for different reasons. The film is about a young jazz drummer at a prestigious music academy who gets to play in the band of the top instructor at the school. It becomes apparent early on that the instructor is crazy. He browbeats and actually beats his students into compliance without a hint of mercy. That a teacher of anything aside from martial arts could physically and psychologically brutalize students to this degree is a reverse fantasy projecting deep-seated angst toward authority figures.

Fine, then the film is a fantasy or allegory, because I did not for one minute think  it could exist in the real world. Even a drill sergeant at a military boot camp is bound to show more restraint. What is also obvious is that the music instructor shows obvious signs of mental illness with volatile and extreme swings in behavior. That might indicate that he is adept at hiding his behavior in the right company, but, in the real world, it wouldn't fly. The large ensemble have all fallen in line, which allows him to pick on the new kid. The band leader's rationale is that Charlie Parker had a symbol thrown at his head which then forced him to practice much harder and subsequently achieve greatness. But that story is not accurate, because the symbol was thrown at his feet as a mild rebuke, not an act of war. It is also unlikely that he played so hard that his hands were constantly bleeding. It is true that musicians and artists in general can be a crazy lot, but not in an academic setting. There are rules. On some level, the students are a little crazy themselves for pursuing serious jazz when it is so much more difficult and produces less rewards monetarily than other forms in this day and age. Moreover, the young jazz drummer basically loses his mind in an attempt to match the master and beat him at his own game.

Wow! OMG! WTH! This is a towering achievement in every way. It is staggering. It is literally staggering; you will leave the theater drained because all your adrenaline will have been used up. Fragmentary, flowing, electric, and it shows the disintegrating of a man's mind in a vibrant phantasmagoria. Any director in the world who sees this will slap himself in the face and say, “Why didn't I do this!” It is a technical tour de force, and everyone in it delivers at full throttle. It is breathless and exhilarating and your mind will be blown. It's a waste of time to compare this to anything else, since this is incomparable. There is nothing to compare it to. It stands alone. Sure, it's a comedy. Yeah, it's a drama, but what it really is is a whirlwind, a tornado, a cyclone, a tsunami of insanity. Everyone involved is fantastic, but Michael Keaton is front and center. Let me say, Batman is back! Wait, I mean Birdman.

Birdman is about an aging actor who refuses to reprise his big blockbuster franchise by making Birdman 4. Instead he has gone for broke and bet everything on a Broadway show that he has written, directs and stars in. It is based on a Raymond Carver short story, and nothing could be farther away from blockbuster. It is about integrity, but is he in over his head? He's a movie star, and he has never done Broadway. He's going to have to refinance the Malibu house even though his franchise has made billions. There are direct references to Iron Man and The Avengers as real world competition on entertainment news shows. Everyone is circling around him: mistress, girlfriend, ex-wife and daughter. None of them has every really connected with him, or he failed them all in some way. If one were to try and compare it to something it would be All That Jazz and Nine (or 8 ½ if you prefer the black and white non-musical). The difference is that the style of this movie is a new industry standard. It plays out as one handheld shot from beginning to end. It should be noted that it does not actually take place in real time, but the transitions are so seamless that you barely notice.

"Ideals are peaceful. History is violent."

David Ayer doesn't have a huge resume of films to his credit. In his 15 years as a director he's only given us five films. Add just another three as a writer. What he has done as a writer and/or director appears to explore some of the same themes of machismo under heavy fire that are splattered all about Fury along with the blood and gore that is the natural byproduct of war. He's the kind of filmmaker who doesn't appear to tackle a project unless he finds he has something to say. In the past that voice hasn't always been terribly original. And while Fury contains pretty much every World War II stereotype ever filmed, Ayer has found a way to present the over-explored genre in a new and clever way at times. You have to exhibit great patience. There are many moments where Ayer stretches a scene to the point where you really feel the nearly 2 1/2 hour running time. During those moments you might find yourself questioning the investment of cash and time you've given him, and rightly so. Ayer can milk a moment like no one else in the business. But, if you stick with it, Fury will deliver just enough of those incredible moments that will make you glad you did.

The internet is destroying everything. It seems crazy, but it's true, and most people know it. I mean that so many businesses have been destroyed by the tumorous growth of the internet and its insidious and unchecked influence. The newspaper business, music business, broadcast business and probably the movie business have been fundamentally and permanently altered. Men,Women and Children addresses how it affects each and every one of us on a daily basis. We're all aware of this. It's our lives now, and it wasn't 10 years ago. Texting on iPhones is so addictive with some people that they are oblivious to how obnoxious it is. Most of us are aware, on some level, how much computers and phones are sucking away what used to be our lives. We know it, but the die is cast. That's the problem with Men, Women and Children. We know everything already, and this movie shoves it down our throat. The subject is definitely timely, but too much of what happens in this movie is like a parade of cliches.

Jason Reitman (Juno, Up In The Air, Thank You For Smoking) is a good director, but he has been losing his touch, citing films like Labor Day and Young Adult. This film is packed with good actors, but they all seem wasted, even Adam Sandler. Sandler is the big star here, making another stretch into dramatic territory. Sandler has done very good work in other people's movies before like Punch Drunk Love, Reign On Me and Spanglish, but not here. Here he is a limp, washed-out nothing, which is what the character demands but still is not a good thing to see. Most of the other good actors like Rosemarie DeWitt, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, J.K. Simmons,Dean Norris, Ansel Elgort, Dennis Haysbert and Emma Thompson here seem wasted with predicable and dreary functions in aid of a boring puzzle.

"Did that just happen?"

I have to confess that I entered The Judge expecting a different kind of film than I actually saw. After seeing the trailer I was reminded of some of the classic courtroom dramas I'd seen over the years from 12 Angry Men through ...And Justice For All. On the ride to the screening I found my mind was swimming with the "closing arguments" Al Pacino delivered in ...And Justice For All and was trying to image how Robert Downey, Jr. was going to try and top that. In the end Downey didn't top that wonderful monologue. In the end The Judge simply wasn't that kind of a movie after all.

It’s October, which means there’s probably a new, spine-tingling offering coming at you every day. (That’s certainly the case here at UpcomingDiscs.) Kill the Messenger — a thoroughly compelling, true-life drama that channels the crusading spirit of All the President’s Men and The Insider — is no one’s idea of a horror movie. Unless you’re like me, and you happen to be a newspaper reporter.

“National security and crack cocaine in the same sentence…does that not sound strange to you?”

With the Marvel universe taking off and scoring at the box office for many years now, studios are digging for franchises they can start up or reboot to cash in on the craze.  Warner Brothers is stumbling a bit with DC comics, but Universal has remained quiet, that is until someone in the creative department realized they own the properties to the greatest horror characters of all time.  When Dracula, The Wolfman, and The Mummy were in their heyday, actors like Karloff and Lugosi became instant icons of cinema.  Now when special FX have never been better and makeup has come along so far, it seems there could be no better time for Universal to open their vaults of horror and unleash their monsters upon the masses where we can witness Dracula and the Mummy sharing the screen together with Frankenstein’s Monster.

Dracula Untold is supposed to be the first film of this monster revival, and the film’s success could determine the fate of these future monster films.  I’m not sure if it’s a sign of confidence or a red flag when the man you have helming your film is a relatively unknown director, but it seems Universal has a lot of faith in their man Gary Shore.  Sure, finding a director is crucial to making your film, but finding the right actor to fill the shoes that so many legends have filled before in the role of Dracula can make or break your film, and in the case of Dracula Untold we have Luke Evans stepping in as the infamous vampire.

"I like your dolls."

The Conjuring was one of the best horror movies to come along in years. Why? Because it was a good scare with a story that didn't totally insult our intelligence or leave us scratching our heads too many times. The movie also dealt with its own red herring of sorts in a possessed doll kept under wraps by that film's hero couple. We're treated to a tease of her story before we move on to other matters. It was used more or less to establish the expertise of Ed (Wilson) and Lorraine (Farmiga) Warren, who would play a central part in the film. After a rather chilling tease and more than enough establishing shots of the doll in a case with all sorts of ominous warnings, we moved on to the story that film was setting out to tell. No question James Wan delivered yet another frightening film that did not really involve the Annabelle doll at all, as it turned out. For the next 90 minutes we forgot about Annabelle, but after a while we went home, and the creepy image of the doll wouldn't shake from our slumber. There was really only one thing for a studio to do, either to exorcise the distraction from our minds or mine a little coin in the doing. The result is the highly anticipated Annabelle.

In 1987 Fatal Attraction was released, and now decades later it is the go-to movie when discussing classic scorned women in cinematic history.  Now a new film is about to take the mantel for the greatest scorned female character, Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Based off the widely successful novel by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl is perhaps the most haunting film about marriage to ever hit the screen. Director David Fincher is no stranger to directing strong, self-sufficient women on the big screen; look at Panic Room and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- but Gone Girl is the closest he’s come to filming his masterpiece.

It’s on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary that we meet Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), and it’s on this day he discovers that his wife, Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) has gone missing.  What’s interesting about this film is that the opening moments aren’t necessarily the beginning of the story; the film takes a very non-linear approach to telling the story, and we see the events unfold through the eyes of both Nick and Amy.  You know how they say “there are always two sides to every story, and the truth is somewhere in the middle”?  Gone Girl takes that precise approach, and what we get is something unique and terrifying.

Stop-motion animation remains a rare treat, but your appreciation of the new film, The Boxtrolls, will likely fall into an either love-it or hate-it camp. I will tell you which camp I fall into shortly. Laika Entertainment Studios produced Coraline and Paranorman, which were both oddball stop-motion fun that I enjoyed immensely. The stop-motion process is a dying art that is only rarely attempted any more, but it is widely beloved by film fans. The stop-motion work in The Boxtrolls is excellent. The cast of voice-over actors are excellent as well. The roster includes Sir Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Elle Fanning and Tracy Morgan.

The setting is probably some alternate reality where people dress like it was the start of the 19^th century England, but machines of all sorts exist. Boxtrolls are very shy and much smaller than regular trolls, which is why they wear cardboard boxes as clothes, also useful as a hiding place when the need arises. A small boy lives down in the depths of the sewers and has been adopted and fitted with his own cardboard box so he will fit right in with the loony, goofy trolls. The boy also eats little creepy crawly bugs like the rest of the trolls. I'll stop right here to say that things only get weirder from there. The people above street level are crazy and distastefully off center, so as to make the trolls seem normal by comparison. The Boxtrolls is based on an illustrated novel by Alan Snow called Here Be Monsters. The novel is much more detailed and part of a series of books called The Ratbridge Chronicles.
As I said before, I think most people will either love it or hate it. I hated it. I think it is too disturbingly bizarre for most kids, and you'd have to be a pretty weird adult before I would recommend it to you. I already said that the stop-motion work is excellent, but it is in aid of a script that is odious, unpleasant and dimwitted. One could make a case that the story is a satire on class struggle and oppression of minorities, but I say they are not doing anyone any favors including minorities and the oppressed.