St. Vincent (Movie Review)

Seen here: The physical representation of awesomeness.

So, because the Golden Globes are unclear on what exactly a comedy is, St. Vincent got nominated for Best Musical or Comedy instead of, say, Top Five, and I have to review it. Ah, well, once they nominate The Tourist, I suppose every other complaint looks nitpicky by comparison.

St. Vincent

Directed by: Theodore Melfi

Produced by: Fred Roos, Jenno Topping, Peter Chernin, Theodore Melfi

Written by: Theodore Melfi

Genres: Comedy, Drama

Starring: Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher

Music by: Theodore Shapiro

Plot: Oliver Bronstein (Jaeden Lieberher) is not having the best of times. His parents have separated, and he has had to move away with his mom (Melissa McCarthy) to Sheepshead Bay, New York, and tries to fit into his new school, always a tough thing to do for a kid. It’s no real cakewalk for his mom either, obviously, who is swamped with her job. So, to help lighten the workload, she hires her retiree neighbour, Vincent MacKenna (Bill Murray) to babysit him after school. Problem is, Vincent isn’t exactly the best example of a good role model for a 12-year old, being a drunken gambler who seems perpetually grouchy about something or other.

 I really wish I had more to say about St. Vincent, because it is a good movie, but aside from some very good performances from Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy, it’s just that. Good. Not great. Not extraordinary in any way, and certainly not original. Just good.

I guess I should start out by complimenting the actors, who seem to be the focus of the majority of the praise directed at this movie, and it’s hard to see why not. The child actor is fine, and heads or tails above most child actors, but he’s not about to pull a Quvenzhané Wallis, as there were some slip-ups from him in the delivery of his lines, but that’s to be expected. You can’t really ask for much more from child actors.

Not every movie can have St. Macauley.

Bill Murray was ideal casting, and he plays his part perfectly in this movie, and I can totally see why he was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Comedic Lead Actor, because he was just the embodiment of this cranky, cantankerous, yet sympathetic old man, even if, again, his character isn’t the most original. However, there is a point in the movie when his character undergoes a very drastic change that Murray performed excellently, and which may have ended up as one of his better performances.

Melissa McCarthy makes up for at least part of Tammy with a solid performance that was much, much more dramatic than one would expect from the lady who helped bring us Bridesmaids. Fine performance, but again, nothing particularly special, although it does give me hope that she can do better stuff than do her worst Will Ferrell impersonation for an hour and a half.

At least I had some semblance of an expectation for The Identity Thief.

Naomi Watts is fine as well, playing Vincent’s Russian prostitute buddy, but it was surprising to me that she got so much critical acclaim, even a nomination for a SAG award for Best Supporting Actress. That’s really stupid. I mean, she was good, yeah, but award-worthy? They couldn’t have maybe given it to Jessica Chastain? Carmen Ejogo?

Skeletor/Margaret Thatcher?

Also, I appreciate that the filmmakers decided against the tiresome trope of having Oliver’s Catholic school be the big baddie through all this. It’s not that I’m Catholic or even religious, it’s just that “Evil orthodox religious schools” are tied with “The government”, the “monolithic, evil corporation” and “environment-destroying, non-redeemable humans” as my least favourite clichéd movie villains.

 Murray’s performance is phenomenal, obviously, but the main beef I have with this movie is that we’ve seen this story before. It’s the black sheep with a heart of gold, of course he’s gonna meet up with a nice yet pitiful kid and teach him something about himself, and of course the little kid is gonna return the favour and get him to open up to human kindness. Even when what I thought would be an earth-shattering event in the story occurred, it didn’t, really. It just kind of kept moving forward in the auto piloted fashion it had started off on.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing, it’s just been done a million times before, and it’s been done much better. I dunno, it was a good movie, it’s not like I was expecting another Lost in Translation, but it also wasn’t particularly gripping or interesting for me. I can’t think of anything offhand that I disliked about the movie. I like the characters, I like the performances, it was funny when it needed to be, sad when it needed to be. It does everything right, just not particularly well enough to itself particularly memorable, especially among all the other awards contenders. It’s a solid, feel-good movie. Just not necessarily a special one.

Overall: Look, St. Vincent is a good movie. It’s just not a particularly original or exceptional one, apart from Bill Murray’s performance. Will I hold this movie close to my heart? No, but it’s a nice movie to put on if you just need a warm, fuzzy feeling in the cockles of your heart.

These are cockles, by the way. What a stupid expression.

Rating: 7/10

Birdman (Movie Review)

Pffft. Whatever man. This is Tuesday for me.

If you read my review of Boyhood, the presumptive favourite for the Best Picture award at the next Academy Awards, you know that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the movie (It’s great, just not the best movie of the year, in my opinion). Knowing this, you may be itching to think what movies I think are good enough to displace what some are calling the best movie of this current decade?

I’d say Birdman is a pretty solid bet (And Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. And Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America…).

Oh fuck, it’s Mothman!!!

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Produced by: Alejandro González Iñárritu, John Lesher,  Arnon Milchan, James W. Skotchdopole

Written by: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone,  Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., Armando Bo

Genre: Black comedy

Starring: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Ryan, Naomi Watts

Music by: Antonio Sánchez

Plot: Birdman revolves around a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”. The play is being written and directed by Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), who is also starring in the lead role. Riggan used to be one of the biggest actors on the planet, back when he was the star of the crowd-pleasing Birdman franchise, which he left after the third movie, languishing in obscurity ever since. His bid for newfound relevance is being threatened by prima donna actors (Edward Norton, Naomi Watts), his temperamental daughter (Emma Stone) and his own overblown ego.

Alejandro González Iñárritu has made a name for himself in Hollywood, directing weird, dark foreign movies that are nonetheless accessible for mainstream audiences, such as Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Birdman is Gonzalez’s first entirely English-language movie, and has gained quite a bit of publicity since debuting at the Venice International Film Festival in August. In many ways, this is a turn towards more conventional storytelling for the director, as he sacrifices his trademark epic, non-linear. intertwining  storylines for what is essentially a frequently darkly comic character study of Michael Keaton (Kinda).

That doesn’t mean Gonzalez doesn’t try to put his own personal fingerprint on this movie, because it has his heavily stylized fingerprint all over it. The usual orchestral score music one would find in most award-bait movies is replaced by some maniac frantically playing the shit out of his drums, even making several appearances throughout the movie itself. Instead of conventional film editing, that is, carefully selecting shots and arranging them into sequences to create a finished movie (Like a loser) Gonzalez decided to go the really strange route of, through extremely clever editing, making the entire movie look like it was filmed in one continuous take, with no noticeable separation between scenes. It’s weird. It’s unconventional. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.

I FUCKING LOVE IT. 

The preceding sentence should always be read like Christian Bale’s Batman, for full effect.

The frantic pace of the music, editing (And the movie as a whole, really) really compliments the rest of the, relatively short, film perfectly. It’s very rare that the fact that a movie felt longer than its runtime is a compliment to the movie, but in this case, it absolutely is. This movie throws SO much stuff at you in its two hour runtime, which would get boring and/or exhausting if every. Single. Goddamn. Thing that happened on screen wasn’t so visually captivating, or if damn near every line of dialogue spouted by the fascinating characters wasn’t so interesting and/or intellectually stimulating.

I do mean that last sentence, by the way. As I was leaving the theatre, so many themes from the movie were swirling through my mind, and none of those themes felt tacked-on for dramatic effect. The dilemma of fame is brought up. The idea of staying relevant and the human desire for immortality is referenced abundantly. Blockbuster movies versus “high art” mediums too. Hell, even the usual theme of a parent-child relationship gone sour is fitted in among all this other stuff. And you know what? It’s all done fucking beautifully. As much as I loved 12 Years a Slave last year, and it was my favourite movie of 2013, and as much interesting things it had to say about the human condition, I can watch it maybe once every six months or so without getting horribly depressed and angry at humanity in general. What I’m getting at is: As great as 12 Years a Slave is, it doesn’t have very much immediate replay value. In fact, more often than not, I just want to put it out of my mind after watching it.

Right after watching the matinee showing of Birdman, I was fully prepared to pay full price for an evening ticket, just so I could analyze the movie’s themes again. The only thing that prevented me from doing so was the fact that I had already spent all my money on comic books by the time evening rolled around.

I guess what i’m trying to say is that I think that a movie about the harrowing conditions that slaves faced in the United States before the civil war wasn’t as interesting to me as a movie where this happens:

I think I’ll just go ahead and let the majesty of this image sink in.

Admit it, you can’t take your eyes off of Edward Norton’s bulge either. It’s okay, none of us can.

Good storytelling can go to shit without good characters, though. Thankfully, this movie delivers on that front as well. All of these main characters are written so well that by the end of the movie, I genuinely like each of them, and want to see everything go well for them, even when they’re being the biggest collection of dickbags on the planet (Which is often). Zach Galifianakis erases my memory of his crappy turn in Are You Here with a great performance as Riggan’s lawyer and best friend, while Naomi Watts is also great as a first-time Broadway actress trying desperately to make something of herself.

The three performances that seem to be attracting the most Oscar buzz, however, are those of Keaton as Riggan Thomson, Norton as a superbly talented, yet pompous asshole of a method actor who could make or break the play and Emma Stone. As much as I hate mindlessly conforming the the general consensus, I’ve gotta say that I agree with everybody else. They’re all fantastic, and I would be more than happy to see them nominated come January.

However, while Norton and Stone seem to be facing some very stiff competition from their peers, Michael Keaton is straight up eating the competition alive. It’s great to see Keaton back doing prominent work again (Not that he was dead in the water or anything, it’s just he wasn’t as big of a name as he was back when he was doing Batman), and even better to see him totally owning a role that is pretty obviously meant to be portrayed by him, even if it’s not always a portrayal that most would consider flattering. Needless to say, he absolutely kills it in this movie. Even if I do joke that it’s basically Michael Keaton playing Michael Keaton, he still disappears into the role and breathes life into what could have easily been a pretty phoned in performance. The only real competition that I’ve seen so far that can really stand toe-to-toe with him is Eddie Redmayne, but more on him later.

Overall: Watch this movie. Do it. Drop whatever you’re doing, drive to whatever independent theatre is showing it in your hometown, pay full price, and plunk your ass down in the theatre seat to watch it. I guarantee you will not regret it.

Rating: 10/10

The Norton-Bulge commands it!!!

Boyhood (Movie Review)

“And that‘s why Uma Thurman can go fuck herself!”

Before Texan director Richard Linklater, the master behind Dazed and Confused, the Before Sunrise trilogy, School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly (Which I haven’t actually seen, it’s just fun to say) and Bernie, first unveiled his latest movie, Boyhood, way the hell back in January at the Sundance film festival, people didn’t know what to expect. A movie shot over…twelve goddamn years? What a weird fuckin’ concept, right? Yeah, good luck running up the Oscar nods on that premise, Richard. You best stick to your cute little art movies, alright?

And then, the critics saw the movie. What was the reaction? Well, I’ll just let Rotten Tomatoes do the talking for me.

Transformers is also here. Y’know. For some reason.

Needless to say, I had pretty high expectations upon watching this movie. How did I feel about it after?

Well, I’ll tell you, but if you’ll excuse me real quick, I need to do a quick change of clothes.

Never leave home without it.

I’m sure Ethan Hawke must have loved it when he learned that both the child actors were credited before him.

 

 Boyhood

 Directed by: Richard Linklater

 Produced by: Richard Linklater, Cathleen Sutherland,  Jonathan Sehring, John Sloss

 Written by: Richard Linklater

 Genre: Drama

 Starring: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei  Linklater,  Ethan Hawke

 Plot: Ha! Good one.

In all seriousness, there really isn’t much to the plot of this movie, which is kind of the point. There’s no real unifying obstacle to tie this movie together. Just the day-to-day obstacles that this kid and his family have to face.

The simplest way to really summarize the movie is this: Over twelve years, Mason Evans, Jr (Ellar Coltrane) grows from boy to man, experiencing life with his friends, his older sister (Lorelei Linklater) and his divorced parents (Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette).

So, judging by my slightly ambiguous intro, you must really be expecting me to spout an unpopular opinion on this movie, like I didn’t think it was great, or, God forbid, I thought it sucked. If you do want me to tear into this movie apart, then I’m sorry to say you’re going to be disappointed.  The vast majority of what this movie sets out to do, it does very, very well. It’s a very different kind of movie than what one would expect, even besides the fact that it was filmed over twelve years. This kind of filming over several years to show the passage of time has been done before (Several documentaries, such as Hoop Dreams, come to mind) but never over a scale as large as twelve years, and never in a movie that has received this much notoriety.

So, how does the story work as a movie? Pretty damn well, I’d say.  It’s not told in a traditional three-act structure (How could it be, really?), it’s more of a look into the life of the main character as he grows up. Of course, he has somewhat of a rough life, because this movie would be boring otherwise, and there are some moments where that fact feels kind of needlessly tacked on. That said, it also helps us empathize with the character of Mason, who is portrayed well enough by Ellar Coltrane, even through his perilous child actor years.

Watching this movie must be one hell of a mind-fuck for him.

Is the story engaging enough to keep one occupied during the entire 165-minute runtime? For the most part, yeah. I (Part of the Millennial audience  I believe the film was aimed at) wasn’t bored for the majority of the movie, and I could relate to a lot of what Mason was going through. Okay, maybe not everything. My parents aren’t divorced, I’ve lived in one neighbourhood my whole life, and I haven’t lived in a home where drug, alcohol and domestic abuse were prevalent. I did, however, relate more to the smaller things he was going through. Hanging out with sketchy friends-of-friends, eagerly anticipating the next Harry Potter book, talking excitedly about the next Star Wars with my friends back when I hadn’t realized the prequels were garbage, discovering that girls were actually pretty cool to hang out with, murdering my first homeless person on my eighteenth birthday, the list goes on. There are scenes that seem to have little to no meaning that really, really should’ve been axed, though. There is one scene, for instance, when it looks like Mason is about to enter into some sort  of altercation or long-term rivalry with a bully, and I kept expecting it to come back later in that point of his life, but it never did, and the little bully prick never showed his face again. I guess you could argue that this is very much how that situation would play out for some people in real life, I certainly have never had that big of a problem with bullies that I haven’t been able to suppress with expired painkillers by now, but this scene in particular just seems like something they stuck in to make some people nod and say “Oh, yeah, remember that?” If that’s what you’re looking for in a movie, fine, I guess, but I’m personally not a fan of relying on nostalgia for critical and commercial success.

If the Rolling Stones were to read that last sentence, they would be laughing their asses off at me right now.

Even when the movie does slow down and get less interesting, as it does once Mason gets into his later teens, I was still able to gravitate towards the characters thanks to the performances. I already mentioned Ellar Coltrane and his fine performance, which, surprisingly, doesn’t appear to be generating much Oscar buzz (Especially considering the massive hard-on that the awards higher-ups have for every other aspect of this movie), but I guess that makes sense when you look at the other premium actors in contention. Most likely making the cut, however are his movie parents, Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, who should easily be in the mix for the big prize come February. Those two were so fucking good that I actually wish that the movie focused more on them and less on Mason. I thought that Ethan Hawke finding his own way in his life and Patricia Arquette going through all the shit she goes through in the movie probably would have amounted to something, well, better.

How was Lorelei Linklater? Well, all I’ll say is it must be nice to be a highly regarded director’s daughter and not have to get jobs through, you know, being a good actor.

Look, I still really, really like this movie. I may even go so far as to call it a great movie that is necessary viewing for film fans. That said, after watching the movie, I stopped and thought, and I realized that not only was it not my favourite movie of the year, but it wasn’t even in my top 15 (More on that later). I watch this movie and I see a great movie that I don’t ever want to watch again on account of it being the length of a Lord of the Rings movie and not as entertaining. I definitely don’t see “one of the greatest films of the decade” as Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian apparently sees.

Also, there’s a line in the movie in which a kid welcomes Mason into a new school by saying “Welcome to the Suck.” This is such a terrible line that I fell to the floor laughing for ten goddamn minutes. What can I say? It helped pass the time.

Overall: Is it the masterpiece that everyone seems to think? I certainly didn’t think so, but judging by the massive acclaim for this movie, you may disagree. In my personal opinion, Boyhood is a highly innovative, must-see movie that gets by on the strength of its performances, and the relatability of the characters.

Rating: 8.0/10

I barely liked this movie more than John Wick. Bizarre, right?

GOLDEN GLOBE TIME!!!

The Golden Globe trophy: a perfect combination of prestigious entertainment award and blunt murder instrument.

So, it’s awards season again, which, I find, seems to coincide nicely with  the holiday season. Last Thursday, in what I can only assume was a movie specifically tailored to coincide with my birthday, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the nominees for this year’s Golden Globe Awards. As was the case last year, I plan to review a lot of these movies, specifically the nominees for best Drama and best Comedy/Musical. For those of you too lazy too check out a link, those movies would be:

• Birdman
• Boyhood
• Foxcatcher
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• The Imitation Game
• Into the Woods
• Pride
• Selma
• St. Vincent
• The Theory of Everything

Now, I already reviewed The Grand Budapest Hotel back in April, and I’m too lazy to have another go at it, but every other one of these movies should be reviewed before the ceremony on January 11th. If I review any of the other nominated movies before than, more power to me I suppose, but for now, these are the movies I’m focusing on.

And for those of you assuming that I’m just going to ignore the television awards like the lazy hack I am… You’re right. That said, I’ll still be doing predictions for both the TV and film Golden Globes, because why the hell not?

And you know what? If you snub the Game of Thrones actors for any of the acting awards, then you’ve earned my indifference.