Gone, and soon forgotten: Gone Girl

OK you can't believe the story for one minute, nor are you meant to, but the David Fincher/Gillian Flynn (who adapted her own novel for the screen - often an exercise in futility as writers are completely unable to cut their precious scenes or even words, but in this case one suspects that Flynn was thinking "screenplay" even as she was writing her novel) production of Gone Girl will keep you watching and wondering: who the hell are these people? It's well paced - even at its 2+ hour length (so it's hardly taut), well acted, a completely professional treatment of material that keeps you engaged until you stop one moment to think about it and realize the whole thing is completely ridiculous - unless you can swallow the premise: Amy (Rosamund Pike) was treated poorly by her parents, children's book authors who made her thru  the "Amazing Amy" book series into America's favorite little girl marries Ben Affleck and the two live unhappily ever after. One of the surprises is that we're thinking, or at least I was, that I'm supposed to like this rich, spoiled couple but they're both completely repulsive - and at some point you realize, yes, that's the point - they're supposed to be repulsive. But who's more repulsive? You know from the title that Pike takes off from the marriage - but has she run away, been abducted, or been murdered? For those who haven't read the book or seen the film, spoilers galore coming: It doesn't take too long before we learn that she is alive and has staged a fake abduction or murder scene, run away from her crappy marriage, making it appear that Affleck killed her, and that she does plan to kill herself as well. Who does this? Only in movies (or books destined to become movies)! Only in movies do all them crazy scheming plot elements come together perfectly, and only in movies do the characters live such isolated lives that nobody realizes they're gone off the rails. What makes this one a little bit above the rest is that Pike's plan does begin to unravel when, following her escape and while she's holed up in a crummy motel, she gets robbed - so she has to go to plan b, contacted on old boyfriend, who puts her up for a while, until she murders him and makes it look as if she's been raped - returning home bloody, resuming her marriage, the two of them entwined in each others'  lies and schemes. The media frenzy that follows this story is like a Greek chorus, very effective element; two of the minor characters - Affleck's sister (Carrie Coon) and the local detective (Kim Dickens) are very good. Does anyone else notice that there are more female detectives working in the movie industry than in the entire nation's police force combined, by the way? All told, a movie that will keep your interest but it's pretty preposterous and paper thin.

Boy to Man: Boyhood is a unique and totally memorable movie

Richard Linklater's Boyhood is a major accomplishment on any level - a truly fine movie about the growth from childhood to young-adulthood (roughly age 6 to 18) - something, I imagine, like portrait of the artist (film director and writer, in this case) as a young man - but what's most remarkable is that Linklater and his cast filmed this over the course of 12 years, so we watch the young man (Ellar Coltrane) and the others in his family - mother, father, sister - mature and grow, or age, as in no other movie ever filmed. The closest analogue is probably the incredible Up series, from England, filmed now over 49 years and counting. But Boyhood may be even more incredible, for a lot of reasons: first of all, it's about the course of a life, and it does include a few highly tense and dramatic scenes, but most of the scenes are significant not as mileposts or ceremonies (we don't see weddings, for example) but rather the kind of quiet moments that make up a life: serious conversations among friends, between father (Ethan Hawke) and children, boyfriend-girlfriend. In other words, it doesn't feel cinematic or orchestrated but rather, captured - much like Linklater's Before Sunrise series, in that regard, or like an American Eric Rohmer film, though far more lively and less abstract. Second, though it's about the boy of course it's also about those in his family: we watch Hawke evolve from a self-centered and immature dad who's more or less abandoned his wife and 2 kids into a rather dull, conventional family man (2nd marriage), symbolized by his selling his GTO and moving into a family van (one of the few "images" of change that the characters discuss directly); we see the mom, Patricia Arquette, go through two more bad marriages, but we don't dwell on the melodrama, life just passes before us, in cinema time as in real time, until, at the end, she's lonely and scared as her younger child moves off to college and into his own life. How fortunate, or skilled, Linklater is to have elicited such great, consistent, and credible performances from his team over a 12-year span! The look and feel of the movie is completely consistent, so you have no sense that it was filmed in a dozen or so segments; the story line unfolds cleanly and fluently - a unique, and totally memorable movie. Deserving of the awards it has won and will win.

A brief history of The Theory of Everything

James Marsh directed The Theory of Everything but in every way it's Eddie Redmayne's movie to make or break, and I think all will agree that he does an amazing job portraying Stephen Hawking as he matures, grows, and simultaneously breaks down physically over the course of his adult life. Redmayne's Hawking evolves from a gawky but sweet physics grad-student nerd (are there redundancies there?) but awkwardly pursues and wins the beautiful girl (Felicity Jones) just as he's diagnosed with fatal ALS. "Given" only 2 years to live, he aggressively develops his theories about black holes, winning renown and eventually fame (and wealth), as his physical condition deteriorates, not over two years but over about 50 years, and still counting. The movies is light on the physics - some may say, thankfully (if you're interested in a film that will convey contemporary physics in totally accessible and even fun way, see Particle Fever); the movie is really a personal story of a difficult marriage and of the struggle of a genius against his disabilities, similar in some ways to A Beautiful Mind. One of the great strengths of the film is the honesty w/ which it faces some of the most troubling issues of the marriage: sexual relations, the need both (especially his wife, Jane) feel for intimacy with others, the eventual breakdown of the marriage (there they may have glossed over some of the more troubling material - and of course the source from the screenplay is Jane Hawking's account of the relationship). The cinematography is especially beautiful, in particular some of the early night sequences in Cambridge, a few passages that show life from Hawking's POV, and an imaginative conclusion in which time is reversed. Redmayne is or should be a candidate for best-actor awards, though it's become almost a Hollywood cliche to grant awards to those who play people with disabilities (a particularly sensitive matter, as actors with disabilities feel marginalized in the acting community).

The only way to understand this film is to see it twice, but nobody will want to

There's a good reason why Thomas Pynchon's works have not until now been adapted for film and that reason is Inherent Vice; watch it, if you can, and you'll see exactly what's scared wiser directors away, and perhaps what drew Paul Thomas Anderson to rise to the challenge. So promising! Inherent Vice is possibly Pynchon's most accessible and "cinematic" novel, as it draws on the film noir tradition of detective stories (particularly, Chandler) but set in a stoner world of 1970s LA (Altman did the same thing, successfully, in Long Goodbye, I think). This material should, one might think, translate to film; but it's obvious here ten minutes in at most that this film is a train wreck occurring right before our eyes. Pynchon is famous for his sharp dialogue (the film can capture that) and for his baroque and at times surreal, elaborate, detailed, often confounding plots - and here's where this movie entirely fails. In a novel, we follow the plot at our own pace, and all Pynchon readers, I'm sure, occasionally step back, re-read, pause to think, and at other times rush forward headlong. In the film, we're stuck with the steady forward motion of the narrative, and the story just becomes increasingly confusing and, eventually, you give up, or at least I did. The only way to make sense of this film would be to see it twice, and nobody will want to. And that's because the pleasures are just not there the first time through - the characters are vague, flat, unappealing; the humor, which may work in a book, when made more physical, visceral, and literal in a film, just falls flat. J Phoenix gives it a valiant try and appears in virtually every scene, and PTA, thanks to his stature, can command a battalion of star actors stepping into bit parts, but there's no center to the movie and certainly no emotional engagement. Phoenix's character (Doc,  a PI) is so cool and stoned that he is oblivious to danger, and so we don't care much about him, either. A Chandler novel turned into film, w/ various voice-over narrations, develops not only plot but character; in this film, the narration is so frayed and fragmentary that we have no sense of the central character at all - nothing moves him, nothing drives him, he's just propelled along from scene to scene. The movie clocks in at 2.5 painful hours - far, far too long for this material. Throughout, I was hoping for a cameo from Pynchon and didn't spot one, though it's possible he appears as one of the men dressed in white at the sanatorium/rehab center that Doc visits well into the film. Not worth waiting for, however.

The best Wes Anderson film yet

To be honest I don't think I've ever liked a Wes Anderson film - all of them so cute and self-conscious, all those precocious children and narcissistic, eccentric families - and was pleasantly surprised to find myself very engaged with The Grand Budapest Hotel, which seems to me his best movie by far and the first time he's used his great talent to make a movie about anything other than his talent and quirkiness. The GBH is by no means a realistic movies; it's a comic romp, not believable for a minute, but nevertheless lots of fun, a fast moving plot, quirky but still quite likable characters, mainly driven by R. Fiennes as the concierege of the hotel in the 1930s and by a very likable new actor who plays the "lobby boy" under RF's tutelage, named Zero. The story is enclosed in several layers of time, and essentially narrated by a now elderly Zero (F M Abraham) to a young writer, in about 1980; the writer turns this narration into the eponymous novel; and the writer, now dead, is honored by devotees in his fictional E. European city (modeled on Stefan Zweig I learned from the credits - will have to read him): the point of all these layers is that we are not to take the events literally - they are a series of narrations, each with its own possibility for exaggeration, distortion, and invention - including Anderson's own invention. At what level - Zero's narration, the novelist's invention, Anderson's depiction - the story changes and evolves and becomes a fantasy rather than an adventure story, nobody can say and it doesn't really matter. Anderson does a great job re-creating the hotel and its milieu in two settings: one as a bustling and lively grand resort in the 30s, the other as a decayed, musty, nearly deserted "white elephant" in the 80s, the grandness lost to and to evolving taste. Although it's a bit of a bauble, without any great meaning or significance (nor does it pretend to be a deeply significant film; issues such as the rise of Nazism, the Soviet control over Eastern Europe, the fall of Communism are at hinted at, but the story is not about history and politics, it's about two several men - very male-dominated film, I have to say - and their star-crossed lives) it's totally fun to watch.

Pinned: The creepiness of Foxcatcher

If it weren't base, closely (I think), on fact, Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher would probably be just too weird and kinky to believe, but truth can be stranger than fiction, as the saying goes, so if you think of Foxcatcher as a re-enacted documentary of sorts it's pretty engaging and, at time, fascinating. Most of all, it's Steve Carell's movie, as he gives an incredibly nuanced and disturbing performance as John "Eagle" Dupont, a 50-something billionaire who is weirdly obsessed with wrestling and wrestlers and entices a team of Olympic hopefuls to his estate to train for competition - and imagines himself as their mentor, coach, and friend - when in fact he's their patron and they're his playthings. The relationship he develops with Olympian Mark Schulz (Channing Tatum) is the heart of the movie, as we watch the physical and emotional descent of Schulz over the course of the film, his humiliation and - though it's strongly hinted at but never shown directly - his sexual relationship with Dupont. In that sense, the movie is about the power of wealth and class, how Dupont, a weak and pathetic, lonesome figure, dominated by his austere, cold mother (Vanessa Redgrave, in a small part), can exert his will over these young men whom he, essentially, has entrapped and kept as his harem. I can't tell if Tatum's a good actor - he seems exactly the same in each of the films I've seen him in, understated and dull, but handsome and physically agile - but he's excellent at least for this role. Out of courtesy to the living Mark Schulz and his family, I suspect the film went easy on some aspects of his relationship with Dupont, but it's still a devastating portrait of ruined lives, with a few terrific scenes: Tatum forced to give a speech in honor of Dupont, Dupont trying to "coach" the wrestlers, the look on Carell's face when he "wins" an obviously rigged over-50 wrestling tournament. Depending on your tolerant for creepiness, worth seeing.

Too many chefs: Completely predictable, manipulative film but some good restaurant scenes

If it feels as if you've seen this movie before, you're right, you probably have, especially if you also saw Chef earlier this year or in fact if you've seen any movie about the restaurant biz or about an immigrant community faced with initial hostility but gradually winning love and friendship as the immigrants both learn the new culture and contribute their own special "flavor." This movie is The Hundred-Foot Journey, another feel-good film from Lasse Hallstrom that feels, well, too much like a film and very little like life (similar in mood to the likable but manipulative Marigold Hotel). After a clumsy beginning, we see that this film tells of a restaurant-owning family forced to leave native Mumbai after restaurant destroyed in a fire, wandering Europe and settling in rural France of all places when their van breaks down - and where they open an Indian restaurant across the street from (that's the 100-foot journey) a 1-star Michelin restaurant owned by a mean, automaton played by the ubiquitous Helen Mirren. Story line is mostly about the family patriarch - who of course builds a friendship and then a weirdly chaste romance with Mirren - and his son and protege, who over time falls in love with her sous chef, played by an adorable Charlotte La Bon. The story line is entirely predictable, much of the dialogue and many of the set pieces are so heavy-handed as to be laughable, every scene seems to be dripping with meaning and significance - and yet, the film does have its moments and its pleasures. First off, I enjoy watching just about any film that shows serious food preparation, though this doesn't come close to, say Eat Drink Man Woman, it's fun to watch a re-creation of a French country restaurant and the loving preparation of some Indian dishes as well. Second, I very much liked the scene in which Mirren (and later others) stand up against a right-wing anti-immigrant group in the town: though it's again heavy-handed this is a really important message for Americans (and Europeans) today and I'm glad Hallstrom didn't shy away from this topic. Also I have to say I like the look at the ultra-chic "3-star" Paris restaurant where the young chef tries to earn his chops (before he realizes, as every single viewer will predict, that his place is back in the village where he can create his own cuisine drawing on classic French technique and Indian spices - mais oui!) - the coldness and emptiness of the 3-star where the byword is "innovate" is really pretty funny and, pathetically, probably not too exaggerated (cauliflower ice cream!).