February 2016

THE BEST OF 2015

Films

 1  The Revenant

 2  Spotlight

 3  Youth

 4  The Martian

 5  Room

 6  The Big Short

 7  Brooklyn

 8  Star Wars: The Force Awakens

 9  Far from the Madding Crowd

10  Mad Max: Fury Road

11  Black Mass

12  The Danish Girl

13  Creed

14  Testament of Youth

15  Carol

16  Irrational Man

17  Mr. Holmes

18  Straight Outta Compton

19  Bridge of Spies

20  The Intern

Directors

1  Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant

2  Paolo Sorrentino, Youth

3  Ridley Scott, The Martian

4  Lenny Abrahamson, Room

5  Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

Actors

1  Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

2  Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

3  Michael Keaton, Spotlight

4  Matt Damon, The Martian

5  Johnny Depp, Black Mass

Actresses

1  Brie Larson, Room

2  Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

3  Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

4  Cate Blanchett, Carol

5  Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Supporting Actors

1  Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

2  Jacob Tremblay, Room

3  Sylvester Stallone, Creed

4  Christian Bale, The Big Short

5  Tom Hardy, The Revelant

Supporting Actresses

1  Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina

2  Rooney Mara, Carol

3  Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

4  Virginia Madsen, Joy

5  Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

Screenwriters

1  Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight

2  Paolo Sorrentino, Youth

3  Emma Donoghue, Room

4  Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, The Big Short

5  Nick Hornby, Brooklyn

Cinematography

1  Emmanuel Lubezki, The Revenant

2  Danny Cohen, The Danish Girl

3  Ed Lachman, Carol

4  John Seale, Mad Max: Fury Road

5  Dariusz Wolski, The Martian

ANOMALISA (2015)

      Since “Being John Malkovich” in 1999, Charlie Kaufman’s singular take on the particularities of the human experience has produced three of my favorite films of this century. In writing “Adaptation” (2002), “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) and “Synecdoche, New York” (2008), the last of which he also directed, Kaufman established himself as the most insightful, inventive and ambitious filmmaker of his generation.

     Since then he wrote and directed a TV pilot for FX, “How & Why” that was rejected by the network and has now released this bizarre, stop-motion animated film based on a radio play he wrote a few years ago. With this film, he’s officially lost me. Maybe, I would have liked this story a bit more if it was played by actual actors, but I doubt it.

       Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) is a dreary sales expert (having written a much admired book) who arrives Cincinnati to speak to a convention. The entire film is set inside the hotel where he staying, mostly inside his room.

     He’s clearly going through some kind of mid-life crisis—the first thing he does when he arrives is call a former girlfriend. They meet and have a very uncomfortable reunion. By this point, I was already tired of listening to Kaufman’s characters.

     One of the strongest elements of Kaufman’s previous screenplays has been his interesting, distinctive women who are much more than afterthoughts to a male-dominated film. Yet here, the women—especially the ex-girlfriend and then Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a convention attendee who Michael falls for—are weak, simplistic and immature characters who serve as examples of human monotony (the reason, I guess that all the voices other than Michael and Lisa are voiced by Tom Noonan).

      The rather pedestrian script and unappealing characters are only part of this film’s problems; the animation (by co-director Duke Johnson) looks amateurish, cheap and, for me, unappealing. And the last thing I go to the theater for is to see naked clay figures having sex.

     I really don’t understand the great reviews this film has earned since its Christmas release nor why Kauffman thought this script was worth his first film in seven years. All I hope is that the positive reaction to this tedious film doesn’t encourage this innovative writer-director to continue working in clay instead of in flesh and blood.

THE DANISH GIRL (2015)

     While critics raved about the lead performances in this film, the work of director Tom Hooper is among the most impressive of the year. Hooper, who directed the Oscar-winning “The King’s Speech” (2010), along with “Les Misérables” (2012) and The Damned United (2009), captures a 1920s Copenhagen that will dazzle even beyond the powerful story told in the film.

     He and cinematographer Danny Cohen capture some of the most beautiful landscapes, street scenes and interiors I’ve seen in a film in years. And its story line couldn’t be timelier.

       Einar (Eddie Redmayne) and Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander, yet again) are bohemian artists living for their art; Einar’s an acclaimed landscape artist and Gerda’s a struggling portrait painter. Then, on a whim, she asks her husband to don some women’s garments so she can finish a painting of a ballet dancer. Something about the touch of the clothes sparks a dormant desire in Einar and before long he’s going out in public dressed as a woman, christened Lili.

     The film is at its best when it explores how Einar’s desire to be a woman impacts his wife and changes the already unusual relationship the couple have (by 1920s standards). Gerda supports him to such an extent that she realized when she has to let him/her go. (Of course, it didn’t hurt that her career skyrocketed once she started regularly painting Lili.)

      It’s a pretty remarkable performance by Vikander and should earn her an Oscar. Hopefully, this is just the very impressive beginning of a rich film career.

     One can’t ignore the film’s social importance in chronicling this transgender story: I, for one, was surprised that nearly 100 years ago the medical establishment acknowledged the need for gender reassignment as legitimate.

      The last third of the film focuses on Lili’s attempt to find medical help to become permanently female, turning the film into a series of losing battle that are sad to watch, rather than one about relationships. But the performances of both Redmayne and Vikander never flagged. These are two superb young actors.

   

CAROL (2015)

     While all films are works of extreme precision, with actors, directors, productions designers, cinematographers perfecting every frame, some look more carefully constructed than others.

     Todd Haynes films remind me of a very expensive clock in which each second, each movement, is vital for the whole.

     His latest, nearly a companion piece to his 2002 homage to the 1950s, “Far From Heaven,” very quietly and deliberately chronicles the relationship between an unhappily married upper class woman and a younger, headstrong shop girl.

Nothing much happens that we haven’t seen in hundreds of stories of unrequited love except that this is between two women in the 1950s, when such liaisons were nearly unthinkable, and homosexuality was believed to be a mental disease. The original novel, “The Price of Salt,” was written in 1952 by crime writer Patricia Highsmith (of “Ripley” fame) under a pseudonym.

     The picture-perfect production design (Judy Becker) and cinematography (Ed Lachman) are as impressive as the two actresses.

     In the title role, Cate Blanchett possesses the look the era even before the makeup and clothes (by the legendary Sandy Powell) place her back in time. Her cool exterior belie Carol’s troubled soul, a woman stifled by her marriage and the trappings of her class.

    Rooney Mara’s Therese yens for something more also, but it is more traditional. She’s a frustrated artist, wanting to express herself through photograph and looking for the one break she needs. Her spunky spirit and naivety combine to allure Carol.

     The setup was a promising one, but “Carol” plays out so predictably that it loses all the good will earned by its stunning production values and touching performances. While I certainly wasn’t expecting a happy ending, I did expect a resolution with some punch. Instead, “Carol” just sort of fades away, back into a repressive time most have forgotten.

   

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (2015)

    There’s much to like about this chronicle of the rise of N.W.A. and the emergence of the Los Angeles rap/hip-hop industry, but, not unlike the music scene itself, it breaks apart in the second half.

     Director F. Gary Gray (“The Italian Job”) first establishes the temperature of pre-Rodney King L.A., a time in which the local police seemed to see the black community as its enemy. This was the height of gang warfare, when the Crips and the Bloods ruled neighborhoods throughout South Central L.A. The anger of those who had to live in the margins between the gangsters and the LAPD spurred a few creative young men to vent through music.

      Three Compton rappers, Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr., Cube’s rela-life son), Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) and DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.), are joined by an ambitious drug dealer named Eric “Eazy-E” Wright and very quickly they become local sensations, tapping into the community’s frustrations about their world. After they hook up with veteran music manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti), the group signs with a record company and head out on a national tour.

     But their incredible success is short lived. In a plot as old as the music industry itself, group infighting and questionable management destroy the group. But, this being rap, the fighting gets a bit more intense than usual.

     Ice Cube is the first to split and finds huge success (though largely unexplained by the film) as an actor, while Dr. Dre joins up with Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor) to start Death Row Records and helps boost the careers of Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur. Cube, one of the film’s producers, is shown in the best light, while the others, especially Eazy-E and Knight, are portrayed as one step away from criminality.

     I won’t pretend I have much interest in this style of music (I actually see it as closer to performance art than music), but the importance of N.W.A. in making  rap, at least for a time, the most popular style of “music” is certainly a story worth telling.   

    Unfortunately, the movie loses its energy in the second half as it tries to cover too much ground, portray ever dispute, and show events from too many different points of view. By the second hour, I felt as if I needed a score card to figure out who was battling whom; and too many of those conflicts are never resolved in the film.

     The performances are all quite good, especially Jackson as his father and Hawkins as Dr. Dre. At its best, the picture captures the incredible force of the N.W.A. in concert and their effect on audiences. But overall, “Straight Outta Compton” offers up a patchwork of events that never meshes into a coherent story.   

STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING (2007)

     The outline of this superbly rendered film has been the basis for thousands of post-grad short stories and the fantasies of even more struggling young writers. First-rate acting and its insightful script trump the story’s familiarity and predictability.

    Grad student Heather (Lauren Ambrose) finagles an interview with the once-famous writer she’s writing her master’s thesis about and, by utilizing her feminine charms, gradually becomes part of his life.

    The focus of her attention is Leonard Schiller (played by the magnificent Frank Langella), a New York writer who gained fame a half-century earlier for his novel about a young, independent woman, but hasn’t produced a major work in many years. Not in the best of health, Leonard, who seems to be in his late 70s, dismisses Heather’s requests for an interview until he realizes that it might renew interest in his name and secure him a publisher for his work-in-progress.

    Despite Heather’s rather charmless manner, Leonard is soon squiring her to literary lectures and cocktail parties, where the writer is seen as a relic of a dead literary scene and the student tries to get her name out there.

    Offering her commentary to the situation is Leonard’s daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor), who is struggling with her own set of disappointments.

    Writer-director Andrew Wagner, who co-wrote the script with Fred Parnes from a novel by Brian Morton, depicts the hungry ambition of youth and the lingering hopefulness of the artist whose time has passed. But what really makes the film memorable is Langella’s Schiller, a classic “lion in winter” who this veteran stage actor turns into a complex metaphor for the endless search for the creative spark.

     Langella, who became an overnight movie star in 1979 with his starring role in the campy version of “Dracula,” never found his footing in the cinema. But with his small, but superb work as CBS chief William Paley in “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005), he seemed to be rediscovered.

      A year after “Starting Out in the Evening,” he delivered a brilliant performance as Richard Nixon in Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon” and then followed it with a quirky, touching role as a man suffering with dementia in “Robot and Frank” (2012). The 78-year-old has continued to work steadily since.

     As Schiller, he exudes a low-key intelligence, showing us a man with a rich interior life who still vainly seeks recognition. What the aging writer ultimate desires—beyond the sex, there’s always that—is the energy of youth that is the source of so much creativity. That can’t be resurrected, yet even as he seems to be on his last legs, Schiller refuses to quit and continues doing what he knows he must: Write.

45 YEARS (2015)

     I’m regularly lamenting the lack of subtlety in the plots and characters of Hollywood films. Thus, I probably shouldn’t complain when a movie offers the kind of understated, contemplative tone I keep asking for.

     Despite thoughtful and moving performances by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay (both of whom started in the New Wave cinema of ‘60s England) as a couple approaching its 45^th anniversary, I struggled to remain interested in this story of marital doubt.

     The pair’s seemingly cozy life in a small English town shows a crack when Geoff receives a letter from Switzerland notifying him that the frozen body of his long-ago girlfriend has been found, fifty years after she drowned while they were on a hiking trip. The idea that Kate would grow jealous of a woman he dated a half-century ago (and has been deceased that long) seems insane to me. Yet that become the film’s focus as she slowly comes to realize, and find evidence that supports her beliefs, that Geoff never really got over his feelings for his first love.

      As Kate, Rampling lets her expressive face and mannered body movements tell you what she’s feeling. The dialogue is minimal. While I couldn’t truly grasp the depth of this character’s fears about her husband’s loyalty, I admire the manner in which Rampling portrays these emotions.

     Except for two stunningly evocative performances in the early 1980s, “The Verdict” and “Stardust Memories,” she never really had much of a film career until she became a favorite of art-film directors in the past 20 years. She’s done exceptional work in “The Wings of the Dove,” “The Cherry Orchard,” “Signs & Wonders,” “Under the Sand,” “Swimming Pool” and “Melancholia,” just to name the highlights. Not bad for an actress on the far side of 50.

      In “45 Years,” Courtenay has a more secondary role, especially in the film’s second half, but he perfectly captures the occasionally confused, in-his-own-world old guy. The actor first made a name for himself in 1962’s “The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner” and has been a mainstay, if not a star, of the British cinema ever since. His most impressive performance was probably as the title character opposite Albert Finney in the memorable 1983 backstage drama, “The Dresser.” In recent years, he was wonderful as the sad Mr. Dorrit in a BBC production of the Dickens’ classic “Little Dorrit.”

     Director Andrew Haigh, who adapted the David Constantine’s short story, seems to want the audience to sympathize with and understand Kate’s pain, yet for me it was much ado about nothing. But then, maybe I’m just a typical dumb guy

CHI-RAQ (2015)

     If this film, examining the reasons behind the escalating inner-city gun violence in Chicago, had been written and directed by a group of white supremacists, I doubt it could be any more racially offensive.

     Spike Lee, trying oh-so-hard to keep it real, has made a picture that depicts black women as little more than unpaid prostitutes, whose only value is how well they “satisfy” their men. And the men, when they are not busy committing crimes, see them in the same light.

     Lee’s bizarre plotline depicts a group of inner-city women who decide to use their power to deny their men, and force them to stop shooting at one another. The degrading manner in which these characters are portrayed would have caused a fire-storm of protests if it had been made by any other filmmaker.

      The entire story line seems to be an excuse for Lee to have his actresses strut around showing off their bodies and engage in endless discussions filled with sexual euphemisms.

      In a tip of the cap to the rap culture, much of the dialogue is rhymed, which just adds to the film’s unrealistic, almost surreal tone.

     The movie grows sillier and sillier as the plot plays out and the characters become more shrill and righteous. Samuel L. Jackson serves as the stage manager/MC of the story, but he can’t save the film from itself.

     While Lee continues to be a very valuable maker of documentaries, he has lost his relevance as a fictional filmmaker. Maybe that’s why the Academy presented him a lifetime achievement award this year; though still short of 60, his best work seems to be behind him. 

December 2015

 

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS 2015

     In years past, Academy Award nominations for movies such as “Room,” “Brooklyn,” “45 Years” or “Mad Max: Fury Road” would have been surprises. Now, with all the detailed coverage in the weeks leading up to the announcements, nearly surpassing the reporting done before the Super Bowl, even the smallest, most obscure picture and the actors from those films are well known to anyone paying attention.

      In fact, the entire idea of getting an Oscar snub is the product of procrastinators identifying films, filmmakers and actors as “sure things.” But I’ve railed on about that before; this year I have a new complaint.

     The press is all worked up because a handful of contending actors and a single film (“Straight Outta Compton”) failed to garner enough votes to secure a nomination. The reason for the uproar is that these few performers are African-American and represented the only hope that the awards world not be another “all white” affair. (Host Chris Rock and other presenters don’t count, apparently.)

    I’m embarrassed for the media that they keep heaping the blame for the lack of diversity in American film onto the Oscar voters. It’s like blaming voters for selecting too many African-Americans for the NBA All-Star team when black players constitute 75 percent of the league.

      I’m guessing but, probably 90 percent of Hollywood movies are made by and star whites. The reasons for that are many and complex, but it has nothing to do with giving out awards at the end of the year. The Oscar nominations are certainly emblematic of the lack of diversity in films, but story after story seems to be holding the Oscar voters (especially the “old white ones”) responsible.

    These are the same voters who, in the last few years, have given nominations to such unknown black actors such as Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique from “Precious,” Octavia Spencer in “The Help” (who also won the Oscar that year), Quvenzhane Wallis from “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and foreign-born blacks Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o (winning the Oscar) from “12 Years a Slave.” I think we can trust these voters to be color-blind in their selections.

     Overall, I was mostly in agreement with the Academy selections. Among the eight best picture selections (I hate that it’s not rounded out to 10), only “Bridge of Spies” is undeserving and should have been replaced by “Youth,” or “Brooklyn” or, dare I say it, “Star Wars.”

      My biggest disappointment on Thursday was the absence of Michael Keaton in the best actor group, especially considering how well “Spotlight” did, with nominations for Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams and two for writer-director Tom McCarthy. Neither Bryan Cranston nor Michael Fassbender deserved inclusion in the category.

     And what is Jennifer Lawrence doing in the best actress category for “Joy”?—a mess of a film and not one of her better performances. If they love Ms. Lawrence so much, why not award her incredible work as Katniss Everdeen. That also would have opened up a spot for Alicia Vikander, who was clearly the lead actress (just not THE girl) in “The Danish Girl,” and then give this impressive Swedish actress a support nod for “Ex Machina.”

     The most egregious mistakes were leaving Ridley Scott, whose balancing act with the different elements of “The Martian” was most impressive, off the best director selections and omitting young Jacob Tremblay, who plays the child in “Room,” from the supporting actor picks. Few pre-teen performances have ever been so affecting.

    For the record, here’s my 2015 Top 10 (with a more detailed “best of” coming early next month):

     1  The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu )

     2  Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)

     3  Youth (Paolo Sorrentino)

     4  The Martian  (Ridley Scott)

     5  Room  (Lenny Abrahamson)

     6  The Big Short  (Adam McKay)

     7  Brooklyn  (John Crowley)

     8  Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams)

     9  Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg)

   10  Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)

STARS WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)

    A long time ago (actually 39 years) in a galaxy far, far away (Western Pennsylvania), I saw this film; it was simply called “Star Wars.” The movie became the biggest cultural phenomenon since the Beatles landed in New York in 1964, along with changing (a.k.a. ruining) the film industry forever.

     After the first film, now known as “The New Hope,” and its sequel “The Empire Strikes Back,” creator George Lucas looked like a visionary filmmaker with a long career ahead of him, destined to take moviegoers to unimaginable places. Instead came the uninspired “Return of the Jedi” (1983), and then, a decade and a half later, the badly told sequels, interesting only for supplying the back story for the first trilogy. 

    Ten years after the ill-advised episodes I-III, the franchise, now a Disney product and under the direction of “Star Trek” helmsman J.J. Abrams, returns to its former glory with a highly entertaining, if totally unoriginal, picture. It succeeds both as a stand-alone film and as the continuation of the original tale of Luke and Leia Skywalker and Han Solo fighting for the Republic’s survival. The movie is practically a remake of the original, but at least they picked a good film to plagiarize.

    All those original characters return, but it’s a new character, Rey (Dixie Ridley), a tough, resourceful scavenger, who makes the film stand with the first two iconic pictures. To summarize a long, but briskly told, story: she joins up with Finn (a rather dull John Boyega), a deserter from the Storm Troopers, and our old friends Han (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) to track down the last of the Jedi warriors (at least that’s what the evil First Order think), the elusive Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).

     Ford clearly is enjoying himself being back in his star-making role, offering his sarcastic quips and array of raised eyebrows as he takes Rey and Finn under his wing. I never understood why anyone would want to find Luke after all this time, but it’s about the journey not the destination.

        The film also benefits from Abrams’ keen sense of popular entertainment and the return of “Empire Strikes Back” scribe Lawrence Kasdan (not to mention “Indiana Jones”) and Oscar-winner Michael Arndt (“Little Miss Sunshine”). 

     And, just in case you needed reminding of the first film, there’s a cool alien bar scene and a Darth Vader-like character.

     But without Ridley’s Rey, this would be no better than a YouTube mash-up. Virtually from her first scene, it’s clear a star is born. The 23-year-old Brit exudes the kind of moxie her character needs to go from a quirky loner to the central figure in a battle against the most powerful force in the galaxy. Somehow she makes it believable. Obviously, the force is with her. 

THE REVENANT (2015)

     What makes this visceral epic, the story of one man’s resurrection from near death, such a singular movie experience comes from the way it visualizes the deep contrast between the stunning beauty of the land and nature’s unfathomable harshness. No doubt, more films have explored the vast stretches of the American West of the 1800s than any other time and place from the past, yet “Revenant” offers an unrelenting visceral intensity rarely matched by previous cinematic visits to this astonishing, unforgiving world.

     Neither do I recall many films that put you right into the action: stalking through the woods, nervously waiting at the camp site, hiding from possible predators, feeling the threat of death. The inventive direction of Alejandro Iñárritu and his trusty cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (both 2014 Oscar winners for “Birdman”) create a documentary-like feel to the drama even as they mix in the mystical spirit invested into the land by the Native Americans.

     From the opening scene, where the camera makes you feel as if you are walking aside two hunters through the forest, the filmmakers bring the viewers into the middle of a wild scene of fur traders under siege by Pawnee Indians. Anyone who has watched many Westerns has seen hundreds of Indian attacks on white intruders, but the suddenness and the complexity of the chaos captured in this film stand out, setting the tone for the rest of the journey. Danger is always in the air.     

      Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) serves as the guide for this group; a taciturn, intuitive man who has lived among the Natives for awhile and travels with his Indian son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), his only family after the boy’s mother was killed by federal troops. DiCaprio totally inhabits Glass in this nearly 90 percent physical role—all scruffy beard and piercing blue eyes—as he spends most of the movie without the ability to speak. This is one of the most psychologically complex performances you are likely to see with so few lines; I doubt his lines would fill even a half-dozen pages of script. 

     As much as I have read about what the filmmakers and the cast had to endure to make the film, it doesn’t prepare one for what’s on the screen. The turning point of the film—the scene it will be forever remembered for—is the bear attack. The sequence is both an astonishing piece of filmmaking magic and an almost unwatchable dramatization of man vs. nature.

     Glass, doing early morning advance scouting, stumbles onto a mother bear and her cubs. She senses danger from the alien visitor and viciously attacks. The brutality of the scene is a microcosm of the film—this is a world that doesn’t belong to man, that can’t be overcome or tamed by weapons or intellect.

     Barely alive, Glass becomes a burden to what’s left of the band of trappers. After struggling to take him along, the decision is made to leave him in the care of two of the men and his son until help can be sent back.

   Fitzgerald (a bearlike Tom Hardy), who volunteers to stay behind, has little interest in aiding Glass, showing his dislike and distrust of him from the start, and instead leaves him for dead. The second half of the movie follows Glass’ stubborn refusal to surrender to the elements, inspired to survive by an obsession to seek revenge against Fitzgerald.

    While I am hardly a big fan of outdoor adventures, I was riveted by Glass’ journey every second of the way. The incredible resolve of the character as he faces the unrelenting conditions of winter and the obstacle-like terrain turns simple revenge into an exhilarating experience. Words are hardly needed.

    DiCaprio has long been one of the most ambitious star-actors of his generation, though often coming off as too immature in such roles as “The Aviator” (as Howard Hughes), “Gangs of New York,” “J. Edgar” (as FBI’s Hoover)” and even in “The Departed.” But with two films in 2013, “The Great Gatsby” and “The Wolf of Wall Street” he showed a maturity and relax confidence that has added the needed layers to his acting.

     In “Revenant,” made during the actor’s 40^th year, he found the perfect role at the perfect time. Ten years ago, he couldn’t have believable played Glass, but now he has both the instincts of maturity while maintaining the physicalness of youth. Most actors hit their stride from their late 30s through their late 40s: it will be fascinating to see if DiCaprio can live up to the expectations of his youth, placed on him over 20 years ago after superb work in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and “This Boy’s Life.”

    With back to back films of this caliber, Iñárritu stands as arguably the best director working in English-language films (with superbly made but less interesting  works, “21 Grams” and “Babel,” coming earlier.)

     “The Revenant”—meaning someone who returns after an absence, possibly from death—reminded me of the two recent space exploration movies, “Gravity” and “Interstellar,” more than any great Western (though there are elements of John Ford’s “The Searchers” and Sydney Pollack’s “Jeremiah Johnson” in the film). Like those outer space adventures, this seemingly impossible journey takes place in a mostly deserted environment where man is a newcomer and shows it.

     Be it 1820 or 2020, on Earth or in space, man remains an explorer in this universe, seeking the answers that will help all of us continue to survive. Hugh Glass’ determination to return from the “dead” offers a slice of that theme, packaged by the filmmakers in sweeping grandeur that turns the movie into the year’s finest.

ROOM (2015)

    Taking as its subject one of the darkest, most inhuman of contemporary crimes, this intense indie film grows unexpectedly complex and more universal as it moves past its initial setup.

     “Room” begins seven years into the captivity of a young woman (Brie Larson) and her now five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), the product of rape by her kidnapper. They are confided, 24/7, in a small room with only a skylight connecting them with the outside world. Their confinement is punctuated by nightly visits from Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), who brings food supplies, occasional toys and has his way with Jack’s mother (she’s only referred to as “Ma”) while he sleeps behind a curtained-off bed just a few feet away.

    Ma does her best to make Jack’s life as normal as possible as this is the only world he has ever known other than the “imaginary” life on television. She doesn’t explain much about the reality of their situation until his fifth birthday spurs her to think about the possibility of escape.

    While the details of the escape seems a bit far-fetched, it moves the film into its second and most interesting act, as Ma and Jack attempt to acclimate to life beyond the “Room.”

    Clearly, it is not as simple as embracing freedom, celebrating your homecoming and restarting life after a youth spent as a sexual prisoner. As for Jack, he might as well have just arrived on a new planet.

     Her parents, superbly played by veteran actors Joan Allen and William H. Macy, deal with the “end” of the tragedy in very different ways, as does the mother’s new live-in companion (Tom McCamus), a calming force amid the storm.

    What holds this film together is Tremblay, in one of the best juvenile performances I’ve seen in decades. A complete natural, the nine-year-old never seems like he’s acting while beautifully communicating deeper feelings through his occasional narration. This, like so many pre-teen performances, is probably a one-off, but it is an impressive one that truly deserved Oscar recognition.

     Equally effective is Larson as the kidnap victim who, because of her son, creates a world so orderly in the room (actually a shed behind a house) that she finds dealing with the real world almost impossible. Larson previously earned good reviews in “Short Term 12” as caring social worker, but here her character deals with problems and emotions that would challenge the strongest among us. Her acting, along with the keenly observed script by Emma Donoghue (from her novel), shines a light on just how difficult simply facing life day after day can be.

    Director Lenny Abrahamson—who directed one of the strangest films of 2014, “Frank,” about a rock singer who always wears a Jack-in-the-Box like Styrofoam head—never allows the film to become exploitive or manipulative; he’s interested in the deeper psychological effects of trauma in our lives and the incredible resilience of the human spirit.  

  

TRUMBO (2015)
    There is something about chronicling the lives of well-known real people that seems to turn screenwriters into hacks.

     I’m probably being harsh, but “Trumbo” serves as example No. 323 in the long tradition; a compelling story filled with interesting, smart people, all turned into simplistic, one-dimensional caricatures. Normally reliable actors turn into hams, as if playing real people gives them the freedom to discard all subtly and acting acumen.

     Brain Cranston, who I’ve seen rarely but won four acting Emmys for his lead role in “Breaking Bad,” is a study of squints and ticks and facial hair as Dalton Trumbo, the highly paid screenwriter of the 1940s who became the spokesman and most famous martyr of the Hollywood blacklist.

      The film depicts the industry’s growing hatred of anyone associated with the Communist Party following World War II, led by the very powerful gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and rightwing actor John Wayne (David James Elliott).

       Trumbo’s informal group of activists, including actor Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg, giving the film’s most authentic performance) feels the heat as the House Un-American Activities Committee turns its focus on Hollywood.

    As crazy as it sounds today, Trumbo and the rest of the Hollywood 10 (the most prominent among the hundreds who were blackballed) went to prison and were banned from ever working in American films again.

     The most interesting segment, but just as cartoonish as the rest of the film, chronicles Trumbo’s life as a ghost writer (his screenplay won an Oscar for “Roman Holiday” though another writer’s name is on it) and working for D-level movie maker Frank King (a gargantuan John Goodman). Those sections are fun and frantic, which is what director Jay Roach (“Meet the Parents,” “Austin Powers”) does best.

     The film is an excellent history lesson for those unfamiliar with this dark chapter of Hollywood (and American), but it plays more like a second-rate television movie than a major motion picture. In this case, Trumbo would have wanted his name removed from the credits.

    Cranston tries too hard to imitate Trumbo, someone who few filmgoers would know from Adam. I refuse to believe that this ultimate professional screenwriter was just a collection of clichés.

     The screenplay, by John McNamara from Bruce Cook’s bio, moves the story along sometimes too quickly, without any inter-titles explaining the time frame; I was taken aback when his daughter suddenly went from a child to a young adult, while his wife (Diane Lane) never aged a day.

     This important story more than deserved a first-rate script, but this cautionary tale of screenwriter needed, at least, one more rewrite.  

CREED  (2015)

    There’s absolutely no reason why this continuation of the long dormant “Rocky” franchise should be worth the price of admission. Yet, for some reason, the legacy of Rocky Balboa abides.

      Honestly, I enjoyed “Creed” more than the 1976 Oscar-winning original. The story of Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son plays as hackneyed as you’d expect, yet director Ryan Coogler (who guided the superb “Fruitvale Station”) brings the kind of directorial touches that turn a mediocre story into a first-rate film. He focuses on the details—the training, the process, letting the camera linger over his actors a bit longer than usual, letting the truth seep into the story from their expressions more than their words. And then, when it comes to the big moments, he knows exactly how to make you feel as if you are in the middle of a major event.

    This old-fashioned crowd pleaser also elicits two superb performances: Michael B. Jordan, also the star of “Fruitvale Station,” as Adonis Creed Johnson, whose silver-spoon upbringing belies his desire to follow his father’s legacy; and the man himself, Sylvester Stallone, playing the punch-drunk Philly fighter for the seventh time.

     Stallone has been a bad actor for so long (though occasionally an interesting presence) that to watch him actually work on his character, digging for something more than the clichés that have defined his Rocky, is very satisfying. It took him 40 years, but he’s finally nailed this character.

    You know, or can guess, the story: orphaned boy fights his way through childhhood before his famous father’s wife takes him in and his life changes. But he can’t get his father’s legacy out of his head and he starts boxing on the side.

    Then, he tosses his financial career aside and heads to Philly to find his father’s greatest opponent, Rocky Balboa. The rise of the young man comes way too fast, accelerated when a promoter finds out he’s Apollo’s son.

    The relationship between Creed and Rocky holds the film together even as the plot plods ahead in familiar fashion.

    Also adding reality to the tale is an up-and-coming singer (Tessa Thompson) who falls for Adonis. While boxing has faded from the spotlight of American sports (I couldn’t even guess who current holds the heavyweight crowd—a name every male knew in the 20^th Century), it remains a popular film subject. A lesser film, “Southpaw,” did very respectable at the box office this summer.

     But this is more than a boxing movie; as was clear from the audience’s reaction at the first notes of the “Rocky” theme. This franchise, despite so many awful sequels, remains a culture touchstone with Rocky holding forth as one of the most beloved fictional characters of modern cinema, right there with Harry Potter, Mr. Spock, Batman and Forrest Gump,

YOUTH (2015)

      While the American cinema remains, for the most part, wedded to the same template that first proved successful about 100 years ago (if it ain’t broke…), European filmmakers tell stories in an often stylized, grand manner; even sometimes mixing time frames so it’s hard to follow for us linear traditionalists. 

For Americans, action is everything; in Europe, it’s more about ideas, philosophy and images, all meshed together.

     This English-language picture from acclaimed Italian director Paolo Sorrentino (his “The Great Beauty” is one of the few masterpieces of this century) is really nothing more than a series of conversations, most of them between Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), a curmudgeonly English composer and conductor, and Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), an equally acclaimed American filmmaker. The unlikely pairing of Caine and Keitel could not have turned out better.

      I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone under the age of 50: this is a requiem to old age, to regrets and shifting remembrances, to last chances and missing loved ones.

    Set in a high-end European spa that caters to celebrities (an obvious homage to Fellini’s “8/1/2”), the film follows Fred and Mick as they roam around the facility, indulging in the type of conversations only lifelong friends can have. Though they made their names in different disciplines, their lives are intertwined, as Fred’s daughter (Rachel Weisz) is married to Mick’s son.

    If you are looking for a plot, Fred is being wooed by the Queen to perform his most famous composition for a public birthday celebration for Prince Phillip while Mick and his team of young writers are desperately trying to come up with an ending to his next movie.

    Jane Fonda shows up late in the film, playing a legendary actress who Mick has written his film for; she arrives at the spa to announce that she’s taking a television series and dropping the film he has been laboring over. She pronounces film dead and offers other truths that no one wants to hear. Truth is rarely the friend of old age.  

     Also excellent in a supporting role is Paul Dano as a hotshot actor who is smarter than he appears. While the actor has costarred with a series of top-notch actors (Brian Cox, Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis) in ambitious films, this is the first time I felt he was totally comfortable with his role and resisted over-playing his character.

    At the heart of the film are these two iconic actors, whose characters grow more interesting because of the audience’s long association with Caine and Keitel; no single actor is more important to post-war British cinema than Caine and Keitel’s early work with Martin Scorsese was enough to make him an essential figure of the New Hollywood of the 1970s.They have both made plenty of bad films, but they’ve never stopped working, maintaining a constant  presence in the cinema, Caine at 82, Keitel at 76.

      Fred holds forth as the forlorn pessimist filled with regrets while Mick acts as if he’s 40, a feisty braggart who, unlike Fred, refuses to retire. I could have watched their bantering for another two or three hours.  

      “Youth” is an often inscrutable mess that seems as if it’s going nowhere (applicable to both this movie and what we categorized as our “youth”), yet it has more insight into how we conduct our lives than a year’s full of Hollywood product.

THE BIG SHORT (2015)

    A tone of desperation, appropriate considering its subject, pervades this energetic adaptation of Michael Lewis’ insiders’ look at the mortgage crisis of 2007.

       Ricocheting between screwball comedy and devastating drama, this fictional film tosses in Michael Moore-style documentary images to illustrate the times and emphasize the public’s cluelessness. While a handful of fast-talking, over-caffeinated money managers predict a life-changing economic crash, photo collages highlight an American public enjoying the booty of a juiced-up Wall Street.

      Also breaking up the film’s narrative, the filmmakers occasionally have the actors speak directly to the camera (pointlessly, really) and then, making matters worse, enlist a handful of “celebrities” to speak directly to the audience to explain complicated financial issues. I can’t image why anyone thought that was a good idea; each time it brings the film to a grinding halt.

     The drama focuses on six investors, based on actual people: a very rich, socially inept physician (Christian Bale); an angry, cynical and outspoken professional (Steven Carell); a self-promoting banker (Ryan Gosling); a pair of upstarts looking for a shot at the big time (Finn Wittrock and John Magaro); and, as their adviser, a Zen-like, ex-Wall Street player (Brad Pitt).

     Pretty much at the same time, they discover that the housing market, which has been monetized by financial companies by bundling good and bad loans into investment products, has peaked and is about to collapse. Bale’s Dr. Burry proposes to buy from the top investment firms an insurance-like policy that pays off if these mortgage units fail. The others follow.

      Writer-director Adam McKay (the “Anchorman” films) and co-writer Charles Randolph are asking viewers to sympathize with investors who are essentially betting that the U.S. economy will tumbling into a deep recession. It takes a cynical bent to thoroughly enjoy this film.

     Of course, they weren’t the only ones who recognized that the housing market was in trouble; banks, regulators, the U.S. government, the institutions whose job it is to safeguard the economy, all turned a blind eye to the problem, ignoring how much of the economy was intertwined with bad mortgages.

   While I cringed at so many points during this motion picture, I was totally enthralled; impressed in the manner it hammers away at the truth, as it comically satirized the ignorance and corruption of the economic system.

      Bale, who seems to never repeat himself (even when he’s Batman), turns the doctor’s quirky, obsessive personality into the most fascinating character in the film. He’s like the unrelenting journalists in “Spotlight,” who refuse to give up on the story despite the naysayers. Burry faces investor lawsuits and desertion by associates before he’s proven correct.

    Carell gives a more believable performance than his Oscar-nominated turn in “Foxcatcher.” He’s funny just by convincingly portraying this frantic investor who can’t believe the malfeasance he keeps encountering.

     Pitt, as the lone wolf who puts his truth in two just-out-of-the-garage wannabes, has become such a low-key presence (even in action films like “Inglorious Bastards” and “Fury”) that he now seems best suited for character roles. He nails this one.

     Let’s face it, if someone tried to make a straight-forward, didactic telling of the mortgage crisis no one is going to show up. Despite my initial objections, the filmmakers’ decision to turn it into a mash-up of styles, keeping the seriousness very off-handed, was a good one.

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015)

    Quentin Tarantino proudly announces in the opening credits that this is his eighth film, seemingly begging for a career appraisal. It’s rather sad, considering that this new film ranks as the least interesting picture.

     His meager production over the past 23 years includes two great films (“Pulp Fiction,” “Inglourious Basterds”), three good ones (“Reservoir Dogs,” “Jackie Brown,” and “Django Unchained”) and an ambitious failure (“Kill Bill, Parts I and II”). I’m not sure how to categorize his ridiculous homage to exploitation drive-in movies, “Death Proof,” part of his and Robert Rodriguez’ “Grindhouse” release, but at least that film had a sense of fun. “Hateful Eight” is just, well, hateful.

     It’s not that there aren’t the occasional entertaining moments in this three-hour endurance test, but during most of this film I felt like I was trapped in the bizarre world of Quentin Tarantino, where the only thing of value is the cleverness of one’s retort.

         Samuel L. Jackson, the writer-director’s go-to provocateur, spews incredible story after incredible story as a legendary Civil War veteran turned bounty hunter. He hitches a ride with another bound hunter (Kurt Russell, channeling John Wayne) as they both head toward Red Rock, Wyoming, along with Russell’s prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh as arguable the most repulsive character in the film), who is destined for the hangman.

     To make a very, very long story (with very little substance) a bit shorter, the bounty hunters arrive at Minni’s Haberdashery (actually a roadhouse) to find Minnie gone and a group of suspicious character hanging around as a violent snowstorm approaches.

     Needless to say, people die in exceeding repulsive ways as Jackson provides a steady stream of profanity-laden explanation. It’s all punctuation by an irritating score by Ennio Morricone of spaghetti Western fame.

     Even the script, which usually is the most consistent aspect of a Tarantino film, never finds its pacing; the most interesting conversations take place in the opening scene between Jackson and Russell as they ride in the stagecoach.

     Among the other actors trying to save this mess are Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Demian Bichir and Michael Madsen.

    Few have ever made the case for Tarantino as a screenwriter with much to say—he’s more interested in dazzling the viewer with one-of-a-kind characters and over-the-top action sequences. But when he sticks you in a room for three hours, you think there’d be more than profanity and cleverness. The iconoclastic filmmaker needs to quickly move on to No. 9.