“Joy” had scenes. And while some of them were very good, I’m not sure that it’s actually a movie, though.

“Joy,” the latest film by David O. Russell is a biopic that proudly displays a big asterisk on the “bio” part. It tells the true story of Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence), an overworked, single mother who created the Miracle Mop and became a millionaire.

Now this is the kind of story David O. Russell loves: somebody who is constantly held down by their insane mess of a family. And that is what ultimately hurts Russell at certain points: he is constantly standing in his own shadow.

By this point, David O. Russell has earned a good reputation in Hollywood after years in creative jail. In 2010, “The Fighter,” about a boxer being held down by his crazy family, was his well deserved comeback. He followed it up with the equally fantastic “Silver Linings Playbook,” about yet another person trying to escape their demons. Between “American Hustle” and “Joy,” it feels like David O. Russell keeps trying to remake “Silver Linings Playbook” while forgetting everything that is so great about it.

People really don’t like “Joy.”

The reviews for “Joy” have been harsh. I am not saying that this film doesn’t deserve that scorn, but it feels like people might have been kinder to it had not come with the added baggage of the Russell/Lawrence team.

It isn’t a complete disaster.

“Joy” is partially saved by some phenomenal performances. Once again, Russell shows that he can bring out the best in Jennifer Lawrence. She has matured greatly as an actress. Sometimes, it seems like she is too young to play this role, but it works in her favor. She seems completely out of place as a woman who has to deal with her parents’ divorce while also sorting out her own. It also helps that she has a great scene partner in Bradley Cooper.

During one scene, she has to go on QVC and convince the world both that they should buy this mop, and that she is an ordinary woman from Long Island, and not a movie star. For a second there, I really did think that mop was the greatest thing in the world.

The film then loses track of everything, including the other characters.

This is why “Joy” can’t be “The Fighter,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” or even “Flirting With Disaster” (a great film from early in Russell’s career): it completely abandons every other character.

Russell is typically so skilled at fleshing out giant ensembles. Here, it just feels like every character is meant to service Joy and their internal lives don’t matter. Early on in the film, Joy’s father (Robert De Niro) is shown as a broken mess of a man. He ruins Joy’s wedding and joins a dating service for widows and widowers, even though he is neither. He is never given a moment of redemption, even though by the end his sins are completely absolved. Sure, this movie is called “Joy” but the story would have been much richer had those who helped Mangano achieve success actually been given her due.

And finally, the mop ends up not being that interesting.

After truly selling me that the Miracle Mop really was important, “Joy” lost me when it suddenly turns into a drama about patent law.

In the end, “Joy” feels like the product of complete creative control. Sometimes, that can be a good thing (see: “The Hateful Eight”). While “Joy” has its redeeming qualities, it feels like a good argument for directors actually reading the notes studio executives give them.

And with one flame from an electric guitar, summer movie season was reborn.

“Mad Max: Fury Road” is a refreshing shot of adrenaline in every way possible. It is based on a franchise that I have never seen and that doesn’t matter, because it eloquently states a nearly 40 year old backstory in a brief voiceover.

We are transported to a desert landscape that is anything but empty. In the future, Earth is a wasteland. Everybody searches for water and oil. Gangs form, but sides often blur together. The angry Max (Tom Hardy) of the title teams up with Furiosa (Charlize Theron) to bring down the psychotic cult leader Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne).

This is a future ruled by lack of resources, where eating a two-headed lizard is the best form of nutrition.

For a barren landscape, this world sure is populated by bright, colorful figures who all abide by different codes. Sure, this is called “Mad Max,” but “Fury Road” often feels like it is about everybody else, whether you have a pale face, or a flaming electric guitar. But Hardy, of course, is a born action star. Hell, at this point, he can play anything. He doesn’t even do that much “”acting” here. All it takes is a few grunts, and I am on board.

The real star here may be Charlize Theron. Furiosa is both nurturing and terrifying. She is somebody who would take care of you, but definitely not somebody you would ever want to pick a fight with.

This is director George Miller’s full vision, and it feels like something he’s been saving up to do for a long time. “Fury Road” was in development and production hell for many years, and the wait was definetly worth it. The film is settled on a few big action set pieces that last a long time and do not disappoint in the slightest. I think what I am most impressed with is Miller’s ability to turn every possible object into a weapon, whether that be a crane or a flaming electric guitar. He is like a way cooler MacGyver.

Many people have been pointing out a “lack of plot” in “Fury Road.” “Fury Road” has a plot, it is just much more sparse and simple than most blockbusters nowadays. That is a great thing. There is one, straight-forward villain. The heroes are clear. The goals are small and attainable. Nobody is trying to launch a nuclear missile through a wormhole. This is literally a world without rules. You don’t have to shut off your mind to watch “Fury Road,” but it definitely the simplest summer blockbuster to digest.

With “Fury Road,” it feels like George Miller was able to play in his own personal sandbox. Then, he decided to blow it up, crash a few cars in it, and set it on fire with a flaming electric guitar. Just roll with it, and you’ll have the best time you’ve had at the movies in a very long time.

The great thing about being a film critic is that you can see a great film before the inevitable hype sets in with a nearly unbiased perspective. The problem with being an unlicensed film critic (do critics get licenses?) is that you see films whenever you get a chance, preferably as soon as they are first released in theaters.

So that is the difficulty with It Follows, which has been touted as the greatest thing for the horror genre since Alfred Hitchcock directed a film about a haunted loaf of sliced bread. It Follows is special in many ways, and I am rooting for it as a little indie that could. At times, it is a great throwback to horror classics. Unfortunately, this is exactly what holds it back.

It Follows is something of a rarity in today’s crowded field of low budget horror films: there are no limbs being torn off the bone, and not even a warning that all the events that we are about to witness were captured on somebody’s flip camera and found by a government agency. It Follows is not a gimmick horror film, and that is a relief. Hell, it isn’t even about teenagers being killed off one-by-one in increasingly gruesome ways.

After a promising date gone wrong, Kelly (Lili Sepe) is infected by a mysterious supernatural force that she must get rid of by passing on to somebody else. It is hard to get rid of something that can’t die, and even harder when the only way to get rid of it involves getting laid.

The best compliment I could bestow on It Follows is how well made it is. Shot on a budget of about $2 million, It Follows looks like it cost ten times that amount to make. This is a film that requires a few CGI tricks so the fact that it looks this good gives me a lot of hope for the future of these tiny devices we carry around with us. The spectacular climax, which all I’ll say about it is that it takes place in a pool, involves action that is frightening even though we are meant not to see it.

And let’s not forget the score, which is what actually makes It Follows even remotely scary. Its like techno version of Psycho. This is the kind of music that doesn’t just leave your head. Every emotion I have towards the film is tied towards the music. Obviously, music is used in a film to guide the viewer’s emotions, and the best horror films seem to use their score to their fullest potential. I will definitely be listening to this over and over again in order to freak myself out in the middle of a workday.

As much as I just described a bunch of good things, these last two paragraphs describe one of my main beefs with It Follows. Its a collection of great stylistic elements, confused as to what substance is. Its a collection of great scenes as opposed to a cohesive whole. During down time, you would hope a horror film is just revving up tension. But at times, It Follows kind of stalls, especially bogged down by a lot of half-committed performances.

I want to like It Follows more than I did, and that is not just because I feel like I should. But in the end, the best kind of horror movies are really about something else below the surface, and I can’t quite get a grip of it here. Maybe I am dumb, or maybe I have just seen enough indie movies where pools are used as a metaphor for redemption. It Follows wants to be Jaws, and it also wants to be Halloween, but it doesn’t have a shark, nor a Michael Myers.

But damn, does this film look good. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch It Follows again, but I will look at it when one of those Masterful Shots Twitter accounts posts a bunch of screenshots from it.

Noah Baumbach has spent so much time shooting around Brooklyn that the borough has become his own personal sandbox.

While We’re Young, Noah Baumbach’s sixth feature film, allows the director to expand his world all while remaining within the confines of it. While We’re Young isn’t the best film that he’s made, but its by far his most entertaining and accessible.

Where do you go when you’re naturally getting older but want to pretend you’re still young? Bushwick, of course. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play Josh and Cornelia, a childless couple in their mid-40s. Josh is a struggling filmmaker who can barely get the grant money to finish his documentary. Well, it is less that he can’t find the money, and more that he is too proud to ask. Josh and Cornelia find a reason to slither out of midlife monotony after meeting a young married couple.

That couple is Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), who are both in their mid-20s, seem like the kind of couple that got married because they thought it would be funny, but they have to make the commitment nonetheless. Jamie is an aspiring documentarian, while Darby is an ice cream maker (which I guess qualifies her as an artist). They’d be nothing more than a Portlandia sketch if not for the warm and genuine performances by Driver and Seyfried.

I am going to freeze this review very quickly to acknowledge Ben Stiller, because he is truly incredible at everything he does. He has a knack for playing characters who aren’t necessarily misfits, but are incredibly unadjusted to their surroundings. It is like watching every anxiety I have ever had come to life. He is like Woody Allen, but much less creepy.

While watching While We’re Young, its impossible not to get the sense that this film is just Baumbach trying to adjust to a changing world. Or anyway, a world that always seems different once you get older, no matter when you were born. One thing that often troubled me about Baumbach in the past was a painful sense of negativity. Starting with Frances Ha, he has found a way to inject negativity with a sense of wonder. Greenberg  was about a guy yelling that he had no idea what he was doing. In While We’re Young, nobody knows what they’re doing, but at least they are blindly optimistic enough to think that they can somehow figure it out.

And this is one of the things I like best about While We’re Young: it is a comedy that understands the universal joke of life, in that as we get older we know less and less. While it is only playing in New York and LA this week, it is a mainstream indie comedy, and a sharp one at that. This isn’t the kind of indie comedy where a guy and girl exchange awkward glances and we’re supposed to uncomfortably chuckle at it. I don’t want to spoil it, but there is one satirical highpoint in the film that reaches South Park brilliance, the kind of thing where bodily functions are used to show how full of it a certain class of people can be. For a reference point, just remember the one South Park episode where everybody in San Francisco is smelling their own farts.

Baumbach pokes fun of them out of love, because this is a world that he clearly knows well (he’s a native Brooklynite). Even if these characters are a little pretentious and often not as smart as they think they are (the best example is a scene in which Josh tries to pitch his movie to a hedge fund manager), they never filled me with unnecessary anger. Even when they put on fedoras.

While We’re Young is about a very specific segment of the population (hipsters; yuppies), but its ideas are general enough to appeal to everyone. Who hasn’t been afraid of getting older? Who hasn’t been threatened by somebody younger than you, even when you are still young yourself? It doesn’t look at any of these questions simply, and everybody in their 40s is just as clueless as everybody in their 20s. I think a whole family could see this, and each member might connect to it in a different way.

Long story short, While We’re Young This is a film that perfectly captures the feeling of not fitting in at a dinner party.

Brain Farts From The Edge

• A lot of talk here about truth and authenticity as well as a documentary which has problems with “timelines.” It kind of sounds like what a lot of dummies said about “The Jinx” recently.
• Seriously, Amanda Seyfried is great. I always overlooked her, but I hope she gets more strong roles like this.
• Also, Darby is not a real human name. Well, I guess in Brooklyn it is.
• Adam Horovitz was good in this. I don’t know, I have no strong opinions about the Beastie Boys. However, I do support any and all Jewish hip hop artists.

Image via Collider

Whenever a new movie comes out that isn’t a sequel, remake, or based on a comic book comes out, I have a bad habit of immediately assuming that it will be good. We can define it as confusing originality with brains. A good name for that would be Elysium Syndrome.

With Chappie, Neill Blomkamp manages to pull himself out of a sophomore slump with something that is sometimes frustrating but often fun and filled with interesting, half-realized ideas.

Chappie takes place during an undetermined point in the South African future, when the city of Johannesburg is riddled with crime. In response, a weapons manufacturer (boy, does Neill Blomkamp love weapons manufacturers) creates an army of robot cops to fight crime. Okay, so this is basically the exact same premise as RoboCop. However, the robots here are a lot clunkier and look like they are assembled from old auto parts. It is part of Blomkamp’s goal to create outdated futures that have something of a charm to them.

A scientist named Deon (Dev Patel), who has more AI than people in his life, takes on a bold experiment to reprogram one of the robots to give it the capacity to learn. Thus, he gives birth to Chappie, who is played under a suit of scrap metal by the immensely talented Sharlto Copley. Chappie is taken in by a group of criminals who want to use him to pull off one last, daring heist. A movie about criminals trying to pull off one last, daring heist? I don’t think I’ve seen that before.

The criminals in question are Ninja (Ninja) and Yolandi (Yo-Landi Visser), who are played by Ninja and Yolandi, who make up the South African rap group Die Antwoord. Now, I am not sure if they were playing Die Antwoord here or not, but given the fact that they have the same names and wear Die Antwoord t-shirts and listen to Die Antwoord songs, I have a feeling that there wasn’t a whole lot of acting there. I have never been able to tell whether Ninja and Yolandi are sincere or elaborate performance artists. That is probably what makes them so fun to argue about. What I will say, though, is that Yolandi is surprisingly sweet as Chappie’s motherly figure.

Casting isn’t one of Chappie’s weaknesses; it is more what it does with its cast members. Hugh Jackman is surprisingly bland as a fellow inventor who has his own ideas about fighting crime. I guess the cargo shorts and mullet are good defining characteristics, but the film also has him throwing a rugby ball around for many of his scenes. This is either because he is Australian, or because he is playing a South African, or both. Chappie is the kind of film that has the chutzpah to cast one of sci-fi’s greatest heroines (Sigourney Weaver), and then sideline her in favor of more explosions.

The real issue behind Chappie is not in the concept itself or in how it explores a larger moral issue (more on that soon), but how it sets up the world. District 9 showed that Blomkamp is actually quite deft at setting up fascinating exposition. Chappie introduces us to this world in fast forward, giving us only a vague sense of what it is like, and why things are going as badly as they are. This undercuts a lot of the social commentary that the film desperately wants to supply.

This is coming from somebody who normally hates exposition. Yet, the lack of explaining also benefits the film in a lot of ways. Chappie introduces us to the idea that you can upload your consciousness on a flash drive. That is an insane idea. Somebody like Christopher Nolan might have spent a huge chunk of time trying to justify the neurological patterns that make this possible. Here, you are either on board, or you’re a square. There is something kind of liberating about that. Sometimes, sci-fi makes more sense when it isn’t constantly trying to justify its plausibility.

I have said some bad things about Chappie, and it seems like most of the world hates it, but I couldn’t help but leave this film with a smile on my face. Sure, it isn’t until the third act that I actually felt any real sense of danger, but there is a fun, goofy feeling running through the film that just works. Plus, this film has a lot of ideas, and maybe a lot of them don’t make sense, but at least it actually presents them in a way where you can have a discussion about them. Chappie is a mess, but it is an entertaining one at least that gets halfway to saying something great.

Maybe Chappie needed a better editor or a better writer. Either way, it proves this: Neill Blomkamp may not live up to the immense promise of District 9, but he’s no M. Night Shyamalan. If anything, at least this film gives us the image of an adorable robot wearing bling and throwing ninja stars.

Here’s the Die Antwoord song from the end credits. I first heard this song two years. It still kind of freaks me out, but it is catchy:

“This ain’t The King’s Speech, bro.” Image via Forbes

January and February are typically Hollywood’s dumping ground months. This is the time when studios just want you to see the Oscar leftovers that they released the last week of December. This is the time of Uwe Boll and Kevin Hart to reign. But once awards season ends, there is something refreshing about watching a movie in which nobody dies from a terminal illness. I don’t care what the groundhog said; with Kingsman: The Secret Service, summer has come early.

Kingsman is one of those movies that plants seeds and bread crumbs early on. At first, they seem pointless but later, they blossom into beautiful flowers and loafs of bread. At a young age, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is visited by Galahad (Colin Firth), a member of the secretive Kingsmen, who are basically England’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The visit is really just to give him a secret necklace that belonged to his father. Fate will bring them together years later, when Eggsy is a delinquent dealing with a drunken step dad. You can normally catch him getting in bar fights at the pub. He is a lot better at starting fights than he is at finishing them. He is basically an Edgar Wright character transplanted into a Matthew Vaughn Joint.

I didn’t realize that Kingsman was based on a comic until the end of the movie, because this story seems like one so perfectly suited for a movie. It occupies this strange halfway zone between James Bond and Austin Powers, in that it is a farce about secret agents who could actually go face-to-face with 007. They use everything from machine guns to, in a very British fashion, an umbrella, as weapons.  This makes for a winning combination of action and comedy.

Part of what makes Kingsman so fun to watch is its inspired casting choices. If we had merely gotten the chance to see the charming and mild-mannered Colin Firth demolish a bunch of bigots, then that would have been enough. Instead, we also get Samuel L. Jackson as a villain who acts Lex Luthor but dresses like Justin Bieber. Despite how crazy and in control he is, there is a big part of him that is largely powerless, especially in the dynamic with his metal-legged sidekick (Sofia Boutella). It is a great reminder that despite how many movies and how many credit card commercial he does, Samuel L. Jackson isn’t always phoning it in. The dude can really lay an f-bomb down.

Kingsman comes from the director/writer team of Matthew Vaugh and Jane Goldman, who more than make up for X-Men: First Class. Vaughn’s directorial style will draw the ire of some and the enjoyment of others. He has an extremely nonchalant approach to violence. Heads explode and hands go flying as if these are both normal occurrences. It feels spiritually linked to Kick-Ass in that all the bloodshed would be shocking if it weren’t so funny. Vaughn’s films are never incredibly “deep,” which is a shame, especially when you’re trying to make a film that’s partially about the ethics of trying to control human population. Kingsman, like Vaughn’s other movies, is a triumph of style over substance. It is the movie equivalent of really filling cotton candy.

Occasionally, Kingsman dips its toes into meta humor. “It’s not that kind of movie,” Valentine (Jackson) says before pulling off a shocking plot twist. This isn’t some way to tear down the action genre, but rather to celebrate something that it is taking a part of. Matthew Vaughn likes to participate in a light meta humor that is more playful than savage. After all, even if the film makes some great strides to avoid plot holes and conveniences, it still rips a page out of the Indepedence Day playbook with the implementation of a computer virus. At one point, a major female character is introduced who should be the love interest. While it is great that the film takes her in a different direction, I am not sure if completely removing her from most of the action is the direction that they should have taken.

Please, don’t let that last paragraph turn you off. I am a blogger, and if I don’t find something to hate on, then my batteries will run out and I will die. I left Kingsman with a giant grin on my face that won’t go away. It proves that great action has a way of secretly getting you invested in characters and mythology. This is the kind of movie that I will probably see on TV one day. When I do, I will stop, and won’t change the channel. That is a high compliment.

Brain Farts From The Edge

• Perhaps Colin Firth is the next Liam Neeson a.k.a. a respected actor who will enter the next part of his career as an action star. It suits him well.
• Kingsman just made me want to go to a pub and grab a pint. Also, are British people just that good at drinking whiskey? Seriously, they chug really good whiskey like its water.
• There is a scene that brilliantly uses a tired classic rock song. It is the most gloriously ‘Murican moment in a very British film. You’ll know when you see it.
• Kingsman has given me at least a little bit of insight into British Bro Culture.
• So, how much longer until Taron Egerton gets cast in a Marvel movie?
• I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Mark Strong is British Stanley Tucci
• This movie also reminded me a lot of Mystery Men. And if you haven’t seen Mystery Men yet then what the hell are you doing here?

Pardon me, but are they going to show this clip at the Oscars? Image via Focus Features

From time to time, I remember Patton Oswalt’s bit about the Star Wars prequels in which he proclaims that he doesn’t care where the stuff he loves comes from, he just loves what he loves. That is how I am starting to feel about most biopics. Or, at least the ones that answers questions that nobody asked.

Stephen Hawking is a figure as fascinating as his findings and a general anomaly of mankind. After all, he was supposed to die two years after being diagnosed with ALS, yet he has lived another 50. So surely, one would think that making a biopic about him would be almost too easy, right? Guys? Guys?

The Theory of Everything isn’t necessarily a bad movie as much as it is offensively inoffensive. Instead of a complex look at a genius who kept going even as the world told him to stop, we are treated to a sweet, if trite, love story. Then again, this is based on the book written by Jane Hawking, Stephen’s first wife. She definitely sees him through some very rosey red glasses.

Normally, I commend it whenever a biopic tries to focus on a specific period of time or one small aspect of someone’s life, as opposed to an overarching story. However, it would have been interesting to see The Theory of Everything go a bit more broad. Sure, the Hawkings marriage is lovely and inspirational, but it is far from the most interesting subject that this film could have covered.

Luckily, the film did manage to rope in two very talented and very British actors for the lead role. As Jane Hawking, Felicity Jones steals many of the scenes that she is in with a sort of quiet strength. She has the less flashy performance here, yet she gets a lot of mileage out of it. One problem with a lot of biopics is that a lot of the ancillary characters can feel disposable. I cannot tell you how mad it made me to see how Walk the Line made Johnny Cash’s first wife look like a lunatic. She was just a plot point to be overcome so he could get to June. One of the stronger parts of The Theory of Everything is that it lets Jane hold her own. Then again, this might not be that big of an achievement, given that it is based off a big that she freaking wrote.

Now, let’s get to Eddie Redmayne, who plays Stephen Hawking. There is a strong chance that he will get back in his Uber tomorrow night cradling an Academy Award. That is not just because he has swept most of the precursor awards, but because this is exactly the kind of performance Oscar voters love, to the point that it almost feels like parody. There is a lot of grinning and shaking and tripping but not a lot about how Hawking feels as he watches his body deteriorate before his eyes. I hate to say this, but it feels a little to a lot like Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder.

Redmayne seems to be trying his best. This might be more the fault of the film itself than the actor. After all, actors are trained monkeys who can eat a lot of Burger King and then say they are just gaining weight for a role. It feels less like this film wanted to give us a portrayal of Stephen Hawking and more like it went through the least amount of effort possible in order to be eligible for an Oscar. The film keeps telling us that Stephen Hawking is a genius. Nobody is arguing against that. What I would like to know, however, is why he is such a genius. How is it that he can look at a cup of coffee and figure out how time works? How is it that he can look at a fireplace and figure out what black holes are? Instead, the film just decides to cut right to the part where A Brief History of Time is published and becomes a bestseller. Again, why exactly are Hawking’s findings so revolutionary? I am an idiot who knows nothing about physics. Please help me.

Again, The Theory of Everything is less bad and more bland. It doesn’t do anything interesting cinematically. If you are looking for something mildly sweet and filled with lens flares and soft lighting, then you will probably enjoy The Theory of Everything. Even if you do, you probably won’t remember much of it down the road.

Image via IndieWire

If you are as cynical as I can be, then a film that drops around awards season about a disease should draw nothing but skepticism. Yes, Still Alice is about an ailment and yes, it is mainly a vehicle for a performance. However, it is a really good performance in a film that handles delicate subject matter very tastefully.

Still Alice stitches together a narrative based on both forgetting and remembrance. Julianne Moore is our Alice. Alice is a widely respected professor at Columbia whose life takes a tragic turn when she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. We follow Alice as her memory and well being slip further and further away from her.

This film is The Fault in Our Stars for Oscar bait: it can make you cry just from a quick glance at its logline. Still Alice doesn’t exploit cheap emotions, but rather it makes us feel everything that we might feel if we were in this situation. A lot of people have had a relative who has suffered from Alzheimer’s or dementia and can relate. However, few of us can claim to have actually felt it. Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland are great at conveying Alice’s worsening condition with some visual tricks, which translates to a lot of blurred vision. Regardless, they use the camera to help us see through Alice’s eyes. That is one of the many beauties of film: it can put us directly into somebody’s brain.

While the directing here hasn’t gotten enough credit, the core of the film’s emotional drive definitely lies in all of the performances. Moore (more on her soon) is accompanied by some worthy scene partners. As Alice’s husband, Alec Baldwin brings a sense of tough vulnerability and relaxed intensity to remind us that he is not just that crazy guy who yells at bikers and paparazzo. Meanwhile, Kristen Stewart brings a surprising amount of emotional range to the table as the youngest daughter who is still trying to figure life out.

Let’s get back to Julianne Moore. There has been a lot of talk about her performance and how she will probably win the Oscar for it. That’s a good call, as Moore brings life, depth, and sadness to this character in a way that few other actresses could. The reason we identify and sympathize with Alice’s continuing struggle is because we understand how much she is losing. We get the sense that no matter what happens, Alice is still somehow present. Moore’s work is really what makes the film worth watching.

Still Alice is a delicate and patient film about love and loss. While it is not perfect (it moves at a glacial pace early on), the sum of its parts makes the whole more than worth it.

Brain Farts From The Edge

• One of my favorite national past times is complaining about how modern films integrate technology (see: Chef). However, Still Alice does it well. It is in your face a lot, but it is not a major plot point. Hey, that is how people communicate now. So, I am going to have to get used to Skype calls and iPhone notes in movies.
• This film takes place primarily on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. That’s You’ve Got Mail territory, for all of you You’ve Got Mail-ites out there.
• There is a scene where Alice takes out a challah. One scene later, they all wish each other Merry Christmas. What.

Say New York is another character one more damn time. Image via A24

Let me get this out of the way before I formally start this review: I do not know New York City better than people who actually live in New York (I can take a train directly into Grand Central from my local stop; that’s where my credentials end), but I at least understand it better than people who have only seen the inside of the Bubba Gump in Times Square.

So once upon a time, New York City was an awful crime-ridden hellhole. This is what you will hear today anytime you enter a trendy Williamsburg restaurant. Mid-bite of a $30 sandwich, some old guy will begin to rant about how horrible the neighborhood once was, and also how much better the city was when The Ramones were around. Nostalgia is a complicated force with many faces.

Instead of piggy backing of off the human need for nostalgia, A Most Violent Year instead uses this time period as a backdrop to tell a surprisingly mellow story. The film is set in 1981, supposedly the peak of deadly crime in the city. It seems like the worst possible time to make a living, but Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) runs a successful oil business. He prides himself on his honesty and integrity. Unlike most people, he can get ahead without compromising his morals. However, as his business gets threatened by rivals in some very violent ways, he is forced to compromise. The problem with Abel is that he is often so passive that it is hard to tell what moral compass it is that he doesn’t want to break.

Oscar Isaac is one of those actors who is so good and so varied in his talent that it makes me angry. Same goes for Jessica Chastain, who scores big as his wife and bookkeeper Anna. She is an embodiment of a tough new money attitude. The most interesting scenes in the film are the ones in which she plays a starring role. In one standout scene, Abel and Anna must decide what to do with a dying deer on the side of the road. He grabs a crowbar; she silently grabs a gun and shoots it without hesitation. Abel might seem to be the most powerful person in the film, but he loses in the war at home.

Scenes like that make me wish Chastain could have had more screen time. She is a source of energy that the film needs, because it often moves at a snail’s pace. At times, I didn’t feel as frightened as I should have during some terrible events, like when a man with a gun gets dangerously close to murdering Abel and his family.

Maybe this is because I was expecting a crime thriller, when this is really a story about the struggle to avoid criminal activity in a world that demands short cuts. A Most Violent Year is a morality tale that sometimes feels more like a novel than a film. Yet, J.C. Chandor, who has the name of a 1940s film noir detective, has a directorial style that feels out of the past. One chase scene, which involves multiple types of transportation, feels like something right out of The French Connection. It builds not just on tension from the moment, but on everything we have known about the character prior.

The highest compliment I can pay A Most Violent Year is that it is certainly a beautiful looking film. It is shot mainly during that depressing part of any given winter day when it seems like the day is ending just as it is beginning. There is one particularly beautiful image where blood and oil mix, something that even Upton Sinclair probably couldn’t come up with in writing. The film captures the gritty, graffiti-covered abandoned factories of the outer boroughs that haven’t gone exactly gone away today, despite gentrification. The Manhattan skyline is featured prominently in the film but usually as a blurry backdrop beyond the reaches of the 59th Street Bridge. These aren’t people living outside the law, but they are living in the shadow of greatness.

The old cliche goes that every New York story features New York as a third character. A Most Violent Year is a New York story that at least tries to look at this familiar city a little differently. We have seen enough couples fall in love on top of the Empire State Building, so why not take us to the East River docks for a change. A Most Violent Year isn’t perfect, but that adds to some of its charm. It is a familiar story about the downside of the American Dream told just a little differently.

“And the winner of Best Oakleys Commercial of the year is…American Sniper!” Image via Indiewire

There is a rule many screenwriters follow called “Save the Cat,” in which the protagonist must do something good (like save a cat) in the film’s first act in order to be likable. In the first scene of American Sniper, Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) kills a woman and a child. Later, he tries to beat a dog with a belt. Now it makes sense why Chris Kyle is an American hero that nobody can stop arguing about.

American Sniper is about the Iraq War. It is a film that should have been made, and for a certain segment of America (re: cheese curd lovers), it will be the defining Iraq War film. For another segment of America (re: kale lovers), it will be seen as a huge missed opportunity. For film critics (re: movie lovers), it will be seen as a big disappointment from a legend of cinematic badassery. I am lactose intolerant and I hate kale, so you can guess which camp I fall into.

Clint, why hath thou foresaken me? Watching you go from A Fistful of Dollars to Unforgiven to American Sniper is like watching a beloved relative lose their personality and start yelling at birds and blaming everything on ethnicities as they grow older. American Sniper is the story of Chris Kyle, who garnered a reputation as the deadliest sniper in American history. A proud Texan, the horse riding, not cousin riding kind (his words), Kyle is basically a modern cowboy. He is The Fastest Gun in the Middle East, yet he never even gets Ennio Morricone as the soundtrack to his life. Eastwood calls him a hero, but doesn’t know how to actually establish that he is one.

American Sniper feels lazy for most of its running time. The battle scenes lack both thrill and suspense. Watching this film is like watching your friend play Call of Duty. One supposedly epic battle scene is shrouded in a sand storm. This seems less like a metaphor for the confusing nature of war and more like a way to keep the budget relatively low. Then, there is a now infamous scene in which Chris holds his baby that is so obviously fake.  The reason for this is because the original baby called in sick and they couldn’t find a backup on time. I have trouble buying that. There are hundreds of mothers living in the Oakwood who would willingly give their babies away to Bradley Cooper and Clint Eastwood.

Just in case you thought the culture wars were over, they have not. They are being fought on your uncle’s Twitter feed and your former high school bully’s Facebook page. Some people are damning this film as a pro-war statement. Others are using it as an excuse for moronic racism. This situation has basically become “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs” episode of South Park: everybody is ascribing meaning to American Sniper that isn’t there. Liberals and conservatives alike would rather watch a war movie that preaches to their own choir, instead of one that says something new and different.

Some jingoistic tendencies aside, American Sniper isn’t very political, and that is one of its greatest failures. Don’t get me wrong, apolitical war movies are great. Just look at The Hurt Locker. While that one wasn’t trying to say anything about what got us into Iraq, it had a powerful message about the nature of war that could be applied to almost any conflict in history. American Sniper explores PTSD and the morality of being a sniper in a half-assed way. While it is great that American Sniper is getting us to talk about what veterans experienced in Iraq, it doesn’t actually lend anything valuable to the conversation.

Luckily, the film finds a savior in Bradley Cooper. Cooper is one of few actors who can sell a movie on his name alone who also deserves to be called an artist. He was really passionate about this story, and you can tell from the way that he humanizes Chris Kyle that he really cares about this guy. Cooper gets a few emotionally raw moments out of a weak script, and we can start to comprehend a man who referred to all his targets as “savages,” yet actually hoped he wouldn’t have to kill anybody.

There are a few brief moments where Eastwood really pulls through. In one nail-biting scene, we see the painstaking thought process a sniper must go through in a matter of seconds. Later, we see how exactly the war has come home with Chris in a shot that is one brief image accompanied by an unexpected cacophony of noise. These are the moments that the film could have used a lot more of.

Whether or not you see Chris Kyle as a hero, villain, or a flawed human just like anyone of us, his story is a powerful one, and it deserved a great cinematic treatment. As a war movie about the battle both at home and abroad, American Sniper comes off as The Deer Hunter without any chutzpah. My dislike for the film has nothing to do with its political outlook; I don’t like it because it doesn’t turn war into any sort of emotional experience. It is the kind of film that makes me want to shake Clint Eastwood and tell him that he can do better. Or, better yet, just put him in a home already.

Note: Clint Eastwood is viewed nowadays as a celebrity poster boy for the Republican Party. True, he is a registered Republican. However, he is also a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage libertarian who opposed the Iraq War. That’s the Northern California equivalent of a neocon.