Author: Don Malvasi

If you’re looking for a crowd-pleaser among the handful of films released nationally on Christmas Day, look no further than The Imitation Game. Benedict Cumberbatch gives one of the year’s best performances as the genius dork with zero social skills and a heavy dose of what we would now recognize as Asperger-like traits. Appealing in an unconventional way, Turing is lovable for his directness, his candor, and his wit. He’s an odd mix of detachment and hyper vigilance. His obsessiveness seems entirely inner-directed as if he is responding to a mysterious force within himself. Not afraid to insult those who are his intellectual inferiors, he also constantly gets himself in trouble.

Focused on deciphering Nazi codes, Turing finds himself at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England, joining a team of Enigma Project code breakers, who thus far have had little luck in succeeding. Turing immediately builds a towering, whirring machine–actually a very early computer. He names it Christopher, after a childhood boyfriend who appears in flashbacks. Directed by Morten Tyldum (the excellent Headhunters) with a screenplay by Graham Moore, the film also flashes forward to a time in 1952 when Turing is interrogated after being arrested for indecency. Although the rest of the world would not find out about Turing’s heroics until the 1970s, he spills his story to the interrogating policeman, who, we are to believe, accidentally stumbles across the incident of “indecency” while investigating Turing as a possible spy with Soviet sympathies. (While the United States was fully engaged in leading the way in the witch hunting of McCarthyism, Great Britain was actually jailing thousands for homosexuality.)

Let’s get a few fact-checked, roll-your-eyes scenes out of the way:

1) The film takes poetic license in depicting Turing as having received a breakthrough moment after writing no less than Winston Churchill himself a plea to allow TurIng to proceed with his plans despite skepticism from his immediate supervisors. (False.)

2) Turing and his gang reach an eureka-moment at a pub after an innocent comment from a secretary provides the missing clue to crack the codes. (Also false, but great fun as the normally reticent motley crew celebrate their breakthrough.)

3) The member of Turing’s crew who proved to be a spy for the Russians was never a member of Turing’s group. (Another whopper, but also one that compresses events in a manner that allows the film to address a very immediate problem during the war.)

4) Christopher was actually named Victory and wasn’t nearly as huge and silly-looking as the one in the film. (What’s wrong with stretching the truth in the name of film visuals–especially if they’re also funny?)

Turing’s relationship with fellow cryptanalyst Joan Clark (a very good Keira Knightley) provides the film with a rock-solid subtext. Plagued with prejudices brought against her for being a woman (she, for instance, was not permitted access to classifies material), her fight against her predicament nicely parallels Turing’s own struggle with oppression directed at his homosexuality. While The Imitation Game is often slick or awkward, their relationship soars above the film’s occasional lapses into simplemindedness. When all is said and done The Imitation Game captures the spirit of a man who personally shortened the war by months if not years–only to find tragic, and unnecessary, payback.

A Tragic War Hero You Need To Discover…4 (out of 5) stars

A down in the doldrums Andre Allen (Chris Rock) makes a serious film (“Uprize!”) about a Haitian slave rebellion. He intends to deflect the lingering stereotype associated with years of making dumb “Hammy The Bear” movies, in which he actually wears a bear suit. In the best tradition of art imitating life, Top Five, also written and directed by Rock, actually has the distinction of being a film about Rock himself wishing to rise above the usual comedic themes. But more about the film’s serious side later. Top Five is one hell of a funny film.

Sassy and full of grit, the seriously well-casted film is a diffuse bag of Chris Rock tricks. While not always hitting the mark, they succeed in wringing the most out of a familiar-feeling concept. Allen encounters a New York Times reporter, Chelsea Brown, (an excellent Rosario Dawson) eager to do a story on him. He demurs, at first, because her fellow Times scribe, a film critic, has over the years rather cruelly trashed his Hammy series. What follows is a sequence of scenes between the Rock and Dawson where the repartee is often exceptional. Rock not only surrounds himself with comedic heavyweights–along for the ride are JB Smoove, Cedric The Entertainer, a hilarious Tracy Morgan, Kevin Hart, and small roles for DMX, Whoopi Goldberg, Adam Sandler, and Jerry Seinfeld–he also has a knack for making those around him better characters.

A naggy reality-television-actress fiancé (Gabrielle Union) is also in the picture but she’s kept at distance from the central action. As she prepares for an imminent wedding, Allen explains to Brown that he feels he owes her since she helped him get clean of substance abuse. Brown confesses to her own battle with addiction and recovery, and lo and behold we’ve got a tidy subplot.

Top Five moves along at a roller-coaster fast pace. Dawson, not to be outdone, goes toe to toe with Rock. They spar delectably as they tackle cultural and racial issues as easily as they do Rock’s colorful past. His account of his “lowest point” before recovery is a hilarious tale of eventually getting arrested after encounters with an irrepressible Cedric The Entertainer and two hookers. Throughout the film Smoove, as Silk, Allen’s longtime friend and current bodyguard, wreaks havoc with every scene he’s in. The Curb Your Enthusiasm actor has developed into a full- fledged star.

Two scenes in the film stand out. When Allen returns to his old neighborhood to trade insults and quips with his live wire old crew, they all pile into an apartment. Not least among the merrymakers are Morgan, who professes to be much funnier than Allen ever was, and a harsh yet outrageously funny Leslie Jones, who berates Allen to “stay black.” Of course, that’s exactly what he’s trying to do in shedding the Hammy The Bear image. His new film seems like a destined-to-fail, equally inane crock of stereotypes–however more serious their intention. Allen faces an interesting crossroads. Top Five handles the dilemma well enough but if you come here looking for a serious statement perhaps a clearer one is the portrayal of celebrity, which the film handles how dead-on accurately.

As the scenes filmed throughout New York hold up a mirror to what it actually feels like to be in the limelight, the film’s other great scene captures the flip side of the excitement and perils of fame. When Allen visits his old neighborhood, an older man (Ben Vereen) calls him over teasingly, yet knowingly. After ribbing Allen in front of the old man’s friends, he comes to reveal a startling secret. It sets the tone for this subtly depth-filled film that manages to not only provoke loads of laughter but an unnerving sense of discomfort. Not all is at it seems but the world goes on, with laughter still the best medicine.

Chris Rock Stars, Directs, and Writes, and Has A Ton of Help = One Very Funny Film…4 (out of 5) stars

Reese Witherspoon, adeptly portraying Cheryl Strayed, author of the 2012 memoir of redemption, Wild, often seems distractingly preoccupied with her backpack. Scripted by English novelist Nick Hornby, and directed by Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club), the movie itself too often seems satisfied with rather meek surface things at the expense of going deeper.

Witherspoon is believable in the central role alright. Ever since the marvelous 1999 Alexander Payne film, Election, she has excelled at playing insuppressible characters. Yet something is missing in keeping Wild from going to the next level. Perhaps Hornby and Vallee were naturally stymied by the inherent challenges present in adapting a passionately written and very personal story.

Beset with heroin addiction and a recently deceased mom (Lauren Dern in an Oscar nomination-worthy performance), Strayed sets off in 1995 on an 1100-mile trek through California forest, desert and mountains. Interspersed with her struggle as a single woman hiker are flashback scenes with her estranged husband (Thomas Sadoski) and ones of her promiscuous affairs and drug taking. It’s all not uninteresting and occasionally poignant. Strayed at one point watches one of her boots fall into a canyon and proceeds to build makeshift footwear out of sandals and duct tape. Her determination extends to braving some close-call encounters with men hikers along the way. The whistle she carries to ward off unfriendly animals has no use against predatory men. Has the recovered addict merely replaced a new obsession, i. e., danger, for the heroin and casual sex?

We’re left to lo ponder a lot about Strayed. The wish here is that she were half as realized a character as Bobbi, her mom. Dern, always a very fine actress, outdoes herself here with a performance that excellently captures the various emotions associated with a single mom struggling with economic and personal poverty yet keeping a saint-like reserve for continuing to harbor the most vivid and alluring dreams. Her genuine affection for not just her daughter but for her very own existence, is palpable. Bobbi is a diamond in this not-all-that-rough, but certainly not-all-that-polished ode to a woman’s perseverance of human spirit. Strayed is a chip-off-the-old-block here but one whose resonance fades when placed side-by-side with her mom’s.

Laura Dern Steals A Just Good Enough Film ….3.5 (out of 5) stars

Stricken with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Matthew Van Dyke nonetheless acquires a masters degree in Middle Eastern studies at Georgetown University. Then a new obsession joins his old one. Lamenting his knowledge of the Middle East as one confined to the intellectual plane, Van Dyke sets off on a backpacking motorcycle excursion of the area. Covering 35,000 miles, the journey includes a video camera mounted on his helmet, capturing his every plight and adventure. No mere chronicler, he sometimes stages time-consuming photo shoots.

With a background as a loner (“the only child of an only child of an only child”) and a coddled middle-class child, Van Dyke is no stranger to solitude. When he meets a few Middle Easterners while in Libya, he takes quite a shining to his new friends. Enough so that after returning to his stateside girlfriend after the trip, it’s not long afterward that he decides put his camera back on and go back and be a volunteer soldier. The occasion? The outbreak of the Libyan Civil War that seeks the ouster of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The underlying purpose? “To give myself a crash course in manhood,” Van Dyke says.

In Marshall Curry’s unique documentary Point and Shoot, the massive amount of raw footage (over 200 hours) shot by Van Dyke takes shape. Curry sometimes seems to be looking at Van
Dyke with a jaundice eye as if the self-indulgence of his project outweighs any merits of valor. Interspersing Van Dykes’s footage with a considerable number of interview scenes, he captures the weirdly disarming nature of Van Dyke’s personality, as well as his serious and admirably self-deprecating introspection. When Van Dyke gets captured by the Gaddafi forces and spends nearly six months in solitary confinement, Curry substitutes deftly done animation for the lack of Vandyke footage during the incarceration. Given that Van Dyke’s OCD condition includes serious germaphobia, the grimy conditions of his prison stay prove to be problematic. Curiously, we do not learn of the details surrounding his release. His decision to stay after his release despite warnings against it from a human rights activist, seems curious. Before long, as the fighting gets more immediate and increasingly dangerous, Van Dyke is asking himself, “Am I a soldier or a cameraman?” At one point, he declares he’s going to shoot his camera and it doesn’t sound like he’s joking.

Van Dykes’ scenes of warfare in the social network age chillingly include shots of many rebel soldiers yielding cellphones to capture images to send back home–as much for self-aggrandizement as for any historical record. Curry asks Van Dyke what propels him to take up arms and Van Dyke responds with what seems like a sincere reference to not being able to sit on the sidelines while his friends are at risk–friends the vast majority of us would regard as acquaintances. Thus, something seems off with Van Dyke. Is he a bona fide eccentric fighting against an oppressive regime? Or a foolhardy desperado pumping himself up with a pluck fueled by a grandiose yen for violence? Curry could have been a little more probing of Van Dyke in trying to provide an answer.

Or there may be an answer that’s contained in the film all along: Van Dyke’s friend from Tripoli, Nuri, a “peace-loving hippie” who transforms to join the rebels but never loses his warmth and humanity. Nori is the kind of character who will stay with this viewer a long time after the rest of the film fades. He exudes an amazing joie de vivre, an unflappable sense of humor all the more heightened by its irrationality in the face of potential imminent death. Perhaps their comradeship propelled Van Dyke in a way that enriched him in a way in which he was previously unaccustomed, and he’s not such a damn fool after all.

Probably The Year’s Strangest Documentary Poses Many Questions….4 (out of 5) stars

The horror genre gets a chilling redo with the critically acclaimed Australian film, The Babadook. Taking its cues from the 1950s and 1960s ghost stories that slyly suggested horror rather than threw it in your face, it also marks the feature directorial debut of Jennifer Kent. Much has been made that The Babadook represents a far different sensibility given that it is a film written and directed by a woman.

The film is presented from the viewpoint of its lead character, Amelia (Essie Davis), a woman with multiple issues and an overwhelming stress level. She parents a six-year-old terror, Samuel (Noah Wiseman, in one of the most memorable child acting performances in recent memory). Samuel harbors a streak of aggressiveness that can quickly morph into violence. He has a penchant for constructing rudimentary homemade weaponry, or throwing his cousin out of a treehouse. Yet, virtually the next moment, he also can be sweet and endearingly needy. At the heart of his anxiety is what he perceives as the very real presence of a pernicious children’s pop-up book character. He can’t keep talking about The Babadook, a snaggletoothed monster whose very mention causes his mother at first amusement, but quickly annoyance. By the time she throws the book away things have escalated to a point where her natural single-mom fragility has strengthened into a frazzled frenzy. Then when the book eerily reappears one day, things really begin to go haywire.

Essie Davis astutely captures the complexity of a mom who also must live with the memory of a deceased husband who died driving her to the hospital while in labor with Samuel. Survival guilt and Samuel’s frustrations concerning a dad he never knew but must be measured against, are the least of Amelia’s worries. Her natural resentment toward Samuel is played out with great care and detail. As the movie begins to blur the supernatural and the psychological we watch Amelia change into somewhat of a monster herself. Yet she remains one in control, the character’s verisimilitude never in doubt however far off normalcy she is forced to stray. The Babadook is that rarity: a film that will scare the hell out of you yet make you think. One can’t wait for Kent’s next project.

A Horror Film That Tenses You Up, Smacks You In The Face, Then Gives Food For Thought …4.5 (out of 5) stars

It’s as dramatic as when you first lay eyes on Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull. In Foxcatcher, Steve Carell is not at all the Steve Carell with whom we’ve become accustomed. There’s not a sliver of the character from The Office or The 40 Year Old Virgin to be found. Nor does Carell, fitted with a prosthetic nose, smile once in the film. In one of the year’s very best performances, a super serious Carell gives an uncanny, haunting take on John Eleuthere DuPont.

Those old enough to remember the stir created by DuPont in 1996 may have forgotten how the man who had the Villanova athletic pavilion named after him came to, in disgrace, have his name removed. In this circumspect yet fascinating drama, director Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball) captures the eerie, reticent disposition of DuPont. Drawn to the world of competitive wrestling despite knowing little about it, DuPont lures 1984 Olympic gold medal winner Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) into accepting a residential training and coaching stint at the DuPont Newtown Square, Pa. mansion. A team will be put together to capture the 1988 Olympics medals. Schultz stays in the guest house and trains at a facility, Foxcatcher, that DuPont created merely to satisfy his craving to get himself in the game. Tatum successfully conveys Mark’s gullibility, giving the not very socially savvy Mark a childlike dimension. Mark has long been overshadowed by his older brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo), a fellow gold medal winner.

Dave has everything Mark doesn’t–a wife and kids, social skills, and a job as a wrestling coach. DuPont wants Dave at Foxcatcher, too, but Dave has little interest, at first, in uprooting his family. Dave is protective and loving of Mark but Mark’s character is so insular that even in the best of time he has trouble reciprocating Mark’s fraternal affection. When Dave is eventually convinced by DuPont to join the Foxcatcher team, tension between the brothers mounts. The straightforward Dave has a hard time figuring out the eccentric DuPont and his volatile relationship with Mark.

DuPont, calmly and increasingly psychopathically, possesses an intensity that takes for granted he’ll get anything wants in life. He already has all the money he needs and more. DuPont wasn’t just a “one percenter” in terms of wealth, he was a part of the 1/10th of one percent of the wealthiest of our population. Watching DuPont inside his world of private jets, helicopters and servants, he seems like a man who has the whole world in his hands.

Then we learn that inside his own family, he must defer to a strong-willed mom (Vanessa Redgrave) to gain permission for something as seemingly slight as what sports trophies will be allowed in which trophy cases. Redgrave hardly has any dialogue yet she is superbly provides the subtext for what inner demons may be lurking inside her increasingky strange-acting son. He rebels against her equestrian interests; she looks down on his penchant for wrestling as ignoble. DuPont, responding to the rare occasion his mom visits a wrestling practice, pretends to actually coach the team so he can show off for her. The scene exposes him as pathetic yet deeply troubled. The movie takes poetic license here since in the real story DuPont’s mom was already dead when he took in Schultz but this is an example of how a condensing of facts can effectively provide dramatic reward. Portraying the truth would have relied on clunky flashbacks and impeded the story. Screenwriters E. Max Frye (the brilliant Something Wild) and Dan Futterman play around with another timeline pertaining to the movie’s climax but their decision here also increases the film’s intensity, all the while staying true to the spirit of the actual events.

Foxcatcher’s great strength is in its rendering so vividly the inevitable enticement wealth and power hold over both the most innocent (Mark Schultz) and the most grounded (his brother Dave). It’s an American tragedy alright, no less so due to DuPont’s hollow talk of patriotic principles, yet the tragedy of DuPont himself resonates. A guy who had everything comes across as a big nothing inside. Adding great insult to injury, we can only begin to guess why.

A Filthy Rich Eccentric Loses His Mind…4.5 (out of 5 stars)

A haiku:

Cringe-worthy, inane.
Jim Carrey had me laughing:
Guess that is enough

Oppressive, delusional regimes will use nearly anything to preserve power, including the demeaning brutality of solitary confinement. In Jon Stewart’s powerful, perceptive adaptation of journalist Maziar Bahari’s memoir of his 118 days in an Iranian prison in 2006, we see the resiliency of the human spirit. We also witness a prisoner fighting back by exploiting his interrogator’s own vulnerabilities.

Played with remarkable subtly by Gael Garcia Bernal, the Newsweek correspondent Bahari’s endures his tormentor’s crushing tactics. Bahari’s interrogator, “Rosewater,” is hellbent on extracting a false confession. Though Rosewater postures himself as puritanical, Bahari comes to identify his abuser’s sexual obsession and reduces him into prurient revery with tales of ecstatic massages in New Jersey. (Rosewater’s family, we come to learn, was brutally repressed under The Shah.)

Stewart, who also wrote the screenplay, pulls no punches in holding up a mirror to a regime that brazenly responds to the protesters with violence once they take to the streets. A passionate, rebellious electorate that supports dissident challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi is insulted by a fixed election forced on them by the theocratic government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While covering a peaceful demonstration Bahari changes course to cover another group’s taunting of the government militia, and the militia’s particularly harsh response. He then shoots video footage that was exclusive at a time when most foreign journalists had either gone home or stayed in their hotels. What was to have been a mere weeklong absence from his pregnant girlfriend back in London changes into his sudden apprehension while asleep in the home of his mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo) in Teheran. Accused of being a spy for the CIA, MI6, and Mossad, Bahari is blindfolded and the torture begins.

Stewart, who took off 12 weeks from The Daily Show and filmed in Jordan with veteran cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, demonstrates an economy of style that is surprisingly savvy for a first time director. Archival footage is seamlessly mixed into the street scenes. Stewart’s handling of Bahari’s solitary confinement is upheld with the recurring device of Bahari’s dead father appearing in his cell. Their conversation details his communist father’s own time in jail during The Shah’s regime in Iran but it also captures his fierce dedication to standing up to especially despotic authority. Bahari’s sister, recently deceased after also facing imprisonment under the Ayatollah Khomeini, also appears in flashbacks.

Before his imprisonment, Bahari interviewed with satirist Jason Jones on Stewart’s Daily Show. What was intended as a preposterous interview with Jones asking Ali-G-style questions to Bahari, is later brought up to him by his interrogators in prison as if it were somehow proof of his complicity in spying against the Ahmadinejad regime. “Why would a spy have a TV show?” Bahari asks. Later, as international pressure from Hillary Clinton starts a momentum that will eventually spring him from jail, Bahari does a dance in his cell to Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love. It’s one more incredible moment of Bernal’s highly textured interpretation of what it must have been like, in terms of anger, despair, and resilience, to have stared in the face of his own death. His survival gives hope to truth overcoming fear in times so fraught with uncertainty that no matter who’s in charge they’re probably not to be trusted.

Of Torture, Tales of Massages, and Leonard Cohen….4 (out of 5) stars

In Les Miserables, Eddie Redmayne sang a song called “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables. In The Theory of Everything, playing Stephen Hawking, Redmayne might very well have changed the words to “Missing Answers to Begging Questions.”

Redmayne and co-star Felicity Jones, who portrays Hawking’s first wife, Jane Wilde, do a fine job but director James Marsh and screenwriter Anthony McCarter go heavy on visual detail but seem reluctant to provide exposition on important matters. Little effort is made to explain Stephen or Jane’s motives regarding life decisions. Confirmation of Stephen’s awareness or possible endorsement of Jane’s possible dalliance with a kind choirmaster (Charlie Cox) is left up in the air. The script, based on Wilde’s memoir, Travelling To Infinity,” counts on Jones’ ability to nonverbally suggest her frustrations with her devotion to Hawking but that proves to be too much to ask. When Stephen later, after 25 years of marriage, decides to leave Jane for a nurse who is attentive but dictatorial, we have little idea what in his makeup caused this. As viewers, we shouldn’t need to go outside the film for biographical explanations.

What the film does right is give a feel for Hawking’s interesting mix of awkwardness and brashness. His courtship of Jane while they were students at Cambridge in 1963, was the result of a nerdy yet highly determined and confidant young man. His vision included wanting to find “one single equation that explains everything in the universe.” After receiving a diagnosis of ALS that will give him at most two years to live, he pushes Jane away. She withstand his efforts and marries him. The Theory of Everything is as much or more about Jane’s tremendous perseverance as it is about Hawking’s.

Three children later (the film also does little to give much sense of Hawking’s relationship with his children) Hawking is lighting up the world of cosmology. His mentor (David Thewlis) gets him meetings with distinguished experts and Hawking dazzles them. Through his trials and tribulations, Hawking maintains an extraordinary sense of humor. When a friend asks Hawking, when he could still speak a little, whether his affliction “affects everything,” Hawking replies, “Different system.” It would have been nice if Marsh and McCarten discovered a different system in their filmmaking for what is indeed a very interesting subject.

Traveling to Infinity: A Missing Probe….3 (out 5 stars)

It gets a little complicated when assessing Laggies. Sam Rockwell has become such a mesmerizing force onscreen he often elevates a work he appears in by several notches. Last year’s The Way, Way Back would have been a rather good film without him; with him, it rose to one of the year’s best. In Laggies, Rockwell plays Craig, the lawyer single dad of Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz). The set-up is Megan (Keira Knightley) accidentally stumbles into the much younger Annika’s world while bored and frustrated with her own. On the day she’s to attend a multi-day self-actualization conference of some sort she has second thoughts and not just about the gabfest. She’s just accepted a proposal from her stuffy boyfriend (Mark Webber) to elope after the conference. In addition, her nosy, advice-pushing friends annoy her.

So the almost-30 Megan bolts, and before you know it she is is not only hanging out with high schooler Annika, she’s crashing in her room. Craig’s reaction is pure Rockwellian. Able to blend a naturally stern response with a compassionately humorous one, Craig has charisma to burn. Rockwell steals every scene he’s in, and he and Knightley are dynamite together. This despite a fine performance from Knightley, who’s getting Oscar buzz for her role in the forthcoming The Imitation Game. Moretz (who also does very well supporting Juliette Binoche in the forthcoming Clouds of Sils Maria) gives Annika depth and believability. In lesser acting hands the connection between the two women could have easily seemed phony. Knightley and Moretz lend strength to their character’s ability to find instant compatibility. When Annika asks Megan to pretend to be her mom at a parent-teacher conference, Knightley pulls it off nicely. A later scene with Annika’s estranged mom (Gretchen Mol) provides plenty of insight on why Annika is a prime candidate for hanging out with a woman more than a decade older than herself.

Director Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister’s Sister) has fashioned a film that’s three parts fun and one part insightful. It differs from her previous work in that it embraces a conventionality that her previous work avoided. It’s also is her first film that she didn’t write. Some Megan’s scenes with her friends-since-high school border on clichéd, and her hyper-deliberate, impossibly sincere fiancé is pure cookie-cutter. And did we really need to include a prom here? Yet its sense of good fun and interesting characters are more than a mere veneer. They stick. Laggies is the perfect chaser to wash down the many heavy fall movies that go from deep to deeper. It’s lightness is no flaw.

Keira Knightley Floats Around Finding Herself….3.5 (out of 5) stars