Doctor Strange - Movie Review

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg and Benjamin Bratt.
Written by Jon Spaihts, Scott Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill.
Directed by Scott Derrickson.

★★★

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is like the most expensive binge-worthy series. Iron Man was just the first two episodes. And in a way, it's like the reverse Orange Is the New Black. Instead of meeting everyone and then getting their backstory, every other episode is an origin story, and we know they'll mingle with other cast members later. Like after the credits.

This time around we meet Dr. Steven Strange, a brilliant, arrogant surgeon whose hands get screwed up in an auto accident. He seeks every possible method of surgical healing, but in a moment of desperation, he goes East to pursue more mystical methods. There he meets the Ancient One (a Tibetan monk in the comics, but to make the movie more palatable for China, he's been changed to a Celtic one). Tilda Swinton plays the Ancient One, and she elevates every scene she's in.

It's one of the funnier entries in the MCU, and it would have to be since it's full of magic and bending reality and interdimensional travel. The visuals are great. Very reminiscent of Inception, but it feels like it's its own thing.

I also enjoyed his sentient cape. Reminded me of the magic carpet from Aladdin.

Spotlight - Movie Review

SPOTLIGHT (R) Starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian D'Arcy James, Billy Crudup, Jamey Sheridan, Neal Huff and Len Cariou.
Written by Tom McCarthy & Josh Singer.
Directed by Tom McCarthy.

★★★★

Spotlight is a tightly directed, straightforward journalism mystery in the spirit of All the President's Men, when a small group of journalists decided to take on a giant institution.

This is about the "Spotlight" team at the Boston Globe, which refers to the team that does long-form investigation. This is back when print still mattered more than the internet, in 2001. When Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) took over the Globe, he was seen as an outsider, and it took an outsider to focus the spotlight team, led by Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton), on the recent stories of Catholic priests molesting children in Boston. At first it seemed like two or three cases, but Baron wanted them to look at the system that was enabling these priests.

It's a great example of when a thoroughly-researched story can make a difference, and how much work actually went into said research. In the internet age, this may be becoming a lost art. There is not a wasted scene, and each one builds the next. It's a precisely crafted procedural that manages to build suspense even as we know what the outcome is.

To the Wonder - DVD Review

Starring Olga Kurylenko, Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, and Rachel McAdams.  Directed by Terrence Malick.

★★

Malick is one of the most frustrating artists for me. I loved Badlands. I found The Thin Red Line to be tremendously overrated.  The New World was okay.  I was disappointed by Tree of Life.

But 21st century Malick is more concerned with images, impressions, moments that linger in the memory, disconnected.  He's not telling a story; he's pre-jumbling your memory of the movie for you.  We have shots or scenes that might stay in the head for a few days, even as most of it vanishes.

His movies are undeniably beautiful, but you can only watch an artist chase butterflies for so long. He films hours and hours of footage, and he doesn't use most of it, and the "most" part tends to include plot elements that would make the whole affair more comprehensible.  Jessica Chastain, Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen, Barry Pepper and Amanda Peet were all in this movie at one point too, but he cut them entirely out of the picture. (Why as an actor would you want to be in a Malick film when you know how good the odds are your part will be whittled down to nothing, or almost nothing?)

Ben Affleck, I get the feeling, had a character and dialogue, but almost all of his lines are cut. I think he gets six lines of spoken word in the whole movie.  Olga Kurlyenko gets the most screen time.  She narrates her thoughts in French while she twirls in flowing skirts in fields of wheat.  Rachel McAdams shows up as an old flame that Affleck reconnects with, and then there's Javier Bardem as a priest.

About 70% of the words we hear are narrated, most by the wife but some by the priest (in Spanish), and most of those times it doesn't appear connected to what we're seeing on screen. I think this is a reflection on how our heads are often elsewhere from what our bodies are doing.  There are times it's jarring when the camera focusses on a person's face and they actually speak some dialogue. I can almost feel the frustration coming out of Affleck. "Let me speak! Some words!"

So while I love his eye, I wish he'd rewatch Badlands and see how it's okay to have a narrative attached to his images.  We can have both cinematography and a story!

Random Movie Stuff - 12/18/11

- Ben Kingsley may reunite with his Hugo co-star Asa Butterfield in Ender's Game.

- Reese Witherspoon will star in Devil's Knot, about the West Memphis Three. It's the true story of three young men who were convicted of killing three boys in 1993, but after several years and a couple documentaries made demonstrating their innocence, they were finally freed. Witherspoon would play the mother of one of the victims, who was sure they were guilty but over the years came to believe them and fought for their release.

- Rachel McAdams is in talks to reunite with her Sherlock Holmes 2 co-star Noomi Rapace in Passion for director Brian DePalma.

- James Frain (Water for Elephants) has joined the cast of The Lone Ranger, starring Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Tom Wilkinson.

- David Fincher (Se7en, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is still working on developing an animated film based on the Dark Horse comic-book character The Goon. He's also still looking at doing an origin story of Captain Nemo, a prequel/reboot of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Morning Glory - Movie Review

**3/4

Starring Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, John Pankow, Matt Malloy and Ty Burrell.
Directed by Roger Michell.

Rachel McAdams has that movie-star sparkle to her eye that makes me wonder why she doesn't work more. Here she plays the eternally perky Becky, a go-getter producer of a New Jersey morning-news show. After getting fired, she sends resumes everywhere and gets a break with IBS's Daybreak, the fourth-place national morning shows behind NBC's Today Show, ABC's Good Morning America, and "whatever that CBS show is."

Harrison Ford, in his best role in years, plays Mike Pomeroy, legendary evening newsman forced out by IBS. Now he's coasting on his contract fumes and Becky twists his arm to get him to come to Daybreak. THey clash. Mike refuses to play along with the entertaining fluffy side of a morning news program.

The movie has a few big laughs, but it works best when it focusses on the chipper Becky working on the gruff Mike. There's a romantic subplot in there for Becky, but it feels like a mandatory throw-in.

Many have compared this to Broadcast News, but it seems too different an animal to me to make any comparison fair. This movie is worried more about entertainment than news, and as such, it hits every predictable plot point exactly when you expect it to. I still liked it, but it's not going to stay in the system long. It was nice to just watch Ford, you know, act for once.