My Take on 2013's Movies

We've been going to several movies over the holidays in an effort to catch up on all of the ones that have received critical acclaim.  Here are my comments on the ones we've seen during the year in reverse order (from most recent viewing back):  

August: Osage County

This movie is shrill and pitched at such a high level of frenzy that it is uncomfortable to watch.  Meryl Streep plays the mesmerizingly vicious matriarch of a dysfunctional extended family gathered for the funeral of her husband -- Sam Shepard, who is mercifully allowed to commit suicide in the opening 10 minutes.  Julia Roberts, Julianne Nicholson and Juliette Lewis play her three variously screwed-up daughters. Margo Martindale is memorable as her sister.  Most of the men are dispensable plot devices rather than full-fledged characters, although Chris Cooper has a memorable scene saying 'grace' at the funeral dinner.  

The movie is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name, by Tracy Letts, who adapted it for the screen.  Most of the plot twists are the sort that play well on stage, but are hard to translate for film.  Avoid this movie if you're easily depressed, because it is certainly depressing.

The Wolf of Wall Street

We both enjoyed this movie and thought that the 3-hour length passed quickly, without stretches of boredom.  Every time that things in the world of down-and-dirty finance seem to be slowing down, someone or something comes bouncing along to reanimate it.  There's really nothing that you can imagine cutting.  It's based on the memoir of Jordan Belfort who amassed a fortune by buying low and selling high in the go-go penny stock market of the 1990's and lived the very high life of yachts and Hamptons mansions and trophy wives. The excellent cast (particularly Leonardo di Caprio as Belfort and Jonah Hill as his main partner-in-crime) really seems to enjoy the rollicking good times.

Lone Survivor

We both thought this was an excellent movie.  It deals with Navy Seals on a mission in Afghanistan that goes very wrong. The performances by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, and too many others to enumerate are wonderful; and the pacing and editing creates a wonderful feeling for the bonds of men in military combat, both at leisure and under duress.  And there's plenty of duress, as the squad of four loses contact with support, comes under attack by the Taliban, and deals with the harsh terrain.  If you can deal with the up-close-and-personal brutality of a war that we send our brave young people to wage, this is the must see movie in theaters right now.  

Inside Llewyn Davis   

This is the most overrated movie of the season.  It is long, tedious and boring.  It's the picaresque, episodic story of a very unlikeable folk singer, played by Oscar Isaac, wandering through a series of down scale 1960's urban landscapes. Spending two+ hours with this loser is depressing.  The grungy sets and costumes and the dark, dank atmosphere make you want to go home and take a long shower.  The Coen brothers have really done their reputation a great disservice by putting their names on this bomb.  And any critic who thinks this is 'the best movie' or 'one of the 10 best movies' of the year goes on our list of 'most out of touch with reality'. 

American Hustle

There are several wonderful performances in this movie -- Christian Bale and Amy Adams as the chief hustlers, Bradley Cooper as an over-eager FBI agent, Louis C. K. as his frustrated and bureaucratic boss, and Jennifer Lawrence as Bale's sexy wife. Unfortunately, there are just a few too many twists and turns in the convoluted plot and too many extraneous characters to sustain my interest over the length of the movie.  Eventually, you just kind of zone out about two-thirds of the way through.  The sets and costumes cleverly evoke the swinging 80's at their tawdriest.  

Nebraska

This is a black & white road-trip movie set on the route from Billings, MT to Omaha, NE.   Bruce Dern plays Woody, a scruffy old man who thinks he's won a million dollars from a sweepstakes (similar to Publishers' Clearing House).  Will Forte plays the loser son who indulges his dad's delusion by driving him to Omaha to collect the prize money.  Along the way they visit various relatives and friends in a small town Nebraska where Woody grew up.  June Squibb is memorable as Woody's long-suffering, opinionated wife.  They all did their best to make this premise interesting, but we all know that the ending is in the fine print and unless you know and love the wind-swept setting it's hard to care much about this kind of stupidity.   


Dallas Buyers Club

Matthew McConaghey gives an indelible performance as Ron Woodruff, a hard-living, homophobic rodeo bull rider who learns he is HIV+ in the early days of the AIDS crisis (1985). Jared Leto almost steals the show as the drag queen, Rayon, who joins Ron in fighting the FDA and the medical establishment to get the drugs they believe can save their lives and those of other HIV+ people in Texas.  While the movie could use some better editing and smoother transitions, it is a convincing portrayal of the early, scary days of the AIDS epidemic.  

12 Years a Slave

I came away from this movie with very mixed reactions. Yes, it's an important film about the horrors of American slavery -- a sensitive historical subject that has been difficult for Hollywood to take on.  Yes, it contains several wonderful, courageous performances including Chiwitel Ejiofor as Solomon Northrup, Lupita Nyong'o as the slave Patsey, Michael Fassbender as the sadistic slave owner Edwin Epps. Yes, it depicts the dehumanizing institution of slavery in America with brutal accuracy.  

But, that very element -- turning humans into commodities -- makes it difficult to relate to the characters and follow the story through several different plantations over 12 years.  It is a fascinating dilemma -- how to differentiate the individual slaves sufficiently for a modern audience to identify with them while still accurately depicting the horror of human beings treated (often very badly) as property.  I don't have an answer for the filmmakers, but I do have a problem with the ultimately dissatisfying result.  

Gravity

I'm sorry that we missed it in IMAX, but we did see it in 3-D and thought it was wonderful.  Sandra Bullock is my candidate for best actress, even though she's not generally a favorite of ours.  Her performance as an astronaut trying to make her way back to earth from the space station is mesmerizing.  You really understand her fear and confusion and bravery. George Clooney is the only other character and he disappears fairly early in the plot after delivering some key plot point lines.  The special effects give you a great sense of what space flight must be like and what living on the space station might entail.  

Captain Phillips

Tom Hanks plays the title role, the captain of a large freighter passing along the western coast of Africa that is attacked and boarded by Somali pirates.  It's a movie filled with tension as Phillips negotiates with Muse, the leader of the pirates, played with wonderful ferocity and gutsiness by Barkhad Abdi.  The failure of this movie is in not providing the audience with an adequate sense of orientation to the spaces of the ship and its life boat where the high tension plot unfolds.  I was always wondering who was where as the action is happening, especially in the claustrophobic life boat.  

Enough Said

James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus play Albert and Eva, two divorced parents facing loneliness as their daughters leave their respective nests, who hook up.  Their performances are both touching and funny.  Katherine Keener is the fly in the ointment (Albert's former wife and Eva's new massage client and friend).  This is a beautifully balanced and poignant movie and one of Gandolfini's finest performances (also his last).  

Elysium

The ultimate 'tale of two cities', set in 2154 with Matt Damon as the champion of the lower classes who are forced to live on a desecrated Earth and Jodie Foster as the leader of the ultra-rich who live on a floating space station called 'Elysium'. Certainly not a great movie, but Damon gives an earnest performance.  Foster is just icy.

Lee Daniels' The Butler

We found this movie too long and yet not long enough to encompass the African-American experience from the Jim Crow south in the 1920's through the election of the first African-American president in 2008 as seen through the eyes of Cecil Gaines -- a White House butler who serves seven presidents from Eisenhower through Reagan.  Forest Whitaker gives an excellent performance as Cecil and Oprah Winfrey plays his alcoholic wife, Gloria.  There are several wonderful supporting performances, although the presidents and their families are more caricatures than real performances.  Cecil and Gloria and their family and friends are witnesses and participants in the major civil rights events of the entire period.  But in trying to encompass the huge sweep of this history Daniels is forced to make major leaps forward, which leaves the viewer more confused than necessary.

Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett is brilliant as the pampered wife of a major embezzler (a la Bernie Madoff) who has left her virtually penniless when he is sent to prison.  She seeks refuge with her lower middle class sister and her husband in San Francisco (a la 'Streetcar Named Desire').  Except for Blanchett's incredibly touching portrait of a woman undone, this movie is a mess.  Woody Allen hasn't so much written and directed this film as assembled pieces from much better sources.  Bravo Blanchett, boo Woody.

Fruitvale Station

This incredibly subtle and heart wrenching movie is based on the true story of Oscar Grant III who was killed by a BART police officer at Fruitvale Station in Oakland on New Years Day in 2009.  Michael B. Jordan plays Oscar as he goes through the day leading up to his death -- it's a moving performance that deserves award recognition.  You watch Oscar make bad decisions that put him in the wrong places at the wrong times, but you also watch him connect with those he loves and who love him.