San Diego Reader February 25, 2016 67
Looking down and shuffling his
feet, the urchin muttered, “There was no live Oscar-blog to distract me from last year’s presentation of the Academy Awards. It sure would make me happy if you’d do one this year.” Say no more, Johnny. Your prayers
have been answered. And I promise to knock as many jokes over the center field wall for the lad as possible. You may never get to meet Johnny,
but chances are, without your help, he won’t make it. Please join me this Sunday night for The Big Screen’s Almost-Annual Oscar Blogathon. Your contributions could mean the differ- ence between life and three-and-a-half hours of slow, self-aggrandizing death. — Scott Marks
LISTINGS All reviews are by Scott Marks, Matthew Lickona, and Duncan Shepherd. Priorities are indicated by one to five stars and antipathies by the black spot. Unrated movies are for now unreviewed. Thousands of past reviews are available online at
SDReader.com/movies.
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi — Maestro of movie mayhem Michael Bay (Transformers) turns his camera on the real-life violence of Beng- hazi 2012 and despairs, giving us the story of a badass American (John Krasinski, sad-eyed and bushy-bearded) who never- theless finds himself worried, in between firefights and rightly so, that his kids will remember him as “dying in a place he didn’t need to be, fighting a battle he didn’t understand, in a country he didn’t care about.” His brother in paramilitary arms isn’t much comfort, saying only that the “something bigger” he used to fight for is gone now, but “warriors aren’t trained to retire.” It stinks to be a soldier (especially when you get left hanging). The only thing worse, it seems, is being a jerky egghead CIA station chief. Or the bad guys, and “they’re all bad guys, until they’re not.” Bay isn’t great at making spa- tial sense of the skirmishes leading up to the last stand on the roof; nor is he subtle with his profundities (Joseph Campbell’s “All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells are within you” gets voiced three times). But he’s hell on manly banter amid the explosions (“Just another Tuesday night in Benghazi”), and also moments carefully calculated to make you feel the horrors — and the heroics — of war. Emphasis on “calculated.” 2016. — M.L. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)
45 Years — Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years is a two-hander about aging that refuses to walk the generally prescribed paths of shedding sentiment and/or dwelling on disease, and for that alone, it deserves hardy praise. On the eve of a couple’s 45th anniversary, news arrives of the discovery of a body found frozen in ice that sets off frost warnings in the marriage, because the departed is the husband’s long-ago lover. Haigh provides the gist of tiny bits of information – we’re frequently asked to weigh the subtle dif- ference between day-to-day details and the memories that we stockpile – that gradually explode within two people. As the counteractive couple, Charlotte Ram- pling and Tom Courtenay are so tight, you’d swear they had been rehearsing for the past 45 years. Rampling in particular
MOVIE
has spent a quarter-century honing her craft, and it shows with every sinewy downturn of her gilt-edged features. An intensely emotional time at the movies, and one you shouldn’t miss. 2015. — S.M. ★★★★ (ARCLIGHT LA JOLLA; LANDMARK HILLCREST)
The 5th Wave — Say this for Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace Moretz): no matter how bad things get during the alien- wrought apocalypse, her hair looks great. And usually, her lipstick as well. Lucky thing, too, since she spends a fair por- tion of the film in the company of Evan Walker, the world’s prettiest hunk (Alex Roe). The good looks are put to good use, distracting the viewer from the holes in the already ludicrous plot, the hilarity of things like kiddie-sized military uniforms ready to hand, and the heaviness of the narration. (“How do you rid the world of humans? First, you rid the humans of their humanity.”) Additional distraction is provided by more moral morass than usual: Cassie opens the film by shooting someone before she’s sure he’s a bad guy, a young man is asked to kill a child on the grounds that he’s hosting the enemy, etc. But it’s not nearly enough. 2016. — M.L. ● (IN WIDE RELEASE)
Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong — A single Chinese-American toy designer in Hong Kong on business (Jamie Chung) and a spoken-for expat investment banker (Bryan Greenberg) meet cute and take us on a romantic 20-minute walking (and talking) tour of Hong Kong. His reluctance to cop to having a GF puts an end to the night, and when the right- place-wrong-time romance picks up a year later, he’s single and she’s not. The travelogue quickly resumes, adding boats, buses, and cabs to the plot- and character- moving transportation checklist. The pair proffer enough chemistry and good- naturedness to keep things afloat, while writer-director Emily Ting’s dialogue evolves effortlessly from early-stage small talk to a possible reevaluation of their current romantic options. As a Before Sunrise-inspired knockoff that refuses to put down stakes for too long (or wear out its welcome), this is a perfectly accept- able — if not remarkable — date night movie. None. — S.M. ★★ (DIGITAL GYM CINEMA)
Anomalisa — Writer and co-director Charlie Kaufman’s stop-motion animated film is a very fine portrait of the despair at the heart of a comfortable middle-aged white man in America circa right about now. British-born Michael Stone (voiced with great sympathy by David Thewlis) has, by most standards, made it. He lives in Los Angeles. He’s married and has a child. He is the author of the success- ful business book “How May I Help You Help Them?” — successful enough to get him invited to speak at a Cincinnati convention of customer service profes- sionals. But the person who needs help here is Michael Stone. Lord knows he’s miserable, and Lord knows he can’t help
himself. Hell, he can’t even get outside himself. Which is not to say he doesn’t try. He indulges a cab driver’s awful banter about local attractions. (“Try the chili!”) He drinks. He tries to buy a toy for his son, with darkly funny results. And he rings up an old flame, someone from the days when change still seemed possible. (A portrait, however fine, is not the same as a story. However much is going on in a portrait, it remains static.) All futile. And then, quite by chance — deliverance? Escape from the great sucking vacuum of the self? The discovery of the salvific other? Without spoiling anything, it seems enough to say that grace is never cheap. And as the parade of voices and faces continues to pass before Stone (and us), the reason behind the puppetry — sad and quietly frightening — becomes clear. 2015. — M.L. ★★★ (LAND- MARK HILLCREST)
The Big Short — The term “I don’t understand” is spoken numerous times throughout the film. That’s not counting audience members. Come equipped with a sophisticated understanding of the bank- ing collapse of the mid-2000s and you’ll be hanging on every word. For those who invest in cinema and wouldn’t know a housing bubble from a tub filled with Mr. Bubble, director and co-writer Adam McKay (The Other Guys) does little to ease the denseness. Sure, there’s the addition of celebrity cameos (Margot Robbie, Selena Gomez) to help walk us through some of the more complicated technical jargon, but they come off less funny and insight- ful than patronizing. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd plays hacky sack with his camera in hopes of bringing documentary levels of urgency to every frame. I left in need of an aspirin. And for all that it “borrows” from Scorsese, they might just as well have called it The Whelp of Wall St. Good cast — Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale — all acting under bad hairpieces. 2015. — S.M. ★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)
Brooklyn — Into a time when audiences are being bombarded with thinkfree technology or jiggled to death by indie indifference comes Brooklyn, a three Kleenex (boxes), straight-forwardly emotional little period melodrama about a timid (though not for long) young Irish immigrant (Saoirse Ronan) finding her way through 1950s New York. There are brief moments scattered all through Ronan’s magnetizing performance where director John Crowley wisely lets the
camera run to capture the young actresses’ stunning array of sensitiveness. The relatively CG-free production design – Montreal proved a convincing alterna- tive to shooting in the cost-prohibitive titular borough – and exquisitely ersatz Technicolor hues heave audiences back to a time when storytelling was built into the price of a ticket. If there’s fault to be found, it rests in the last-ditch revival of a throwaway character, ostensibly salvaged to uncover and make known our heroine’s one dark secret. 2015. — S.M. ★★★ (IN WIDE RELEASE)
Carol — The easy descriptors for Todd Haynes’s take on Patricia Highsmith’s tale of socially unacceptable female relation- ships during the early ’50s are words like “sumptuous,” “ravishing,” and maybe “entrancing” (that last thanks to a com- mand performance from Cate Blanchett as a failed wife, loving mother, and motherly lover). But the more important adjec- tives are “open,” “adult,” and best of all, “human.” The lesbian affair at its heart is rendered with intelligence and care, and if there are speeches to be made, they are happily few, and far more personal than political. Rooney Mara is appropriately wide-eyed as the Bright Young Thing, and Kyle Chandler manages to make his portrayal of the embittered ex both sour and sympathetic. Your take on the rather drawn-out denouement, however, may vary depending on what kind of story you thought you were watching. 2015. — M.L. ★★★ (ARCLIGHT LA JOLLA; LA PALOMA; LANDMARK HILLCREST)
The Club — A glacial pall engulfs the steadily sunless beachfront town of La Boca, but for the five fallen priests who are sentenced to make it their purgatory, it might as well be an all-inclusive stay at Club Med. What exactly all of these men did to earn their place in this repentant, Vatican-approved house of detention is never made clear. But when a new arrival takes his own life, the Church dispatches Father Garcia (Marcelo Alonso) to act as both investigator and Father confessor. It’s during his visit that Larrain’s unmistak- able ability to shed laughter on the most inopportune moments surges to the fore, but it’s the calm before the storm. The scattered third half resorts to shock and horror as a means of tying loose threads. The climactic carnage that overruns both man and beast nudges this well away from social commentary and in the direction of ineffective gothic horror. Ashen-faced Pablo Larrain staple Alfredo Castro is
brilliant as always (is this the first time in four features that he’s been allowed to crack a smile?) but it’s Antonia Zegers’s Sister Mónica — the only hen in the rooster cage, who acts as the terminally sunny “jail-keeper” and knows a good meal ticket when she rides one — who earns top acting honors. In Spanish with English subtitles. 2015. — S.M. ★★★ (LANDMARK HILLCREST)
Daddy’s Home — Will Ferrell plays his standard issue wide-eyed naif, an amiable simp who can find the good in just about any situation, save one: the sudden reappearance of his wife’s guilt- stricken greaser ex (Mark Wahlberg), eager to reheat a dead romantic soufflé. Two moments stand out in this battle between alpha male and alpha dope over who makes the best father figure for Wahlberg’s children: an expertly executed avalanche gag involving a motorcycle let loose on a house, followed by a particu- larly nasty throwaway laugh involving a drunken Ferrell and a kid in a wheelchair. Add to this a marked anti-violence mes- sage and you’re automatically miles ahead of your average Ferrell vehicle. That’s not to say it’s good, just that it’s tolerable. Linda Cardellini plays a wife who doesn’t do much to come to her present husband’s defense, while Thomas Haden Church garners most of the laughs as Ferrell’s raunchy boss. 2015. — S.M. ★ (REGAL PARKWAY PLAZA; SANTEE DRIVE IN)
The Danish Girl — The story of Gerda, a struggling portrait painter (Alicia Vikander) who loses a husband but gains a compelling subject — there’s nothing like a broken heart for inspiration! Of course, the losing and gaining are all of a piece, born from her man Einar’s (Eddie Redmayne) conclusion that while nature made him a man, God made him a woman, and like the saying goes, “I gotta be she.” Director Tom Hooper (Les Mis- erables) keeps Gerda at the painful center of the drama — at least at first — and it’s a wise decision: Vikander’s force, confidence, and charm are arresting. But eventually, he surrenders to the visual and psychological displays attendant on Red- mayne’s prolonged transformation from Einar to Lili. The shift is understandable — an unhappy, neglected wife is common, while a man’s pursuit of a new body to match his new wardrobe and identity is
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