SPECTRE

Spectre

Grade: B

**Currently in Theaters**

Starring: Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Lea Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Dave Bautista, Rory Kinnear and Monica Bellucci, and Featuring Andrew Scott as ‘C’ and Jesper Christensen as Mr. White

Premise: James Bond begins uncovering clues that hint at a super-secret terrorist intelligence agency on the verge of seizing power on a global scale, which is led by a major figure from Bond’s past.

Rated PG-13 for intense action, sexuality, disturbing images and a scene of torture

Skyfall was always going to be a tough act to follow.

The 23^rd installment in the James Bond saga, which came out in 2012 under the steady hand of Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes, was a new highpoint for the saga, arguably one of the top Bond films to date. Helping the Daniel Craig era recover nicely from the doldrums of 2008’s Quantum of Solace, Skyfall gave audiences intriguing hints about Bond’s past, brought Judi Dench’s seven-film run as M to a meaningful close, introduced three likable MI6 supporting characters and an uber-charismatic villain played by a brilliant Javier Bardem. As soon as that film was over, I couldn’t wait for the next installment, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

Spectre, the 24^th Bond film, which is also directed by Mendes, doesn’t reach those lofty heights. Some would argue it couldn’t.  Given that Spectre drops strong hints that this is Daniel Craig’s last go-round as 007, that likens its finale-that's-not-as-good-as-the-amazing-middle-installment-of-the-series effect to the final film in another recent epic saga...Spectre is basically the Daniel Craig Bond films' Dark Knight Rises. It’s a solid film and brings back a lot of the likable elements of the last film and builds on them, but it’s a little more formulaic and, bottom line, just can’t reach the dizzying heights of its all-time great predecessor. Dark Knight Rises, with its sprawling cast, time-jump plot and somewhat ambiguous ending, couldn’t match the hair-raising dread and Joker-induced wow factor of 2008’s Dark Knight. Likewise, Spectre, despite a great cast, tons of action and exciting intrigue, just doesn’t pack the punch of Skyfall. But even as it probably signals the end of an era, it’s enough of a classic Bond that you look forward to the next one, no matter who’s playing 007 when it comes.

Plot

After a self-initiated excursion to Mexico City to track a baddie, James Bond (Craig) is raising red flags at MI6 again. As the new M (Ralph Fiennes) reminds him, MI6 is still under investigation by government bigwigs believing “secret agencies” are antiquated and out of touch—the same government that is quickly moving toward shutting down such agencies in favor of internationally-connected digital information bureaus. Thus, with a government intel operative Bond calls C (Andrew Scott) seemingly watching MI6’s every move, the last thing the agency can afford is its resident devil-may-care problem child causing international incidents that could lose them all their jobs. But Bond, who’s still dealing with the after-effects of losing the previous M (Dench)--his longtime supervisor and sometime mother figure--believes he’s onto something. A trip to Rome and the wooing of a mysterious woman (Monica Bellucci) brings him information about Spectre, a super-secret terrorist organization that may or may not be related to the government movement to render MI6 obsolete.

Getting reluctant assistance from his pressured MI6 fellows Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Bond sneaks to a meeting of Spectre personnel and is alarmed to recognize the head honcho (Christoph Waltz) as someone he once knew personally. This person, it turns out, nurses a grudge against Bond, and he sends his hulking, inscrutable henchman (Dave Bautista) to give him closure. But Bond escapes, and, having recognized one of the names MI6 has that’s associated with Spectre, follows a trail of clues to Madeline (Lea Seydoux), the daughter of a disgraced, now-dead Spectre operative who wants to meet the organization that exiled her father and made an attempt on her life. With the henchman hot on their tails and the mastermind of Spectre lurking, Madeline and Bond seek to put the pieces of the puzzle together to find out what Spectre is and just why it’s after them.

What Works?

Though there are more clearly-obvious throwback elements to the older Bond films this time around, Spectre is directed with same surety as its predecessor by Mendes, and it brings the same no-nonsense, this-is-Bond-in-the-21^st-century spark. The action is exciting but gritty (the spectacular pre-credits action sequence may be the best one ever in a Bond flick), the technology is cool and, in this day and age, doesn’t seem that farfetched or unreal, and the ending, which strongly hints that Craig’s time in the tux is done, is exciting and provides a fitting potentially-final chapter without descending into schmaltz.

If Spectre is Craig’s final go-round (which it probably should be given the refreshing sense of closure afforded by this film’s ending), I will say Craig has easily been my favorite Bond actor. Yes, I’ve seen a couple of the Connery films, and I understand the he-was-the-original sentiment most “Connery people” argue, but, to me, Craig perfectly embodied the carelessly-charming ladies’ man, the mortal but relentless and cunning action hero, and the wounded man with a painful past. He made Bond a fully-realized person. His run started with the sensational Casino Royale, which gave us several all-time Bond moments and characters, stumbled with the mediocre Quantum of Solace, then roared with the spectacular, meaty Skyfall and doesn’t exactly fall flat with Spectre, even if this one is a little cheesier (see below). In this one, Craig’s performance brings all the roguish charm and never-say-die grit I’ve enjoyed about his stint, even if I kind of hope, for neatness’ sake, that this is his last hurrah as Bond.

Though if this is Craig’s last run, what’s to become of the quartet of likable actors who’ve played his supporting characters at MI6, all of whom were introduced in Skyfall and cement themselves here? It would be a shame to switch up Q from the marvelously-likable Ben Whishaw so soon, ditto for the appealing Naomie Harris as Moneypenny. Fiennes makes a great antithesis/secondary hero once again as Mallory/M. Even Rory Kinnear, who has now been one of the talking heads of the series as M’s assistant, Tanner, the last two times around, would be welcome back. Whether it’s rumored front-runners Tom Hardy or Idris Elba in the tux next time, or somebody else, I hope some if not all of this MI6 team comes back as their support.

The key new roles in Spectre are played by Lea Seydoux—who might look familiar to audiences from her time as an assassin in 2011’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol—and Academy-Award winner Christoph Waltz, easily recognizable for his two go-rounds as charming but lethal chatterboxes in Quentin Tarantino films. In addition to being attractive, Seydoux has a built-in toughness that’s easy to like for a potential partner for Bond—someone who is her own person (not just eye/arm candy) and who could have his back, not just a spot in his bed. Waltz has some nice moments but is somewhat underwritten (see below). Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy’s Dave Bautista has some fun scenes as an old-school, nearly-indestructible henchman.

What Doesn’t Work?

It must be said that, in 2015, we’ve already had a spy-based franchise film that was 21^st-century gritty, had cool gadgets and gizmos, death-defying stunts and eye-popping action sequences, familiar faces and likable new ones, a mysterious, glowering villain, and was focused on the earth-saving derring-do of the agents of an elite espionage agency under fire from government bigwigs who think the agency is a risk and is outdated and could be shut down. Yep, we already have. It was called Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Bond is its own brand, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking back to Mission Impossible and thinking how that film, at least, managed to truly surprise and impress me with some of its many twists and turns.

Some of the things I didn’t quite love about Spectre: the impending installation of a new, all-communications-connected technological system that’s supposed to be a fail-safe—a villainous idea that’s already been suggested in multiple recent thrillers including Rogue Nation and Terminator: Genisys; Christoph Waltz’s underwritten villain—Waltz has shown in past roles that he can out-charisma anybody, and not only does he get limited screen time but his motivation for going after Bond seems kind of puny; Monica Bellucci draws the typical short straw as the Bond girl who’s only around for a couple superfluous scenes that mostly revolve around her hopping in James’ bed; there’s an ultimate torture device that for some reason doesn’t work on Bond the way it’s scientifically supposed to (at least according to the villain using it) even when it's used on him correctly; a couple of key bad guys die way too quickly and conveniently. And the confusing, seemingly-implausible idea that all the plots in all of the Craig Bond films were connected and orchestrated deliberately by one agency...I didn't like that, put it that way.

Spectre isn’t bad. It just feels a little too formulaic and a little too tidy considering the gritty, unpredictably-dramatic events of Skyfall.

Content

Like most Bond films, Spectre is light on swearing and nudity, but there’s heated sensuality/obvious sexual overtures, plenty of action that includes a few grisly deaths for baddies, and a torture device that makes our hero scream in agony. It earns its PG-13 with material that’s heavier and more realistic than your average Marvel superhero flick, but it probably won’t shock anyone who’s seen the other Craig Bonds.

Bottom Line

For me, Spectre is The Dark Knight Rises to Skyfall’s Dark Knight—it’s a solid movie, even if it can’t reach the spectacular heights of its predecessor. It’s a little more of a formulaic Bond film and the great Christoph Waltz is unfortunately underutilized as the villain. That said, the likely final Bond film to star Daniel Craig in the title role has a great cast, some terrific action, and a refreshing, upbeat ending. Until next time, Mr. Bond.

Spectre (2015)

Directed by Sam Mendes

Screenplay by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth

Based on characters created by Ian Fleming

Rated PG-13

Length: 148 minutes

BEASTS OF NO NATION

Beasts of No Nation

Grade: A-

**Currently on Netflix**

Featuring Abraham Attah as Agu, Idris Elba as The Commandant, Emmanuel Nil Adom Quaye as Strika, Kobina Amissah-Sam as Agu’s Father, Francis Weddey as Agu’s Big Brother, and Jude Akuwudike as the Supreme Commander

Premise: A West African boy is torn from his loving family by civil war and ends up a child soldier in the rebel militia

This Film was Not Rated (NR): Contains strong, bloody violence, language, intense, disturbing images including depictions of rape and torture, sexual references, and some drug material

Beasts of No Nation, the first original film produced by and for Netflix, the online streaming service, is a haunting, engrossing film that takes a sobering look at one of the great tragedies the world has to offer, namely, the way young African boys are manipulated and turned into soldiers by blood-thirsty, power-hungry men who need bodies to fight for them in their endless conflicts. Adapted--from a book of the same name by Nigerian-American Uzodinma Iweala--for the screen, directed, and filmed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, who won an Emmy for his work on TV’s True Detective, Beasts is a frank but beautiful tour through this dark, painful reality.

Plot

In an unnamed African nation, young Agu (Abraham Attah) knows there’s a war going on in his country, but it ultimately affects him little as he plays with his friends, pranks his older brother (Francis Weddey), and listens to and learns from his father (Kobina Amissah-Sam). He has a mother, too, and a younger brother and sister, but the family is split up when word comes that the war between the government troops and the rebels is coming closer. When it does come, the war takes the lives of Agu’s father and brother and seemingly everyone left, with Agu surviving only by fleeing into the jungle, where starvation and sickness loom. But he’s rescued—if you want to call it that—by armed members of the Native Defense Force (NDF), a rebel battalion made up largely of child soldiers. First beaten and mocked and threatened, Agu is spared when the battalion Commandant (Idris Elba) takes a liking to him. In the battalion, Agu finds camaraderie and purpose, experiences alcohol and drugs for the first time, and survives initiation, which involves killing a man to prove his toughness. Though he grows to love some of his comrades in arms and experiences the thrill of victory in war, Agu can never quite digest the horror of the things he sees and does, and he wonders if God can forgive him.

What Works?

Before this project, Fukunaga was best known for directing part of the first season of HBO’s anthology drama True Detective—particularly the part with a five-minute tracking shot of Matthew McConaughey’s character navigating his way through a ghetto crawling with armed gang members. If that somehow didn’t convince anyone that Fukunaga knows what he’s doing with the camera, Beasts unquestionably will. Despite some very harrowing and disturbing content, Beasts is one of the most vividly, beautifully-filmed movies I have seen in some time, so rich and immersive it’s an incredible sensory experience. The colors pop, point-of-view shots put you in the shoes of the characters, sudden explosions and gunshots make you flinch, and the blood and mud are unavoidably real. Maybe Fukunaga is just an artist with the camera, or he knew the film would have to be especially vivid if it was going to be viewed almost entirely on screens at home, or both, but Beasts is visually-dazzling.

Fukunaga supposedly spent seven years writing the screenplay, but with the camerawork so fine, you hardly need the limited dialogue to begin prying into what you’re seeing. While the notion of child soldiers has haunted people for decades, Beasts asks us to consider that though the influence of substances, physical intimidation, and “brainwashing” may well play a part in the boys’ transition into soldiers, who’s to say part of it isn’t the boys’ desire to belong, to have purpose, to potentially get revenge on those who have scarred them, or even to just feel something again after being numbed by grief and tragedy? It’s not hard to understand why Agu so quickly agrees to join the NDF when they find him, after he’s starving, lonely, sickly and orphaned, and is given the chance to have friends at his side and a gun in his hands. And, while the horror and grief of his first kill is driven home—you wish he wouldn’t do it even though you know he will—later scenes feed you the adrenaline of battle so that you’re almost eager for the action to start. If you, as the viewer, are eager for the action to start, how about boys who are not only taught to fight and to make their own destinies, but who are simmering with grief and rage and need an outlet? I’m obviously not saying killing is right, for any reason, but this film dares to peel the onion a little bit. And the quiet, thought-provoking closing makes you wonder if there’s any coming back from this, if there is a real future for boys who undergo this trauma.

This is Fukunaga’s movie more than it is any of his actors’, but the cast, most of them unknowns, are uniformly fine. As Agu, young Attah’s role isn’t quite as showy as, say, little Quveznhane Wallis’ was in 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, but it’s a brave, sturdy performance and Attah proves a very effective audience surrogate. In a wordless role as Agu’s unspeaking best friend in the troop, Emmanuel Nil Adom Quaye has some nice moments. And Elba shows multiple sides of the Commandant, a man who is intimidating, empowering, strong, inspiring, and yet petty and flawed as well.

What Doesn’t Work?

Fukunaga was really, really close to having a masterpiece on his hands—with such a vivid, clear, thought-provoking picture consisting of uniformly-brilliant visuals—but the screenplay doesn’t quite deliver. A two-hour, seventeen-minute film, Beasts is naturally more Life-Of-A-Child-Soldier than specific story, but it seems to more or less run out of plot just shy of the two hour mark. The camerawork and acting is good all the way through, and it’s not exactly hard to decipher what’s going on, and the ending will definitely leave you pondering, but the film is so adept at setting up Agu and his loving family, his desolation after their deaths and his need to belong to something—even the NDF—and many of his experiences in the NDF, that it’s noticeable when the film starts running out of gas. Part of it is the character of the Commandant, a role some have whispered could bring Elba year-end awards attention; he’s prone to giving long-winded, substance-infused speeches, but that’s it--the character doesn’t really go anywhere, and the big climactic confrontation between the Commandant and some of his frustrated troops seems like a screenplay necessity more than a dramatic change in the emotional tide. It’s like the movie inhaled deeply in the happy opening scenes, held its breath through all the trauma of the middle chapters, then hurriedly exhaled all at once so that the last 15 or so minutes were a blur.

Content

Beasts isn’t quite as dark and graphic as it could have been, but this is such a heavy, tense film that it’s gratifying that it isn’t. Nevertheless, this film would definitely earn an R rating on a traditional scale (it was Not Rated because it was made for Netflix), with bloody violence (some of it shot in graphic close-up), plenty of F-words, substance abuse, and disturbing hints at traumas like child molestation, torture, and rape. This movie isn’t for the faint-hearted, and it can very likely induce emotional reactions. Plus, with its visual-heavy structure and heavily-accented dialogue, it’s not the most accessible film.

Bottom Line

Beasts of No Nation tells the harrowing story of an African boy’s plight from happy family member to lonely orphan to accepted member of a gang of violent, trained child soldiers. Thus, it tells the story of thousands of boys—attempting to put a clearer, even more human face on one of the great human tragedies of our day. Shot with vivid intimacy by Cary Joji Fukunaga’s prying, intelligent, weightless camera, the film is gorgeous to look at and experience even when the content is ugly, and, despite a screenplay that gets a little weak late in the going, it’s a thought-provoking, emotionally-powerful experience.

Beasts of No Nation (2015)

Written for the Screen and Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga

Based on the novel by Uzodinma Iweala

Not Rated (a Netflix Original Film)

Length: 137 minutes

STEVE JOBS

Steve Jobs

Grade: B+

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Seth Rogen, Michael Stuhlbarg and Katherine Waterston, and with Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo and Perla Haney-Jardine as Lisa Brennan at ages 5, 9, and 19

Premise: Computer pioneer Steve Jobs must deal with overworked colleagues, bitter acquaintances, company superiors, the press, and his turbulent personal life just before three of the major product launches of his career.

Rated R for constant strong language

Steve Jobs might be the greatest movie ever that is all dialogue and no plot.

Put another way, Steve Jobs might be exactly the kind of film movie studio executives were describing—though they may not have known it—when they came up with the term “talkies” in the late 1920s, because that is what this movie is: people talking.

That that talk was thought up and put on paper by Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, TV’s The West Wing) means it’s going to be rat-a-tat, balls-to-the-wall, English-language-fireworks talking, which can be thrilling in its execution but can be dread-inducing and exhausting to an audience because it means the characters onscreen are never going to stop and think what they’re about to say, which means they will never defuse or avoid conflict or take the easy way out. Directed by Oscar-winner Danny Boyle (whose diverse resume includes Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours), and adapted from the biography “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs is a feisty, fiery, unflinching verbal circus that depicts what it was like to be in the immediate circle of Jobs just before three of the landmark product launches of his career. The result is a film that is a masterpiece of acting and blocking--featuring several awe-inspiring moments that ensure Oscar is going to come a’calling--but can, admittedly, get a bit wearying as it works through its third act. There’s no doubt it doesn’t get much better than this when it comes to high-level filmmaking, though.

Plot

In 1984, fresh off the success of its legendary 1984-themed Super Bowl ad, Apple was preparing to unveil the Macintosh, and the front-man for the Macintosh was none other than Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender), who, along with Steve Wozniak, had put Apple on the map with the hit personal computers Apple I and Apple II. Already worth hundreds of millions, the headstrong, titanically-driven, hyper-focused Jobs is surrounded by critics, well-wishers, and exasperated employees. One such employee is his assistant, Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), who alone seems to be able to talk sense into her boss and make him see reason. Another employee, software expert Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) is pushed to the absolute brink by his perfectionist boss’s unyielding technical demands (Jobs wants to put on a good show for his audience at the launch). There’s Jobs’ boss, Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), who, though not a tremendous fan of some of Jobs’ marketing schemes, can only toast his front man and then sit back and watch the dough roll in. There’s Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), Jobs’ old friend and colleague, whose relationship with Jobs has soured over Jobs’ continued success, widespread appeal and gargantuan ego. Finally, there’s the not insignificant matter of Jobs’ old girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston), who’s on welfare and has a 5-year-old daughter, Lisa (Makenzie Moss), who has proven through tests to almost certainly be Jobs’.

In 1988, after a fall from grace at Apple, Jobs is with computer programmer NeXT, which is ready to launch a nifty, specially-shaped cube, which he calls his comeback but which those close to him (like Joanna) know is really his “get back at Apple” item. Even as he relishes the idea of the cube bringing him back into relevance, he carries a massive chip on his shoulder, which can’t help revealing itself even during well-wisher visits by Wozniak and Sculley.

Ten years later, after Apple has nearly gone out of business following the failure of an early tablet-like device, Jobs has been re-hired as the CEO, and his sleek, colorful iMac is about to hit the market. Its projected sales figures are historic. But Jobs is still dogged by a grumbling Wozniak, still fretting over the flake his daughter’s mother turned out to be, still hissing at his employees’ grumbles about him, and battling his me-first mind to determine how, exactly, to relate to and parent his now 19-year-old daughter (Perla Haney-Jardine).

What Doesn’t Work?

In high school, I had to read and write a report on Jonathan Swift’s classic Gulliver’s Travels. While I enjoyed the book, as I moved into the novel’s latter sections, I noticed it seemed to be recycling the same elements and ideas over and over again—Gulliver would happen upon a new civilization, be adopted into the civilization, be marveled over, learn the civilization's customs and language, and soon become as one of them. It happened four times, first with the famously-tiny Lilliputians and then with the giant citizens of Brobdingnag and so on. It was all interesting, but it started to lose its effect after a while, as ideas were very clearly recycled. While Steve Jobs’ three sections don’t fall into formula nearly as easily, the nonstop chatter, all among the same four or five characters and most of it about the same topics (including a lot of big words and/or difficult-to-understand concepts like the size and speed of computer hardware and software) becomes wearying. It’s true it helps build Jobs’ character—things could work differently if he wasn’t such an A-hole a lot of the time—but, as marvelously-acted and rat-a-tat as most of these scenes are, it’s a lot to sit through.

What Works?

That being said, if it wasn’t made by the first-class pedigreed likes of Boyle and Sorkin, or acted out by this troupe of actors, it would certainly not be nearly as watchable. "Watchable” is a gentle term, however—watching Steve Jobs is like being in the passenger seat in a speeding car in which the driver seems capable of doing anything: running through a red light, making a sharp turn on two wheels, racing up a hill to get air-time at the crest and stopping or not stopping in heavy traffic. There’s rarely a moment to catch your breath, and for a movie that’s short on things happening and almost all people talking, that it generates that sort of effect is kind of terrific.

But what talking to get to do! Sorkin is the same kind of genius writer as Quentin Tarantino in that he’s a master craftsman who can just own a film, and he makes actors who master his dialogue look good. First, Sorkin led six different actors on The West Wing to acting Emmy wins over 7 seasons as one of TV’s most celebrated shows. Then he made household names out of Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer and Rooney Mara in The Social Network. And now, well, this acting crew may well divebomb the Oscars.

Certainly the first name to come to anyone’s mind regarding Steve Jobs should be that of Michael Fassbender, the celebrated actor (of Shame, 12 Years A Slave and X-Men) who appears in every scene—and nearly every frame—as Steve Jobs. Watching Fassbender’s performance here is like watching a quarterback throwing touchdown pass after touchdown pass. Jobs’ own biographer, Walter Isaacson, described Jobs as having a “passion for perfection and ferocious drive”—Fassbender gives you that and then some. He’s an inspiring and exciting but equally infuriating and even terrifying individual, portrayed here as someone who’s always the smartest, most magnetic man in the room and knows it. Jobs is both the villain and hero of this piece, and sure to land the Irish-born actor in the Best Actor category at the Oscars if not landing him the trophy outright.

Going up against Fassbender when he’s hitting it out of the park, the rest of Steve Jobs’ ensemble has to hold their own weight, and they do. Winslet, though hampered slightly by an Eastern European accent (her character is Polish) that occasionally disappears only to come back stronger in the next scene, is heroic (in fact, Joanna might be the hero of this piece) as the only person to land any punches on Jobs that he can’t just shrug off. Her commitment to sticking by her boss is, frankly, incredible, given the grief she takes. And a Supporting Actor nomination may well come calling, for the first time, for either Jeff Daniels or Seth Rogen or both—each has two magnificent verbal shootouts with Fassbender, with Daniels playing the corporate stiff for the second time this month (after The Martian) and Rogen bringing a wounded edge to the generally good-humored, but clearly overlooked, Wozniak. In smaller roles, Stuhlbarg, Waterston, and the three young actresses who play Jobs’ daughter Lisa each own their own small parts of the film, often providing the heart and emotion necessary for the movie to not be completely cold and hard-eyed.

Content

Steve Jobs is rated R for the four-letter words that creep up in Sorkin’s vast and heavy repertoire. There’s nothing else—no nudity, violence, sensuality, or over-the-top emotional moments—that's particularly off-putting…except, that is, for the film’s breakneck pace, its procedural structure, and the polarizing figure at its center.

Bottom Line

It’s difficult to believe the real Steve Wozniak watched this film and was quoted as saying it was “like watching the real Steve”. Parts of this movie make you wonder why, then, anyone bothered to put up with him. Well, other than the fact that about 99 percent of us enjoy one or more of his brainchild inventions (iPod, iPad, iMac, Macbook, iPhone, iTunes, etc…), as Steve Jobs—which is based on his official biography—argues, it's because he was a visionary. A self-centered, unrelenting taskmaster? Sometimes, sure…but a smart, charismatic, creative, colorful genius as well. This movie is all talk—all insanely-explosive, edge-of-your-seat dialogue—which can be tiresome for two full hours, but its top-flight, Oscar-worthy director, writer and actors make it worthwhile and, at times, spectacular.

Steve Jobs (2015)

Directed by Danny Boyle

Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin

Based on the biography “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson

Rated R

Length: 122 minutes

SICARIO

Sicario

Grade: B+

Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Daniel Kaluuya, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal and Maximiliano Hernandez

Premise: An idealistic FBI agent is recruited to a narcotics tax force battling the influx of drugs from Mexico. She is surprised to find almost immediately that the drug cartels aren’t the only ones who don’t play by the rules.

Rated R for bloody violence and disturbing images, language, scary moments, and some sexual content

Sicario is a dark, bruising film about what it means to live in a depraved, fallen world. It shows the dark side of battling the disease that is the drug trade. Denis Villenueve’s film (from Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay) suggests that, for something as dark and penetrating as the drug trade, it can’t always be as simple and righteous as kicking down doors, arresting the bad guys, and showing off piles of confiscated drugs and cash to the TV cameras. As one character tells another late in the film “If you want to live in the land of wolves, you have to be a wolf.” It’s a well-made, brilliantly-shot film with several fine performances, though if you were hoping for a more gung-ho, patriotic film about good guys stopping the bad guys in the name of justice, in a clear battle of right and wrong, wait for the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi movie from Michael Bay. It should tell you something that the title is Mexican for “hitman”. This is movie with a skewed, cracked moral compass, but it’s masterful and devastating in the way it portrays the shades of gray in one deep bruise on humanity’s conscience.

Plot

A high-flyer in the war on human trafficking, FBI Agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is a crack operative, one of the best of the best. Her reputation has gotten around. One day—shortly after her team busts down a door and finds something even worse than kidnapped human beings in a small, cramped house in an Arizona suburb—she’s recruited to a specialized anti-drug task force in El Paso, led by smooth-talking Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). Matt and his mysterious enforcer Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) are at the front of a team looking to make a splash in the drug trade at the border by kidnapping the relative of a big-time drug lord in the hopes that the main man will show himself. Assuring Kate she’ll make a difference—after her recent gruesome findings and a hidden bomb that killed two men on her team, Kate is eager to find the people who would commit such atrocities—they immediately make an incursion into Juarez, Mexico, and nab a guy. But Kate has her doubts when Matt and Alejandro are vague in the details of who the man is or why they have him, and she has even more when their men initiate an armed engagement with drug runners in an area crowded with civilians. She soon suspects she is nothing more than a pawn, a front for Matt and Alejandro and their dark, subversive activities. But she has no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes.

What Doesn’t Work?

If you like everything laid out neatly for you, this isn’t your movie. Not even close. It can be frustrating how quiet and devoid of simple answers lots of Sicario is. It’s a movie about manipulation, and fighting fire with fire, and justifying any means with the ends achieved. The characters are given motivations but little in the way of backstory or personality—there’s nothing along the line of a big, character-building moment. It also doesn’t quite provide the action that seems to be promised—there is action, but it is dark and grueling, not the pocorn blockbuster variety. It’s a slow burn to a dark, dark climax.

If you didn’t get the hint yet, it’s not a movie that leaves you feeling very cheerful.

What Works?

It’s a gnarly flick, though, one where subtle hints and seemingly-meaningless scenes slowly become very, very important, as in life-or-death important. It asks you to consider whether the means are justified by the ends they achieve. What constitutes “making a difference” in something as ongoing and impossible as the war on drugs? What is an appropriate punishment for someone who would attempt to legitimize his role in the drug trade with the uniform he wears? What do you do to a man who has a nice house and a nice family and seems like a regular businessman, when he sits atop a veritable food chain of a drug cartel in which people are kidnapped, killed, tortured and taken advantage of every day?

The key performances are strong without being flashy. Blunt, who also played a conflicted action heroine in last summer’s Edge of Tomorrow, is the audience’s conscience, a toughie and a patriot but someone who believes in right and wrong and not crossing the line, even though she’s seen how some do cross the line. She’s solid, and her growing internal conflict is easy to sense and understand even as she uses minimal words to portray it. Brolin has his usual swagger but it’s here suffused by a determination to see everything through a sardonic, tinted, look-at-the-big-picture lens. Del Toro—who won an Oscar in 2000 for Traffic, another big movie about how the drug trade impacts everyone—uses his big frame and impassive visage to loom intimidatingly over the film long before he does anything significant, but he turns out to have a huge role to play, and he teaches Blunt (and the audience) the “become a wolf if you want to live among the wolves” lesson in the most dramatic, unsubtle way possible.

The cinematography is terrific, full of slow-panning shots of cities and country-sides that build the tension until even beautiful sceneries are seemingly bursting with horrifying possibilities. The camera also captures a few close-ups of certain characters’s faces that will stick with you. The tension is built all along by a muted but addicting drum-driven score. And the final, wordless scene brilliantly drives home the horror of the ongoing drug trade and the violence and darkness it creates even as it focuses on a calm, domestic environment.

Content

Sicario is a hard R, with plenty of splattery head shots and pools of blood, plus a few unexpected shocks and plenty of bad words. Also, with its gloomy outlook, it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. Leave the kiddies and the optimists at home.

Bottom Line

One of those dark, brooding films you sit through waiting for some awesome gunfight or car chase, only to get to the end and realize dang, that actually was a pretty good movie, Sicario shows just how dark the world can be, both in terms of the drug trade and the human tendencies for sin and vice that created it. An effective musical score, strong cinematography, and notable performances by Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin make this a solid, thought-provoking venture for the tougher, more daring moviegoer.

Sicario (2015)

Directed by Dennis Villenueve

Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan

Rated R

Length: 121 minutes 

THE MARTIAN

The Martian

Grade: B+

Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Pena, Kate Mara, Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean, Benedict Wong, Sebastian Stan and Aksel Hennie; also featuring Mackenzie Davis and Donald Glover

Premise: Stranded after a terrible storm, a lone member of the first manned mission to Mars struggles to survive on the planet’s airless, waterless, non-living surface. Meanwhile, NASA, Mission Control, and his surviving crewmates in space try to devise a way to rescue him before he runs out of food.

Rated PG-13 for language, intense scenes of peril and suspense, and some bloody/disturbing images

In 2013, audiences were wowed by Sandra Bullock’s desperate struggle for survival on the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere in Alfonso Cuaron’s taut, terrifying Gravity. Last year, audiences tried to hold back tears as Matthew McConaughey searched for a new home for the human race amongst the stars, even if it meant leaving his beloved daughter behind, in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. Gravity, which had exactly two characters whose faces were ever shown onscreen and took place largely in real time, was 90 minutes long, won 7 Academy Awards, and earned $274 million at the box office in the U.S. alone. Interstellar, which was 169 minutes long and had a plot that spanned nearly 80 years, won 1 Academy Award and grossed $187 million in the U.S.

So, space movies that are more than mere “space adventures” like Star Wars or Star Trek have become a new regular pastime, thanks largely to the advances in CGI and other special effects. This weekend’s new film, The Martian, is the first “big space film” of recent years that isn’t an original work. Based on a best-selling novel by Andy Weir, this Ridley Scott-directed film follows capably in the footsteps of those intergalactic predecessors, but it may, ultimately, prove the most audience-pleasing. Lacking the white-knuckle intensity of Gravity and the slightly overblown “epicness” of Interstellar, The Martian is a well-paced, well-thought out, accessible film that has its astonishing visuals and its moments of pathos but is, ultimately, a solid, well-rounded motion picture that should please audiences.

Plot

Just days after becoming the first humans to set foot on Mars, the highly-trained crew of the research mission Ares III is forced to evacuate when a stronger-than-expected storm descends on their base camp. Rather than risk having their shuttle knocked over by the high winds, stranding them on the planet with no way to return home, they abort. However, during the hurry to the shuttle, one of the team members, botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is struck by debris and nearly buried in sand. With limited visibility and the information that Watney’s vitals have ceased, the remaining crew, running out of time, make the crushing decision to leave him and begin their journey back to earth. Back on Earth, the Director of NASA (Jeff Daniels), the head of Mars Missions (Chiwetel Ejiofor, of 12 Years A Slave) and the Ares III crew director (Sean Bean) debate how soon to send another mission. They wonder if one of the key objectives of a new mission should be to retrieve the body of the astronaut for whom they have had a full, decorated funeral.

However, Watney isn’t dead. He awakes in pain, half-buried and alone, but he manages to get back inside the base structure, treat his wounds, and consider his situation. He is alone with no means of contacting anyone (the communications disk torn asunder is the very item that hit him during the evacuation), and, worse, he has limited food and water. He can survive several months, maybe a year if he rations. He’s on Mars, a planet millions of miles from Earth where nothing grows and there is no water. A botanist, he begins to use canvas tarps and energy from the base’s solar panels to fashion his own greenhouse, and he tries to make himself at home, using the video log recorder to record his daily activities and give himself a reason to talk out loud. On Earth, a NASA specialist (Mackenzie Davis), viewing satellite images from the planet’s surface, notices objects from the base camp have been moved, re-positioned, cleaned. It slowly becomes clear to NASA that Mark Watney must be alive. Debates arise. Is there a way to contact him? What do they have to tell him even if they do contact him? Should they tell his surviving crewmates, who are on their nearly year-long return journey, believing him dead? Should they hurry another mission, potentially cutting corners and endangering others’ lives, to try to get to him before he dies of starvation? Watney, who knows he has limited time, begins searching for his own answers.

What Works?

As was evidenced by its intriguing trailers, The Martian has a killer premise that could scarcely be uninteresting even if it tried. It’s also much brisker and more procedural than, say, Interstellar—it takes great pains to explain ways that Watney tries to grow food, has to charge his land rover, how NASA has to make an emergency shuttle lighter to try and get to him. Yet it also has plenty of time with Watney mulling things over, talking and even laughing to himself about his situation, and it features plenty of scenic shots that drive home the concept of his being so utterly alone—millions of miles from the nearest known living things.

I’d be willing to argue that Matt Damon was the perfect actor for the role of Mark Watney. Clean-cut and All-American, usually with a little smile at the corners of his mouth, he’s always been a likable, , accessible presence, which is big here when he spends the vast majority of his screen time alone, in unfamiliar surroundings, just going through daily tasks and talking to himself. Roles like the super agent in the Bourne series and his surprise cameo in Interstellar make him easy to believe as an astronaut, and we’ve seen him in brainy roles before (Good Will Hunting, the Ocean’s series), so we can accept that he’s an enterprising, genius botanist as well. And he’s no less easy to watch, and root for, even once a great deal of time has passed and he’s thinned out, grown a scraggly beard, and developed a weary, somewhat haunted look in his eyes.

After the film lays the groundwork, though, there are significant passages where Watney is not onscreen and Damon’s large, diverse supporting cast has to pick up the slack. Since the movie is more a procedural, most of the actors are playing roles without back-story and with a lot of plot-driven, technobabble dialogue. They make it work, though. Standouts include Jessica Chastain (an Interstellar co-star of Damon’s), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, and Donald Glover.

Will The Martian be a big awards play? As was the case with Everest, the movie I saw and reviewed last week, it’s technically impeccable (it’s difficult to imagine how they put together and filmed this movie)—it looks great whether it’s on Mars, in space, or inside the shuttle with the crew members. It could well be in the running for technical awards like visual effects, editing, and sound mixing. Plus it's well-written and, despite a lot of space terminology, easy enough to follow. Overall, it’s a very impressive achievement.

What Doesn’t Work?

As entertained as I was by The Martian and as much as I enjoyed it, I didn’t find myself blown away. Two years ago, I was blown away after I saw Gravity. This movie didn’t quite have that effect on me. I think it’s because the movie is so generally riveting the whole time, it just isn’t able to conjure a moment or two of real, amazing movie magic that’s noticeably above and beyond its general pulse. It is very interesting and engaging and the last half-hour will have you on the edge of your seat, but no scenes quite took it to the point of greatness. For comparison’s sake, The Martian is exciting but, as a procedural, lacks the relatable emotional underpinnings of Interstellar (with almost no back-story for any characters, you don’t get quite as invested) or the high-pitched, feverish intensity of Gravity (there is a moment with two astronauts clinging to a tether, spinning in space, that is highly reminiscent of Cuaron’s film, but, here, you’re almost certain they’ll make it, whereas in Gravity, you had no idea and felt like you were hoping against reason). The movie also skips a great deal of time right at its conclusion, skipping several big, key scenes I thought would have been very important to the humanization of the main character as he adjusts to life back on Earth, amongst people.

Content

The Martian is the rare PG-13 film that gets away with two F-words, plus it has plenty of other swears. There’s no nudity or sexual content, no alien gore or anything (Red Planet, this isn’t), but the entire movie is pretty intense, and there are moments when the main character’s chance of survival seems pretty slim. There are at least one or two big shocks, and an early scene of Mark Watney tending to his wounds will have squeamish audience members covering their eyes.

Bottom Line

I liked The Martian. A lot. For the most part, I’m not disappointed. It’s a very, very good film in my opinion. Great? Not quite. But if you’ve seen the trailers, you know how intriguing the premise is, and the movie comes up with plenty of ingenious ways to keep things interesting and to keep you involved, even with plenty of technobabble dialogue. The always-likeable Matt Damon anchors a sprawling cast of recognizable actors, there are some gorgeous visuals and some heart-stopping, Gravity-style space action scenes. It’s a well-rounded film that will easily entertain you.

The Martian (2015)

Directed by Ridley Scott

Screenplay by Drew Goddard

Based on the novel by Andy Weir

Rated PG-13

Length: 141 minutes

EVEREST

Everest

Grade: B

Starring: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Emily Watson, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, John Hawkes and Michael Kelly, also featuring Jake Gyllenhaal and Robin Wright

Premise: Multiple competing teams of hikers trying to reach Mount Everest’s summit on May 10, 1996, are waylaid by a terrifying, deadly blizzard

Rated PG-13 for constant intense scenes of peril, and emotional content

Everest, a new true-story-based feature about one of the deadliest days in the history of earth’s tallest mountain, is an interesting case in which the film is not directly “based on” any particular book, though some five published books have detailed at least some of the events depicted in the film. Some of the details about who did what are hazy. Ultimately, the movie depicts the events of May 10-11 1996 and the days preceding, when a total of thirty-four climbers attempted to reach the summit of Mount Everest, a reported 29,029 feet above sea level. While most made it to the summit, some did not return because of a powerful blizzard that hit just below the summit in the afternoon on May 10, turning already barely-endurable conditions into a nightmare of dwindling oxygen, avalanches, slippery ice and snow, and frostbite.

Directed by Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormakur and brought to life by a large cast, including five Oscar nominees and several other familiar faces, Everest, like many true story films, is a riveting-enough film that ultimately makes you more interested in the real-life story than the movie. Though, I suppose, even if there hadn’t been a blizzard, it would still be compelling, as it makes the viewer wonder, watching people who can barely breathe or move toiling up a snowy mountainside, what compels someone to put themselves through this just to get to the top of a mountain? As one character says, “You’re suffering now, but, for the rest of your life, you’ll be the guy who made it to the summit of Mount Everest.”

But is it worth it?

Plot

In the Spring of 1996, New Zealand-born mountain climbing specialist Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) was planning to make his fifth trek to the summit of Mount Everest, helping a new bunch of adventurers and thrill-seekers experience the ultimate thrill on Earth, before heading back home to be with his wife Jan (Keira Knightley) when she goes into labor. His clients—who each paid him a hefty sum to help them realize their dreams—are a mixed bunch, each with their own stories. Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) is a Texan example of machismo, climbing Everest mostly because his wife (Robin Wright) doesn’t approve of the idea. Doug Hansen (John Hawkes) is a drifter who nearly made it to the summit once and is desperate to do so again—his dream has captured the imagination of folks back home. Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly) is a writer who wants to give the world in-depth personal insight on this ultimate expedition. Yasuko Nambo (Naoko Mori) has already climbed six of the world’s seven highest peaks and wants the complete set.

Rob Hall’s team—called Adventure Consultants, headed by himself and Helen Wilton (Emily Watson), who oversees base camp about half-way up the mountain—turns out to be one of a handful of groups making for the summit on May 10, 1996; another is rival group Mountain Madness, led by the gregarious American hotshot Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal). Rob and Scott end up deciding on a reasonably amicable alliance due to sheer number of hikers and the need to get to the summit by 2:00 p.m., the usual turnaround time, in order to get down the mountain and inside their tents (with their plentiful oxygen supply), before the sun goes down and the weather gets likely worse. Along the way there are deposits of oxygen canisters that need to be placed in case of emergency, ropes that need to be rigged, and local sherpas who need to be recruited to help climbers make the most treacherous passes.

There’s a reason one in four Everest climbers dies. With such thin air and frigid temperatures, exhaustion, hypothermia and windburn begin to take their toll. Some people’s lungs just can’t take it. Others’ eyes or muscles begin to give out. The weaker climbers who need to use their oxygen more begin to run out. Some people are too slow to make the peak in time but claim they will die trying, causing some faster climbers to have pity and slow down to stick with them. Others are sick enough to be rushed down the mountain by macho hikers who then rush to try and catch back up with the group. All this happens even before a huge blizzard hits just below the summit, blasting the exhausted hitchhikers with gale-force winds, pelting snow, early-onset darkness, and, of course, diving temperatures.

What Doesn’t Work?

Everest takes a while to get going, feeling early on like either a documentary or a movie with a clear over-abundance of characters, most of whom are dark-haired, bearded men with only a handful of lines each. A lot of technical terms or mountain lingo is used—“Hillary Ridge”, “above the summit”, “below the summit”, “south summit”, “the face”—to describe things that are, to the viewer’s eyes, mostly indiscernible patches of rocks and snow. The movie begins with the pre-climb team meeting and then hustles forward several weeks to get to the main action of May 9, 10, and 11, which can be disorienting. Sure, the movie tosses the audiences a few anticipation-building nuggets (“Humans are not meant to function at the cruising altitude of a 747—your bodies are literally dying up there”), plus it’s impossible to not be intrigued by the idea of achieving such a hallowed achievement, but it gets hard to really care when you see scene after scene of people climbing mountainsides or scaling ropes, so heavily bundled that you can only maybe tell who’s who because of the color they’re wearing. There are too many characters to go around. Distractingly, the same extended shot that pans from the hikers toiling up the mountainside to the summit high above them is used twice in the span of about twenty minutes. And, after building up a huge head of steam and sense of emotion and anticipation, the movie unexpectedly (and, I would argue, somewhat unfairly) hustles to its conclusion and casually drops a few bombshells on the audience just before the end credits. 

What Works?

While Everest isn’t the same kind of sensory thrill as, say, Gravity, when you sit down and think about it, it’s an undeniably spectacular achievement. It’s almost impossible to imagine how, exactly, this movie was filmed, with such a thorough, convincing sense of atmosphere. The visuals are by turns breathtaking and terrifying, and it’s not hard to believe the men and women toiling onscreen are truly in discomfort and pain even before it all hits the fan when the blizzard comes. I saw the movie in 2-D, but there were no moments to me that really stuck out as “pop-out 3-D” moments, so I would imagine the 3-D is pretty immersive; that would probably add a little to the spectacle.

I will say that, despite having so many characters and taking a while to pull the viewer in, Everest is very well written and directed in that most of the characters and storylines you were actually able to grab onto in the first half become crucially important in the second half. In fact, it’s appropriate that, once the first party of climbers reaches the hallowed summit of Mt. Everest—in a well-done, slow-panning shot—it feels like a switch has been flipped, and the movie is much more epic and exciting from there on. There are a multiple scenes audiences will watch on the edge of their seats or through their fingers, and others that could very well bring a tear to the eye.

As was the case with Black Mass, the true-story-based film I saw and reviewed last week, Everest is somewhat mystifyingly full of recognizable actors despite having, for the most part, relatively few juicy dramatic parts. I wondered if they all came on board due to interest in the script or interest in the real-life story—though it occurs to me now the studio likely noted that the film would need familiar faces for audiences to latch onto and thus paid name actors to make the film more marketable. Just like Black Mass, the story behind the film is more interesting than any particular part, but the actors in Everest commit themselves admirably. Jason Clarke, who seems to be everywhere lately, is solid in the lead, recognizably mostly thanks to his strong Down Under accent, but Emily Watson and Josh Brolin have the showier parts that form the real backbone of the film. Jake Gyllenhaal and Robin Wright are somewhat wasted in tiny cameo roles, but Keira Knightley nearly steals the movie in just a couple of scenes with a cousome heart-wrenching moments as the beleaguered, terrified spouse back home.

Content

Everest is impressively clean for a PG-13 film, with no innuendos or sexual content to speak of and, even more impressively for a film about people constantly in distress, almost no cursing that I can remember. Of course, it’s the harrowing circumstances in which the protagonists find themselves that make the film intense. Early scenes of a few people coughing up blood due to an adverse reaction to the thin air prove just the beginning—no details are excessively gory (though one wince-inducing image depicting horrible frostbite will remain etched in one’s mind), but there are a few shock moments as people fall or even, simply, slip, because, in those circumstances, being separated from the group or finding oneself at even a slight disadvantage can prove fatal.

Bottom Line

Everest looks great and tells a powerful, thought-provoking, heart-wrenching true story. As a movie, it takes a while to warm up, though most of the second hour of this 121-minute movie is as engaging and riveting as you could want. A large cast with a number of respectable actors acquits itself well, though most of the actors have only a few scenes. And if you’ve ever thought that you might want to climb to the summit of Mount Everest, rest assured this movie may make you re-think that ambition.

Everest (2015)

Directed by Baltasar Kormakur 

Screenplay by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy

Rated PG-13

Length: 121 minutes

BLACK MASS

Black Mass

Grade: B

Starring: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Corey Stoll, David Harbour, Adam Scott, Jesse Plemmons, Rory Cochrane, Dakota Johnson, and Julianne Nicholson, with Peter Sarsgaard and Juno Temple

Premise: Notorious South Boston criminal James ‘Whitey’ Bulger increases his empire of crime under the veil of immunity he received due to his agreement to become an FBI informant.

Rated R for constant profanity, bloody violence and disturbing images

Black Mass, based on a book of the same name that detailed the rise of real-life criminal James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, is the most Boston-accented movie I’ve seen in a while. In fact, I can trace a direct connection between this movie and The Departed, another film about cops/agents of the law and career criminals set in Boston. Like Black Mass, that Oscar-winning film featured a huge cast of notable actors all barking relentlessly in ‘pahk the cahhh’ accents. Also like Black Mass, that movie made the idea of the cops, the FBI, or anyone else agreeing to deals with criminals who wish to become “informants” a fairly poor idea given the possible (and, this film argues, likely) repercussions of granting streetwise criminals a feeling of freedom. But, unlike The Departed, Black Mass is based on true events.

Plot

In the early ‘70s, James ‘Whitey’ Bulger (Depp, in blue contacts and under a lot of makeup) was already a noted criminal, having spent nine years in Leavenworth and Alcatraz prisons and tending to "take care of" people who got in his way. The much older brother of a senator, Billy Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch), don’t-call-me-Whitey-or-else kept his dealings relatively on the DL. Then the ties he’d formed with good old “southie” paid off when ambitious young FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), with whom the Bulgers had grown up, offered ‘Jimmy’ immunity as an informant—Jimmy, who hated the idea of ‘rats’ or ‘informants’, considered it an ‘alliance’—if he helped the FBI bag the Boston branch of the mafia, which was based on the north side.

Jimmy, it transpired, did lead the FBI right to the house of the local Mafioso, but the FBI agents (Kevin Bacon, Adam Scott, David Harbour) around Connolly slowly begin to realize Jimmy is abusing his place in the “alliance” by expanding his criminal activities, to the point that he is soon tied to the murder of the head of a million-dollar business in Oklahoma. And after Jimmy’s young son (Luke Ryan) and elderly mother pass away, leaving him with lots of criminal associates but no one with whom he feels truly close, he becomes more unhinged and wanton in his killings. As the crimes continue to escalate, Connolly--once a stud for making the “alliance” that landed the FBI the mafia--begins to feel the noose tightening, his claims of “southie ties” and “southie blood” paling in comparison to the reign of terror he’s helped unleash.

What Doesn’t Work?

I would guess we’re going to see four or five more movies with the same general appeal as Black Mass between now and mid-January—i.e. the season in which awards contenders are released. That would be films based on interesting, catchy real-life stories that transpire over a number of years. Such movies are innately interesting given their ripped-from-the-headlines, history-making content, but the movies are often no more than competent. These real-life stories that take place over a large expanse of time tend to leave little room for character development, strong relationships, or even, sometimes, a particularly strong narrative arc. One of the people with whom I saw Black Mass claimed during the end credits it was “different than I thought it was going to be” and “kinda boring”. While I can’t imagine anyone claiming Mass was “crap” or “a waste of time” or the worst movie they’ve ever seen, you might hear a lot of watered-down, lackluster “praise” like “it was well-made, and well-acted”. That’s exactly Black Mass. The film has its strong points (and I’ll get to those), but anyone expecting The Untouchables or The Departed or another hip, groovy cops-and-robbers film with a lot of action is going to be disappointed.

Also, something that didn’t quite work for me was one of the film’s main selling points—Johnny Depp in blue contacts and under a lot of makeup meant to depict him as an aging, balding, white guy from southie. As soon as I started seeing him in marketing material for the movie months ago, to me, it just felt like a gimmick. There’s an argument to be made that Depp doesn’t sound like, act like, or, obviously, look like his normal characters, and that may well please fans who have felt he’s coasted in recent years playing eccentric, accented, fantastical characters that were all seemingly just “Johnny Depp in a Different Accent and Colorful Costume”. Despite what’s obviously a pretty bang-up makeup job, I still felt distracted the entire film that Depp's makeover, with his lighter skin and ice-blue contacts, was more a cool attempt to disguise an actor than a really transformative event. If you see the film, you be the judge.

What Works?

I’ll say that Whitey Bulger’s story is interesting and it can get one riled about not wanting the cops/FBI to make the same mistake of creating “alliances” with Bad Guys just so they can catch Really Bad Guys, but the real reason to see Black Mass is its sprawling cast of recognizable actors. Depp is the just the tip of the iceberg (and I wonder if it was the chance to work with him that drew in all these other notable faces). This movie is loaded. Will any of them be making the rounds during the golden weeks of awards season? We’ll just have to see.

Depp, who, it must be said, convincingly speaks the accent and owns a couple of bravura scenes in the second act in which he terrifies the crap out of the audience and the other characters on screen just by talking quietly and gesturing, might be in the Best Actor conversation, though I would argue the role isn’t quite showy enough (and the movie probably came out a little too early for him to not be drowned in the tide of contenders in upcoming movies). If Depp’s name remains in awards-consideration conversations long enough, his chief co-star, Joel Edgerton, deserves to be in those conversations with him (albeit for the Supporting Actor category). In what’s probably his best role to date—and coming off his recent joint success directing and starring in the heralded suspense thriller The Gift—Edgerton perfectly plays the part-patriot, part-sleaze who’s blinded by “southie ties” and, later, corrupted by fame and success. Edgerton is almost a co-lead, in fact, and he’s terrific.

Recent Best Actor nominee Benedict Cumberbatch also has a notable role as “the most powerful politician in the state”, Jimmy/Whitey’s little brother Billy. Although he amazingly disguises his strong native British tones for “southie” speak, the role is ultimately rather thankless. You wonder if the popular, acclaimed actor was just really drawn to the script or the story or the possibility of working with Depp, and thus accepted such a part.

The supporting cast is a who’s who of supporting actors from TV, like Adam Scott (Parks & Rec), Jesse Plemmons (Breaking Bad), and Corey Stoll (House of Cards), and recognizable lifetime supporting actors from movies like Kevin Bacon and Peter Sarsgaard. A few others make strong impressions in just a handful of scenes, like Dexter-look-alike David Harbour as an increasingly-conflicted FBI agent, and Dakota Johnson (50 Shades of Grey) and Julianne Nicholson as Whitey and Connolly’s conflicted spouses, respectively. Finally, some praise should be handed to Juno Temple, who has exactly two scenes, but they’re two that will have the entire audience on the edge of their seats, peering between their fingers. It should be noted that, despite the movie’s overall slow pace, it does begin noticeably ratcheting up the suspense in the second half—the audience can feel the noose tightening almost as much as any of the characters.

Content

Black Mass isn’t quite as bloody or shoot-em-up violent as you might think, given that one of the reasons the movie is officially Rated R is “Brutal Violence”—in fact, the main reason the movie is rated R is the F-word-every-sentence dialogue. That said, the violence the film does contain is often gut-wrenching, including two close-up violent murders (one of which compelled me to look away) and one particularly disturbing scene in which we don’t see the murder directly, but we hear the victim trying to struggle and scream as they’re slowly strangled to death. For a “slow” or even “boring” movie, you might be surprised how tense you are during the latter stages of Black Mass.

Bottom Line

Black Mass has an interesting story to tell about a real-life criminal—so interesting that the end credit captions of what happened to the surviving major participants in the film prove arguably the most interesting part of the entire two-hour affair. But, as a movie-going experience, it’s not particularly entertaining. Anyone expecting a full-on cops and robbers shoot-out will be disappointed. The movie also has scant romance and only the merest touch of dark (dark!) humor. That said, Depp headlines a deep cast of recognizable and solid actors which should prove intriguing to any real movie buffs out there. It’s not a hugely-entertaining time in the theatre, but I won’t say you won’t be affected.

Black Mass (2015)

Directed by Scott Cooper

Screenplay by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth

Based on the book by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill

Rated R

Length: 122 minutes