NIGHT CRAWLER

Nightcrawler
Grade: A-

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed and Bill Paxton
Premise: An ambitious loner excels at the "profession" of night-crawling--taking graphic on-the-spot footage of crimes/accidents and selling it to the highest bidder among local news stations.

 Rated R for bloody/disturbing images, language, and some violence

It's a shame I didn't agree with the note on which writer/director Dan Gilroy chose to end the movie Nightcrawler, because I left a sensational movie decidedly less than thrilled. That's a significant complaint, but a small one. For the vast majority of its running time, Nightcrawler borders on phenomenal. It's a truly spellbinding thriller, an adventure that's so engaging and exhilarating despite being undeniably icky. True, in the day and age of Game of Thrones, American Horror Story, Gone Girl and True Detective, audiences aren't exactly strangers to the idea of moral and ethical ambiguity, but, in Nightcrawler, it hits home with an extra deflating force because of the all-too-real nature of the seeming crimes against nature perpetrated. Packing a powerfully edgy punch and a brilliant against-type performance from Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler is great stuff.

Plot
Lacking formal education and many (any) friends, ambitious ne'er-do-well Louis Bloom (Gyllenhaal, superb) has scraped a living selling scrap metal and odd objects to black market traders. One day, he sees a car accident on the side of the road, and he sees the people who arrive before the news--camcorder-waving scavengers determined to scratch a freelance living, turning stolen, snatched moments into headline news. They're nightcrawlers, and their philosophy is delivered to Louis curtly by one experienced videographer (Bill Paxton): "If it bleeds, it leads." This turns out to be true, as Louis' first adventure giving it a try bags him some graphic close-up footage of a shooting victim. A brief jaunt over to KWLA Channel 6 news brings Louis a stroke of good luck; tough-as-nails News Director Nina Romina (Rene Russo) likes what he has, offers him $250, and tells him to keep her in mind in case he gets anything else particularly interesting.

The offer sticks. Hooked, Louis hires a partner/navigator (Riz Ahmed) who's too poor to refuse the dubious position, grabs a police scanner, and begins crawling every night, seeking diamonds in the rough in the form of flames, corpses, wreckage, and blood, all caught on camera. It works, and he's soon such a name the local vet who brushed him aside offers him a chance to team up. But Louis' hard-changing, no-questions style begins to exhibit worrisome signs, such as a tendency to bend (or break) the law, drive like a maniac, lie to the police and, sometimes, put people in danger who didn't need to be. While Nina's always looking for some more footage from her protégé, Louis's competitors, his partner, and local law enforcement are soon on his tail. But Louis--obsessive, driven, increasingly-maniacal Louis--can't help himself.

What Works?
Any discussion of Nightcrawler's merits has to start with--and mostly consist of--praise for Jake Gyllenhaal's performance, a turn that deserves to be remembered in the Best Actor category come Oscar time. This is the 34-year-old actor as you've never seen him--gaunt and goggly-eyed, suspiciously-evasive, creepily-manipulative and darkly-driven. It's far removed from the actor's boy-next-door appeal; in fact, it's sometimes impossible, while watching Nightcrawler, to picture the kindly actor as he's generally known. This is a chameolonic turn, with the rants, raves, deception, and creepy offers others can't refuse. Louis Bloom is a character you'll remember.

Gyllenhaal dominates the proceedings, appearing in almost every scene, but he's ably supported by a tightly-wound Rene Russo (in her best and most prominent role in probably a decade) and newcomer Riz Ahmed, who plays audience surrogate as a guy who sometimes admires Louis, but, at other times, is appropriately terrified of him.

This is Dan Gilroy's directorial debut; his highest-profile past projects were writing The Bourne Legacy and Real Steel. Considering the former was a bust and the latter was a pile of clichés, Gilroy's Nightcrawler script is a major breakthrough and an absolute gem. While its main character and primary content are certainly repellant, Gilroy's quietly-churning script pulls you in and holds you there, until the last act suffuses breathtaking suspense and then explodes with wild action. That Louis is composed mostly of self-help clichés and workplace platitudes clearly memorized off the internet is unnerving in this digitally-obsessed age, and the crimes depicted are so commonplace you'll be hard-pressed to avoid thinking of nightcrawlers the next time you drive past a car accident scene or a cluster of emergency response vehicles (one scene audience members will likely find hard to shake is the sight of Louis--fixing an accident scene to his liking for the first time--dragging a probably-dead car accident victim around a car and leaving him there, illuminated in the glare of the headlights, because it makes a juicier shot).

What Doesn't Work?
While the plot takes a late turn many audience members won't particularly like, it's the final two scenes that hit me as false. Not wanting to post spoilers, I can't reveal what they are, but it's unfortunate, because the majority of the movie is utterly stellar. It's not fun to leave the theater in which you saw a brilliant thrill ride trying to convince yourself it really was good.

Content
Nightcrawler will give you the willies, with unnerving depictions of car-accidents and shootings at the immediate aftermath, with wounded or dying people bleeding and being treated while cameras hover in their faces, taking in their agony. Go in knowing what you will see will be unethical and morally skewed. For the squeamish, there are some depictions of very bloody bodies and crime scenes, plus a few realistic shootouts. There are also some F-words. This is dark stuff (more power to Gilroy, who made this edgy concept so entertaining).

The Bottom Line
I thought I might like Nightcrawler, but I didn't expect it to border on brilliant. The last couple minutes didn't feel quite right and damaged my enthusiasm a bit, but this unnerving, suspenseful, well-acted film is powerful. Jake Gyllenhaal deserves to be in the thick of the Best Actor conversation for a performance unlike anything he's done before. And try keeping this movie out of your mind the next time you witness a catastrophe. If you liked Gone Girl, here's another dark story about the everyday sociopath.

Nightcrawler (2014)
Written and Directed by Dan Gilroy
Rated R
Length: 117 minutes

GONE GIRL

Gone Girl
Grade: A

Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Fugit, Tyler Perry and Missi Pyle

Premise; A down-on-his-luck author’s wife suddenly disappears from a house showing signs of a violent struggle. As details of the couple’s fractured marriage come to light, many are quick to jump to the conclusion that the man is a killer. But all is not what it seems.

Rated R for language (including some sexual references), violence, blood and other disturbing images, sexuality and some graphic nudity

Rarely has a movie been so repulsive and so magnetic at once. Gone Girl, the new thriller from Director David Fincher (auteur of other gut-punches like The Social Network, Se7en, Panic Room, and the English-language Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is a hideous, terrifying, ugly, perverse, twisted film about how false facades, faded hopes and fierce pride can tear people apart. Based on a bestselling novel of the same name by Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the screenplay), Gone Girl is an absolute jaw-dropper, a shocking yet amazing film that is almost as sensational as the sensationalism it depicts running rampant through a region gripped by an apparent small-town crime. I knew it had already impressed at the box office, sparked talks of potential Oscar nominations, and become a must-see-to-believe moviegoing venture in the vein of The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects and The Crying Game, but I wasn’t quite expecting that.

It will take some time to stop tasting the bile this movie caused me to generate. That said, I can’t deny that, in some ways, the bile tastes pretty sweet.

Plot

It’s not really worth talking about the plot, because the ride is crazy-brilliant, but the basics are simple enough. At a little hamlet in Missouri, a bored, depressed former author, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), comes home from a mid-morning journey downtown to find his front door open, his living room coffee table shattered, signs of blood in his kitchen, and his gorgeous big-city wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), missing. Of course, the police are soon involved, and detectives Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and Jim Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) each quickly suspect that the calm-bordering-on-indifferent Nick is hiding something, quite possibly the murder of a woman it’s soon clear he barely actually knew. He didn’t know she kept a journal. He didn’t know if she had any friends in town. He didn’t know she knew about his affair with a barely-legal former writing student of his (Emily Ratajkowski). Because Amy was the inspiration for a best-selling children’s books series—Amazing Amy, penned by her forbidding, hoity-toity parents—the case of her disappearance quickly becomes a national phenomenon, with notable television personalities (Missi Pyle, Sela Ward) and know-it-all neighbors (Casey Wilson) eager to give their two cents as to why Nick is obviously guilty, why he should be given the death penalty, never mind prison. While many want to believe the case is open and shut, a desperate Nick, his unfailingly loyal twin sister (Carrie Coon) and acquired big-city lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry) slowly begin to find clues indicating Amy might not be dead. In fact, she might not even be under duress. But her found journal contains nothing but paranoia, accusations, dread, and fear. It also says “This man (my husband) may murder me.”

What Works?

For those who admire editing, pacing, and direction, Gone Girl is something close to Christmas morning. David Fincher allows the film to build slowly, with an opening narration of a man wondering what it would be liked to split his wife’s skull—plus curiously-restrained performances in the early going—making it clear something is afoot. Just what isn’t revealed until later, when the film has gathered the dramatic momentum of a train racing downhill. Gone Girl features twists, turns, and sad truths so effective you sometimes want to leave the theater, but I dare anyone to walk out without knowing the full story. And this full story will leave you agape. Unlike most movies in which the cut to a sustained black screen lets people slowly realize the movie is, indeed, over, Gone Girl’s credits begin immediately, the scrolling words hitting the clenched audience like a slap in the face. It’s then that you realize this movie—a white knuckle exercise for nearly all of its 2.5 hours—is going to haunt you almost beyond words with its dicey resolution.

The cast is great, with characters effectively etched without the actors ever being too flashy. Recently celebrated for his directorial efforts like The Town and Argo, Ben Affleck essentially plays himself, but darker—a tall, charming, handsome American man, but one whose tense tendencies suggest a constant internal storm of bitterness and regret. Nick seems suspicious, but, despite his obvious flaws, you can’t help but be drawn to his side. That’s mainly because his romantic foil (a phrase that is a hopelessly flimsy attempt to describe the part), the gorgeous but frosty, impassive Rosamund Pike, looms over the picture as an increasingly-nightmarish figure. Her scenes in flashback suggest a woman who went into her union with Nick with her eyes open, but needed everything to be perfect for her to be satisfied. When it’s not perfect, she starts to fall apart, and it shows. Pike (whose resume includes a Bond girl and a Jane Austen heroine) is dynamite in the role, a likely slam-dunk for a Best Actress Oscar nomination. The two are ably supported by the likes of Coon as Nick’s tortured twin sister, who sees absolutely all her brother’s warts and stands by him anyway, Dickens as the blunt detective, and Perry as the cocky celebrity lawyer.

 
It’s hard to gush more about Gone Girl without allowing spoilers. As I’ve already said a couple times, what makes the movie so impressive is that it’s so enthralling despite the repulsiveness of some of its material. The movie’s most interested in revealing the thoughts that nestle into the corners of the mind, even between spouses in a marriage—it shows all fifty shades of the “do you really know them” question, including a few shades no one would ever want to admit to (needless to say, almost any couple that goes to this movie will feel a little rattled, and perhaps in need of a heart-to-heart chat or six). From the acting, to the editing, to the film’s two most memorable images (a murder most foul the audience can see coming from miles away but can do nothing but sit helplessly by and watch, and a screaming fit shown from beyond a glass window, so only the visual agony can make an impression), Girl is mesmerizing.

What Doesn’t Work?

Gone Girl is long and feels long, but this hardly matters, as you’re anxious for the movie to keep going until it comes to the conclusion you want to see. Whether it ever gets there, though, is the question. Needless to say, its themes are pitch black, so it’s not a movie that will leave you feeling cheerful. But looked at as the movie that it is, it’s hard to quibble with.

Content

Language. Sexuality. Some nudity. Blood. A bloody murder. Domestic squabbles. Gone Girl is full to the brim, plus it’s so dark overall it’s not an easy movie to recommend.

Bottom Line

I feel like I can’t write a very complete review of Gone Girl because A) This is not a movie for which anyone should want to issue or be issued spoilers, and B) the movie itself isn’t very complete; its open-endedness is part of what makes it so haunting. It’s well-acted, well-directed, very well-written, and it will spook the crap out of you, especially if you’re on a date. Even if you're not, consider this a spectacle you have to see to believe. Remember Se7en? The Usual Suspects? The Sixth Sense? The Crying Game? Movies you just HAD to see because of their sheer audacity? Here’s another.

Gone Girl (2014)

Directed by David Fincher
Written for the Screen by Gillian Flynn; Based on her Novel
Rated R
Length: 149 minutes

FURY

Fury
Grade: B

Starring: Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena and Jason Isaacs, with Alicia von Rittberg and Anamaria Marinca as the German women

Premise: A young army clerk with no combat training is mistakenly placed under the command of a hardened tank commander in the last weeks of World War II.

Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, language, disturbing images, and some innuendos

Intense. Macho. Electric. These were the main adjectives that kept running through my head as I watched Brad Pitt’s new World War II epic, Fury. But for one notable scene of exception, Fury is a hard-faced, dead-eyed, red-blooded war movie with the battlefield frankness of Saving Private Ryan or Enemy at the Gates. The main characters are all men, who are throughout the movie almost as dirty on the outsides as they are on the insides, haunted and twisted by the things they’ve seen and done. They talk with grim frankness about their lives, their hopes, and even their expectations of mortality. The battles in which they fight are terrifying, dark, unpredictable, muddled storms of shouts and screams and flashes and explosive projectiles. They’ve all seen things happen to the human body that no one should ever be able to imagine.

With three major battle scenes—one of which, involving a grounded dogfight of sorts between four tanks, feels completely original and all the more terrifying for it—Fury delivers the “goods” for the war film genre. But its more fundamental aspects suffer. Surprisingly for writer/director David Ayer, who’s written a string of notably-terrific screenplays including End of Watch, Training Day, SWAT, U-571 and The Fast and the Furious, Fury is undeniably weak when it’s not on the battlefield. Its major characters are all mostly clichéd types and are sometimes hard to tell apart. Their dialogue rings of predictability and blandness. Their fates are too easy to see coming.

And then there was that one major, rather pointless scene…

Plot

By April 1945, Allied Forces had penetrated Nazi Germany’s borders and begun encountering the dregs of the German army—including whole divisions made up of children threatened and coerced into defense by a desperate Nazi regime. Encountering resistance at every turn, the Allies spearheaded their assaults with armored divisions, rolling tanks over enemy barriers, trenches, and armies. Heading the crew of one such lumbering war machine is Sergeant Don Collier (Brad Pitt, solid), called “Wardaddy” by his peers and subordinates. A no-nonsense, tough-but-relatable SOB, Wardaddy is largely revered by his tank crew, which includes a Mexican the guys call “Gordo” (Michael Pena, sadly-underused), a religious southerner called “Bible” (Shia LaBeouf, barely recognizable) and a greaseball hillbilly called “Coon Ass” (Jon Bernthal, Shane from TV’s The Walking Dead). Seasoned veterans all, the crew of the tank called “Fury” (the name is painted in white capital letters along the barrel of the main cannon) barely has time to mourn the loss of one member when they’re given a less-than-worthy replacement, a clean-cut clerk/typist named Norman (Logan Lerman, very impressive) who has only been in the Army for eight weeks. Norman’s main skill has been typing; he’s barely even seen a gun, let alone fired one on enemy troops, and he’s never seen the inside of a tank.

Looked on with scorn and malicious humor by the tank crew, Norman is miserable within days, at one point begging for Wardaddy to kill him rather then make him abuse a captured Nazi prisoner to prove his toughness. But when a Nazi artillery raid kills some seemingly-innocent civilians in an attempt to kill a meager handful of soldiers, Norman discovers the inner anger and bile to actually pull the trigger with enemy soldiers in his sights. One of the forward machine gunners on the tank, Norman soon impresses the crew with his work in battle. But individual skill may not matter much when the crew of the Fury soon finds themselves alone behind enemy lines, facing armies of enemy soldiers that even the fearsome Wardaddy isn’t sure they can defeat.

What Works?

As I mentioned, Fury’s at its best on the battlefield, particularly in a late-act encounter in which the movie’s claim that German tanks were better than American tanks seems proven true. This scene, in which three American tanks charge a bigger, more powerful German tank across a field and try to evade its deadly shells, is electrifying in its breathless, brutal intensity. Its astounding cocktail of booming cannons, barked orders, yells of pain and the shocking sight of almighty tanks being reduced, in an instant, to a shattered metal box full of fire, raises the hairs on the back of the neck. All of Fury’s battle scenes are logistically straight-forward, so the geography and placement of the major players is always easy to understand, and the scenes are uncompromising in their brutality (the suddenness with which a man’s head is blasted off at one point made me jump in my seat).

Though war movies tend to be more about the orchestrated mayhem, there are almost always a few consistent characters audiences can attach their interests to. Based as it is mostly inside a tank with a set crew at close quarters, Fury helpfully gives us five people who are in nearly every scene. Though Pitt gives a rock-solid performance whose haunted edge is impressive given the actor’s swagger in his other notable WWII film (2009’s Inglorious Basterds), the real star is the fresh-faced Lerman. Given the plumb role of a newbie who must grow to deal with the horrors he experiences, Lerman, for the second time this year (after March’s Noah), gives an exceptional performance of real weight, convincing in an entire spectrum of intense emotions including sudden fits of rage and anguish. Sometimes physically forced to do terrible things, Lerman gives the idea of “lost innocence” in war a face. Given his two standout portrayals this year, Lerman looks one to watch.   

What Doesn’t Work?

Sadly, other than Wardaddy and Norman, the remainder of the Fury’s crew are walking stereotypes, who are only mildly engaging even when you can actually understand what they’re saying (due to wartime mayhem and gunfire, large chunks of the dialogue are unintelligible). Other than one intense monologue he’s barely visible onscreen while delivering, Michael Pena (so good in Ayer’s End of Watch) is wasted, a sad fate for such a talented actor. LaBeouf is even worse off. And while Bernthal gets to tear into the overripe role of a mean wartime dude (a type typically seen more vividly in Vietnam War films), the character is written as so loathsome, it’s sometimes hard to watch. Plus, a subsequent scene of attempted amends feels fake. It also doesn’t feel like a coincidence or a surprise that, when the going gets tough, his meanie is the first to die.

One of the main talking points in discussions of Fury is almost certainly going to be The Scene With The Two German Ladies, a narrative-stopping head-scratcher that occurs about 45 minutes in. After helping liberate a town of hidden Nazi forces, Wardaddy notices a pair of comely women peeking through the windows of their apartment. Dragging the still wet-behind-the-ears Norman along, Wardaddy goes inside, realizes one of the women is a young, curvy, fresh-faced blonde, he prompts Norman to take her into the bedroom while he has the older provide him a bucket of water in which he can shave and wash his face. While some suspense lingers as the women nervously eye the soldiers’ guns and hear distant explosions resound outside, some time is given to showing Norman managing to charm the blonde—named Emma—by drawing circles on her hands. Then they start kissing. It’s unclear how far they go before the rest of the crew comes by, at which the men mercilessly taunt Norman for “showing some” and then they all sit down and eat a sort-of brunch. This is where the ickiness of Bernthal’s character is shown in his unending insults of Norman and his calloused mistreatment of the comely blonde.

It’s not really that hard to understand why this scene is here. A) It gets a few women into the movie, which could potentially make the movie a bigger sell to people not in its target audience. B) Between Norman’s shape-drawing and Pena’s monologue, Bernthal’s nastiness and Pitt’s Wardaddy showing some grudging, gruff hints of chivalry, the scene was obviously seen as an opportunity to flesh out the major characters. C) It’s almost certainly meant to drive home the horror of war, how it rocks the world of helpless, harmless civilians. While it registers effectively enough on the latter two fronts, this scene borders on egregiously-funny as it runs nearly 30 minutes, becoming one of the most random and near-pointless show-stopper movie scenes since Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger’s talky bar scene in Inglorious Basterds. But it feels undeniably forced—obviously, putting a few cutesy women near the fighting makes war seem that much worse, and with all these dirty grunts sitting in a pristine kitchen with some well-dressed hostesses, it feels and looks like some ill-tempered Jane Austen knockoff. Even if this scene manages to plumb some emotional depth, it still feels all wrong in its length and its placement—Fury, which clocks in at 134 minutes, would have been much better off as a sheer action film.

I have a few other quibbles as well—mostly on minor details: the fates of several of the tank’s crew members strain credulity, with false-feeling notes including a man surviving four bullets to the chest from a sniper long enough to ruminate briefly on the nature of men in war, and another being spared by a surprisingly-accommodating SS officer.

Content

Full of mud, blood, guts, and F-words, Fury is pretty uncompromising. It stacks up a huge body count for a movie focusing on the exploits of five men, and it shows both the full-scale battles and the details of gory aftermath. And, of course, the back-and-forth dialogue is not of the Sunday School variety. Welcome to war films, folks.

Bottom Line

At its best, Fury is one of the most captivating action films I’ve seen in the theater in some time. It’s fierce, brutal, and epic, and it contains a pair of fine performances, by Brad Pitt and rising-star Logan Lerman. But between some cookie-cutter characters, some corny details and one completely needless scene of domestic-hospitality-amidst-the-chaos, Fury has its sputters. But it still surpassed my expectations—you’ll be hard-pressed to stand on numb legs when this whopper is over.

Fury (2014)

Written and Directed by David Ayer

Rated R

Length: 134 minutes

THE JUDGE

The Judge

Grade: B

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Jeremy Strong, Vincent D’Onofrio, Vera Farmiga, Dax Shepard, Billy Bob Thornton and Leighton Meester

Premise: A cynical Chicago defense attorney returns to his rural Indiana hometown and becomes an important figure when his elderly father is put on trial for murder.

Rated R for language, intense emotional content, sexual content, and some unsettling images

“Oscarbait” is a term movie people like to throw around this time of year. Its meaning is simple. Since the Academy Award/ “Oscar” nominations are announced early each year, the last few months of any given year usually play host to movies vying for nominations from Hollywood’s most prestigious award show. They’re released in the last few months before voting for the awards’ nominees begins in order to remain fresh in the minds of voters. Whether or not the movies were actually made with the intent of getting such recognition remains something of a mystery, but their content and the timing of their release are not. These movies—whether they boast potentially noteworthy plot, acting, writing, directing, aesthetic values, or some combination therein—are, by being released during the time in which voters are looking for quality, quite simply fishing for Oscar nominations. Hence, they’re Oscarbait.

The Judge is pure Oscarbait. Again, I can’t prove it was made just to try to win major recognition, but it certainly seems like the releasing studios are almost hoping for some notice. It was fairly-obvious from the movie’s trailer, which put the world on notice that it had four actors filling major roles whose names come attached the words “Academy Award Nominee” or “Academy Award Winner”. And then there’s the movie itself, which boasts enough material for at least half-a-dozen Oscar-nominated films. It doesn’t help that a lot of this material has been covered (many times, and sometimes recently) by better movies. The Judge isn’t a bad movie; it deserves some praise, and has the ability to touch many people. But it’s a little too long, too overstuffed, and trying to feel important to be a truly authentic, powerful motion picture.

I can’t help it. To further illustrate this point, I will put numbers throughout my plot synopsis below to indicate elements in The Judge that are indicative of the kinds of elements that get movies award notice, or the kinds of movies that have actually gotten award notice.

Plot

It’s said that slick, motor-mouthed Chicago defense attorney Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) doesn’t have a conscience (1). His record of ducking trial with his cases indicates as much. He’s got money and a name people in the business know, but he also has a crumbling marriage (2), which is likely to endanger the amount of time he gets to spend with his adorable daughter Lauren (Emma Tremblay)(3). When his mother unexpectedly passes (4) he leaves the big city to return to the provincial Indiana town in which he grew up (5). Back home, he’s reunited with his big brother (Vincent D’Onofrio), a former rising-star athlete who was permanently crippled by a car accident, which lost him a promising future (6). He’s also reunited with his little brother (Jeremy Strong), who’s something of an obsessive technology whiz (7) despite suffering from a mental handicap (8). The brothers have often wondered why Hank ran off for the big city and rarely visits (9), but their curiosity is kid stuff compared to the decades-old grudge nursed by Hank’s father Joseph (Robert Duvall), from whom Hank has long been estranged (10). Having served as the town judge for 42 years, Joseph is a well-respected, even beloved, figure in the small town (11).

But Joseph—who’s hiding Stage 4 cancer from the world (12)—is threatened with losing all good favor with the townsfolk (13), when he comes home one night from a drive on a stormy night with a man’s blood on his car (14). The man, a convicted felon with a violent past, died after being struck by the car while riding his bike. Joseph—called “Judge” by his sons and most of the townspeople—can’t remember exactly what happened (15), whether that’s due to possible dementia, mental lapses caused by his secret chemotherapy treatment, or his potentially having fallen off the wagon from his decades-old sobriety (16). When the town D.A. (Dax Shepard), a kind but nervous young man with a law degree from a no-name school realizes he can’t quite cut it (17) when the old man’s case goes to court, there’s only one man for the job. Though Joseph is loathe to use him, enter Hank as his new DA (18).

Thus, while battling plying questions about his failing marriage, hosting his daughter for a brief hometown stay (19), and contending with his father’s failing health and hair-raising insults, Hank tries to prepare his defense for a case that, to some, seems open and shut (20). “Some” includes steely-eyed prosecutor Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton), who swears he’s going to ruin Joseph’s reputation and have him locked away for murder (21). Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, Hank is reunited with his high school sweetheart, now a diner matron (Vera Farmiga)(22), and experiences alarming discoveries about the parentage of that former flame’s cutie-pie grown daughter (Leighton Meester)(23).

What Doesn’t Work?

Well, other than being just a bit cliché….

Ah, I hate being hard on a sincere, well-intentioned movie like The Judge, but with so many melodramatic, seen-it-before plot elements, it often feels like either a polished movie from the Hallmark Channel or a Nicholas Sparks adaptation (come to think of it, those two types aren’t really all that different). While the estranged father/son dynamic, the small town homecoming and the murder trial are all clearly broadcast in the trailer, the smaller elements—the mentally-handicapped sibling, the late-act cancer diagnosis, and the potential rekindled romance—are all a "surprise", and are all unavoidably indicative of Sparks’ soapy, “important” style. Also, what with attempting to touch on all these elements, The Judge feels way too long and drawn out, up to and including the most not-the-real-ending scenes I can remember in one movie since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

My shortest diagnosis: The Judge is a polished Hallmark Channel movie.

What Works?

There’s no denying this movie’s pedigree where its actors are concerned. In fact, perhaps the only elements that lift this movie out of the same league as Sparks adaptations/Hallmark fare are the leading performances by Robert Downey Jr., and Robert Duvall. As the lead who’s in nearly every scene, Downey Jr. doesn’t tread much new ground (his early scenes are easily-reminiscent of his Tony Stark from the Iron Man films), but later scenes show him add an edge of steel to his wise-cracking motor-mouth. One of the most watchable actors in the business, Downey Jr., has some surprises up his sleeve this time. He has to be at the top of his game, too, to go head-to-head with Robert Duvall. As everyone knows, Duvall brings gravity to all his late-career curmudgeons, naturally infusing them with humanity, emotion, and, when required, twinkly warmth, but what stands out is that, at 83, he can still blow a gasket like nobody’s business. Whether in boiling-over spouts of bitterness and old hurts released in his kitchen or a few of the most riled courtroom confrontations since A Few Good Men, Duvall brings a staggering force to his character’s eruptions, convincingly portraying an old man who backs down from no one, least of all the middle son who disappointed him.

The two primaries are so fine that, at times, The Judge manages the swagger of a truly Great movie. It happens when Downey Jr. and Duvall are at each other throats (at one point, they almost literally are).

Despite a large cast, none of the other principles have anything approaching that same dimension, which is a shame when you have the likes of Vera Farmiga and Billy Bob Thornton (both previously nominated for Academy Awards for their acting) on hand. Both are solid, albeit in cookie cutter roles, her as the old flame with the heart of gold any man would love to come home to at the end of the day—let alone after 25 years—and him as the supremely-confident prosecutor who smells blood. You wish they each had more screen time.

Content

Cut the movie’s 15-20 F-words, and The Judge would be a fine PG-13 film. There are a few innuendos and a pair of heated make-out scenes, but the scenes most likely to affect audiences depict an aging character who’s starting to lose control of his bodily functions, whether that’s his memory, his temper, or, in arguably the film’s most wrenching scene, his bowels. Overall, there’s not much material here that will offend, and, given the wealth of domestic storylines, many audience members will be touched and able to relate.

Bottom Line

My shortest diagnosis: The Judge is a polished Hallmark movie. While a whole raft of clichés and half-baked subplots puts one in mind of Nicholas Sparks' well-meaning but corny dribble, the movie is overall solid, mostly by virtue of terrific leading performances from Robert Downey Jr., and Robert Duvall. I wouldn’t expect to see this movie on many end-of-the-year awards lists (it’s a little too cliché for that) but it’s a decent R-rated alternative to some of the darker flicks in theaters right now.

The Judge (2014)

Directed by David Dobkin
Written by Nick Schenk and Bill Dubuque
Rated R
Length: 141 minutes

THE DROP

The Drop
Grade: C

Starring: Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, Noomi Rapace, Matthias Schoenaertes and John Ortiz
Premise: A formerly-prominent mobster tries to figure out a way to get back at the gangsters who forced him to work under them.

Rated R for language and some bloody violence

The only real reason to see The Drop is to witness the last screen performance of the late James Gandolfini. Gandolfini, best known to audiences as the moody patriarch of The Sopranos, passed away suddenly in June 2013 at the age of 51. While there was a lot of buzz surrounding his performance as a loveable lug in last year's romantic comedy Enough Said--which came out just weeks after his death--his role as an embittered small-time crook forced to work even smaller time under the boots of Chechen gangers was his actual last role. It is the last time the actor (also notable for turns in The Mexican and The Last Castle) will be seen onscreen. As stated previously, the actor's presence--and his solid, believably-lived-in performance--is the only reason to see this movie.

Oh, I could name a few other reasons, like the newest entry in the Tom Hardy Masters Accents collection, or some moments of heavy, heavy suspense. But, ultimately, this film, written by novelist Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) based on a short story of his called 'Animal Rescue', is almost a no-show, a quiet slow burner set up with the promise of organized crime but also promising a payoff that never really comes. It's a talky, moody, shifty film you have to sort through, and that leaves you wondering, largely, what you just watched.

Plot
Tall but taciturn Bob Saginowski (Hardy) works at Cousin Marv's, a fair-quality sports bar on the seedy side of Brooklyn. It's owned by Bob's actual cousin Marv (Gandolfini), a lifelong bachelor who used to be a big name in small-town crime but now has to put up with being the point man for exchanges of funds going into and out of the hands of Chechen mobsters, who moved into town about 8-and-a-half years before. As Bob puts it, the mobsters leaned on Marv, and he "flinched". But Marv continues to seethe, hoping and wishing for a chance to be somebody again. Bob gets to be somebody when, one random night, he discovers an abandoned pit bull puppy in a garbage bin on his walk home from work. The garbage bin belongs to a quiet, shifty woman named Nadia (Noomie Rapace of the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies). She claims the dog isn't hers and she doesn't known who's it is, but she nonetheless helps Bob treat the puppy's wounds (it looks like it's been beaten), and she keeps it for a few days while Bob gathers the necessary food and accessories to raise it at his home. Both quiet, closed-off types, Bob and Nadia feel like kindred spirits and develop a friendship of sorts.

But Bob soon has a lot on his mind. A couple punks in masks rob Cousin Marv's and make off with $5,000 of the Chechens' money, and the Chechens demand to get their money back. A local detective (John Ortiz) starts questioning Bob and the bar locals about the old disappearance of one of their buddies. And another shifty character enters Bob's life--Eric Deeds (Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaertes), an ex-con who's well-known for a stint in a psych ward and who is commonly believed to be the killer of the local boy who disappeared those years back. He also happens to be the owner of Bob's new dog, and he says he wants him back. He's also Nadia's ex, and Nadia clearly has both physical and emotional scars from their relationship. As Bob worries for Nadia and the dog's safety, Cousin Marv starts scheming about how to either get the Chechens their money, or get the Chechens.

What Works?
If that sounds particularly exciting, it's not. Mildly interesting? Sure. But the only thing I care to compliment about The Drop are the performances by Hardy, Gandolfini and Schoenaertes (Rapace is sadly short-changed, given astonishingly little to do considering her amount of screen time). The British-born Hardy has mastered an old south drawl (Lawless), an urban Pennsylvania grumble (Warrior), and a couple different UK accents (Inception, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Locke). Now he adds a Brooklyn "yous guys" mutter to the pack. Even though he tends to play very taciturn characters, Hardy has a considerable screen presence--you tend to hang on his every word--but you keep wishing the script would let him do more. As quiet psycho Eric Deeds, Schoenaertes brings a real pulse to the film's second act. His hulking frame, distant stare and quiet speech all immediately make him seem like the kind of person you should run from on the street, but he somehow draws you in, to the point that, when his coldly detached air cracks enough for him to bang his hands on a table in frustration, the change from his eerily quiet manner scares you out of your wits.

But you should be here to see Gandolfini, in his final completed role. It's a doozy. Watching The Drop, it's hard to believe he's really passed, because his Cousin Marv is clinging to life, determinedly squeezing anything resembling meaning or quality out of it. He knows he doesn't have the weapons, the connections, or the strength to be his own boss again, but he hates being anybody's errand boy. "I was respected," he reminds Bob fiercely at one point, "I was feared." Considering the actor was best known for playing a mob boss and other heavies or men of note, it's a fitting and memorable last act.

What Doesn't Work?
Well, anyone expecting an action movie will be sorely disappointed. But even what the film has to offer is, mostly, disappointing, because every plot strand seems half-baked. Marv wants revenge/power, but it's never fully explained what he does to try and get it. Bob and Nadia seem like lost souls who've come together to help each other, but they have the most frustrating non-romance since Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling in Drive (another irritatingly-slow, half-baked thriller). The detective gets a piece of vital information about a main character, but you don't know what it is. And Schoenaertes' creepy stalker seems to be around for more than just intimidation/stalking, but what his role is precisely is never made clear.

You could say pacing is a problem. And maybe commitment to its story--the movie feels like it's sticking its toes in the story's water to test the temperature, but never agrees to fully submerge itself.

Content
While it's not nearly as violent or action-packed as similar movies, The Drop contains a few bloody killings and similar images. It's also got a fair few F-words.

Bottom Line
The Drop will forever be known as the last movie to feature James Gandolfini. It should wear that honor proudly, as the late actor's turn as a disgruntled, bitter mobster who used to be noteworthy is the only feature of the movie that has much conviction. Tom Hardy fans will find things to be happy about (he cuddles a puppy, in fact), but the film is Gandolfini's. Despite that air of importance, however, The Drop is ultimately a stuffy, talky, slooowwww movie about what I guess you can call the boring side of organized crime. Not a must-see.

The Drop (2014)
Directed by Michael R. Roskam
Screenplay by Dennis Lehane; Based on his short story "Animal Rescue"
Rated R
Length: 106 minutes

LUCY

Lucy
Grade: B

Starring: Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman
Premise: A woman tricked into a deadly smuggling scheme is infected by a powerful chemical drug that enables her to use nearly all of her brain’s capacity.

Rated R for strong violence, blood and gory images, language and disturbing content

Lucy is decent enough for what it is, but what it is, is a misguided mismash of balls-to-the-wall action flick and preachy psychological enlightenment. It’s not a good combination anyway, but Lucy is short enough to be an insanely-entertaining action flick, but not nearly long enough to get us thinking any huge, serious, deep truths about humanity’s existence or life’s purpose. This isn’t exactly Inception, though it rather wants to be. What it is, is a frustrating amount of hooey getting in the way of what is, at times, a truly gripping, can’t-look-away suspense thriller. It’s the last third of the movie that decides to get really preachy, crashing down to an ending that prompted giggles in my theater, an embarrassingly-lame attempt to challenge the audience to walk out feeling changed after watching Scarlett Johansson mutate into a gooey computer.

Which is all a shame, because the movie opens with 10 or 15 of the most gripping, terrifyingly suspenseful minutes I’ve seen in ages—Quentin Tarantino could scarcely have done better. It’s proof that with a little more vision (or a little less), Lucy could have been something really special.

Plot

Right away, hard-partying nobody Lucy (Johansson) knows something isn’t right. Her fling, Richard (Pilou Asbaek) has been offered $1,000 to bring a metal brief case into an office building to a Korean gangster, but he seems reluctant to do it. It’s fairly playful back-and-forth, until he handcuffs the case to Lucy’s wrist and tells her the only way to get it off is deliver it to the gangster inside—a Mr. Jang—who should have the key. Within minutes, Lucy has seen Richard get killed, has been grabbed and dragged upstairs by hulking Korean gangsters, seen Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi) emerge from a side-room containing a stack of bloody bodies, and seen a man get his head blown off right in front of her. Then Mr. Jang asks her if she wants a job.

Just hours later, Lucy realizes she’s on the front lines of the gangsters’ quest to distribute a powerful new drug to the world. It’s been implanted inside her while she was unconscious. It’s when the drug starts to seep into her system, infecting each cell, that things start getting out of control. Suddenly she feels enlightened, opened, able to detect minute details, hear things no human should hear, capable of astonishing feats she’s certainly never been capable of. She begins to understand even before she gets in contact with a brilliant neurologist (Morgan Freeman)—the drug is allowing her access to more of her brain’s capacity than the 10% humans normally use. More and more. Soon she’s capable of mind-reading, incredible memory, telekinesis, and even superhuman strength. The gangsters have gotten wind of it and are rushing to try and stop her, while the professor desperately seeks a one-on-one with her, trying to get her use her now extraordinary brain power to teach him the secrets of the universe.

What Works?

Like I said, the first fifteen minutes are extraordinary. I’ve seen the previews for Lucy at least a dozen times, so I knew where it was all going—a bag of drugs in her stomach gives her unseemly brainpower—but even so, those opening scenes are so thoroughly disconcerting and creepy (a mix of crime flick and horror movie) that they’re completely riveting. In fact, even more than that—cut out a few inter-cut scenes of Morgan Freeman lecturing an anonymous audience on the human brain, and you’d have probably thirty consecutive minutes of can’t-look-away stuff. It’d be even better if the trailers hadn’t revealed so much and made it obvious what was going on—the beginning is still riveting, but imagine if you hadn’t the faintest idea where it was going.

The second third of the movie isn’t bad, either. As Lucy accesses more and more brain power and is able to do more and more, the film becomes wildly entertaining—watch her flip cars with her mind, surf the web at hyper-speed with a different computer in each hand, change her own hair color at will to hide from the pursuing gangsters, and change Freeman’s professor from a skeptic to a believer in seconds with incredible hacking skills. The part where she throws an attacking gunman through a wall with a casual flick of the hand in his direction isn’t bad, either. Compounded by some fantastic visuals, Lucy builds up one crazy head of steam.

What Doesn’t Work?

Even before it starts to get really preachy, Lucy has a few alarm bells early, with random clips of footage intercut with the movie’s main action that are completely unnecessary (like—we know Lucy is walking into a trap in the office building with the case cuffed to her wrist without seeing random clips of cheetahs stalking grazing gazelles; it’s not rocket science). This doesn’t heighten the suspense but is merely distracting, especially when those early scenes are fine on their own.

And then the movie peters out. After an early scene where Lucy easily evades groups of pursuing policemen and gangsters and then uses her brainpower to navigate an impossible high-speed route against traffic, the movie seems to promise a really epic action throw-down only to have large groups of Korean gangsters and French policemen fight each other in a hallway while Lucy is sheltered in an office connected to a computer. Seriously? Wouldn’t it have been way more fun to get Lucy out there to dodge bullets Matrix-style, and throw all the guys through walls? This could have been a kind of stupid-fun R-rated superhero flick! Instead we watch her pretend she’s in the age of the dinosaurs? Really?

And don’t even get me started on that closing line.

Content

There are a few shots of a barely-clad Johansson, and a brief clip montage of different kinds of animals engaging in the act of reproduction (Humans included), but Lucy derives its hardness from the violence and related details. There are a few scenes of impromptu surgeries (two of which Lucy does with nothing more than her hand) that will give squeamish viewers the willies, and we do see a lot of people get shot. It’s not exactly Scorcese, but it’s rated R for a reason.

Bottom Line:

Lucy has a killer premise, a brilliant first fifteen minutes and some terrific ideas up its sleeve—it’s a shame it almost all goes to waste. The last ten minutes are so hokey and convoluted they don’t deserve to be connected to that opening. Johansson and Freeman are good, obviously, but, by the end of the movie, you end up feeling had. But at least it gives a reasonable explanation as to why Johansson supplied the disembodied voice of a computer in January’s Oscar-nominated drama Her.

Lucy (2014)

Written and Directed by Luc Besson
Rated R
Length: 89 minutes

GET ON UP

Get On Up

Grade: C+

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Nelsan Ellis, Dan Akroyd, Viola Davis, Craig Robinson, Lennie James and Octavia Spencer, with Jamarian Scott and Jordan Scott as young James Brown

Premise: Born into extreme poverty, Augusta, Georgia native James Brown makes the leap from a life of petty crime to worldwide fame as the Godfather of Soul.

Rated PG-13 for language (including racial slurs), sexual content, brief drug use, violent/disturbing images and some emotional content

There’s only one type of person who needs to see Get On Up: die-hard fans of the late James Brown. If you were a huge fan of Brown, who died on Christmas Day 2006, and phrases like Godfather of Soul and Get Up Offa That Thing automatically make you want to smile and dance and sing, you need to hurry to theaters to see this new biopic of your hero.

If the previous sentence does not describe you, you don’t need to see this movie. In fact, I’d recommend you stay away from it. Despite an impressive pedigree (directed by The Help’s Tate Taylor, and featuring an award-worthy performance by Chadwick Boseman), Get On Up is a long, slow, slightly-miserable time at the movies. There’s some great music and moments of high energy, but a vague, muddled narrative, a lack of important characters and a warts-and-all approach that makes its subject seem like an egotistical prick quickly squander excitement and interest. Even compared to similar lengthy epics about famous musical names (2004’s Ray, 2005’s Walk the Line), Get On Up is a disappointment.

Plot

The film basically recounts some of the highs and lows in the life of the late Godfather of Soul. We get glimpses of his dirt-poor childhood, growing up in a shack in the Georgia woods with an uncaring mother (Viola Davis) who one day decides to run off, leaving James alone with a stern, abusive father (Lennie James). After a while, Brown’s father decided to join the army, leaving young James with Aunt Honey (Octavia Spencer), who runs a whorehouse in town. Still largely without any parental influence, James (played as a teen and adult by Chadwick Boseman) winds up in jail for petty theft before he’s even eighteen, but he’s largely saved by a chance meeting with Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis), a budding musician who sees real talent in James’ gospel church-inspired energy, and convinces his grandfather to pay his bail. Byrd and Brown team up in a group that begins rocking night clubs, but they hit the big time after a trip from Little Richard (Brandon Smith) leads to a chance meeting with an agent from King Records.

With some assistance from manager Ben Bart (Dan Akroyd), Byrd and Brown’s group, “The Famous Flames”, takes off, but there’s no denying the real draw is the man at the front. With almost inhumane vocal range and smoothly eye-popping dance moves, James can soon command any audience, any venue, anything he wants. Life’s not perfect, though. With great fame comes adultery, alcohol and drug abuse, estrangement from his children, paranoia that his friends and musical collaborators are aspiring against him, and a gargantuan ego. When his personal and professional lives take a tumble in the late ‘80s, James looks, seems, and almost feels washed up, but an early ‘90s attempt to make amends with Byrd (whom he fell out with years earlier) gives him hope of a real comeback.

What Works?

If you’re not a James Brown enthusiast but you’re demanding a reason to see this movie, I can only give you one, but it’s a big one: the leading performance by Chadwick Boseman. Essentially an unknown when he scored the coveted role of baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson in last year’s surprise hit 42, Boseman also had a small appearance in this spring’s Kevin Costner drama Draft Day, but still isn’t anybody’s idea of a household name. He may still not be after his portrayal of Brown here, but that’s only because that portrayal is so utterly convincing. Research about the movie and Boseman’s preparation reveals the actor did not sing (unlike Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line), but, hearing the songs, it’s not hard to fathom that studio execs figured they couldn’t possibly teach an actor to sing and screech like that. So he lip-synched. However, I read that Boseman spent two months learning Brown’s dance moves, working with trainers and choreographers five to eight hours a day to master the groove (which he attempts to define for a flock of very white news reporters at one point in the movie); he’s also reported to have done more than 90 of Brown’s famous splits. With this absolutely convincing physicality, Boseman makes easily apparent the Godfather of Soul’s fiery passion, explosive energy, and undeniable sex appeal. He also speaks in an often unintelligible Southern accent that, I am told, is a dead ringer for the late Brown’s. But for all the flash and glamour of the performance with this physicality and vocal quirks, Boseman also makes clear Brown’s bitterness, his ego, his self-obsession, and—though he’d be loathe to ever admit it—his loneliness. A childhood without parents and without anything taught him to rely on only himself.

As Brown’s long-time collaborator Bobby Byrd, Nelsan Ellis has the only other significant, recurring role in the movie; he’s wonderful. It’s not a showy part, but Ellis is affecting in those key moments where he has to defend Brown the mad genius from nay-saying band members, reports, and execs.

Basically, if anyone is thinking or talking about Get On Up more than a few weeks from now, it’ll be due to Boseman’s tremendous portrayal. Were this movie released in October or November instead of August, he’d likely be a near shoo-in for an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Since this movie was released at the beginning of August, I won’t guarantee anything, but even without any year-end award honors, this work would be a huge highlight on anybody’s resume.

What Doesn’t Work?

It was someone’s idea to tell Brown’s story in very non-linear fashion—almost on the level of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s slapdash dramas 21 Grams and Babel. This was a terrible idea. While Ray and Walk the Line similarly used framing devices to avoid a history-book-style chronological trek through their subjects’ lives, Get On Up starts with a scene that cuts to an earlier scene that cuts to an earlier scene that cuts to an earlier scene, and then finally, we have a two-minute scene of young James Brown at his ramshackle home in the woods, before it bumps back out to another random concert. It’s almost half an hour before any sort of chronological sense is established. For one, this fairly random approach makes it hard for an audience to develop roots of interest and emotional connection. For another, it makes an already-long movie (138 minutes) feel even longer and more tedious because it’s so unorganized. And this random approach also pretty much eliminates our connection to any of the other important people in Brown’s life. Other than Byrd, no one else is established in detail. Dan Akroyd has a few scenes as a studio exec for whom Brown is a meal ticket, Craig Robinson plays a disapproving band member, Viola Davis flits in and out of a few scenes as Brown’s no-good mom, and Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer has maybe two short scenes. Only one of Brown’s rumored multiple spouses/mistresses has any significant screen time, but my disinterest was so considerable by the time she had three scenes in a row, I didn’t even care to catch her name.

I know nobody’s perfect, and warts-and-all movies about famous people, especially, are often praised for their grit and realism and for pulling back the curtain so we can see the ugly stuff, but Get On Up should prove a real test of any James Brown fan’s mettle. I’m not knocking Boseman’s performance, but with his selfish preening and raging ego, Brown comes across as the most unlikeable real person portrayed at the forefront of a movie since Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Were Brown alive today, this movie would certainly not make me a fan of his. It’s curious that a movie produced by one of his good friends (The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger) would make him seem like a person with so few redeeming qualities.

Content

There’s some cussing (including at least one word that starts with F), a bit of child and spousal abuse, a scene where a young Brown pulls the shoes off the victim of a lynching, a few scenes that hint heavily at what The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper would call “coitus”, and one scene where Brown smokes a joint laced with something else. I’m sure it’s nothing to what it could’ve been.

The Bottom Line

Despite a tremendous, award-worthy performance from leading man Chadwick Boseman, who lip-synched but did all his own dancing and even the splits, Get On Up is a drag, a long, disorganized, movie that makes its main character seem like a colossal prick. Unless you’re a huge James Brown fan, I’d avoid this one.

Get On Up (2014)

Directed by Tate Taylor

Written by Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth

Rated PG-13

Length: 138 minutes