Mr. Turner (****1/2)

MR TURNER is a movie of extreme confidence and attention to detail. It is the latest film from Mike Leigh, known for his improvisational filmmaking style and deep human stories. With Mr Turner, he makes a film that is both knowledgable and intriguing; a portrait of a man that many in the public do not know and yet leave feeling like they do. 

The film deals with the last 20 or so years of Turner's life. You may know him for his seascapes and stormy oil paintings. He was a deeply patriotic artist and also a man of mystery. A man of England. The films chooses to let us get to know his family first and foremost. For an unknowing audience member, perhaps Turner is just a man with a hobby, not the country's most prolific and infamous artist of the time. We meet his father, a man who has grown in age and come to work for his son as an assistant. We meet Turner's housekeeper, a drastically plain woman who feels as though she has Turner's heart and devotion. 

The story follows a very episodic nature, as we find Turner both coming to terms with his life as well as profession. The film takes a smart approach in that we are merely observing, as though a play. There is little sympathy to be found in Turner throughout most of the film, and there are times he is plain cruel. We are perhaps meant to reason how a man becomes a man, or maybe how art can be influenced by it. 

The film is lucky to have a man like Timothy Spall as its star. To American audiences he is known as one of the main villains in the Harry Potter franchise. He is, in reality, one of the most versatile actors in the industry, able to transform himself in a performance with remarkable ease. He is an easily recognizable actor, with his large stomach and prominent smile- but what he manages with Mr Turner is to create a wholly realized person- not a protagonist, but a man. He talks deep and grumbles through the back of his throat, and yet never is there a time when watching the film that we doubt anything he says or does.

The other star is the films cinematography. Gorgeous and lush, the camera moves throughout the cold interiors as though a ghost. Our beautiful landscapes and exterior shots are vibrant, framed perfectly, and almost mimicking the style of Turner's paintings, themselves. 

Plot wise, there isnt much to take in. The film steps along at a 2.5 hour running time and yet there isn't a scene out of place or a dull moment to be found. Its difficult to imagine how such a film can or would end, and Mike Leigh finds the perfect note- a series of 3 masterful shots that encompass all that Turner has achieved in his life, the beauty of his work, the power of his personality, and the cruelty of ultimate loneliness. 

I've thought quite a bit about this film after it ended, and in the days following. It left a mark on me that isn't easy to understand. Yes, it's amazing to see how an artist creates and the lengths by which some of these 19th century painters went to achieve greatness. In the end, what's all the more gripping is the subtext that lies underneath everthing. There's so much more to a work of art than surface level alone.

(Awards potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Spall), Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup, Best Original Score)

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt I (***)

Hollywood continues to puzzle me. I know the reasoning a studio would want to split one story into two separate films: greater box office yield, more DVD sales and related merchandise... What hurts is realizing that these producers are willing to compromise artistic endeavor and story for a fast buck. This is not to say Mockingjay is a bad film - in fact I enjoyed it for what it was worth. My problem is that I don't even know if I'm invested enough to see the final film when it releases next year.

Mockingjay moves past the macabre futuristic children-killing genre the past two films were to become something more reminiscent of a good military story. We have the villains and heroes established, and now they are put to the test. In fact, the lack of the titular "Hunger Games" that have been the centerpiece of the first two films makes this a difficult movie to define. There is perhaps one true action scene, and a majority of the film is spent trying to understand Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and why she feels like crying all the time. Maybe we can settle on sci-fi for now.

After breaking the game, quite literally, in the abrupt ending to Catching Fire, here we see a new District, District 13, housing weapons and soldiers and civilians who have joined a rebellion against Panem and its leader: the Santa Clause-esque President Snow. Their main mission becomes unifying the separate districts to make such a rebellion possible. They will need all the help they can get. My God, Panem soldiers are futuristic as we would expect, with automatic weapons and full body armor. These rebels are armed with sticks and stones... It's going to be a bloody, epic finale (if my knowledge of 2-part sequels is any good).

Is there enough material in this film to justify it on its own accord? I would say no. So much of the film is shot in dark, gloomy underground settings, and we see Katniss have constant nightmares and emotional traumas... For being such a best-selling book, I'm wondering why readers don't feel compelled to find something with a little more joy. The film is essentially a buildup to a climax that never happens (in fact, I think that will be the final film). The question then becomes, what's the point of the first half at all?

(Awards potential: Best Costume Design)

Wild (***)

Living in a busy city, it becomes easy to forget about the appeal and beauty you find in nature. The smell of a burning fire, the sound of crickets in the night. There's almost something therapeutic about it. In a way, that becomes the hypothesis of Jean-Marc Vallee's latest film, as a woman hikes up the Pacific coast (nearly 1,000 miles) in order to find some sort of self-redemption.

As the director of last year's Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club, it's easy to see the touch of Vallee's direction. In many ways these two are stories on opposite sides of the same coin. After a tragic death in her family and a nasty divorce from her husband of 7 years, Cheryl Strayed (stray like a dog) decides to cleanse her body and mind of toxins and restraint. She packs a large pack filled with water, food, and a tent, and decides to make a 3-month trek north to Oregon, where she plans to spend the rest of her life.

The movie, like Buyers Club, functions with subtitles illustrating the amount of time spent on her journey, and a minimal soundtrack as Cheryl spends some time soul searching and cooking up some hot mush on the campfire. We are thrust dead into the middle of her story, and learn through flashbacks and narration the means by which her life has led to this point.

As far as acting goes, Reese Witherspoon does a grounded job of holding the film together - as it is essentially a one-woman show. Unlike the "good girl" we have come to know her for in films like Walk the Line and Legally Blonde, here she gets down and dirty. Laura Dern as her mother also has a very simplistic truth to her. In the face of abuse and hardships, here is a woman who just keeps smiling, if only for the sake of her children.

The assembly feels like a student film, and we are barraged endlessly with voice overs and brief flashbacks as if to explain every single thought Cheryl has running through her head. My God, when the tent is dark and she repeatedly turns on the flashlight, we don't need to hear her say "I'm scared of the dark." You can understand the director's idea, but in the execution it becomes a muddled assembly of cuts and almost pretentious narration where simple emotion was intended.

Like Into the Wild, this is a film based on a personal memoir. Here, Cheryl comes out with a happy ending, for Christopher McCandless, the ending was much more absolute. There's something about being one with nature that has clearly fascinated people over the years, and the written word is a beautiful way to communicate ideas and thoughts. For a film to work in this regard, though, a bit more caution is required. Nothing ever needs to be spelled out in full.

(Awards potential: Best Actress (Witherspoon), Best Supporting Actress (Dern))

Ida (*****)

Ida is a movie of immense beauty and startling discovery. Unlike most movies we see today, Ida is near-glacial. At times, individual shots seem like they are still photographs, and only as one character moves from one corner to the other do we realize that we are watching something unlike anything else this year. To say it is a miraculous movie is perhaps a bit reaching - but this is without a doubt a story that is absolutely compelling and important.

We meet Anna, a teenage girl living in a convent in Poland. It is sometime in the 1960's. There are dirt roads, few cars, a few birds chirping. The silence becomes a character to itself. Before taking her vows to become a Catholic nun, her Mother Superior advises she meet her Aunt Wanda - long estranged and nearly forgotten about. She obliges.

Her aunt is unlike anything we can expect. She drinks, she is rude and empowered, and she has a secret. Anna was raised as a Jewish girl named Ida, her family long-since deceased. What Anna perhaps envisioned as a simple family meeting becomes a story of discovery as the two women journey to discover what happened. A road movie of sorts, although it it more a journey of inner discovery, both for Anna and Wanda.

The intrigue of this movie comes from a multitude of things, and there is so much to ponder over as the minutes tick by. First of all, we have the unique dynamic between niece and aunt - polar opposites and yet the same in many ways. Both women find ways to deal with their solitude, and yet who is the better person? Ida admits she has never fantasized about boys, she is quiet, she speaks little. To an outsider she would appear a little weird, with her pale skin and dark sunken eyes. Wanda, on the other hand, is a judge of the Communist Party. She loses herself even at work, drifting in and out of reality. She drinks, acts reckless, and at first cares little for her family.

This movie falls into many categories and yet it doesn't fall into any. In a way this is a more modern Holocaust movie in terms of its repercussions on future generations. We have the mystery of Wanda's obsessions with finding the man who sheltered their family during the war. It's coming-of-age as Ida meets a jazz musician with an allure she can't quite put her finger on. Is she wrong for beginning to doubt her devotion to God, or is this a healthy part of becoming a woman?

In stark black and white, the film is a beautiful demonstration of purposeful cinematography. Characters are framed so low in the shot that oftentimes we barely even see their mouths moving as they speak. The camera allows them space within each frame, perhaps emphasizing the loneliness these people feel or maybe just to remind these characters that God is always present...

At no more than 82 minutes, Ida still works very slowly, and the film is so calculated and precise that I don't think any moment is uncalled for or unnecessary. Ida will not be a film for everyone, but it succeeds on so many levels that it's no wonder it is on the shortlist for the Academy Award for Foreign Film.

(Awards potential: Best Cinematography, Best Foreign Film)

The Imitation Game (****1/2)

THE IMITATION GAME is a marvelous film, one that grips you from beginning to end. Tightly-wound and nearly impossible to sit through in boredom, here is a movie that understands how to tell a story accurately, astutely, and beautifully.

The man is Alan Turing (played by one of our finest actors - Benedict Cumberbatch). Perhaps you haven't heard of him. It's okay, most people are likely to draw a blank. According to Winston Churchill, Turing "made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany." With a small team and little else, Turing was able to crack a Nazi cipher known as "Enigma," a machine the Germans used to conduct military strategy via radio.

The film sets up our story perfectly. We are introduced to the team, to Turing's isolation and awkwardness around social settings. We also learn that Germans alternate Enigma's settings every night at midnight. Everyday spent trying to solve the puzzle is a countdown of increasing difficulty. Alan has the theory to fight machines with machines, and devises a computer named "Christopher" to attempt to solve the German's code. Of course, being 1940's England, not much hope is placed in electronics.

The movie comes across as a fiction-pulled thriller, and by that means the film is wildly entertaining. Cumberbatch works slowly at building up Turing's loneliness, both in flashbacks and voice over, and as the final credits began to role, it was amazing to think back at all that we learned about a man that time will not soon forget. It is a masterful acting job. The same goes for Kiera Knightly, who's performance is about as honest and memorable as anything I have seen this year. Through slight mannerisms and habits, Knightly hits it out of the park as a woman who views saving the world as just another Sunday crossword puzzle.

The film also delves into Turing's later years, when he was charged with the crime of indecency as punishment for homosexuality. For the film to use it as such a main drive of the plot, his personal relationships are surprisingly lacking from the story, and only a small subplot revolving an elementary school friend even attempts to work out his emotional traumas. All the power for trying, but in many ways it felt as though this was one aspect that was toned down in order to appeal to a greater audience.

Without doubt, the world has Alan Turing to thank (a realization that comes in the film's final scene, a beautiful dialogue between Cumberbatch and Knightly). This was a movie that was quite literally being developed since the 1950's. Thank God they got it right.

(Awards potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actress (Knightly), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Editing, Best Original Score)