Director: Morten Tyldum
Runtime: 114 minutes
British mathematician Alan Turing completed a Herculean task at the height of World War II as multiple opposing forces closed in on him. Time was of the essence when it came to breaking the Nazi Enigma encoding device. At one point, MI6 operative Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong) tells Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) that in the time they've had to introduce themselves, three British soldiers have been killed thanks to messages sent using Enigma's seemingly impossible encryption codes.
And yet despite the massive looming threat of the Third Reich in the background, the story of Turing's crowning achievement has surprisingly little urgency. Director Morten Tyldum and writer Graham Moore rely on too many weary storytelling tropes and framing devices. The Imitation Game is solid, quietly rousing entertainment, but it lacks the sort of polarizing intellectual dynamism that made its subject such a visionary in his field.
Hopping from 1951 (the year of Turing's arrest for homosexual acts) to the early 40s, and even back to Turing's school days, The Imitation Game has quite a bit to juggle in under two hours. To their credit, Tyldum and Moore tell their story smoothly, ensuring that one never gets lost amid the jumps in time. Tyldum's direction is polished, and opens up the scenes so as to keep the film from looking either stagey or like a generic TV movie. Moore's screenplay, adapted from Andrew Hodges' book, has its share of witty exchanges and carefully timed emotional outbursts. To an extent, the Norwegian Mr. Tyldum deserves credit for directing the most downright British movie of the year, with its restrained emotions and real-life-period-piece narrative.
Everything in The Imitation Game, for better or for worse, has been calibrated to make the film both important and widely accessible. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, the execution here - however pleasurable - is what gets in the way of the film leaving a lasting mark. The scenes set at boarding school and in 1951 each have their own internal arcs, yet by stringing them along with the WW2 story, their impact is muted. They feel like optional subplots even though both (especially the latter) have direct connections to the middle timeline. Rather than work in harmony, the subplots leech off of the WW2 story to the detriment of the entire film. The danger of the war and the possibility that Turing's sexuality may be exposed never feel like terribly pressing matters. There is only one sequence, in which Turing and his team must decide whether to warn a British ship about a U-boat attack, where the required urgency actually materializes. Breaking the Enigma code was not a tidy solution, but the film barely gives one a taste of this crucial and fascinating angle.
The cast is the real draw here, and even the actors with underwritten roles are at least fully engaged with the material. Cumberbatch is an ideal fit for Turing's isolated, anti-social genius mindset. Though there are similarities with his character on Sherlock, the actor's work here is characterized by an understated wit and a less abrasive frankness in his dealings with co-workers. When Turing tells his commanding office that his teammates will only slow him down, it comes from a place of cold objectivity, rather than malice or derision. Cumberbatch's cast members, though often relegated to playing simple types, turn in solid work, with Matthew Goode doing some fine work as Turing's confrontational adversary. Breaking up the boys' club is Keira Knightley as fellow decoder Joan Clarke, who forms the most in depth bond with Turing. Clarke is the one person who sees and understands who Turing is beyond his brilliant mind, and Knightley's scenes with Cumberbatch are easily among the film's best, even if her character doesn't really have her own arc.
Behind the scenes contributions are all quite strong without overwhelming the story or the actors. Production designer Maria Djurkovic (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) varies the decor of the film's many interiors to lend the imagery subtle, unobtrusive distinctions. The film looks simple, yet elegant, and Alexandre Desplat's understated score gives the story an extra boost of energy. Costumes, meanwhile, communicate the time period without being distracting.
There's no doubt that everything in The Imitation Game looks and sounds right. The underlying problems with structure certainly don't hold the film back as an accessible crowd-pleaser. Instead, the frustration with The Imitation Game isn't that it does something horribly wrong, but that it - like a few other recent films - takes its real life story and turns it into something so by-the-numbers. Tyldum and Moore may have told Turing's story, but in their approach they have failed to capture his spirit.
Grade: B-
Director: Peter Jackson
Runtime: 161 minutes
Many argue that The Two Towers, the second of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is the strongest film in an outstanding cinematic trio. Middle installments come burdened with moving pieces and are unable to finish with a bang. At least, they're not allowed to finish with as big of a bang as the final entry, which gets the benefit of wrapping it all up. The Two Towers, however, overcame that by creating its own epic ending, yet still making it clear the obstacles that lay ahead in The Return of the King. It was a spectacle having its cake and eating it too, in the very best way. That same success, sadly, is nowhere to be found in The Desolation of Smaug, Peter Jackson's middle chapter of this three-part adaptation of Tolkien's The Hobbit. Instead, it's the film that many likely feared Jackson's original trilogy would be: bloated, emotionally hollow, and suffocated by visual effects.
Whatever flaws one can find with last year's An Unexpected Journey (and there are many), that at least had a proper beginning. Desolation kicks off with an unnecessary flashback to dole out catch-up details, and then hits the ground running. Unfortunately, the film's feet are made of glass. The mix of hand-crafted and computer-generated sets and models is even more glaringly obvious than in Part I, which breaks the spell immediately. While certain VFX shots in the original trilogy no doubt look a tad dated by now, they at least still have a lived-in, tactile feel. By contrast, the blend of CGI and reality is amateurish at best, with the lighting for the green screens casting a hazy glow over an unfortunate number of scenes. The vaseline on the lens look has been put to great use before (Casablanca is still stunning), but here it just looks cheap, and even unfinished.
More disappointing is how much Jackson's storytelling skills have dropped in quality. The plotting is agonizingly drawn-out, yet what little character exists is often rushed. Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage, handsome even underneath the make up), is a compelling figure, yet this time around he only has one note to play. The supporting band of dwarves, meanwhile, often feel interchangeable. Like excessive characters in a horror movie, they exist merely to fill the frame when the action kicks in. And while Jackson and his co-writers deserve credit for creating a badass female elf warrior (Evangeline Lilly's Tauriel), they also stick her in a totally bloodless pseudo-love triangle that drags things down even further. Even Bilbo (Martin Freeman), our supposed guide and protagonist, feels like an afterthought until the finale.
Thankfully, after all of the build up, Jackson does hit a home run when he reaches the super-sized climax. The villainous dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), is stunning. Both the visual effects and Cumberbatch's performance are excellent, and together they create the single best thing about an otherwise misguided pair of adaptations. Even the story's several cutaways to other matters (the elves, the townsfolk near Smaug's mountain lair, Gandalf - remember him?) can't throw off the thrill once the dragon takes center stage. The varied set pieces Jackson wrings out of the encounter are excellent. Smaug is rendered so well that even the lackluster work on the backdrops finally stops being a bother.
But then the "ending" comes crashing in and ruins the fun of it all. We still have another full length film to wrap this all up (one that originally wasn't supposed to exist). Jackson and company more than deliver with the titular dragon (and there is a lot of material with him), yet the final cut to black is a rude reminder of just how much this adaptation has been dragged out. It's the worst sort of fan service, trying to give every moment of the (quite slim) novel its due, and then throwing in a bunch of other nonsense to fill in the gaps. You're better off buying a ticket and then finding something to do for an hour and a half. That way, you'll skip nearly all of the narrative fat, and only enjoy the good stuff. Best to sully your cinematic memories of Middle Earth as little as possible.
Grade: C-
Director: John Wells
Runtime: 130 minutes
It may seem odd, but the first film I thought of after seeing August: Osage County was Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. They have virtually no similarities when it comes to tone or subject matter, but they're noteworthy in how they downplay more noticeable "directing." Film is said to be the director's medium (auteur theory and all that jazz), but films like August and Lincoln are more content to reign in the cinematic techniques and simply let the acting and writing grab the spotlight. Both films are that much better because of this decision, even though August lacks Lincoln's distinguished sense of subtle finesse.
Adapted by Tracy Letts from his own Pulitzer-winning play, the film takes the Hollywood route and shears off roughly an hour's worth of material (much like Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd). While this decision does create the occasional pacing issue, such a considerable loss of material isn't enough to wreck the film. As 'directed' by John Wells, Letts' story is still an bitterly funny tale of a family get-together in the wake of tragedy.
At the center of the film is Violet Weston (Meryl Streep), the cancer-ridden family matriarch. To say that Violet has complicated relationships with her daughters is an understatement. The reasons are best left unsaid (the story has a few surprising twists), but suffice it to say that this isn't just another big and loud family. The Westons are a particularly dysfunctional lot, capable of bickering and manipulating each other and then suddenly sharing in blackly comedic jokes about suicide.
Like most family get togethers, real or cinematic, the early sections are where things struggle to take off. Letts' considerable cuts from his play are commendable, yet he leaves in some establishing scenes that are but empty stage business that would allow someone to change their costume. Wells doesn't try anything 'cinematic' or abstract, but some scenes - like Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper wandering through a dim, humid room - are as painfully stage-y as they come.
The initial focus on Streep's Violet is also something of a divisive choice. While there are plenty of effective big and broad moments, Streep's capital-A acting sometimes clashes with the choices of her co-stars. Some of this is likely intentional - Violet comes off as a coarse, upper middle class Norma Desmond - but the performance is in need of some reigning in. When Streep does hit her mark, however, she's near the top of the ensemble in her ability to bring acid-soaked wit to Letts' tangy dialogue.
Yet as Streep chews the scenery with reckless abandon, two of her co-stars (one famous, the other not so) steal the movie out from under her. As Violet's youngest daughter Ivy, Julianne Nicholson is superb in one of the film's quieter, introspective roles. This is the sort of supporting turn that immediately makes you wonder why Nicholson hasn't risen to greater prominence by now. She's effortlessly emotive, capturing Ivy's struggle with being the subservient youngest child without ever feeling pathetic.
On the flip side is Julia Roberts as oldest daughter Barbara. Stripped of virtually any movie star ticks or persona, Roberts tears into the role, albeit in a more naturalistic manner than Streep. Watching Barbara's simmering contempt grow into a wrathful boil is among the narrative's most satisfying emotional developments. By the time the dramatic centerpiece - an early dinner featuring the whole Weston clan - comes to its knock-out ending, Roberts seals her status as best in show, just as Barbara finally claims her dominance in the household.
For all of the antagonism on screen, Letts' script never forgets to make these characters feel human and relatable, albeit in uncomfortable ways. Among the film's best scenes is a conversation among Barbara, Ivy, and Karen joking and drinking together. Despite their drastic differences, the (admittedly warped) sisterly bond of the trio comes together with remarkable clarity.
While the women are out dominating the screen, the men (none of them Westons by blood) are less successful. There's a subplot involving Barbara's husband Bill (Ewan McGregor), as well as one involving Karen's (Juliette Lewis) sleazy boyfriend (Dermot Mulroney), but they're used more to develop the great women around them. Only Chris Cooper makes much of an impact as his own individual, and it's a testament to his talent that he communicates so much with so little. Meanwhile, Benedict Cumberbatch, while certainly a talented actor, is a minor disaster as Cooper and Martindale's son Little Charles. The brief moments with Charles making his way to the Weston home are the lowest of the films lows. It's too bad that his character has such a pivotal connection to the underlying plot.
Thankfully, the men are mostly afterthoughts, with the women allowed to take center stage in a way that's far too uncommon. Wells' direction ranges from bumbling to bland, but Letts' voice comes through so powerfully thanks to the clear emotional investment of just about everyone on screen. August: Osage County won't be remembered as high art years down the line, but as a vehicle for some superbly written and acted dark comedy, it certainly gets the job done. While I doubt it fully captures the greatness of the source material, it's certainly not a bad place to start.
Grade: B/B-
Director: JJ Abrams
Runtime: 132 minutes
The fun of a sequel (at least on paper) is that the groundwork for the characters has already been established. This allows future installments to hit the ground running, and build up bigger, more epic plots that can produce thrills on a grander scale. The most obvious recent example of this trend is Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, which took the foundation of Batman Begins and introduced a darker, larger narrative, along with a more potent villain and higher stakes.
JJ Abrams, on the other hand, has opted for an oddity of a sequel in his reboot of the Star Trek film franchise. Like its predecessor, Star Trek: Into Darkness has slick visuals, a good sense of humor, and fun set pieces. It also boasts a more enjoyable and menacing villain. On the other hand, Abrams' film feels strangely limited in scope, due to the script's initially choppy plotting. Overall, Into Darkness is a solid follow-up to Abrams' 09 film, yet it can't help but feel like a step in the wrong direction when it comes to narrative ambition.
Thankfully, the lighthearted opening sequence quickly re-establishes the best traits of the last film. The thrills are there, and, more importantly, so are the laughs. Though certain returning characters get little to work with (including Zoe Saldana's Uhura), the dynamics across the ensemble are still handled with a swift effortlessness. As the film's co-leads, Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto continue to delight. Their chemistry has remained firmly intact, and it's capable of infusing even the darkest moments with flashes of wit. Yet where Quinto was quite easily the MVP in the previous film, it's Pine who's the real surprise this time around. Kirk's existential conflicts aren't as inherently as interesting as Spock's, yet the way the script pushes the character (and the actor playing him) to his emotional limits is a tremendous boon. Of the returning supporting players, Karl Urban and Simon Pegg continue to have a ball as Bones and Scotty. John Cho's Sulu, refreshingly, also gets a few brief moments to steal the spotlight.
However, much like The Dark Knight, the real draw of Into Darkness is the villain. And while Benedict Cumberbatch's John Harrison (a rogue Star Fleet agent) may lack any nasty scars or colorful clown make-up, he's still a memorable force to be reckoned with. Cumberbatch is no stranger to playing slightly detached, hyper-intelligent characters. Yet unlike his excellent work on BBC's Sherlock, Harrison allows the actor to take that intelligence (along with his commanding deep voice) and slather on a nice thick layer of menace. Cumberbatch rarely raises his voice throughout the film, and his expression is often a mask. The actor largely allows his intonations to carry the character, and it works. From the beginning, Harrison is a mystery. As such, it's fitting that he becomes more expressive as his identity emerges. He's a blank canvas because that's what he needs to be for his own purposes (and possibly others').
Unfortunately, to get to the real meat of Into Darkness' plot and characterization, one has to endure a surprisingly clunky opening act. After the fun opening, the script then jumps around between drama at Star Fleet (Kirk loses command of the Enterprise), and Harrison's first attack on London. Then there's the matter of Harrison's possible connections to the bellicose Klingons, who threaten Earth's peaceful galatic explorations. Once everything comes together, there are a nice number of a-ha moments. By contrast, the first half's material is more obligatory than fully engaging. Abrams seems to agree. Barring the opening, the action sequences in the first half or so feel like they're being directed on autopilot. Given the immense charm of the cast, the film is never in danger of dragging. At the same time, there are moments where Into Darkness seems to coast along like a perfectly engineered machine that's also completely devoid of any true verve or personality. Rather than bring something new to the table, the first half of the film feels like more of the same, only without the fresh energy that Abrams brought to the table four years ago.
Without that same energy, many of the early set-pieces lack true tension. There are a few too many times when characters are on the brink of death's door, yet the tone is too light for the stakes to feel real. However, once the various plot threads come together, Into Darkness stops being merely competent, and starts rising to the occasion. A trio of extended action sequences help drive the film to a smashing conclusion, albeit one that ends on a surprisingly small scale. Abrams finally seems fully alert in the director's chair, and drives the film home with equal amounts of glossy thrills and genuine (yet never sentimental) emotion. The whole film is a marvel of sights and sounds (visual effects and scoring are dynamite), yet it's in the second half of the film where they start to really pop. Above all else, the film is worth sticking with just to watch the stunningly put together sequence where the Enterprise plummets down from space and through the Earth's atmosphere. It's the sort of stuff that big budget extravaganzas were made for, and Into Darkness more than delivers.
Yet once the adrenaline of the finale wears off, it's hard not to view the film as mildly underwhelming. When the film works, it works spectacularly. And even when it isn't flowing together smoothly, it has engaging characters and a sense of humor that prevents the film from drowning in self-seriousness. But even as the film reaches some wonderful highs, it still comes off as a bit of a missed opportunity. Into Darkness should have been Abrams' chance to go bigger and bolder. Instead, he's opted for more of same, on roughly the same scale (possibly smaller). That doesn't make Into Darkness a bad film, or a bad movie-going experience. It just makes it a slight step backwards for a franchised that seemed primed for a great leap forward.
Grade: B
