Review: "The Imitation Game"

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-

Review: "Welcome to the Punch"

Director: Eran Creevy
Runtime: 99 minutes

Lean and stylish, yet ultimately hindered by mundane writing, Eran Creevy's Welcome to the Punch is the latest in a long line of similarly-themed British crime thrillers. Creevy's sophomore directorial effort has a strong cast and a nice, understated energy. However, it hits far too many familiar beats as it attempts to increase the complexity of its plot. At best, Punch is a showcase for Creevy as a director, even as it makes it painfully clear how much progress Creevy needs to make as a writer.

Opening with a nicely handled chase sequence, we're introduced to hotheaded cop Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy, cast refreshingly against type) as he tries to thwart a massive heist led by Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong). Yet Sternwood escapes, and Lewinsky is badly wounded. Three years later, Sternwood returns from his exile in Iceland after the mysterious death of his son. As Lewinsky seeks revenge on the man who ruined his career, both men find themselves gradually uncovering a deeper conspiracy in the London police force. 

Right off of the bat, Welcome to the Punch moves with an elegant and controlled momentum. Creevy's dialogue in the early stretches is often sparse, but packs a few nice exchanges (mostly between McAvoy and co-star Andrea Riseborough as a fellow cop). On the opposite side of the story, Strong anchors his scenes effortlessly. When the two male leads face off, it's usually Strong who commands the screen, as solid as McAvoy is in such a different role. Supporting roles, namely those played by Riseborough and Peter Mullan, are also well handled, and lend the film a sense of polish that often transcends the limitations of the screenplay. 

Yet, as is typical with narratives of this strain, the film starts to stumble once the plot becomes more complicated. Creevy's navigation through the various and sundry forces on both sides of the law eventually grow muddled and simplistic, and undercut the more tightly-plotted opening reels. By the time the end credits begin, Welcome to the Punch is already starting fade. It has little more to offer than visuals flooded with shades of blue, and some efficient, stylishly-handled shoot-outs. Even the action, however, becomes a bit numbing in the final act. One late-in-the-game sequence, which builds terrifically, ends with so much slow-motion and Inception-esque BRRMs that it borders on self-parody. 

These two sides of the film clash more and more, and prevent Welcome to the Punch from even being a satisfying and straightforward action-thriller. The efforts of the cast and Creevy (as director), are ultimately squandered on material that is too shallow for its own good. Still, the film does mark Creevy as a talent to watch behind the camera. His sense of style is mostly successful here, and he gets solid work out of his cast, even as they're let down by his writing. But there's a difference between potential and execution, and Welcome to the Punch showcases too much of the former, and not enough of the latter, to be worth the time unless you're getting it in the mail from Netflix and have time to kill.

Grade: C+/C

Review: "Zero Dark Thirty"

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Runtime: 157 minutes

It's difficult to write about Kathryn Bigelow's Osama Bin Laden drama Zero Dark Thirty after what's happened over the past few weeks. With the reviews, the controversies, and the responses to said controversies, what on earth is left to say? Well, let's start with the basics: it's a really damn impressive piece of film making that stands tall in a year filled with diverse narratives.

If you've missed any coverage of the film whatsoever, the story essentials are little more than the fictionalized account of the decade-long hunt to locate and kill Osama Bin Laden. And even though Bigelow's film, which reunites her with The Hurt Locker scribe Mark Boal, runs over 2.5 hours, Zero Dark Thirty knows how to make every moment count. Whereas The Hurt Locker truly was a character study, Zero is much more of a procedural set against our so-called War on Terror. 

Yet even though the center of the story, Jessica Chastain's Maya, is often reserved and completely consumed by her job, Bigelow and Boal haven't forgotten to make her a character as well. When Maya first enters, she's practically a blank slate. Fresh off of the plane in Pakistan, Maya witnesses the much-discussed torture of a detainee. To answer the question of whether or not the film glorifies torture, I'll merely offer this much: Maya has no problem telling a detainee that giving honest answers will make his life easier, but she doesn't exactly look on with icy approval as she watches that detainee suffer at the hands of CIA agent Dan (Jason Clarke). What Bigelow and Boal have pulled off, along with Jessica Chastain's work in front of the camera, is one person's journey from being an outsider doing an uncomfortable job, to becoming unwavering in her determination to see everything through. 

Where Zero Dark Thirty could have been simplistic, sugar-coated, and jingoistic, it is instead meticulous, blunt, and intense, without emotional manipulation. One could accuse the film of trying too hard to be objective, but that all gets blow away by the film's masterstroke: the raid on Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. Bigelow's strength comes from her ability to generate tension without going overboard, and the tactic pays off grandly here. The raid is intense, but not without the appropriate grimness (women shot and killed, children left crying and alone, etc...). Yet best of all is the treatment of Bin Laden's death. In different hands, such a moment would be completely overwrought. Bigelow and Boal, however, allow the death to unfold in a relatively anti-climactic fashion that couldn't be more fitting for the movie's tone and themes. Yes, the SEALs got the "bad guy," but what now? Where do they have to go next? What repercussions could this death have? Answering those questions would need a completely different film, yet it's important that Zero doesn't wrap everything up so neatly that it gives a sense of complete and total closure.

However, the film does allow the right level of closure for Maya. Chastain is mostly front and center here, and turns in another performance that capitalizes on her wide emotional range. As reserved as Maya often is, Chastain's work never feels lazy, and just because she's putting up a poker face doesn't mean she's not present. If anything, it means the exact opposite. Being present and listening is what Maya does in order to inch towards her goal, through every disappointment and disaster. The rest of the ensemble turn in perfectly convincing work, although few truly have much to work with. Stand outs from the supporting cast include the above-mentioned Clarke, as well as Jennifer Ehle as an older, more experienced operative. 

But at the end of the day, the film is mostly a showcase for Chastain to quietly carry the film, and for Bigelow's extraordinary storytelling and atmosphere to shine through. The aesthetic may be roughly the same as The Hurt Locker, but there's no way to walk out of Zero Dark Thirty and think that she's made the same movie twice. The Hurt Locker used its characters to paint a portrait of various kinds of soldiers. With Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow moves a step up the ladder in terms of authority. She's looking at the people behind the scenes, the little pieces that have to be assembled before the troops undertake missions like the Abbottabad raid. In doing so, Zero Dark Thirty, which opens with audio from 9-1-1 calls on 9/11, feels applicable to a wider range of people, because of how it weaves in the broader implications of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It takes us from the moment of no return, all the way through an act of collective revenge, one that ellicits not cheers and grins, but solemn contemplation on what happened to us as a nation, and what we did, for better and for worse, because of those actions.

Grade: A/A-

Review: "John Carter"

The road to theaters hasn't been easy for John Carter, Disney's big-screen treatment of Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic (ish) fantasy adventure novels. No major stars, reports of a ballooning budget, shifting release dates, and then reports of costly re-shoots all pointed to one conclusion: a massive flop. Now, considering that I'm a little late in seeing the film, directed by Pixar alum Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E), I can't make predictions. We know that the film has flopped; it's done. So, with that out of the way, we can stop talking about box office, and start talking about the film's artistic merits, of which, outside of its technical categories, there are precious few.

It's a shame too, because only a few months ago another Pixar director, The Incredibles' Brad Bird, made his live-action debut with the extremely fun Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Unfortunately, Staton's transition to live-action hasn't been quite as successful, though he's hardly the source of the film's problems...at least as a director. As co-writer, however, he does deserve some of the blame. In adapting Rice Burroughs' story, the sort of fare that seems better suited as a Saturday morning cartoon, Staton, Mark Andrews, and Michael Chabon have crafted a wannabe-epic that is so scattershot and overstuffed, not to mention overly serious, that it nearly collapses in on itself.

Here's the basics: Confederate soldier John Carter (Friday Night Lights' Taylor Kitsch), after finding himself trapped in a cave, somehow finds himself transported to Mars (known by its inhabitants as Barsoom). There, the planet is at war as two humanoid cities, Zodenga and Helium, battle for supremacy. There's also green, four-armed creatures known as Tharks, who both aid and hinder Carter as he tries to piece together where he is and how he got there. Now, the past few sentences have more than a few silly words in them, but through all of it, the actors play it straight. There's a sense of humor missing here that would have made all of it a little more bearable.

Unfortunately, John Carter is so concerned with making itself the next big sci-fi/fantasy franchise, it winds up suffering from throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-if-something-sticks-syndrome (that's T.E.A.T.W.A.S.I.S.S.S. for short). It's not too much of a problem for about half of the film's 2 hour duration. Unfortunately, once it hits the last 40 minutes, the narrative goes into Important Incident Overload. There's a wedding, a massive fight in an arena, a massive Thark horde, a big battle, another wedding, and several trips between Earth and Barsoom. It's all so much that none of it carries any weight, and the dramatic shifts that should come as surprises or moments of triumph/despair ring hollow.

The acting doesn't do the film any service. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but the dramatics all feel phoned in, and the actors can do little to elevate the material considering the take-everything-seriously direction Stanton opted for. Kitsch makes for a perfectly decent hero, and Collins has what it takes to make a kick-ass heroine, even though she's reduced to being saved by Kitsch at least three times in the exact same manner. Other roles, like those played by Dominic West and Mark Strong, have potential to be fun antagonists, but they have even less to work with than the heroes. I don't doubt that the actors involved could have made this a worthwhile journey, but the filmmakers so thoroughly undermine them that there's little they can really do.

Which is an even bigger shame, considering that the film does have one area where it truly shines: the visuals. Despite some borderline campy costume design, Barsoom looks immaculate, whether it's in the dusty desert villages of the Tharks or the halls of Helium. Best of all are the winged airships that come closest to giving John Carter's world something to differentiate itself from, say, Tattooine. The visual effects are also remarkable, whether it's the scenery, the Tharks, or the massive, 6-legged white apes. So much money obviously went to the visuals, and the VFX work is strong enough that it doesn't feel plastic-y or weightless, but that key element of movie-making - the script - is so deeply flawed that even the visuals can't redeem it.

So, is John Carter a true disaster? From a financial perspective, probably. From an artistic perspective, not so much. It's not particularly good (even the actions sequences to little to get the heart racing), and some of the final act borders on train-wreck territory due to the rushed pacing, but it's missing that special spark that would make it a true failure as a film. Uninspired? Yes, visuals aside. Weak characters? Yup. But a worst-of-all-time level failure? Not quite. It's simply that controversies and expectations have played such a big part in how we've come to known John Carter, that it's hard to separate the financial performance from the quality of the filmmaking. That doesn't mean that you need to see it, or that you're missing anything. It just means that big flops don't entirely equal major artistic failings. Sometimes they just mean massively mediocre efforts with little to nothing worth writing home about.

Grade: C

Review: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" (2011)

"There is a mole, right at the top of the Circus." So goes one of the more straightforward lines of dialogue in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tomas Alfredson's chilly telling of the classic John Le Carre novel. Yet despite that seemingly clean cut line, nothing is quite as it seems in this tale of espionage and betrayal. Though previously adapted as an acclaimed miniseries starring Alec Guiness, Le Carre's novel has never made it to the big screen until now. It's quite the dense tale (despite not being terribly long), and to tackle it in 2 hours is quite the challenge. Despite the doubts, Alfredson and company manage to effectively condense the story without resorting to an over-reliance on exposition. The end result is a thinking person's espionage thriller, one more content to focus on the intricate and subtle, rather than the bombastic and sensationalistic.

On paper, the narrative is straightforward. An ex-spy named George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is recruited to help find a mole hidden somewhere in MI6. Yet how the story is told is where Tinker Tailor makes its beautiful, icy mark. Right from the beginning it's clear that Alfredson (whose last film was the excellent vampire film Let the Right One In (2008)) knows how to both build and maintain an atmosphere. Though there are moments that could have been executed to create an overblown sense of tension, Alfredson keeps things rather grounded. Moving with the story's back-and-forth jumps to gradually reveal information, the level of tension is quite low. Yet it's precisely this slow burn that allows the film to work. It is maintained non-stop throughout the 2 hour run time, which makes those more eventful moments create their own sense of suspense naturally.

So even though screenwriters Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor have to deal with quite a bit of information, they manage to convey it all through just the right amount of dialogue. So even though this means that there are scenes of telling, they never weigh the film down. And Mr. Alfredson, ever the capable visual stylist that he is, has plenty of room to show, which he and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema do marvelously. Along with production designer Maria Djurkovic, Alfredson and Hoytema have fashioned a dark and dingy world that comes to life, albeit from a distance. This isn't a film that wants to spell things out. It gives you just enough to make the connections, and then moves on. And thanks to Mr. Alfredson's eye and the excellent cast, that's never an issue.

For though Gary Oldman has been marked as the lead of the story, Tinker Tailor is very much an ensemble piece. But even though this means that the wealth of screen time is spread quite far, the performers all get their chance to make an impression, and no one misses. In addition to his eye for atmosphere, Alfredson knows how to maximize his performers' abilities, even when they have precious little screen time. Even Kathy Burke, as a former member of the MI6 staff, who has but one scene to really act as a character, makes a nice impression. And things only get better for the more prominent characters. There are no acting fireworks here, but that's not to say that there isn't impressive work. One of the film's best moments comes very early on. It's nothing more than a shot of Smiley after his name has been mentioned by Control (John Hurt), yet the movement on his face and in his eyes says quite a bit, even though we don't have a full understanding of what that is at this point.

For even though this is a film about finding a traitor, it is also a film about change. Oldman's Smiley is technically retired when he's called back into service, and the film makes subtle references to the group of MI6 members who have been pushed out and left behind. In one scene, Oldman and Burke sit together on a couch sharing a drink and jokingly lamenting the lack of sex in their lives. Meanwhile, an oblivious teenage couple on the other side of the room sits, passionately kissing each other. One pair has their lives and their purpose ahead of them, the other has already expired. It's a significant moment, though its importance doesn't become quite full until after, when those little moments have time to sink in and add to the richness of what could have been just another spy tale.

Let's not forget about the other members of the ensemble, however. Oldman may be first billed among the cast, but it's some of his cast members who are in contention for MVP. First is Colin Firth as the womanizing Bill Haydon, whose full connection to Smiley is only revealed quite late in the game. Rivaling him for best in show are Tom Hardy as a field agent fearing for his safety, and Mark Strong who - no spoilers - gets to deliver some beautiful expressions of haunted pain that reveal the actor to be worth much more than simply the go-to man for stock villain roles. Other roles, like those filled out by Toby Jones, Hurt, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Ciaran Hinds, also have their moments to shine, especially Jones in a scene where he blows up at a co-worker. Ultimately, however, no one is allowed to hog the spotlight, which is good because there are no weak links, and the ensemble as a whole is an understated marvel.

So even though Alfredson's approach may have a bit of Scandinavian chill to it, this is still an effective journey through the dark corridors of Cold War espionage. From the performances to the direction to the meticulous production values (excluding Alberto Iglesias' score, which is fine, but pales in comparison to his work on The Skin I Live In), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a first class, atmospheric tale of intrigue and deception. Before the lights fully dimmed and the film started, my friend and I were treated to a series of previews, each louder and more chaotic than the next. In the aftermath, I now appreciate Tinker Tailor even more, because it may be the last intelligent movie of its kind for quite a while. All the more reason to make the trip to the theater, then.

Grade: A-

Trailer: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" [music found!]

One of the much buzzed about, but little-exposed films of the year is Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, an adaptation of the John Le Carre novel of the same name. Boasting a dynamite all-male cast, promotional material has been scant until this trailer. Judging by the Youtube video's title, it looks like another trailer will hit soon for US audiences. That seems like a shame, though, seeing as this 80 second look already has me saying YES to everything. I love the aesthetic of Cold War Era thrillers, where suspense is built more on character interactions (and globe-trotting) that shoot outs or chases. There's also the director, Mr. Alfredson, whose last film was the excellent Let the Right One In (the Swedish original). Then there's that outstanding cast of talented actors. Barring that this is some surprise fiasco, Alfredson and co. can count me as sold on this one.

**Also: Special credit should go to the people who put this trailer together. The clips are well chosen, and let us in on the story without taking us through big sections of the plot. The editing and music are pretty fabulous as well, building a nice little knot of tension in a short amount of time. Bravo.