The Gambler is, in one word, absurd; but not in a bad way. The film begins with a palpable and unidealized scene between Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) and his dying father followed by a slow, uncomfortable funeral scene; after this, the film immediately transitions to an unexplained but funky, upbeat vibe. In a way, this mirrors the idea of his character; constantly developing in an unconventional, alluring, at times frustrating manner but not always without method or purpose.

Both an English professor and a high-stakes gambler, Bennett is $240,000 in debt and has seven days to pay it down. Can he? Yes. But in his mind, hitting rock bottom is the only way to start over. So he sprints to the depths, hurdling opportunity after opportunity to get himself out of the situation, while rock bottom remains just out of reach. He is addicted to putting himself into sticky situations – mostly at a disadvantage.

Mark Wahlberg does a fantastic job of conveying Bennett’s frustrated nihilism. Bennett’s most intriguing feature is that he is mostly talk, and the script expertly allows Wahlerg to talk around a subject. Bennett appears to care about nothing other than ensuring other people know their place. He tells hundreds of students they are not talented enough to write a book, and later chastises them in a long monologue about their lack of genuine interest, saying things like, “I pretend to teach and you pretend to learn.” But of course, when a student is on the phone as he’s talking about how he doesn’t actually teach and they don’t actually learn, he freaks out and doesn’t see the irony.

While Walhberg’s performance is entirely enjoyable, John Goodman as Frank, a loan shark, steals the show. As a practical businessman with a seemingly paternal interest in Bennett’s future, Goodman’s all-knowing demeanor is familiar for those avid fans of The Big Lebowski (despite the lack of Vietnam references and gun-wielding anger), and his scenes provide nearly as many laughs. Brie Larson as Amy Phillips, a student Bennett begins a relationship with is frustratingly underdeveloped despite attempting to be unrealistically motivating.

I have a hard time watching someone, even a film character, dodge positive options in favor of knowingly disastrous paths. The nihilistic approach, and the ending, just didn’t suit my taste. Still, this movie provided plenty of entertainment value to make up for the pain of character decline. You might walk out, as I did, thinking, “I’m not sure what I just watched.” But sometimes, that’s the best part.

Grade: B

The long-gestating film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway musical about intertwining fairy tales is finally here. After years of living in film development purgatory, some 20 or so years after it was first conceived, Into the Woods has arrived. And it is glorious.

First of all, everyone in the all-star cast is so spot-on and so perfectly cast. Meryl Streep is, of course, fantastic as the Witch, totally dominating every scene she’s in. James Corden and Emily Blunt as the Baker and his wife, respectively, anchor the whole film together with their energetic performances—and my goodness can Blunt sing. Her performance of “Moments in the Woods” blew me away. It’s hard to think of a more perfect Cinderella than Anna Kendrick, and her rendition of “On the Steps of the Palace” is probably my favorite song of the film. Even the two youngest members of the cast, Lilla Crawford as Red Riding Hood and Daniel Huttlestone as Jack, hold their own in the songs with the older cast members and really shine in their solos. And Chris Pine… my goodness, Chris Pine. His Prince Charming is as over-the-top and as ridiculous as he should be, chivalrous to a fault and a total narcissistic twit. And his version of “Agony” with Billy Magnussen’s Prince was PERFECT and easily one of my favorite scenes in a movie this year. Fans of the original won’t be complaining how a cast member ruined their favorite song in the show, because everyone in the cast is great and no one drops the ball.

I really have to commend director Rob Marshall for staying so faithful to the already fantastic original musical. Part of the allure of the source material is that we see these familiar fairy tale characters in the interstitial space between their stories: we never see Cinderella at the ball or Jack being chased by giants. And the stories we do see have a dark twist: the relationship between Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, for example, takes a creepily sexual tilt in the musical. The point is that a lot of the action takes place offstage, with the bulk of what we see onstage being characters from different stories interacting with each other and impacting the consequences of their tales. And, by and large, Into the Woods sticks by that idea.

Mercifully, Into the Woods is not special-effects heavy except when it needs to be. More often than not, scenes in the film feel like a very well done stage production: not drowning in special effects or an overabundance of color correction, but rather filmed in relatively small-scale points in the woods with long camera takes. The incredibly intricate stories and songs can speak for themselves. Marshall could easily have indulged himself and taken advantage of opportunities that film as a medium presents that would be more difficult in a stage production. And he does do that, but only a few times. The vast majority of what we see onscreen could easily have been done in a stage production, and the result is a film that still feels intimate and full of heart. There’s also a surprisingly small amount cut out from the source material. There are a few changes here and there, but nothing major, and those changes mostly deal with cutting songs or certain characters to make things more streamlined and movie-friendly. A lot of the weird, dark stuff—fans of the musical will know what I’m talking about—is still there. The film still reaches the same end result, however, with all the emotional oomph as before.

Into the Woods is fantastic and it’s the way a movie musical should be: faithful to the source material, taking advantage of new opportunities the medium presents, but not overly so. Fans of the original stage musical (like myself) will be excited to see the show come to life on the big screen, and newcomers will find plenty to enjoy, too.

Grade: A

A little girl named Annie with curly bright red hair stands up at the front of her social studies class giving a presentation on William Henry Harrison. When she’s finished reciting her paper, she does a little tap dance and smiles brightly at her class. All the kids roll their eyes as she sits back down. Another girl, Annie B., African-American but with an equally frizzy mop of hair, now walks to the front of the classroom to recite her project on Franklin D. Roosevelt. But her project is different: she gets the class to bang on their desks and clap in unison to illustrate how FDR helped the poor.

So begins Annie, the fourth film adaptation of the classic stage musical about a young orphan girl looking for her real parents. This one, however, promises to be a “contemporary reimagining” of the classic story, which essentially means bringing the story into the present day—where these young girls have access to smartphones and Twitter, where Miss Hannigan is a former frontwoman of a pop band, and where Daddy Warbucks (now called Will Stacks) is a cellphone company mogul running for mayor of New York City.

Okay, let’s start with the good first. Annie is actually decently well written. I laughed out loud at most of the jokes, and there’s rarely a bit that flat-out doesn’t work. Given director Will Gluck’s work on Easy A, this isn’t surprising. Cameron Diaz is delightfully ridiculous as Miss Hannigan, as she should be.

In every other aspect, Annie fails.

Annie is a musical, and the most important part of any musical is the music. What that means for the songs in the musical is one of two things: either 1) it’s essentially the same song but with a hip-hop beat underneath, as is the case with the big numbers like “Tomorrow” and “It’s Hard Knock Life;” or 2) the song is totally rewritten to sound like any other radio-friendly hit out today. “Little Girls” and “I Don’t Need Anything But You” are totally unrecognizable, save for the lyrics. There’s even a new song written by Sia that sounds like… well, a Sia song. Annie wouldn’t even be a success if they had kept the original music because the vocal performances are so wildly inconsistent. Quvenzhané Wallis is perfectly fine as Annie, but the syncing of her vocals to her on-screen Annie makes it painfully obvious she’s not really singing. Jamie Foxx goes all-out with his R&B riffs and it’s totally out of place. I don’t even remember how Cameron Diaz sounded, but it was probably fine, I guess. And Bobby Canavale… never have I heard such atrocious singing in a musical since Russell Crowe in Les Misérables. The backing music is also so horribly mixed that it sounds like a mushy blob of sound underneath the vocals. What I’m getting at is that the songs in Annie are bad. Really, really bad. And a musical with bad songs is a bad musical.

Annie feels like an unnecessary update to a perfectly fine musical. Most changes don’t work, some are downright cringe-worthy, and the vocal performances just aren’t there. If you really want to watch a musical about a spunky orphan girl wandering the streets of New York City looking for her parents, watch the original one.

Grade: C

I love The Lord of the Rings movies. They’re some of my all-time favorite films; they’re big, epic, and generally all-around awesome. I suppose that’s why I’ve been less than overjoyed by the new Hobbit trilogy. Although the films still possess the look and some of the feel of the earlier trilogy, they often seem to lack the heart that Frodo and the Fellowship always carried with them. The third and final installment, The Battle of the Five Armies, is in many ways a microcosm of both the positive and negative aspects of the Hobbit series; the good parts beautifully resurrect the spirit of The Lord of the Rings, which makes the failure of the rest of the film all the more painful.

For those who may have forgotten, The Desolation of Smaug ended with the titular dragon flying straight towards the human settlement of Esgaroth (Lake-town) in order to burn it to the ground after being woken by Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman). Our diminutive hero had been sent into Erebor, the Kingdom Under the Mountain, by dwarf company leader Thorin Oakenshield to retrieve the Arkenstone, the magical artifact that would confirm Thorin as King. The Battle of the Five Armies picks up immediately where Desolation left off, covering the final portions of the novel.

This is by far the most uneven film I’ve seen not only this year, but in recent memory. Parts of it are absolutely stunning and others are almost stunningly bad. One of the best examples of this tendency is the amazingly disparity of the quality of acting. Martin Freeman, for example, hits the nail on the head in every single scene. He channels the same mixture of honesty, earnestness and heart that Elijah Wood pioneered during his time walking in the hobbits’ furry feet. It truly feels like Bilbo can stand on equal footing with his successors, those who would be bowed to by kings. Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield is somewhere in the middle; for the most part he does a good job, but there are a few scenes where he gazes straight into the eyes of the audience in the same way Harry Styles does in a One Direction music video. Lee Pace as the elvish king Thranduil is all over the place, spouting a few lines that elicit nothing but hysterical laughter from the audience and make you wonder how much of the Shire’s Long-Bottom Weed he was smoking at the time.

The special effects fall into a similar problem. One of my primary complaints of the Hobbit films is that they over utilize CGI technology. See, one of the things that make the battles in The Lord of the Rings so epic is that the actors aren’t just hacking at empty air in front of a green screen. Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, and John Rhys-Davies were actually swinging swords and axes at real people, covered in scary make-up and costumes. It seemed, well, real. Although it’s not quite as bad as previous entries (the scene in Goblin-town from An Unexpected Journey comes to mind…) Peter Jackson has sadly continued this trend. Even though there are a few scenes featuring actual flesh-and-blood enemies, these brief moments only make us all the more aware of the illusory nature of the remaining scenes. The only part where the special effects were used to brilliant effect—when Smaug the Magnificent mercilessly burns Lake-town to the ground—is over far too soon. The gloriously evil dragon (voiced by the fantastic Benedict Cumberbatch) was one of my favorite part of the entire Hobbit series, and I was very disappointed that the dazzling fire-drake had such a brief role in this movie.

And finally, we come to the meat of the film: the Battle. It’s right in the title after all. Yes, the promised battle does take up a significant portion of the film, but it yet again stumbles into the same troubles as the other aspects of the film. This is probably where these scenes are the most painful to watch. There are a few moments that so evoke the feel and spirit of Jackson’s greater work that the rest of the movie could almost be forgiven. But not quite, because the rest is just so outlandish you can’t help but laugh at it. Legolas (Orlando Bloom), particularly, has apparently been completely exempted from the laws of physics. Granted, he did this occasionally in LOTR; I haven’t forgotten the scene where he surfs down a staircase on a shield while shooting orcs with arrows. But his scenes in Battle of the Five Armies wouldn’t look out of place in The Matrix. Much of it not even necessarily bad, per se, it’s just so ridiculous it completely breaks the suspension of disbelief and takes you out of the film.

These are all major problems. The remarkably uneven quality of the movie produces a bizarre phenomenon: something awesome will happen, something that reminds us of earlier cinematic glory, and the whole audience will happily cheer. But then a minute later something utterly absurd will happen and the whole theatre will burst into hysterical laughter. That’s not how a Tolkien film is supposed to be. A Tolkien film is supposed to be gloriously epic, making us cheer, and then laugh only when the designated comic relief occurs. We are not supposed to laugh at bad acting or poorly-choreographed fight scenes.

Maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe I’m unfairly comparing The Hobbit movies to one of the greatest film trilogies ever made. But how can I not, especially when the same director is at the helm of them both? Peter Jackson seems to have lost his touch, and for the most part he is unable to recapture that quality which made The Lord of the Rings so perfect. We can now only catch momentary glimpses of that essence, and that only serves to make what this film is and what it is not all the more obvious.

Grade (good parts): A

Grade (bad parts): C-

Average Grade: B-

I tend to enjoy films based on true stories, especially those heavily relying on the source material. Still, when I heard “Wild” meant to bring bestselling author Cheryl Strayed’s story of moving beyond a heroin addiction, destroyed marriage, and losing her mother to the big screen, I was apprehensive. I’m not sure if my unease was caused by the thought of seeing Reese Witherspoon as the recovering, dynamic protagonist, or if I was simply unexcited to see someone throw themselves into nature as a way to overcome their faults. Regardless of weighting, I wasn’t thrilled about either prospect, and that discontentedness carried through my viewing of the film. 

With absolutely no hiking experience, Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) decided the only way to recover from her series of poor choices and painful life experiences was to hike more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail on her own. Through intermittent flashbacks and voiceovers, we learn of her mother’s passing, her frequent infidelities that lead to her divorce, and her heroin addiction. 

"Wild" seemed to bring together a winning team: director Jean-Marc Vallée (“Dallas Buyers Club”), Academy Award-winner Reese Witherspoon (“Walk The Line”) and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Nick Hornby (“An Education”). I loved “Dallas Buyers Club,” and while I’m used to seeing Reese Witherspoon in static romantic comedy roles, I have no qualms with the actress herself. Rather, many parts of the film just felt painfully heavy-handed. At a particularly vulnerable moment, Witherspoon comes across a boy, his grandmother, and their pack llama (yes). The boy is maybe 6-8 years old, and is incredibly articulate; he even offers to sing her a song that perfectly relates to her current situation... I sighed. Witherspoon never connected with me; she often felt too aware that she was supposed to convey a character dealing with her demons, rather than seeming like she actually was doing so. A minor, but annoying, detail: she supposedly hiked miles and miles each day in often incredibly hot weather—yet she never once put her hair up. It was always down and almost too-perfectly disheveled, yet never wet as if she’d been sweating, which she should have been even in colder weather.

The light of the film was a fantastic performance from Cheryl’s mother, Bobbi (Academy Award nominee Laura Dern), whose struggles with an abusive husband and overwhelming care-taking instincts paired with an endlessly positive attitude all made her feel incredibly tangible. Witherspoon, however, felt like she learned how to be a recovering addict from a novel she didn’t finish.

I really, really wanted to like this movie. It had so much potential: I love the director, I love true stories, I love satisfactory endings. But the heavy-handed nature and my initial unease, which was never quelled, prevented me from being captivated. If you enjoy nature films or want to hike the PCT, maybe you’ll learn a helpful thing or two about REI return policies. I just didn't find it worth my time.

Grade: C

The Imitation Game is a long-overdue biopic about mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), who played an instrumental role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code during WWII. He was also gay, and was prosecuted by the British government for homosexual acts before committing suicide. He’s a tragic, incredibly important figure in world history, and his life deserves a proper treatment on film.

So is Cumberbatch up to the challenge? Of course he is, he’s Benedict Cumberbatch. I honestly was concerned he would basically be playing Sherlock in the 1940s, but his performance as Turing is much more than that. He stutters, and pauses in his patterns of speech because his mind is clearly working faster than his mouth can form the words to express what he’s thinking. Turing is a genius, and that comes across loud and clear in Cumberbatch’s performance without seeming overwrought or showy. In a year not nearly as crowded with amazing male performances as last year, he’s a lock for an Oscar nomination.

The large majority of the film focuses on Turing's efforts in cracking the Enigma code, and it breaks down the work he does so the audience can digest it. It admirably goes very deep into why Turing's method was so revolutionary. It details which methods were traditionally used in code-breaking, how exactly Turing’s machine worked, and how the machine and Turing’s intellect came together to finally crack the Enigma code. It also makes the potentially tedious and boring minutia of code-breaking very entertaining to watch. Turing’s personal life, however, takes a back seat. The film doesn’t skirt over Turing's homosexuality exactly, but a real examination of that part of him only makes up one extended scene near the end of the film. There is basically no mention of his larger contributions to modern computers either, save for a footnote at the end.

It’s impossible not to compare The Imitation Game to the other period-set British genius biopic to come out this year: The Theory of Everything, about the life of Stephen Hawking. The two films’ approach to their subjects differs, however. If The Theory of Everything shows us why Stephen hawking is to be admired for the obstacles he's overcome but not necessarily for the work he did—according to the film--The Imitation Game is the opposite. Alan Turing was a genius and an integral part of winning WWII, but the fact that he was gay and took his own life doesn't matter as much. At least, according to the film.

Those are relatively minor issues in an altogether very good movie. Anchored by a fantastic performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game is the way a biopic should be done: exciting, entertaining and very enlightening.

Grade: B+

“Destroying the world is only too easy. Rebuilding it is not so simple, however.”
-Kozo Fuyutsuki

Films at a glance:
Genre: Mecha, Action, Psychological
Creators: Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Mahiri Maeda
Studio: Khara
Length: 302 minutes total (ongoing)
Years: 2007, 2009, 2012 (ongoing)
Highlights: Second chances

Note: It is recommended that you first read our article on Neon Genesis Evangelion, or this article will make very little sense to you.

In 1995, Hideaki Anno (fresh out of rehabilitation due to problems during production of his previous project) began work on what started as a fairly ordinary mecha action anime series. Because of serious issues in both his personal and professional lives, the project slowly but surely transformed into something very different. The result was a brutally depressing deconstruction of giant robot shows filled to the brim with psychological exploration, religious symbolism, and philosophical questioning. It was known as Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it was a massive critical and commercial success.

A decade later, Anno decided to revisit Evangelion. The difference is that this time, he was respected in the entertainment and artistic communities, happily married, and filthy stinking rich. He decided to tell the story of Evangelion over again, but without the overwhelming depression and stress that he was dealing with during the creation of the original. Plus, it didn’t hurt that animation technology had increased substantially since the original’s release, and that he nabbed an absolutely massive budget to bring his magnum opus to the silver screen. And so begins the salvation of Ikari Shinji, Ayanami Rei, and Asuka Langley Shikinami as Anno gives them a second chance.

Rebuild of Evangelion is a tetralogy of films which retell the story of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The films’ English titles are Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance, and Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo. They are not simply remakes of the original series with better visuals, but rather an alternative take on the story. The first film follows the first third of the series quite closely, changing only slightly the plot and characterization. The second film follows the series in broad strokes, but changes both the plot and characters substantially. The third film is completely new and barely follows the series at all.

Now, while it is true that Anno’s notorious psychological problems are not coloring the films’ production anywhere near to the same levels as they did when he created NGE, the Rebuild films are by no means less dark than the series. If scenes that elicited horror in the original are still present, they are just as disturbing as in the original. If they were removed than chances are that Anno wrote a new scene that was even more disturbing. Rather like the progression of its parent series, the Rebuild films start out tame and (relatively) ordinary, but each one is progressively darker and more bizarre than the previous; many have argued that 3.0 is even bleaker than the original. However, they are not totally devoid of hope, and there are a number of hints scattered through the movies that the characters in Rebuild might actually be able to earn a happier ending than their earlier counterparts.

Neon Genesis Evangelion, for all of its glory, did have one major problem during its original production, which was a lack of funds. Further, it fell prey to the same fate which haunted numerous series created by Gainax, its original studio: running out of what little money it had before the series was finished. Naturally, due to its enormous success, Anno had no trouble securing a massive budget for the Rebuild films. The extra money and the ten plus years of technological improvement result in the new films being about a hundred steps up from the production values of NGE. This is especially notable in the action scenes, which now fully live up to Anno’s imagination in a way formerly impossible. Everything is these films is bigger, better, faster, and more colorful than it ever could have hoped to be 20 years ago.

Of course, this wouldn’t be Evangelion without the depression, contradictory symbolism, philosophical pondering and plain confusion that the first series has become so infamous for. For example, while Anno claims that Rebuild is his way of giving his characters a (metaphorical) second chance, there are a number of hints that it might be much more of a literal second chance for them. One of the new themes in Rebuild is an exploration of cyclical time and eternal recurrence, with one character in particular seemingly aware of and referencing the events of both NGE and the Rebuild films, despite them seemingly taking place in separate continuities. This idea is reinforced by the Japanese title for the upcoming final film; Evangelion: The New Movie:||. This can be interpreted in one of two ways: either as “||”, which is the musical notation for “end”, or as “ :||”, which is the musical notation for “end, then repeat”.

I highly recommend that you do not watch these films unless you have seen Neon Genesis Evangelion. The films assume you have and as such will spoil major and shocking plot twists of the original. Further, you are expected to be familiar with the original’s plot, as many of the details remain the same and Rebuild will not hand you all of them on a silver platter. This is the nature of remakes, but Rebuild of Evangelion is more than that. It is both an homage to the original with production values that Anno could only dream of originally, and an alternative take on the same characters in order to tell a new story. It is a second chance for Shinji, Rei, and Asuka, and if I took only one thing from my favorite anime series of all time, it’s that these children deserve a second chance. 

This article is part of the Guide to AnimeLand series. Recent entries have included The Place Promised in Our Early Days, The Animatrix, and Samurai Champloo.