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Eric Tatar on Baby Driver

6/29/2017

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​When you watch Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End, their most entertaining moments always come when the genre clichés they’re lampooning (respectively: zombie, cop and alien movies) mix with Wright’s innocently over-the-top humor, like a kid watching those kinds of movies got to jump into one and arrange it how he liked. None of those moments, however, and none of the ones in his extravagantly styled adaptation of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, would have worked without the kind of engaging and unique characters that launched Wright to British comedy stardom with his sitcom Spaced. With his new film Baby Driver, he’s succeeded in curving his comedic timing and styling into the fast-paced action genre while enhancing it with the film’s wide-reaching score, but his characters either feel undercooked (in the case of the main character and the waitress he falls for) or stuck inside the action stereotypes he dug into in Hot Fuzz, and with such a small-scale cast, the film’s best moments can’t escape their shallowness.
 
Baby (Ansel Elgort), the boy wonder driver who has been jacking cars since he could see over the dashboard, gets mixed up with a bad gang when he accidentally grabs a load of "merchandise" along with a car. To get square with Kevin Spacey's mob boss Doc, he's forced to be the getaway driver for every heist Doc sets up until his debt's paid off. Balancing the criminal side of his life with taking care of his elderly guardian and making time for his newfound love down at the diner (Lily James, whose look echoes Shelly from Twin Peaks right down to the hairstyle) is the guiding force of the film, weaved together by a pretty serious and uninteresting backstory for Baby (a car crash early in his life took his parents and most of his hearing) whose best result is allowing for the neat musical moments Wright sprinkles throughout the chases and more light-hearted scenes. If you go back to his initial version of the film’s idea in a music video he made with the Spaced cast and imagine the music extending into the ensuing escape, you should get a good idea of the film at its most enjoyable, when the tires are screeching and the gears are shifting in step with the score. Even these high points, though, still feel undercut by the superficial natures of the people in the car.
 
The key to the film’s appeal is it’s simplicity, and the scene of Baby sampling a conversation between two brutal criminals for an electronic track is a glimpse of how Wright might have extended the setup’s innocent charm to the rest of the story, but his decision to lead the characters down a more serious and complicated path leaves the premise and it’s execution at odds with each other. The idea definitely works for the music video format: we don’t have time to know who any of the robbers are or what their plan is, so we just get to see the getaway driver bop along to some music. For the film version, Wright took the opposite approach to April’s Free Fire, where the idea of a gun deal gone wrong would have been enjoyable in a 10 minute YouTube video but was stretched over an hour and a half, by scattering short, great scenes across a story that merely ties them together.
 
Grade: B-
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Eric Tatar on Free Fire

4/21/2017

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Ben Wheatley’s disinterest in moving his newest film, Free Fire, past it’s setup of a gun deal gone bad gives it the momentum to grip us moment to moment as a feature length shootout with a tight script, but leaves it’s events feeling shallow and, as soon as the credits roll, insubstantial. Simplicity is often a key part of an action movie’s success (throw in too much drama and we start wondering when we’ll get back to the good stuff), but slipping only the barest of story details into scenes of goons popping up from cover to either insult or shoot at each other means there’s no impact when a bullet finally finds it’s mark.
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With his aversion to telling a classic story, Wheatley makes sure to get as much mileage out of his characters as possible, as they’re tasked with balancing the mocking and gunfights that constitute the film’s atmosphere solely through their dynamic relationships. As 10 dealers and henchmen get involved in the exchange, the relationships a few of them shared before the deal quickly become overshadowed by a complex web of cheap rivalries and alliances that drive the shootout. With their back to back introductions and Wheatley’s clever use of the acoustics of the warehouse to constantly bleed their conversations into each other’s scenes, they’re able to carry the violence from its explosive start through its conclusion as one unit. Each of them are fairly one note by themselves, like Cillian Murphy’s “just here to make a deal, no funny business” Chris or Armie Hammer as the overly-chill moderator Ord, and only become interesting when paired alongside a group to banter with, but the explosive trickster Sharlto Copley creates in Vernon easily shines the brightest simply by being an exaggerated version of the classic dastardly cartoon villain whose eyes turn to huge dollar bill signs whenever a deal passes through their ears.

The greatest asset to Wheatley’s love of wit and gunfire, and the reason each shot and jeer fired in the battle is instantly gratifying, is the excellent sound design. The first time Chris tests out the merchandise is the moment the film sparks to life, as the butt of the rifle ramming against his shoulder sends vibrations through your seat while concrete explodes all around the theater. The kinetic energy of the shootouts all come from the ability of the audio to place you inside the chaos of the warehouse. This effect draws as much from the weapons locking, reloading and firing as from the characters’ voices, which are constantly building the warehouse around you. Two characters start a conversation at one end of the warehouse, and when we suddenly cut to another pair, we can hear the last pieces of their exchange bouncing off the walls in the distance. Then, there’s another voice shouting in the distance, and a moment later the camera’s right next to the yelling man. From the groups whispering their various plans behind each other’s backs at the start to Vernon yelling at every corner of the shootout, the film gleefully takes advantage of the opportunity for humor this layer of immersion adds. However, the film’s adherence to its immediate, wafer-thin pleasures means the precisely placed audio is only enhancing the “if you’re not shooting, you better be throwing a zinger” philosophy, rather than adding another element to a fully enjoyable package. Every aspect of the film is done in service of this idea, and while it makes for a laser focused blend of Wheatley’s favorites and a momentarily satisfying experience, it’s disappointing the best components weren’t given just a little more depth to work in.

Grade: C+
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Eric Tatar on La La Land

12/16/2016

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In his new feature La La Land, Damien Chazelle manages a dual affair between the music from his last film, Whiplash, and classic musical films like The Young Girls of Rochefort, putting them into the roaring improvisations that Sebastian the jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) can’t contain when told to play from a holiday set list and the studio lots lost in time that Mia the actress (Emma Stone) gazes at from her work across the street (streetlamps roll past painted backdrops of French sunsets while she taps out coffee orders on a giant iPad). Of course, Mia’s dream when she came to Los Angeles wasn’t to be a barista and Sebastian’s wasn’t to play the Christmas classics, so we’re taken through their persistent attempts at making it big to see whether or not Chazelle will end up giving them all they ever wanted.
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His script was originally about a younger pair of aspiring stars settling into LA for the first time, with planning set on casting Miles Teller and Emma Watson. After both dropped out for scheduling and money conflicts, Stone and Gosling were brought in and the characters were aged up significantly to fit the new leads. While a seemingly simple change, this older pairing allows the focus of the story to move from two starry-eyed newcomers’ dreams to examining the type of resilient people who are able to work for years while being denied at every turn, helped along solely by their all-consuming passion. The way these aspects of Mia and Sebastian come out is similar to how Michael Mann handles Jamie Foxx’s Max in Collateral, seemingly on the verge of a breakthrough with saving up money as a cab driver to start his own luxury limo company until Tom Cruise asks him how long he’s been at it. The way his simple reply of “twelve years” can fill our imagination with an endless cycle of night shifts in pursuit of a fading dream is akin to when Mia talks about her six years looking for a role to no avail or when Sebastian’s sister berates him for hanging onto his collections of instruments and records in his run-down apartment in hopes of them eventually filling his jazz club. Naturally, those shared years of failure eventually draw them together, and from here, Chazelle’s liberal reimagining of his inspirations’ love stories combined with the abilities of Stone and Gosling to blend Mia and Sebastian’s lives together without losing their individual personalities define much of the movie’s charm. This marks the pair’s third film acting together as a couple, and by now they have it down to a science, skirting just far enough from the edge of cheesiness to make their kisses and conflicts seem believable without sacrificing the loveable Hollywood schmaltz from those bygone pictures the movie constantly draws from.

As a side effect of how well executed and naturally engaging the duo’s relationship is, the musical aspect of the film occasionally feels like it belongs in another, more theatrical story. There are only six songs with singing spaced throughout the film’s two hours, and the first two come within the opening ten minutes. These are also the weakest of the bunch, placed nearly back to back with little room for the story to give them context as well as visually being overblown set pieces that are easy to feel lost in when compared to the simplicity of the later numbers. Those songs, aside from an exuberant concert Sebastian performs with his musician classmate Keith’s (John Legend) pop-jazz band, act as extensions of Mia and Sebastian’s lives together and are much more intimate, with the duo tap dancing beside a skyline view or singing side by side on a piano bench, but the feeling that each act more as momentary diversions from the main story than scenes with any impact remains until the final two numbers. 

I wouldn’t want to spoil the second-to-last song beyond saying it’s the first that’s both a great musical and story scene, while the finale, playing out in a much more visually expansive style than Whiplash’s intense drummer-conductor faceoff, creates the movie’s most personal moment by using every previous piece of the story in a style that justifies all of their inclusions. While the unevenness of some of those pieces drags the focus out past Mia and Sebastian and so away from the chief strength of the film, the overarching lightness of the story means the movie never becomes unpleasant. Going in knowing as little as possible about the exact events can definitely help you appreciate their conclusion more (I haven’t revealed anything too important here, and if you avoid the trailers like I managed to, you should be alright), and getting to experience the classic-film chemistry of the two leads along with the finely crafted music and choreography allows La La Land to be enjoyed as a journey about managing dreams and emotions as easily as for its sensory pleasures.

Grade: A-
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Eric Tatar on The Accountant

10/14/2016

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Usually, the “needlessly complicated” in needlessly complicated action movies comes from them feeling like the result of the writer throwing a bunch of characters and scenarios into a running blender. Stringing a story together with childhood flashbacks and sudden revelations, their pacing becomes so muddled that there’s nothing definite for us to hold onto as we’re whisked from foreign vacation spots to high-tech mansions to cities whose names pop up in the corner of the screen. While those same pieces make up the strange beast that is The Accountant, instead of coming out as pure sludge, the slow dribble of action and thinly spread layers of characterization over its first half combined with an onslaught of bodies and twists going into the climax create a deliberately portioned but only occasionally interesting smoothie. 

Nothing hampers the movie and contributes to its lethargic start more than Ben Affleck’s Chris Wolff, a mathematically brilliant accountant whose autism pushes him away from everyone else in his world as well as from any interesting developments. Having to play an underdeveloped character shouldn’t count against Affleck, but his forgettable presence is especially noticeable alongside the solid performances of the remaining cast, especially Jon Bernthal, who acts as the rowdy antithesis to Chris’ withdrawn assassin, and JK Simmons as the seasoned cop leading the investigation after him. Working at the robotic prosthetics company where Chris has been hired to find any faults in their records, Anna Kendrick’s upbeat Dana provides a good potential foil for him to show us more about his past and a much needed shot in the arm for the so-far tedious pace, but their conversations quickly end up being the most lackluster part of the film and exacerbate the main issue that Gavin O’Connor keeps running into: focusing on a character who doesn’t like to talk to anyone means everything we need to know about him is forced to come from a flashback, slowing the story down even further.

Most of these problems don’t surface in the second half of the film, but neither do many of the characters, including Dana, and after the initial relief of watching some brutally intimate fistfights (carried over from O’Connor’s exhilarating cage matches in Warrior), the story begins to feel like the finale of a premium TV crime series we’re being shown as the pilot. What could have been a fulfilling redemption and reunion with some context outside of hurried flashbacks ends up being another detriment to the rest of the film, spreading the characters out further across another direction the plot should have stuck with as the main one. 

The unconventional protagonist of Chris makes for an interesting concept, especially for a $44 million Hollywood thriller, and could have really carried a more compressed film that shaved away a storyline here and there, so while The Accountant goes down relatively easy as it is, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it could have been really refreshing had it only been mixed a bit better.

Grade: C-
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Eric Tatar on Green Room

4/22/2016

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Shifting between campy grisliness and gruesome brutality without ever dipping far enough into either to be interesting, Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room slumps beneath its indecisive nature. Saulnier brings back the precise cinematography of his previous film, Blue Ruin, to coat the story of a punk band stumbling across a violent backroom misunderstanding with the hazy atmosphere that made Blue Ruin’s mysteries engaging, but digging into the drawn-out conflict between a pair of families benefits a lot more from meditative camera movements than the immediacy of a contained club brawl. Once machetes start slicing into bodies, the lingering shots of their outturned organs give Green Room a feeling of cruel sobriety.

Saulnier seems aware of how unpleasant these scenes can get, but his attempt to balance out their sour demeanor by pumping them full of hokey dialogue makes the moments of levity undermine the story’s tension. Being held hostage in a grimy venue filled with skinheads and fresh corpses should be enough to stiffen the most hardened members of the band, so it’s hard to feel a sense of danger when the captives are cracking jokes seconds after their friend has been executed in front of them. If Saulnier had found ways to give any of these characters some dramatic weight past their witty remarks, his liberal disposal of them as the band works their way towards an escape could have been an exhilarating fight for survival, but he seems to regard each one as a collection of limbs to be hacked off or blown away.

Not that the rough acting gives us any reason to believe otherwise, with only a few characters being brought past screaming whenever a weapon flashes into view or wandering around solemnly. Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, and Joe Cole comprise the band and, despite being given the most screen time, are indistinguishable past their temperaments ranging from volatility to cowering frailness, making the progressive thinning of their group feel like the dreary procession of assorted deaths found in the most indulgent horror movies. The majority of the cast grind through the film in a similar manner; Imogen Poots is practically apathetic despite being a young skinhead thrust into the fight alongside the band after her friend is murdered and Patrick Stewart seems uninterested in anything besides getting the growing pile of bodies in his club swept out the door.

Mark Webber and Macon Blair create the most interesting characters in the movie as two skinheads defecting from the group for different reasons, but they’re sidelined until the climax. Their clunky additions to the story and the inconsistent tone of the film give the impression that Saulnier may not have fully figured out what experience he wants us to have, with him showcasing how gratuitously he can rip apart some kids to cover up any signs of the movie’s dissonance. Green Room feels like a step backwards from Blue Ruin, forgetting the kind of dense world that pulled us into that film’s story and leaving little reason for us to pry into its shallow and confused one.

Grade: C
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Eric Tatar interviews Robert Eggers and Anya Taylor-Joy on The Witch

2/24/2016

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I was able to ask a few questions to the director of The Witch, Robert Eggers, as well as the film’s lead actress, Anya Taylor-Joy, during a roundtable discussion at the Eliot Hotel last Thursday, and while the other two reporters alongside me had much more to say, I got the answers I was interested in, which you can find below. ​
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Eric: Something I noticed about the film in the rest of the scenes that were outside the horror parts is that it seems kind of like a dramatic play. Knowing your background in Shakespeare, were you at all influenced by the play structure and theatre pieces?
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Robert: You’re not the first person to ask that question, but very few have. It certainly was in my intention, so the films that I like, such as Bergman and Drier who are so close to my heart, are a big part of this film. Bergman comes from the theatre, so his films are very play-like, and most of Drier’s films, while he didn’t direct theatre, are adaptations of plays. So certainly there are these movements that feel like the best part of silent cinema since there’s non-diegetic sound and things are moving in a way that you could never do on a stage, and those parts are certainly what our DP Jarin [Blaschke] prefers, but there are these scenes that tend to play themselves out like a full on “scene”.

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Anya: Sorry to jump on in, but thank you for asking that because, not from the play point of view but from the non-horror aspect, Ralph [Ineson], Kate [Dickie] and I would consistently be like, “So I know we’re making a horror movie…” but since we’re not on set seeing these horrible things, I mean, I went on set a few times just because I was curious, but we just felt like we were making this horrifying story of this family’s breakdown, due to isolation, fear, paranoia, all these things, that’s where we were emotionally.

Eric: You obviously put a ton of research, time and effort into making the movie; when you were making it were you ever afraid it would be marginalized as just a horror film, just another entry into that genre?

Robert: I mean, I hope it’s marginalized as a horror film because I wanted people to see it. I had such a hard time getting anyone to make any feature I had written and so it seemed to me in the climate at the time, and I think it’s still true now, it was going to be much easier for me to get a film financed and seen if I could make a personal film that was within a genre.

You can read Eric's full review of The Witch here.
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Eric Tatar on The Witch

2/19/2016

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Like the best directors in the horror genre, Robert Eggers made sure his debut was a great movie before concerning himself with making it scary. His exploration of how religion, isolation, and sexual repression intertwine when pushed to their limits feels out of place alongside films that emphasis scares over their characters; here the dread works itself out from the straining relationships of a displaced family.

That family, settling on a stretch of bare farmland after being banished from their New World town for unexplained reasons, typifies the fears of the 17th century settlers; as strangers in America, the only common link from their past lives in England becomes their faith. With five children and a poor harvest, however, the parents, played by Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie, have to contend with the fact that belief isn’t going to help them survive, and before they can reaffirm their values, some “thing” springs out of the woods encircling them and snatches their newborn. With his decision to show us the grisly fate of the child along with the mass of contorted flesh gnawing upon it, Eggers propels his story past the stumbling blocks that many other monster films struggle over; in addition to being immediately terrified, we know that there is an actual evil here. No skirting around bushes or strange noises; the witch is real and bloodthirsty.

After this intense introduction, Eggers uses his impeccable attention to detail, acquired through his past work as a production designer, to bring out the character of the family through a controlled atmosphere of constantly imminent betrayal, a wavering unity that his fearless cast takes full advantage of. Ineson’s William is obsessed with protecting his family to the point of delusion, running outside to angrily smash logs every time he loses a dispute in a kind of grizzled pout session, while his wife, a fearsomely severe creature that Dickie makes nearly as distressing to be around as the witch, prefers to throw accusations towards her children at the flip of a hat for a grasp at some resolution in her increasingly hostile homestead. Interfering with the strict narrative of moral worship they’ve spun their lives around are their two oldest children; Harvey Scrimshaw plays Caleb, a boy at the start of puberty whose maturation and subsequent newfound desires clash against his ingrained principles, conveying his inward confusion through a scrunched brow alongside eyes pleading for understanding, while Thomasin, whose flirtation between well-meaning innocence and playful roguishness Anya Taylor-Joy captures with a range of pleasant to devilish manners, threatens to upset their carefully laid balance as she finishes her growth into womanhood.

Eggers’ fascination with the time period and how this familial chemistry was born from it comes through in every aspect of the production. The bleak color grading compresses each prayer for absolution along with the wilting tracts of the farm, and his decision to solely use flowery Puritan dialogue, while initially distancing, compounds the parent’s piety as tensions intensify; they’re unable to lash out with slews of curses in fear of enraging God, leading to the captivating circumstances of kinsfolk disputing with Old English as possessed children reel in the background. That balance between moments of intense visual horror and dramatic confrontations, along with Eggers’ ability to maintain the air of desperation through both, gives The Witch its horrifying presence; rather than turning away for a second to hide from a monster slipping past, you’d have to shut your eyes for the film’s entirety to escape the fear permeating each precise step Eggers and his cast take.
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Grade: B+
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Eric Tatar's Top Ten Films of 2015

2/10/2016

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The pleasure of watching a great movie comes from the dedication of the people behind it, with legions of crew members working to provide the culmination of years of dedication to a story they believe is worth telling. When you can feel their effort and passion wrapped into each moment and the work of their hands on every frame, you have found the force that allows filmmaking to be such a powerful means of expression. The tireless work of those who love films will carry the medium on and continue astounding the audience with their ambition and drive, those same qualities that brought us these ten great movies from 2015 and left me excited for this year’s similarly enthusiastic productions.

10. The Peanuts Movie

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Directed by: Steve Martino
Written by: Bryan Schulz, Craig Schulz, Cornelius Uliano
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I grew up reading a lot of Peanuts comics and loving the simple American town life that Charles Schulz was able to capture with Charlie Brown and his adventures, and this new adaptation nails that same timeless nature; besides a few pop songs, Steve Martino doesn’t concern himself with modernizing the series and instead focuses on appealing to the same childlike wonder of the best animated films. Evoking all the great Peanuts holiday specials, the script was written without much interest in finding new material so if you’ve disliked everything Peanuts related you’ve ever seen, there’s nothing here to make you start liking it’s innocent brand of humor, but being able to see Lucy offer advice from her psychiatric stand and Snoopy chase down the Red Baron with the fidelity of modern animation (despite the new 3D models, everyone moves in the classic sideways Sunday strip style) makes for a greatly nostalgia movie that never feels disingenuous.

You can read Carter Sigl's full review of The Peanuts Movie here.

9. Bone Tomahawk

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Directed by: S. Craig Zahler
Written by: S. Craig Zahler
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Combining grotesquely violent horror into a traditional Western formula without shirking the pistol spinning and prideful banter, this debut feature from a former novelist brings together the best aspects from each genre into an adventure you could imagine a weathered cowboy telling his inexperienced riding companion through a long stretch of empty plains. S. Craig Zahler doubles down on the madness afforded from the classic setup of the mysterious stranger’s arrival in a quiet town, with the film’s climax having his four would-be rescuers enduring the brutal wrath of a cannibalistic Native American tribe, while the lingering pace of their journey maintains all the humbling beauty of an expansive and open country.

8. The End of the Tour

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Directed by: James Ponsoldt
Written by: Donald Margulies
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It’s hard to overstate the accuracy of David Foster Wallace’s predictive writing on modern youth culture; his deconstructions of irony, postmodernism, and the impact of excessive television exposure are easily understood when looking at any college campus or gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood. While his troubled personal life and constant battle with depression are well documented, the book tour following the release of his critical sensation, Infinite Jest, only found a narrative fourteen years later when the Rolling Stone reporter, David Lipsky, sent to accompany him on the chilly Midwest road trip finally published his account of it with his own novel, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. The End of the Tour covers both these periods, switching between a 2010 Lipsky dealing with the news of Wallace’s suicide and his memories of their time together in Illinois. With Jesse Eisenberg as the struggling reporter/novelist and Jason Segel as the sudden media darling, the majority of the film is comprised of their conversations and clashes about writing and validation, and having the dialogue pulled directly from both their recorded and untaped dialogues (while the film is adapted from Lipsky’s book, he shared his unpublished material with Donald Margulies) lends each exchange a richness and authenticity, as does the impeccable work of Segel. Eisenberg plays his role of the occasionally impudent observer similarly well, and often finds his ideologies too easily shrugged away by a shy, amicable man who is far more successful than he may ever be, creating a dynamic that enrages and fascinates him while guiding us through this supremely engaging movie.

You can read Mary Tobin's full review of The End of the Tour here.

7. The Lobster

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Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Written by: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
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By imbuing a commentary on contemporary relationship expectations with surreal humor and a distinct dystopian sci-fi world, Yorgos Lanthimos’ story of a society where single people are secluded in a far-away hotel and given 45 days to find a partner is at turns horrifying, romantic, funny and uncomfortably deadpan, with each element solidifying his eccentric ideas as ones we should be listening to. For all its bizarre characters and absurd plot (if you’re unable to find a partner before your time at the hotel is up, you get turned into an animal of your choice), Lanthimos’ allegory strikes decidedly close to the modern 20-something year old’s home while the ridiculous physical comedy and purposefully stilted line-delivery managed by the fantastic cast makes what could have been a primarily depressing movie endearing.

6. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

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Directed by: David Zellner
Written by: David Zellner, Nathan Zellner
IMDB Page

In their adaptation of an urban legend surrounding the death of a Japanese woman in Fargo, North Dakota and her supposed fascination with the suitcase of cash buried beneath its snow banks in the 1996 Coen brothers’ film, David and Nathan Zellner dream up an adventure reminiscent of the titular Kumiko’s obsession, filled with offbeat characters while convincing us of the legitimate drama in its madcap story. The great composition and dialogue make the film a treat to watch and listen to while the stubbornness and desperate belief Rinko Kikuchi brings to Kumiko, the qualities that lift her out of the dreary office job she begins the film stuck in, have us cheering her on in spite of the obvious futility of her quest. Fargo’s resurgence with its recent FX television series taking cues from the mix of black comedy and crime drama that made it so enjoyable has shown why the film has become such a classic in a relatively short time, and the mesmerizing heart of Kumiko’s story epitomizes its influence.

You can read Brandon Isaacson's review of Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter here. 

5. Shaun the Sheep

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Directed by: Mark Burton, Richard Starzack
Written by: Mark Burton, Richard Starzack
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With their unique claymation style and charmingly off-kilter humor, Aardman Animations (known for Chicken Run and the Wallace and Gromit shorts along with their accompanying movie) have constantly given young audiences great alternatives to those kids films whose fervent attempts at appealing to their perceived demographic leaves them feeling soulless and hollow. In the same vein as any truly great animation, Shaun the Sheep finds that magical delightfulness able to entrance anyone watching, regardless of their age, as its dialogue-free construction leaves room for the humans and sheep to coexist without a constant need for shifting languages as well as allowing for a constant stream of fantastic visual gags. Valuing the regularly echoed importance of family and memories without pretense, the movie easily succeeds in its eagerness to provide pure entertainment.

You can read Anu Gulati's full review of Shaun the Sheep here.

4. 45 Years

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Directed by: Andrew Haigh
Written by: Andrew Haigh, David Constantine
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The immediate scale of time presented by the marriage of this film is staggering; being 19 years old, it’s hard for me to imagine living another two lifetimes where I wake up to the same person every day. How quickly those decades of love can sour, the situation Charlotte Rampling’s Kate finds herself in the week before her 45th anniversary, is terrifying, and the weight of her performance as a woman forced to consider that her lifelong dedication and trust may have been misplaced allows her strained smiles to inflect the immense heartache inside her. The naturally understated quality of an elderly couple’s anniversary planning gives the decay of their relationship the slow burn it requires, letting us feel the endless amount of time preceding it being lost.

3. Spotlight

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Directed by: Tom McCarthy
Written by: Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer
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Assured and deftly composed, Tom McCarthy and his sublime ensemble create a Boston permeated with dread in their depiction of the investigation that lead to the 2002 Globe report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, an institution whose omnipresence is felt constantly in real life and here becomes the source of misery in every victim’s divulgence. In its concern with unseen scope, Spotlight presents the vastness of the epidemic in waves, with each new realization of its severity by the team of reporters working the story forcing the increasingly worrying question onto us and them: how did we let this happen for so long? The impeccable writing allows each scene of the film to remind us of this awful truth while remaining wholly thrilling.

You can read Arjun Agarwal's full review of Spotlight here.

2. World of Tomorrow

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Directed by: Don Hertzfeldt
Written by: Don Hertzfeldt
IMDB Page

A poignant impression of the world our constantly advancing technology may create for us, Don Hertzfeldt’s new short recalls the dry humor of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to supplement the fears of a modern paradigm shift towards the digital revolution and away from the intricacies of humanity that Hertzfeldt feels is already underway; his future sees the creation of the “outernet,” whose safe infinity lonely people easily disappear into, and viewscreens able to show the memories of any generation that soon become filled with displays of people staring back at them. With Hertzfeldt mixing together a wealth of science fiction narratives, each scene of the film becomes a newly imaginative look at his creations and the innocent confusion with their purpose by Emily, the young girl brought forward in time by her 227 year old clone. For all her successor’s grandstanding on the purpose of living, it’s Emily’s easy laughter that gives us the film’s ultimately optimistic message. In addition to its Academy Award nomination and all the acclaim heaped upon it online, the personal testament I can give for the film came when the friend I showed it to over Thanksgiving break told me she was still thinking about how good it was at Christmas.

1. Knight of Cups

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Directed by: Terrence Malick
Written by: Terrence Malick
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I believe that every other film on this list, even if they don’t appeal to what you personally like, can be appreciated for their attempts at telling great stories. The skill and craftsmanship that produced each one deserve to be praised and I’m sure many people will thoroughly enjoy them just as I did, so despite knowing that the qualities of my personal favorite, the swirling narrative and meditative nature of a man searching for human connection, that I found enrapturing are sure to be bewilderments to anyone looking for a more traditionally designed film, I really encourage you to give this movie a try. In looking at a Los Angeles filled with opulence but lacking virtue, Terrence Malick creates so many stories that another director may have been content to bring into focus as the main subject but that he flows through each other, sliding moments together into expressions of a life dissuaded by breathtaking excess in its search for fulfillment. His exploration of whether, within this world consumed by such extravagance that everything becomes defined by its riches, pursuing love has become passé and futile is a poetic approach to an issue of the heart versus reality, much like his last two films, and becomes an evocative lesson in remembering where our values should lie.
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Eric Tatar on Youth

12/11/2015

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I went through the same range of reactions watching Youth as when I saw Paolo Sorrentino’s last film, The Great Beauty; there were times that I was amazed at how well every aspect of the film came together and other moments where I sunk down in my seat, begging for a new scene to end whatever fresh disappointment I was enduring. The Great Beauty was filled with scenes of such energy that they were almost enough to distract from the ineptly written characters and strange pacing. Youth has a similar dichotomy, but it’s strength lies in it’s characters and the calmer moments they spend with each other while the more emotionally incessant scenes come off as ridiculous.

Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel play lifelong friends who have both been fortunate enough to find success in their careers: Caine’s Frank Bellinger is a revered composer intent on staying retired while Keitel’s Mick Boyle is a writer collaborating with a young team to finish his twenty-first film. Their fame allows them to vacation in the lap of luxury, spending their twilight years at a grand Swiss resort buried between the Alps. Their relaxation is interrupted when Frank gets pestered by the Queen of England’s lackies to perform his pieces again. His daughter, played by Rachel Weisz, encounters trouble as well when her husband, Mick’s son, leaves her for a pop star. In one of the film’s more successful scenes, Mick declares this new partner “the most insignificant woman on the face of the planet,” and it’s unclear whether he’s insulted by his son’s separation or if he’s recognizing an impression of his own past disappointments. From there, Mick has problems finding an ending to his script and guaranteeing the involvement of his lead actress (Jane Fonda, whose short time on screen is among the best in the film). As the characters’ issues continue to pile up, the resort stays in constant motion around them: new musicians, a few of them real life artists, perform on a rotating open-air stage each night, saunas and bathhouses are continually filled and emptied of elderly occupants, and Mick amasses a debt taking bets with Frank on whether a couple will ever talk at dinner.

The friendship between Frank and Mick is the lifeblood of the film and what carries the story through it’s rougher moments. Caine and Keitel make the relationship work; just like the characters they’re portraying, they’ve both lead artistic lives and have their respectable achievements behind them. The numerous scenes of the pair strolling through the resort grounds reminiscing on their past adventures come off as outings they may already go on once the lights and cameras are gone. Paul Dano’s role as an actor recognized for his single superhero role while his more serious work remains forgotten is reminiscent of 2013’s Birdman, although it’s much less intense: Dano’s Jimmy Tree is more annoyed than furious. It’s hard for the characters to stay angry for very long when their days are wrapped in the beauty of the mountains.

There are moments to love in the film: Frank’s orchestration of a field of grazing cows produces a beautiful bell symphony, and Mick daydreams of being visited by his former leading ladies on a rolling hillside (despite his fading memory, he never forgets anything he’s shot). The credit for these scenes goes to Luca Bigazzi, who Sorrentino was smart enough to utilize again after his cinematography made The Great Beauty such a pleasure to look at. Unfortunately, Sorrentino has also retained his awkward implementation of special effects; in The Great Beauty, CG flamingos and a fake giraffe left scenes aiming for emotional resonance feeling hollow and Youth features a similarly misused green screen shot that disrupts any momentum the film’s final minutes had. And the ending is where Youth makes its biggest misstep: a story concerned with meditations on the relationship between love and time confuses itself by suddenly thrusting emotional climaxes into the lives of Frank and Mick. It’s difficult to feel the weight of the pair’s actions when the rest of the movie has them ogling supermodels and trying to figure out if one of them slept with a mutual crush.

While The Great Beauty was steeped in cynicism, Youth is more interested in reflection. It’s characters are separated from the stress of the world and left to muse on how they’ve spent their time finding a place in it. Sometimes they look back with regret, but more often their memory is tinged with humor. Ultimately, Youth is frustrating because the moments that are so easily enjoyable are dragged down by plodding scenes that hamper whatever good will you held, but the film is still worth watching for those flashes of brilliance. This is a movie to watch when you’ve extinguished your backlog of conventionally good films and want to see an unevenly great one. The best recommendation I can give to Youth is that the worst parts are forgettable, so you’ll only remember the good things.

Grade: C+
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Here's Some Movies (Week Five) by Eric Tatar

12/8/2015

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It’s a shame that animation, a style that avoids many of the problems traditional filmmaking has to grapple with, is known as the medium primarily used for kid’s films. What’s more unfortunate is that Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks (whose films form this public notion of animation) have transitioned into using CGI for all their releases, limiting what can be accomplished with the format’s immense capacity for creative storytelling. With this week’s list, I’m recommending films whose unique designs showcase the diversity animation holds for telling stories visually. I’m not trying to paint the style these studios use as being creatively bankrupt (most of their classics were done using similar technology, and I love those now as much as I did growing up), but this recent trend has left me worried that someday we’ll become so accustomed to one kind of animation that all the interesting experimentation in the genre will fizzle out. Before we get to that point, watch these five films and enjoy their different ideas for what animation can be. They might not all be instantly appealing, but give them a chance: maybe you’ll end up being as captivated by them as I was.

It's Such a Beautiful Day

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Directed by: Don Hertzfeldt
Written by: Don Hertzfeldt
Released in: 2012
IMDB Page

I always drew little scenes of stickmen interaction in my notebook’s margins during the more boring classes of my middle school career, so seeing Don Hertzfeldt take what was a fairly easy way to distract myself from learning anything and build an extraordinarily compelling story of existentialism and acceptance from it was pretty amazing on my first watch. The second time I saw it, I noticed how many different ways he was able to take the simple animation and include a small new aspect that would form the scene to come: blues and reds setting the mood for a melancholic or uplifting moment, pinpricks of light gliding over a sleeping head, burning film strips tightening the frame’s grip on a cowering figure. The film is a feature length version of Hertzfeldt’s last three shorts, each of which he shot with a 35mm camera and through clever trickery inserted all these extra elements. Every section is by turns introspective, witty, and saddening, and it’s the meeting of the three that makes everything work so well; the film’s questions aren’t thrown at us but spread through the often intersecting humor and hopelessness of a simple line drawing, with moments spent examining both the ridiculousness and fragility of his existence.

Mary and Max

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Directed by: Adam Elliot
Written by: Adam Elliot
Released in: 2009
IMDB Page

Done in the claymation style of the Aardman classic Wallace and Gromit (and this year’s awesome Shaun the Sheep) known for it’s grueling production time, Mary and Max is the story of two pen pals drawn together by chance: one an 8 year old Australian girl from a suburban family, the other an obese 44 year old New Yorker living alone with his mental health issues. Neither of them seem to be able to find a place in the world, and as their respective social and mental problems grow, their letters becomes the only way they can express themselves. The heart of the film lies in this correspondence and the relationship that builds from it, but it isn’t some unrealistic perfect escape from their dreary lives: they get angry with each other, their words become filled with spite, and their exchanges dry up. The quality of the film lies in how much it makes us want them to find happiness and remain friends. It does get very heavy and depressing, especially coming up to the finale, but that’s what makes it a great example of the emotions claymation is able to convey when it’s not being used for more lighthearted stories.

Redline

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Directed by: Takeshi Koike
Written by: Katsuhito Ishii, Yoji Enokido, Yoshiki Sakurai
Released in: 2009
IMDB Page

Seeing contemporary animated films awkwardly incorporate CGI into their story due to budget and time constraints is always disappointing. The magical quality of hand animation, that ability to create a sense of movement which appears hyper-real, gets muddled by glossy polygons and jerky models. Redline is lucky enough to escape these failings thanks to its unique position of having a seven year development period which gave the film’s studio, Madhouse, the space needed to fully achieve its vision of a high speed alien-globetrotting race. The cars move so smoothly that it’s easy to miss how good the characters look: they’re constantly expressive, and the smallest details of their conversations are full of motion. While the story of a disgraced driver set on finally winning the glory he always falls short of is simple and nothing new, it’s only there to lay the tracks for the roller coaster of a film speeding over it. As our boy JP’s pompadour stretches further in front of him with each hit of boost jammed into the engine, we’re eager to find out the same thing he is: how much faster can we go?
This movie was also reviewed as part of Carter Sigl's Guide to Animeland.

A Scanner Darkly

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Directed by: Richard Linklater
Written by: Richard Linklater, Phillip K. Dick
Released in: 2006
IMDB Page

Made with the rotoscoping technique that recalls graphic novels and cel shaded art, Richard Linklater’s take on the Phillip K. Dick novel of the same name looks at how a widespread drug addiction would be perceived through the eyes of an undercover cop inching closer to solely becoming a user. Linklater already had experience using rotoscoping for his film Waking Life, with the style’s incorporation there aiming to create a dreamy aura for the main character to wander through. Here it adds another level to the surreal mood made up of drug trips, hallucinations, and swirling body projections. It’s definitely the hardest visual style to get used to on this list, since you’re able to recognize Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Keanu Reeves even as they’re hidden behind shifting paintings, creating an initial disconnect that might prevent you from connecting with their characters at all. Once you attune yourself to the film’s bizarre wavelength, though, the crisp dialogue and compelling acting from Reeves will keep you held there for what becomes a beautiful story, not just visually but in it’s final message as well.

The Secret of Kells

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Directed by: Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey
Written by: Tomm Moore, Fabrice Ziolkowski
Released in: 2009
IMDB Page

A beautiful interpretation of Irish folklore told with the aesthetic of a child’s storybook, the kaleidoscopic geometry of The Secret of Kells makes its flat planes of chilled stone and bright forest ground feel like a return to the ideals of traditional animation while embracing contemporary stylings. Brendan, a young boy living at the remote monastery of Kells, is enthralled by the tales he hears of an unfinished book whose completion will bring peace and understanding to the troubled world of Vikings his people hide from. When it’s creator brings the fabled book to the abbey and asks Brendan to find him a few berries from the surrounding forest to be made into ink, the breathtaking flurry of colors and shapes morphing into trees, flowers, and animals that soon rush past him evoke the young wonder felt when turning a page to discover the next meticulously detailed picture. The film’s historical influence provides another compelling layer to it’s story, with the bewitching spirit Brendan encounters in the forest coming from Celtic mythology and the all important book actually having existed as a Latin manuscript of the New Testament. Combine that with it’s great vocal cast and a nice short running length, and you get another transfixing animation from a year that was rife with them.
It’s Such a Beautiful Day and The Secret of Kells are available on Netflix, and you can find Redline on Hulu, but you’ll have to seek out Mary and Max and A Scanner Darkly someplace else. Have a good winter break and watch the best movies you can find!
This article is part of an ongoing series. Click here to read last week's article, and check back next semester for more awesome movies!
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