'John Wick: Chapter Two' is Undiluted Action Insanity

John Wick: Chapter Two wastes absolutely none of your time in establishing what it wants to be from the very opening frames. On the side of a building, a reel of Buster Keaton plays (a nod to the original stuntman himself) just before a sleek motorcycle comes tearing through, followed by  a black muscle car in hot pursuit. To say things escalate from there puts it lightly, but needless to say there’s about 20 totaled cars and even more bodies piled up before this sequence comes to a conclusion.

The original John Wick was a slow-burn cult classic about a hitman brought out of retirement by the premature assassination of his beloved puppy, a violent romp that found its true audience through the Internet, word of mouth and video on demand. Audiences fell in love with seeing noted Matrix star Keanu Reeves back at his ass-kicking best to take on a gritty revenge tale that knew not to take everything so seriously and to simply focus on making some ludicrously fun action scenes.

And much like the first, Chapter Two prefers the all-killer, no-filler approach to action filmmaking. Director Chad Stahelski and screenwriter Derek Kolstad know exactly how to slim down an action movie to the bare essentials, always opting for a more simple approach in telling a story, whittling it down to something that’s still coherent and interesting, but without overloading the screenplay with anything that doesn’t put the action scenes front and center.

Where the original John Wick explored a simple premise with expert precision and a tongue-in-cheek approach to its own inherent silliness, the second chapter opts for something much bigger and badder, but still somehow never sacrificing the commitment to wildly entertain you or bog the story down with unnecessary fluff. Yes, John Wick is brought out of retirement for revenge once more, but this time Wick has to trot the globe facing off against a diverse set of foes, everyone from a sumo wrestler to the rapper Common.

The criminal underworld hinted at in the first John Wick now becomes the ever-expanding playground full of hitmen and assassins for Wick to face off against, a frankly ridiculous secret society with its own set of rules and codes, giving chapter two an added dose of the fantastical. This is the kind of society where homeless people are hitmen in disguise, two men can try to murder each other in a knife fight on a train without a sign of police, ten henchmen can get their brains blown out on a dancefloor while barely anyone bats an eye… but don’t be fooled, John Wick knows and loves its own inherent silliness and it only invites you to do the same.

But it’s truly difficult not to be won over by the art on display here in John Wick. Much like how one would go see a circus to watch a talented trapeze artist, John Wick is perfectly crafted to showcase the talent of its cast, and especially its star. The John Wick films prefers to shoot close-combat action like a Gene Kelly musical, full of intricate fights choreographed as dances, something best captured in long takes rather than the quick edits we’ve come to expect from so many of Wick’s contemporaries. Reeves executes his brutal ballets with a craftsman’s precision, eliminating rooms of bad guys in beautiful locales, leaving a canvas of blood splatters and a litter of broken arms in his wake.

To go into great detail about John Wick 2’s outrageous setpieces would be to deprive you of some of experiencing their sheer bravado and lunacy, but needless to say it matches the high octane standards set by its predecessor and dare I say exceeds them. There’s hardly any moment of John Wick: Chapter Two that isn’t a delirious amount of fun and it’s better than anything that we really deserved out of a second installment of this franchise. And judging by the packed theater I left this weekend, I think we can all look forward to how another installment could continue to blow our collective mind.

'La La Land' is a Fleetingly Charming But Painfully Dull Ode to Old Hollywood

From the incredibly showy opener and opening titles that boldly declare "SHOT IN CINEMASCOPE," it’s almost immediately clear that something feels just slightly off in Damian Chazelle’s sophomore follow-up to the angst-ridden Whiplash. These commuters in downtown L.A. jumping on their parked cars certainly act like they’re in a classic Hollywood musical and the camera certainly follow them as if they’re in one, and yet this number does nothing to charm or entice you into feeling the waves of nostalgia it’s meant to evoke.

This forgettable tune is followed by another, this time sung by star Emma Stone and her girlish cohorts all bathed in technicolor light and garbed in flashy colors meant to evoke memories of superior films such as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or An American in Paris but again failing to spark any sort of charm or delight those films are renowned for. Chazelle keeps the camera rolling and spinning to wow the film geeks, but it ultimately feels so performative in a way that’s aping classics rather than evoking them.

And yet by some small miracle, the film begins to click when jazz pianist Sebastian (played by ultra-charmer Ryan Gosling) begins his half of the tale. A scene where Gosliing’s free-jazz roots and sensibilities clash with his employer’s (played by Whiplash villain J.K. Simmons) desire to keep it simple, stupid is one of the movie’s rare moments of real charm and musical fun.

Subsequently when Gosling and Stone meet at an '80s themed party a few scenes later, it feels as if the two stars’ potent chemistry and charm is going to be enough to carry La La Land through the bland songwriting and uninvolving story. Their tap-dance routine against a scenic Hollywood skyline is probably the closest the film can get to actually nearing the grace of a Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire film’s essence.

But this grace quickly becomes short-lived as it becomes imminently clear that the stars’ chemistry simply can’t prop up this two hour-plus exercise in nostalgia-baiting. The romance blossoms pretty quickly, so instead of a familiar boy meets girl tale, the story starts to revolve around two people so hopelessly annoying in their desire to perform their art like in the “good ol' days” that you begin to beg for these characters to break up simply so the film might actually become about something interesting again.

Sebastian’s desire to build a jazz club with real integrity, which initially felt like an innocent jab at how self-serious jazz purists can be, is actually in fact treated as the ultimate stake for this character’s arc. When Sebastian decides to get an actual steady-paying job any musician would kill for, the film treats this as a tacky betrayal of his “pure” art form and inexplicably wants to punish Gosling’s character for daring to step outside his freeform-jazz sensibilities. (And on that note, are we seriously supposed to hate John Legend’s music in this film? He’s meant to be the tacky antithesis to pure jazz but they actually give his band some of the more enjoyable music here.)

Ultimately every bit of aesthetic La La Land appropriates from infinitely superior and more sincere films simply serves as glorified window-dressing to a boring, cold and ultimately joyless reworking of Hollywood tropes without any kind of story to hang them upon. It practically begs the viewer to take it so seriously that it becomes near laughable “Look at these posters from old movies! The long takes! Hey remember CINEMASCOPE?! They shot Rebel Without a Cause in CinemaScope and we even have that in our movie! *wink wink* Are you not entertained??” the movie practically screams at you. The musical setpieces are neither frequent enough nor impressive enough to justify such a bloated runtime and despite its glorious ending and one (count it: ONE) impressive song, this facade is ultimately about as sturdy as a Hollywood backlot: push on it a bit and it topples spectacularly.

I won’t be surprised at all to see La La Land taking its victory lap around awards shows this season, because there’s nothing Hollywood loves more in an awards darling than a bout of self-congratulatory backpatting about its own legacy (see: The Artist), but you can certainly expect it to be forgotten about this time next year.

Ron Howard's 'Eight Days a Week' Is a Sweet, Slightly Empty Treat for Beatles Fans

How do you even begin to break down the immense mythology of a group widely considered to be the greatest of all time into something digestible and accessible but also still reverent? The eight years of musical, visual, historical, economical, political and social impact The Beatles left behind looms like a giant block of marble that should only intimidate any author or documentarian foolish enough to try and mold it into a singular experience that does the group justice.

And yet in truth, it’s insanely difficult to craft a bad movie around the story of the Fab Four. For all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the band’s legacy, any filmmaker who deigns to cover the band’s story essentially has the perfect subjects: four of the most affable, down-to-earth, creative and interesting people who ever walked the Earth. The filmmakers have a smorgasbord of every kind of song imaginable at their disposal to set a mood or tone, a majority of which are already in pop music’s pantheon of greatest ever. So really you’ve only got yourself to blame if you can make a bad film with all of that at your disposal.

With that said, at this point in history it is much easier to make a boring film about The Beatles. After so many books and documentaries covering every inch and aspect of The Beatles’ career, at some point a hardcore fan can only get so much out of a “new” interpretation a storyteller tries to craft out of that eight year marble block without some hint of what’s already come before.

And Ron Howard’s latest documentary begins dangerously on that cusp of blandness, threatening to turn into just a shiny new coat of paint on the same storyline even the most casual of Beatles fan is conscious of. The montage of those rough n’ tumble nights in Hamburg coupled with their subsequent haircuts/suits that led to Please Please Me’s chart-topping overnight success... it threatens on yada-yada-yada territory before the real fun actually begins.

Where Eight Days a Week begins to differentiate itself is in making you feel the absolute and all-consuming chaos of an event that was The Beatles’ touring years. A treasure trove of great concert material has been carefully remastered and restored for this documentary (a perfect justification for the film’s existence if you really needed one) and the footage of swaths of young people screaming their heads off, rushing stages, and evading police makes you feel just how singular an experience the Beatles were in history. Nothing had ever happened like this before and nothing would ever again.

The baby boomer generation was desperate for a way to express themselves, and these unassuming, charming lads with similar haircuts and incredible songwriting and vocal abilities came along and changed everything,These four young men were at the center of the world’s biggest cultural maelstrom and somehow trying to maintain their own sanity. The film runs you through the elation of Ed Sullivan and Shea Stadium all the way through to the bitter end at the KKK rallies in Memphis and the miserable Candlestick park final gig.

Their cheery and cheeky demeanor on that electric first tour of America heartbreakingly contrasted with the weariness of the magnifying glass is the film’s biggest success. It makes the mere existence of any Beatles music that followed the madness of their touring years seem like a God-given miracle.

The film wisely chooses to focus on the band’s overwhelming unity during these progressively trying times and puts a sunny disposition on the group’s overall dynamic. It’s nice to have a Beatles documentary that pits The Beatles against the world when so many others like to focus on their internal battles that came later. Those touring years, as Ringo mentions in the film, were when The Beatles had to look out for each other first and foremost. So while it may feel dishonest to exclude the turmoil of their later studio work, it’s impossible to deny the bond the Fab Four shared with one another.

There’s a few glaring omissions in terms of Beatles lore, in particular manager Brian Epstein is paid an abysmal amount of lip service considering how especially important he was to the success of this period of the Beatles career and in terms of interviewees, there’s hardly much on offer that hasn’t been stated better elsewhere (for instance the only real archival interview footage with George comes from the superior if exhaustive Beatles Anthology), and a few subjects may leave you scratching your head about their inclusion but overall it’s good fun and good-natured even if it doesn’t forge a brand new vision of history.

While hardcore fans familiar with most of these intimate details may not find anything revelatory here, it’s worth the price of admission for the glut of restored and remastered footage of some classic Beatles concerts and if you’re able to see it in theaters, the entire Shea Stadium concert plays following the movie, fully restored in 4K with remastered sound. It goes down like a smooth, soothing ale for those of us already under the Fab Four’s spell, while still providing those looking for an accessible entry point to the Beatles’ early career with a satisfying result.

Only in cinemas September 15th. With world premiere broadcast live & specially remastered concert footage. Book your tickets now: http://scnl.co/BeatlesTix The Beatles played Shea Stadium on August 15th 1965 in what was to be the first rock concert ever staged in a stadium in front of more than 55,000 people.

'Captain America: Civil War' is Pure Comic Book Bliss

After a fairly stagnant summer of mixed to positive reception to Marvel’s two artistic gambles that were Age of Ultron and Ant-Man, the Russo brothers return to the Marvel universe to once again shake it to its foundation after the triumph that was Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and what results is undoubtedly the greatest achievement that a shared universe like this can offer.

Eight years ago, when Tony Stark strapped on that hot-rod red ‘n' gold metal suit for the first time in Iron Man, something like Captain America: Civil War could’ve only been imagined as a glint in Nick Fury’s good eye. The phrase “the Avengers initiative” sounded like goofy nerd nonsense to most audiences in 2008, but it has become almost as ubiquitous as something like “Agent 007” or “May the Force be with you.”

And now after eight solid years of films and universe-building pieces locking into place, finally Marvel feel they don’t have to spend too much time introducing new ideas or characters because by now we’re so familiar with this universe and its inhabitants that it’s no longer necessary. The introduction of characters like Wakandan prince T’Challa (better known as the Black Panther) and Tom Holland as our third Spider-Man in 15 years feels so assured and effortless, it’s strange to recognize this is the first time we’ve met them in Marvel’s cinematic universe. Civil War operates like a true comic book event—a massive, multiple-issue arc that brings in characters both new and familiar to tell an expansive story that somehow maintains both coherence and intimacy in the midst of so much bombastic action.

After the disaster in Sokovia averted by the Avengers during Age of Ultron’s climax, Captain America and the rest are still galavanting around the globe, stopping the bad guys with little to no government oversight. That is, until an honest mistake by newbie Scarlet Witch forces the Avengers to finally face the scrutiny that’s been building among the people of the world since Loki and the Chitauri touched down in New York. Cap feels that the new “Sokovia Accords” will only hinder the team’s ability to do good since they’ve always proven to have the people’s best interests at heart, while his counterpart Tony Stark, plagued by the horrors his creation Ultron caused in Sokovia, thinks the Avengers need some accountability after the mayhem they’ve caused since he took up the mantle of Iron Man.

Like any compelling debate, both sides have great points, and one of Civil War’s greatest strengths is giving both Cap and Iron Man equal reason to righteously feel the way they do. With Marvel’s diligent planning out of the arcs each film should take, the seeds of this diametric opposition have been sown since Iron Man 3 showed us Tony’s post-traumatic reaction to New York and Winter Soldier turned Cap’s trust of the government completely on its head.

Civil War may boast the cast of an Avengers follow-up, but the film’s emotional crux is undoubtedly Cap and his relationship with comrade-turned-communist Bucky Barnes, a through-line begun in Winter Soldier that becomes the heart of Civil War’s conflict. Bucky is all Cap has left of his past life and he’ll do anything to protect him, even at the cost of abandoning his ties with Tony and his counterparts. Luckily for him he isn’t alone, and the various superheroes start forming along party lines, ultimately leading up to a direct confrontation where Cap and Iron Man’s teams have to decide if they really want to punch each other after all they’ve been through together.

The resulting decision to come to blows is where things start to ascend into jaw-dropping spectacle. The showdown of Team Cap and Team Iron Man on the abandoned tarmac is something comic book geeks could’ve only imagined in their wildest fantasies a few years ago, but here it is as the zenith of pure popcorn entertainment. Spider-Man zips around, popping off quip after quip, while Black Panther locks claws with the Winter Soldier; it’s sheer bliss even if we don’t want to see anybody seriously hurt.

Ultimately this desire is what makes the face-off that follows it infinitely more compelling. The long-teased slugfest between Cap and Iron Man is exciting on paper but absolutely devastating to witness, as two friends come to blows in an absolutely heartbreaking moment that shifts this cinematic universe for good.

Captain America: Civil War is an achievement only hinted at in previous Marvel movies, and to see it come to glorious fruition is absolutely mind-blowing. Robert Downey, Jr. turns in his best performance since the first Iron Man, as he’s asked to run an emotional gamut from his standard cocksure, quippy playboy, to a resigned, guilt-ridden participator in the Accords, and ultimately into a wounded child who can only lash out in frustration at the betrayal he’s been faced with. It’s not perfectly paced and has some seriously bad shaky cam/action choreographing in its opening moments, but it’s ultimately the film’s compelling characters that steer Civil War into “best ever” superhero film territory.

'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' Is a Disasterpiece of Epic Proportions

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a film done half by committee and half by a hack filmmaker, resulting in one of the most baffling tentpole blockbusters in recent memory. 

For all of Man of Steel's issues, there was at least a semblance of hope that dealing with the fallout of Superman's destructive battle in Metropolis would provide an interesting crux for a showdown between comics' two most iconic heroes. Instead Warner Bros. and Zack Snyder don't really shoot themselves in the foot so much as they take a shotgun blast to both kneecaps before this franchise has even truly begun.

To every comic fan out there, these characters probably couldn't be less recognizable, which ends up feeling like a huge miscalculation. And while making such darker and grittier choices when it comes to our titular heroes isn't necessarily a death sentence for a franchise, failing to make an interesting or coherent story certainly should be. For all of the promise that a clash between these two titans should entail, the conflict disappointingly takes a back seat to a mishmash of setups for future movies while failing to have a compelling story or characters of its own.

Even at two and a half plus hours, DC's obsessive desire to catch up with the world-building of Marvel's Avengers means BvS ends up more bloated than a dead whale, covered in pustules meant to tease (or threaten) even more of this tripe. Not to mention it manages to both cram in and bungle some of DC's most iconic comic book runs before we've even had a chance to know or come to like these characters at all.

Everything leading up to the promised battle is..."experimental" editing, we'll call it... where any vestige of film logic simply evaporates almost as soon as it appears. Scenes with virtually no relation appear in sequence with no rhyme or reason (or establishing shots) and it makes following the plot or grasping the buildup towards the climax a Superman-sized feat. And when the two finally do come to blows and the movie starts flailing towards something interesting, the tension is deflated like a sad sigh escaping a wet balloon, which then devolves even further into CGI mayhem and one of the most dramatically underwhelming attempts at emotion in a comic book film to date.

But it would truly take a Herculean effort to reconcile the giant misstep that has been Henry Cavill's Superman. Instead of giving Cavill a single chance to make himself likable after a muted showing in Man of Steel, screenwriters Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer instead double down on the hemming and hawing that is Superman's Christ complex, refusing to give him a single moment of likability or humanity. His laughably unearned relationship with Amy Adams' Lois Lane is still utterly uncompelling and Lois once again never rises above a plot device when their relationship ought to be the warm heart of the film. 

And if Cavill's Superman hits a bum note, his supposed foil is an absolute flatline. Even if Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor was just a more neurotic and eccentric mad scientist than his shrewd businessman counterpart in the comics, it still wouldn't excuse this film's muddled attempt at a motivation for his evil machinations. Luthor's reasoning for pitting the heroes against each other flabbergastingly changes or simply isn't explained and every one of Eisenberg's fidgety attempts to get something meaningful out of the material does not click whatsoever. 

If any character makes it relatively unscathed after this movie's thrashing it's Ben Affleck's Batman, even if he’s transformed from a principled vigilante with a code into a murderous, grim old bastard who doesn’t mind branding his victims so they’ll be viciously killed in prison (seriously). While certainly landing amongst the better film portrayals of the Caped Crusader, it's an unfortunate fact that most of the Batman material here is a less interesting retread of what has come so many times before. For all of Snyder and crew's ass-kissing of Frank Miller's classic The Dark Knight Returns, it would've been nice to use that grizzled incarnation of Batman to explore events in his past never portrayed before onscreen. There's only so many times you can feel something as Thomas and Martha Wayne are gunned down in the street and BvS hardly does anything different in the Bat's backstory (are we 100% sure the scene where young Bruce falls in a well isn't the exact same footage from Batman Begins?). Even Batman's most interesting action sequence where he chases down an armored truck is cheapened when the realization sets in that Christopher Nolan did this so much better barely even eight years ago. 

As for Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman... she's there. She fights. She does some fairly inconsequential Justice League exposition... wait, why was she here again? To just remind us she has a moving coming out next year? Is this whole movie just a DC infomercial?

There's a fascinatingly great superhero tale buried within Batman fighting Superman that should truly stimulate our superhero consciousness, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has the unfortunate task of having to balance that interesting story with building an entire cinematic universe over the course of a few hours. For those fleeting moments where our heroes do trade blows there's a spark of movie magic that no hack or studio exec could ever screw up, but it's buried under a two hour mess that tries to cram "DC's Greatest Hits" into a dour, colorless romp of unlikable characters. Not all superhero movies have to be colorful or funny, but at least give us a dramatically satisfying story if we're to hop onboard another extended universe.

Batman vs Superman Dawn of Justice Official Trailer #3 US | Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1O5lo1q | Offizieller German / Deutsch Kinostart: 24 März 2016 Zack Snyder's BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE is in theaters March 25, 2016.

'10 Cloverfield Lane' is Highly Effective Slow-Burn Thriller

Proving lightning can in fact strike twice, the marketing campaign that snuck 10 Cloverfield Lane's teaser onto the Super Bowl lineup did in fact generate that similar ripple of excitement that made Cloverfield an enormous viral success.

 But interestingly, producer JJ Abrams and company opted to distance this installment significantly from the found-footage Godzilla-inspired model that made so many waves in the film world and instead opted for a more straightforward thriller that seemingly has nothing in common with its predecessor.

10 Cloverfield Lane plays like a longform classic episode of The Twilight Zone, with a first act punctuated by some gut-punch thrills and a final two thirds expertly constructed to be one of the most effective slow-burn thrillers in recent memory.  So even when the twists and turns it charts are par for the course in this sort of sci-fi/thriller mix, it’s the blend of perfect pacing and a towering John Goodman that truly separates it from the pack.

Michelle (Scott Pilgrim's Mary Elizabeth Winstead) finds herself locked in an underground bunker with two strangers after a seemingly catastrophic event occurred on the world above. Also trapped is farmboy Emmett (Broadway’s John Gallagher, Jr.), a lovable yokel tinged with regret about missing out on his life before the incident.

Their captor is Howard, with John Goodman playing exactly the type of guy you'd expect to build a massive fallout shelter under his farmhouse. Goodman's awkward yet still somehow menacing personality is just enough to put you on edge despite his best intentions. Goodman is nothing if not affable and that’s why the fact that he could snap at any time on the two youngsters is truly unsettling. It's by far the movie's highlight and yet another gem in the filmography of one of the all-time great actors (forget Leo, where’s Goodman’s Oscar for The Big Lebowski?).

Cloverfield Lane takes its time carefully unfolding the mystery of what happened aboveground as well as what secrets Howard is hiding himself, and the result is a thriller that doesn't rely on jumps or gore and treats its audience with respect rather than contempt. The pacing keeps things chugging along at a thrilling rate and aside from a somewhat underwhelming final ten minutes, 10 Cloverfield Lane is nail-biting fun that's far more than just a cheap marketing gimmick. If this is to be our new horror/sci-fi anthology, let’s not wait another eight years to get the next installment off the ground.

Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Like us on FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/1QyRMsE Follow us on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/1ghOWmt 10 Cloverfield Lane Official Trailer #1 (2016) - Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, Movie HD Waking up from a car accident, a young woman finds herself in the basement of a man who says he's saved her life from a chemical attack that has left the outside uninhabitable.

The Top 15 Films of 2015: Transverso's 2016 Oscars Best Picture Picks

With the Oscars finally arriving tonight, it’s time to take a look back at the incredible year of film that was 2015. For every superhero sequel there were plenty of indie smashes, and it was easy to find art at the multiplex as easily as it was in your local arthouse cinema. So let’s look back at the movies that will shape the film world for the next few years.

---

15. Phoenix

A riveting psychological thriller set in the ruins of postwar Germany, Phoenix is a hypnotic slow-burn that builds its tension deliberately and devastatingly. Nelly is a Holocaust survivor who had her face disfigured in a concentration camp and when she returns to her hometown to find her lost love, she finds he may nothing may ever be the same. It takes cues from Rainer Fassbinder and Alfred Hitchcock, but manages to morph into its own cerebral mystery that results in an absolutely stunning final scene that’s among the year’s best.

14. Bridge of Spies

Steven Spielberg may be the closest thing our generation has to Frank Capra, a filmmaker who tries to unearth what it really means to be an American while not shying away from the darker underbelly of our culture. So while it might be interpreted at first as simplistic or unsubtle, Bridge of Spies is an intricate deconstruction of the peril that Cold War attitudes placed our world into. Given a biting wit by writers Joel and Ethan Coen, Spielberg uses America’s sweetheart Tom Hanks to craft a beautiful slice of Americana, bolstered by his confident direction and an excellent and understated Mark Rylance performance.

13. Sicario

Timely, nail-biting and cerebral, Sicario is yet another masterpiece of unbridled, heart-stopping tension from director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy). An unflinching look into the heart of darkness at the center of the Mexican drug war, Sicario keeps the audience in the dark just long enough until its razor wire tension explodes in a third-act confrontation that will leave your jaw on the floor. The Oscars should be ashamed for not nominating Brolin or Blunt but especially Benicio del Toro in one of the highlights of his career.

12. The Big Short

Propelled by one of this year’s sharpest and most inventive screenplays, The Big Short proves director Adam McKay’s talents lie beyond just Will Ferrell vehicles like Anchorman. The financial collapse of 2008 is a subject of fascination for McKay (touched upon in his underrated The Other Guys) and takes full advantage of the big budget and star-studded cast of The Big Short to tell this story in its entire tragic fullness. While some of the explanation may feel like condescension, the directorial flair that McKay presents his story with keeps things fresh and funny but with the dramatic weight the subject deserves.

11. Tangerine

As much as Tangerine could’ve just been “the movie shot on an iPhone,” it manages to transcend and become so much more. It’s an epic exploration of the Los Angeles underbelly on Christmas Eve, told through the eyes of two lovably rambunctious transgender prostitutes. The iPhone cinematography gives it a wonderful kineticism of life and verve, but its two leads give it a warm heart at the center. It’s hilariously madcap with just a hint of melancholy about finding your place in this world, but Tangerine is a sweet portrait of an unusual friendship told with some awesome filmmaking technique.

10. Love & Mercy

One of the best biopics in recent memory, Love & Mercy is a stunning recreation of the dizzying highs of creating one of pop music’s greatest records ever in Pet Sounds and the soul-crushing lows of Brian Wilson’s subsequent mental dissolution. By intertwining the two award-caliber performances of Paul Dano and John Cusack as two eras of Wilson, Love & Mercy crafts a heartbreaking arc of redemption through the power of love and music. recording sequences alone are worth the price of admission (supplanted by a great electronic Atticus Ross score) and it’s a career high for every actor involved, especially Dano and Cusack.

9. Crimson Peak

All of director Guillermo del Toro’s finest films are about the relationship of innocence vs. brutality, and Crimson Peak is indeed another visual masterpiece from one of the few living visionaries left in genre filmmaking. Moreso a Victorian melodrama than a straightforward horror film, Crimson Peak is a testament to Del Toro’s intricate craft, building another terrifying world within Allerdale Hall, full of shadows and ghosts. It's an old school kind of horror told with unapologetic camp and nobody is better at crafting atmosphere or creatures than Del Toro. Hail to the king, baby.

8. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

While it may have been impossible to top the heights of the Burj Khalifa from Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is a roundly satisfying addition to one of the greatest modern action franchises. Mission Impossible is a series that understands scale more than any other and once again crafts some of the year’s most awe-inspiring action setpieces that simply suck the breath right out of you. Tom Cruise once again throws himself in the jaws of death for our amusement and Rogue Nation takes the best elements from all four of its previous installments to form a supremely entertaining summer blockbuster and one of the year’s best action films.

7. Inside Out

Just when it seemed PIXAR might be in a creative lull, a film as fresh, funny and inventive as Inside Out comes along. The concept of one’s emotions personified as little people inside your head is already quite a clever idea, but Inside Out’s screenplay grows this concept into one of PIXAR’s funniest and most moving films ever. It never offers easy answers to some of life’s toughest problems but is still a valuable portrait of how to deal with the combating emotions within ourselves. And with a cast this perfect, it’s no wonder it brings you to tears of both laughter and sadness.

6. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

It is a small miracle that The Force Awakens manages to feel so organic, natural and so thoroughly a part of the Star Wars canon so instantly. Yes it’s great to see more practical effects, location shooting and overall more competent direction, but the characters are what make us truly love Star Wars and The Force Awakens creates them with marvelous aplomb. It’s the most solid foundation fans could’ve hoped for and a cast and crew of marvelous talent did what most thought was impossible: make the entire world love Star Wars again.

5. The Hateful Eight

After a few false starts and script leaks, it seemed unlikely that Quentin Tarantino was ever going to get around to making his next Western, but somehow it arrived and was bigger and badder than anything we could’ve hoped for. Shot “In GLORIOUS 70mm” as the posters loved to proclaim, The Hateful Eight was incredibly heartening to see so many turn out for the roadshow 70mm film screenings, a cinematic event unlike anything seen in America for the last 40 years. Not to mention that the film itself is one of the director’s finest, assembling some familiar faces from the Tarantino oeuvre and shoving them in a snowbound cabin as their wits slowly whittle into blasts of blood-soaked brutality. Beautifully shot by Robert Richardson and given the year’s best score by the maestro Ennio Morricone, the elegance is contrasted by one of Tarantino’s screenplay, one of his most black-hearted treatises on the nature of humans. Three hours simply whizz by and we’re left with a landmark for Westerns, Tarantino and the medium of film itself.

4. The Look of Silence

Documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to 2012’s groundbreaking The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence somehow manages to eclipse and become an even more important piece of cinema than its predecessor. The Act of Killing was a sickening snapshot of how people who committed some unforgivable atrocities manage to live with themselves, but The Look of Silence manages to make that pain even more immediate and disturbing by having a survivor of the massacre face his persecutors in front of the cameras. The interviews are pulse-pounding, cringe-inducing, absolutely revelatory bits of cinema and once again Oppenheimer has crafted a gorgeous, gut-wrenching document that is both important and artful. If you only watch one documentary from last year, make it this one.

3. Carol

Few movies are ever as gorgeously photographed as Carol but even fewer manage to pack such a devastating emotional punch. The forbideen romance between Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) sounds like the stuff of pure melodrama, but becomes the most purely affecting relationship depicted onscreen this year. The breathtakingly composed shots are given the dreamlike qualities of memory, as if groggily recalling the nostalgic minutia of romance: the lingering gaze of a lover, the offhand smile, the squeeze of a shoulder. Not since Her has a film managed to capture the thrill of falling in love but also the heartbreak of separation. It's a gorgeously orchestrated piece of filmmaking, one that plants a tender ache in the heart that doesn't fade quickly.

2. Ex Machina

With all of the recent success of sci-fi on the blockbuster scale, Ex Machina is a refreshing reminder that the best science fiction stories are based in exploring big ideas and not necessarily on visual spectacle. First time director Alex Garland, screenwriter of such recent sci-fi classics as Sunshine, Dredd, and 28 Days Later, is certainly no slouch in the visual department, but Ex Machina is more interested in exploring the dynamics between its three main characters. It’s an absolute delight to watch its intricate plot unfold, throwing twist after turn up to one of the year’s most shocking endings. It’s heady science fiction at its finest and it rewards rewatch after rewatch. Drop everything and watch it as soon as possible.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road is a once in a generation event. A movie so pure in its unbridled creativity and filmmaking boldness deserves every amount of praise one can muster. At its core just a chase film with a feminist bent, it manages to transcend and become so much more. Director George Miller takes his incredible apocalyptic fairy tale begun over thirty years ago and creates even more dazzling mythmaking out of the nuclear wasteland. Visual storytelling is rarely this simple and coherent in a modern action film, but it’s also hardly ever this fun. No film was as viscerally exciting, visually bold and unabashedly badass as Mad Max: Fury Road.  It set the film world on fire and will probably dominate the conversation on action cinema for decades to come. Perfectly paced, perfectly shot, perfectly edited and bathed in sound and fury, Mad Max: Fury Road is one of this decade’s absolute finest.

---

Honorable Mentions:

Steve Jobs

The Martian

Spotlight

Amy

The Wolfpack

Bone Tomahawk

Krampus

The Assassin

World of Tomorrow

The End of the Tour

'Carol' Is a Gorgeously Filmed Portrait of Love and Loss

Set amidst a hazy glow of 16mm, Todd Haynes' Carol is a beautifully devastating piece of melancholia. Returning to the familiar '50s backdrop of his tribute to Douglas Sirk, Far From Heaven, Haynes focuses his unusually soft lens on a timid but curious young shop girl named Therese (Rooney Mara) and her affair with the mysterious but intriguing socialite Carol (Cate Blanchett).

Adapted from the Patricia Highsmith's groundbreaking novel The Price of Salt, Carol takes its time in carefully constructing the forbidden romance at the center of the film as something genuine. By taking the time to let it grow, the effusion of romance becomes more cathartic and the heartbreaks become even more achingly painful.

Mara is pitch-perfect as the young Therese, a girl who thought she knew what she wanted until it all comes tumbling down. Her ambitions to discover what she truly wants in life are subverted by her own shyness, and in a role where she's meant to be such a mild-mannered piece of wallpaper, it truly speaks to Mara's talents that she's able to imbue Therese with just the right amount of both optimism and anguish. The scene in which she confesses to Carol she has no idea what she wants because she "says yes to everything" is one of the film's most powerful.

Blanchett too is astonishing as the titular Carol, infusing her elegant socialite airs with a sense of pain, especially in her moving interactions with her young daughter. Blanchett gives Carol this queer sense of aloofness, and even when it seems she is closest to Therese there is still a mysterious "otherness" to the older woman character. Yet once the dramatic punch of the second half hits, she drops all airs of fragility and evolves into something more touchingly humane, giving Carol a sympathetic sense of desperation in her loving pleas.

Seemingly lost among the awards chatter however is the perennially underrated Kyle Chandler as Carol's estranged husband Harge, a man so torn apart by the futility of his marriage but so desperate to make things normal in his life again. When at first it seems his role is simply "the evil ex-husband," it was a pleasant surprise to watch him evolve into something wonderfully more complex, as his love for Carol grows increasingly more strained against the circumstances of her sexuality. 

Forsaking the crisp sharpness of digital photography, cinematographer Edward Lachman opted for the beautiful simplicity of 16mm film and it lends Carol a strikingly gorgeous haze and grit. The breathtakingly composed shots are given the dreamlike qualities of memory, as if groggily recalling the nostalgic minutia of romance: the lingering gaze of a lover, the offhand smile, the squeeze of a shoulder. It's a rush of color but also of feeling, and it makes Carol a truly sensual experience in every sense of the word. 

Todd Haynes beautifully captures the flourishing romance between star-crossed lovers, but also deftly illuminates how tragic this kind of affair felt back in 1951. It's a portrait of the outsider in a way that can truly break your heart, even if it leaves with a sense of optimism, and a gorgeously orchestrated piece of filmmaking with a tender ache that won't fade quickly. 

'Steve Jobs' Is Dynamic Fire-Cracker of a Biopic

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of reading Walter Isaacson's incredible portrait of the tech icon Steve Jobs in preparation for this very movie and I found myself simply unable to put it down. I had always been fascinated by Jobs as a CEO unlike any other, a man I saw as responsible for products that completely revolutionized how I viewed computers, telephones and music.

But Isaacson's book also helped me grasp Jobs' incredibly difficult nature. He was one of the most stubborn and irritable people to work with and often had fractured relationships with many people due to his arrogant and driven nature. But as insufferable as he was, Jobs was wholly dedicated to creating some of the world's greatest ever products. Jobs didn't believe that art and products has to be independent of each other and in fact considered himself an artist above all, just as his idol Bob Dylan whose music is accurately prominent in this latest attempt to capture Jobs onscreen.

Isaacson's biography is an intricate and intimate examination of a very complex individual and probably comes as close as we'll ever get to knowing everything there was to know about the complicated visionary and the demons that drove him.

So of course something is immediately lost in the translation to the screen as the level of detail that is compiled in such a comprehensive overview of Jobs' life would be impossible. And instead of even attempting to cover such an eventful life in just two hours, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin chooses to focus on three of the most important product launches in Jobs' life: the unveiling of the Macintosh, his NeXT cube after he left Apple, and culminating with the launch of the iMac.

This is certainly a clever idea because if there was anything Steve Jobs’ life revolved around it was the launch of his products, but the fact that Sorkin now must pack in all the drama and relationships formed over a person’s life into three very specific events does get a bit maddening at times. Steve Jobs certainly didn’t have three life-defining conversations with CEO John Sculley, marketing director Joanna Hoffman, co-founder Steve Wozniak, and his estranged daughter Lisa Brennan at each of them, but I can understand why they were all included. This is a biopic after all, and Sorkin needs some human drama at the center of these tech talks. So while the bold new format to this biopic is certainly novel, it does require a bit of truth-stretching.

Luckily though, Steve Jobs is helped massively by scene after scene of predictably zippy and clever dialogue from Aaron Sorkin, all delivered by a massively talented cast. Michael Fassbender proves once again he is arguably the best actor working today, imitating Jobs’ high-pitched nasal voice but still managing to fully inhabit Jobs’ arrogant and calculating nature. Jeff Daniels is also an excellent casting as tepid CEO John Sculley, Jobs’ reluctant father figure in his turbulent time at Apple, and Seth Rogen is surprisingly confident as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

And while the film wants to explore Jobs’ up-and-down relationships with Sculley and Wozniak among others, ultimately this attempt to capture Jobs onscreen is about his fractured relationship with his illegitimate daughter Lisa, whom Jobs famously denied ever fathering for a number of years. It’s a relationship that is of course rife with potential for human drama, and Sorkin chooses to explore it as the biggest contradiction of Jobs’ life: that he himself likely felt rejected by his birth parents, but ultimately it took him a very long time to grasp that he was rejecting his own daughter in a similar way. It’s certainly the script’s most compelling element, even if I personally would’ve liked to see Jobs’ ultimately more important relationships with his wife and other children explored at least to a certain degree.

For such a dialogue-heavy film, Steve Jobs certainly needed some solid direction and Danny Boyle absolutely excels. Though its events take place entirely before the year 2000, Boyle's sensibilities lie fully in the 21st century, full of color and life that give so many scenes of backstage exchanges between two characters a crackling dynamism. Beautifully photographed by Boyle’s former Sunshine collaborator Alwin H. Küchler, Boyle’s direction gives Sorkin’s script the zip that it needs to separate itself from the pack. His use of frame inserts to invoke flashbacks, the brisk but clever transitions between all three acts, and his use of visuals to both convey information and illustrate Sorkin’s dialogue all turn what would’ve essentially been a well-acted stage play into something that’s gripping and totally cinematic.

I recommend that if you want the more real and nuanced portrait of the enigma that was Steve Jobs, pick up Walter Isaacson's excellent biography upon which this movie is supposedly based. But Steve Jobs the film is a vibrant fire-cracker take on the Hollywood biopic. Decidedly brisk but somehow managing to pack in a compelling amount of human drama into product launches, it's easily the most worthy portrayal of Jobs yet and probably the best we're going to get committed to screen. Confident direction from Boyle combined with a sizzling Sorkin script allows sparks to fly, even if some parts fizz out instead.

'Crimson Peak' Proves a Delightful House of Horrors

The creak of a wooden stair. The bump in the night. The chill on the back of your neck. As cliche as it sounds, these are the tiny but powerfully unsettling things that master director Guillermo del Toro seeks to turn into your worst nightmare. The most terrifying parts of Crimson Peak are in its eerie silence and candlelit amblings down decrepit hallways, when you never know quite what is lurking around the corner.

Although the fantastic Crimson Peak is being marketed as a straightforward horror film (and it certainly has its scares), Del Toro himself correctly pointed out that this is far more of a love letter to Victorian romance stories and Gothic horror than it is a ghost story.

Mia Wasikowska stars as Edith, an impressionable young American swept off her feet by the dashing Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) after the mysterious death of her entrepreneur father. Whisking her away to his family's estate across the pond where he lives with his colder-than-ice sister Lucille, the ghostly warnings Edith has been receiving all her life begin to come to fruition as she learns to truly "Beware of Crimson Peak."

There are truly very few horror filmmakers out there who can still craft a truly incredible sense of atmosphere, and Guillermo del Toro is one of the absolute greats. His unique style of production design is perfectly suited for a Victorian fairy tale and the incredible set of Allerdale Hall just allows Del Toro's imagination to run wild. Applying his signature creature design to these horrific specters, their bones crack and creak as they loom through the dark hallways and it's simply awe-inspiring.

As A-list a cast as Del Toro recruits here, their commitment to an old-school kind of campiness in their delivery is admirable. Some of what the script gives them could be considered groaners but Hiddleston, Chastain and Wasikowka's delivery is excellent as they are fully committed to the kind of story Del Toro wanted to tell. Particularly excellent is Jessica Chastain as the menacing sister Lucille, perfecting the chill in that deep-seated evil that boils under the surface, and absolutely reveling in the madness that's revealed as the plot unfolds.

In any other director's hands a lot of Crimson Peak probably would've fallen flat, but Del Toro's strength is that he plays all of it completely straight. He fully believes in the power of atmosphere and his attention to detail in his craft helps to fully immerse the audience in some truly fantastic tales. His penchant for gore is certainly still on display, and the fact that Del Toro carefully chooses when to unleash the brutality only makes these moments more powerful, especially in the requisite bloodbath finale

It's an old school kind of horror told with unapologetic camp, and aside from some faulty pacing in the end, it is without a doubt one of the best theatrical experiences of the year, one of Del Toro's finest films, and a highly recommended Halloween treat.