So I saw a bunch of movies over the last few months, and
I’m going to compact some of the reviews so that there isn’t a horrifying
backlog constantly nagging at me. Plus I can get these objectively good movies
out of the way in favor of my preferred fare of action movies, bad movies, and
bad action movies. First up is about half of the Best Picture nominees. As well
as these ones feel free to check out my reviews for Birdman and Whiplash.
Today, the “THE” Movies!
The Grand Budapest Hotel
This is a Wes Anderson movie, so there is a lot to like, but
also a lot to be annoyed by. In a series of flashbacks we learn about the
adventures of a dashing hotel concierge and his bellboy sidekick as they have
adventures in a fictional inter-war European nation. I guess I want to describe
the movie as “mannered,” everything is done in an extremely stilted and precise
way. For me it really called to mind early screw-ball comedies, with lots of
door slamming and farcical elements, though combined with an odd undercurrent
of violence and darkness. Whether those combine for a fun experience or a
deeply unpleasant one really comes down to the viewer. I enjoyed it quite a
bit, though did get weary of the constant cameos by the usual suspects from
Anderson movies.
The Imitation Game
The bulk of The Imitation Game felt very familiar to me.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: There’s a genius, he doesn’t get along
with people, his plans are audacious and he’s given a chance to carry them out
but will lose everything if he fails, there is a building stuff montage, the plan
fails, there is a failure montage, some seemingly innocuous comment suddenly
spurs inspiration, the plan is a success. Be it Val Kilmer building a laser in
college, the Scorpion team trying to overcome the villain of the week, or Alan
Turning building the first computer to crack Nazi codes, the foundation of The
Imitation Game is a very familiar set of beats. A familiar plot could be saved
by excellent acting, but for me Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing exactly
the same as he plays Sherlock Holmes, its fine work but not particularly revelatory,
I mean there are basically nine full length Sherlock movies on Netflix right
now. I wish this movie had been better, because of the importance and tragedy
of Turning’s story, but it’s simply a middle of the road movie.
The Theory of Everything
Of the two, this is the superior tragic English genius
movies. It’s the story of physicist Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane, how they
deal with his debilitating disease and both eventually find new love. It’s also
got a pretty standard story (boy meets girl, they fall in love and are happy,
terrible stuff happens, the pieces get picked up), but in this case the
performances really elevate the subject matter. Of course the big news here is
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking, seeing him transform from able-bodied to
wheel-chair bound is heart breaking, and he does an amazing job portraying
Hawking. Though less flashy, Felicity Jones is also very good as Jane Hawking,
being sad and bearing up as the film wears on. A movie isn’t really the best
forum for it, but I wish the movie had done more to explain what Hawking was
actually proving and accomplishing, instead of explaining things
metaphorically. I’m sure it would have made the movie extremely dry, but as it
is there are definitely parts of the movie that feel like when they describe
how they’ll beat the alien in a Star Trek episode (“Reroute the tachyons and
reverse the polarity! OF COURSE!”). Still on the whole a nice sad movie.
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