American Hustle is a caper film, period piece and gets close to being a straight up comedy. It takes a slew of genres and tosses them into a blender. Usually when this happens you wind up with a mess. Here? They wound up with a pretty entertaining movie.

The film tries to "bring you back to a time" and it doesn't really do that flawlessly. It doesn't totally fall down on the job? But it is a little too self conscious in its "retro-ness". This is a pitfall of many films set in some time viewed as iconic. Not EVERYONE dresses in the uniform of the time (usually there are fashion carry -overs aplenty). When they make a film about the 2010s everyone will be wearing beltless baggy jeans with their underpants hanging out.

But fortunately the film isn't just about wide ties and polyester. The film is sort of a caper movie. But it doesn't lean on that too heavily and, instead, relies on characters and the actors take these and run with them. Christian Bale plays against type as the out of shape grifter with a ridiculous comb over. Amy Adams as his partner whose fake English accept is a film-long gag. Her character is playing a character. Jeremy Renner is effective as the earnest politician who bends the rules for all the right, but still illegal, reasons. Sure Bradley Cooper seems to be playing the character from Silver Linings Playbook as an FBI agent but he does it well. Don't mess with success.

But Jennifer Lawrence comes close to stealing the movie in her supporting role. It is admittedly a role almost designed to do that--the sort of spurned, definitely unbalanced wife of Bale's Irving Rosenfeld. She is both comic and a mover of the film's action. And she is Jennifer Lawrence so she also looks great.

One of the saving graces of the film is that it doesn't play it too serious. It doesn't get mired down in process of the con game or the FBI investigation. It is also never excessively violent. This light touch works. If they had gone even a hair more serious? It wouldn't work because the plot and the characters wouldn't hold the weight. This isn't a knock on the plot or the characters. It is a compliment. The writers kept it perfectly balanced. It even winds up to make points about friendship, ethics and even redemption.  

There are a number of great scenes in the film that have a limited amount to do with the basic plot. One of these has Rosenfeld pointing out a Master painting in a museum to Cooper's Richie DiMaso. He tells him it is a fake and the calls into question who the real master is. It is a brief and oddly compelling. There are a few others like it in the film. These do not rocket the plot forward but the set a tone for the movie.  They also eschew making Renner's Mayor Carmine Polito the typical crooked politician. He may have to work with crooks, mobsters and con men but he isn't one of them. He is a true believer. It is a different approach.

Some critics may have become a little overly breathless about American Hustle but it is well paced, written, directed and acted. The film begins with a title stating "Some of This Actually Happened" and it is incredibly loosely based on the Abscam investigation. Part of the humor here is the weirdest least likely SEEMING parts of this movie did happen. The resolution makes less than perfect sense and seems a tad unlikely? Or maybe it is just that it isn't set up through the rest of the film and professional con artists wouldn't leave their "move" to chance? But this is a minor thing. If you think of the flaws well after seeing the movie? The film did its job, hiding the fact it isn't reality from you for a little while.

When you first see a preview for a film about a man who falls in love with an operating system your natural reaction might be; "blech..." But funny thing about her, it is a unique, funny, touching and even thought provoking movie. It is every bit as good as you've heard and read. It might even be better.

It is also a film best seen with very little foreknowledge. The less you know the better. It isn't that there are huge surprises? It is the subtle points and developments here that you don't want foreshadowed. Sure, you know the basic plot but the film approaches subjects related to our existence, to technology, the nature of love, forgiveness and of personal identity and individuality. It is a complicated movie even though it seems quite the simple love story at times.

Her isn't maudlin or dreary though.  It does make you feel for the characters but it also has more laughs in it than most movies that are SUPPOSED to be comedies. It probably starts of lighter and gets heavier as it moves on but the load is never terrible to bare. It is so easy to imagine a movie like this going off the rails--especially when it gets into sex! It stays firmly ON the rails throughout.

Thanks be that this film was written and directed by Spike Jonze and that some hack didn't come up with a similar idea first and put J-Lo or Katherine Heigl in it. Because this is the sort of concept that Hollywood could turn into another putrid, eye rolling, barf inducing rom-com.

After seeing 12 Years A Slave it was difficult to imagine another film taking the Best Picture Oscar--even excellent films like Nebraska or Inside Llewn Davis. But this film may have a shot. It isn't because it is necessarily better than 12 Years A Slave but that it is so incredibly unique. It is a film that looks at the future of humanity (make no mistake there WILL be sentient Artificial Intelligence in the next generation).

It is the little things in this movie that elevate it from merely good--the attention to fashion changes in this slightly future-world. The fact Joaquin Phoenix uses a safety pin in his shirt to keep his OS girlfriend from not being able to see when he walks around with her as a mobile device. There is attention to detail at every point in this movie--the video games that appear in it are fantastic and hilarious (and seem very real to boot)

12 Years is about the past and it brings that world to life in startling fashion. Her is doing an entirely different sort of thing that, in its own way, is no less provocative. Human - OS relationships accepted by society? What would JESUS say?

It is still hard to see how Chiwetel Ojiofor could possibly lose to anyone in the Best Actor category. Even though Phoenix' performance in her IS worthy it is also in a more subdued, less dramatic role. He deserves a nomination nonetheless.

This is the sort of film that Jonze makes. He isn't prolific. His last full-length was Where The Wild Things Are, the peculiar adaptation of the Maurice Sendak book in 2009. Her is every bit as good (and this is a huge compliment) as his films Adaptation and Being John Malkovich. Again, it may be even better. Like those films it also bears multiple viewings.

It is to be hoped that it is less than four years before Jonze's next feature.

Philomena is the true story (more or less) of a woman searching for the child taken away from her when she was an unwed teen in Ireland. The subject alone shows the Catholic Church in a rather unflattering light and there have been many other Irish movies dealing with the forced breaking up of families by the church and state--and all of these have been dire, harsh, cheerless films.

Not so Philomena. It isn't played for straight up laughs and it isn't really a comedy but the writing and the acting are far more lighthearted than the subject matter suggests. In fact, no one who has seen the previews will expect anything dire or harsh.

It is a tribute to Judy Dench that this seems like an easy role for her. She is so effortless, seems so real as the simple, pleasant, non-judgemental Irishwoman that you almost don't see it as a performance. She also gets the bulk of the laughs.

Philomena is a mostly cheerful woman who has harbored this one great secret, this one great regret. she finally tells her daughter and shows her the single photo she has of her son. The daughter then has a chance run in that sets things in motion.

That run-in is with Martin Sixsmith, the cashiered director of communications for a government department under Tony Blair. Philomena's daughter is working at a party he attends.

Sixsmith, a former journalist, is shown as a little prickly. He is rude and occasionally snaps at people. If you focus on him as the lead there seem to be some reasons to scratch your head; why does he take on the story he initially dismisses? Is one inconclusive conversation with his wife what really did it?

Sixsmith, played ably by Steve Coogan, who also wrote the screenplay, isn't a bad sort though and, to the movie's credit he doesn't "change his ways" after meeting and spending time with the cheery, forgiving Philomena.

This is a movie that seems to stick mostly to the real story. There are flashbacks to a young Philomena (played by Sophie Kennedy Clark) that are hints at what went on before--they are never overdone and they are cut together with the "present" part of the film perfectly.

Stephen Frears certainly can make a movie. You hear about actors who would be entertaining reading the phone book; Frears would make an interesting movie with a script based on the phone book. This may not be The Grifters or Prick Up Your Ears but it is a memorable film nonetheless. Its sense of humanity, its humor and how shows "issues" movies often pretend to grapple with as ultimately meaningless. The movie does not try to move outside the bounds of the real story. It does not try to be big--and that is why it works.

Great acting and a good screenplay don't hurt of course.

The Wolf Of Wall Street sure makes bilking people out of their money look like a lot of fun--aside from having to listen to so many boring speeches about getting rich. It is as if Gordon Gecko had a child with Zig Ziglar and then the child smoked a bunch of meth. To make up for the speechifying there is a great deal of banging, cocaine done of women's naked bodies and 'lude popping going on so it all works out in the end.

Or maybe it doesn't.

It is sort of frightening to imagine the various interpretations people might take from this film. One critic I read described it as a "morality play." I am fairly certain this person does not know what a morality play is. There is no moral here (nor does there have to be) but this is just such a meandering mess about one of a million swindlers from the last big Wall Street scam you would hope for SOME sort of focus. Others seem to just think it is a rollicking good time. If it is supposed to be that? It sure is a peculiar subject matter.

What you get here are a bunch of good actors in a good looking film that is sometimes funny, sometimes outrageous and way, way, way, way way longer than is necessary. It would have been appropriate to use several more "ways" in the previous sentence. It is never boring despite its flaws and the actors all do--at LEAST--the best they can with their given roles.

Leonardo DiCaprio does his best scenery chewing and coked-up speechifying and Jonah Hill adds to the camp with his fake big teeth as DiCaprio's second banana.  Matthew McConaughey, Jon Bernthal and Rob Reiner are all sort of memorable in their roles despite limited screen time. Some seem to be bending over backwards to praise Margot Robbie too. She is fine but I expect this praise has a lot to do with her nakedness in this particular film. And yes, she looks great naked.

It is odd that in a film this long some characters appear with little intro and development. Is it possible ANYTHING landed on the cutting room floor here? But then this is an odd film. It is like Goodfellas on Wall Street--but with a lot more "direct into the camera"asides.

Is Scorsese's intent here to show us how the big economic criminals never really get their just punishment? Is he trying to leave the audience with lack of satisfaction? Of frustration? Perhaps, or perhaps this is just what you do when Martin Scorsese a film you don't like? Maybe you figure the problem is with YOU, not HIM. Some people are afraid to say they don't like a Scorsese movie. If you list his ten worst movies  you'll find that eight of them are still pretty damned good.

But no one is perfect and while The Wolf of Wall Street is off and on entertaining it also is long, meandering and sort of pointless. It is at least as frustrating as it is entertaning. There is also something missing here--any look at the people swindled by DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort. This is also likely purposeful but why? How do we have context--even in the humor--of what is going on here if we see only the coke snorting good times of the swindlers? And why so many pep talks and speeches to the "troops"? It really gets to be grating.

It is possible this is a movie that will age well? But I wouldn't bet on it. Oscar nominations all around! It is Scorsese but it really shouldn't win anything except the Oscar for "film that easily could have been an hour shorter."

Thank God for movies like Nebraska. There is nothing whatever wrong with blowing things up, with CGI, with duels to the death were someone always says "This ends HERE." All those things are good. But it is also nice to have a film that is about people who might easily live next door, about the actual human condition, with its humor, frailty and ultimate need for redemption.

Perhaps the most important thing to say about Nebraska is how stunningly beautiful it looks. The black and white film, from beginning to end, is a masterwork of cinematography. It doesn't matter if you are looking at landscapes and lonely roads or close ups of the often bedraggled characters. The film is just beautiful looking from start to finish.

If it doesn't win the Academy Award for cinematography they should do away with the award.

There is also, of course, more to the film than how it looks. Ostensibly it is the story of an elderly man, Woody Grant (played in an Oscar-nod worthy performance by Bruce Dern), who believes he has won a million dollars. He heads out, on foot, from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect his reward. Everyone knows there isn't any reward (except perhaps Woody). But his son, David, played by Will Forte, in what has to be a break through role, decides to take him to Lincoln.

What could go wrong?

He views it as a way to get to know his dad and to get the notion off the old man's mind.  In short order, however, they wind up sidetracked into Woody's hometown where discussion of his "winnings" brings out the good and bad in old friends and relations. This description gives the film short shrift because as it moves forward you learn, piece by piece, about who Woody really is. The film is about kindness and decency as much as it is about greed.

Alexander Payne delivers a wonderful film here and the casting is also flawless. Dern's taciturn Woody and Forte's well-meaning David are joined by June Squib as Woody's wife (another possible best supporting Oscar), Bob Odenkirk as Woody's other son, Ross, Stacy Keach as the ill-flavored Ed Pegram and Angela McEwan as Peg Nagy, a long lost love who, with very little screen time, makes a huge impression.

And it is nearly as beautifully written and in its intent as it is visually stunning. There are places where you laugh, where you feel a little angry and there should be, if you are human, places where you tear up. This is a small film, there are no explosions, the universe isn't going to end, there isn't a single car chase and, again, thank God for that.

Dallas Buyers Club isn't a grand overview of the prejudice and hysteria of the early years of the AIDS epidemic. It isn't really a story of some great triumph either. It is a small story, about one man, Ron Woodroof, trying to survive. He does it, basically on his own, in the face of massive attempts by the government agencies that should be helping him.

It is a little more complicated than that too. The complications are sort of under the surface in the film. The "bad" doctors were sort of right, AZT worked in lower doses. The protagonist, at the very least, starts out aiming to not only stay alive but turn a profit. He isn't a saint.  Yet he is played by Matthew McConaughey as so likeable that it is impossible to resist him. You like him even as you realize what he is.

But the character changes as the film progresses too. The brunt of prejudice maybe he, somehow, comes to understand the other characters pain.

The one other character in the film who really matters is Jarod Leto's Rayon. He delivers a performance that should get serious consideration for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. He HAS to be nominated. He plays the role mostly in drag, partly with great humor but also with a pain that is almost palpable--that seems real.

Rayon isn't someone it would be wise to give your apartment keys to. He isn't someone you want to lend money or have talk to third graders about "just saying no" but he is a character that demonstrates how even people at the bottom of society love, are loved and are worthy of love. It is a remarkable and moving performance.

The other actors in the film do the best they can with their less flamboyant roles. Jennifer Garner is fine in the role of Dr. Eve Saks but just seems sort of dull next to McConaughey's Woodroof. If she didn't seem that way it would be a silly film and it is not. One interesting note is that the small roles where an actor is only on screen for a few minutes are all quite well done. It is tough to be memorable in a few minutes but many here do that--Denis O'Hare, Kevin Rankin and Steve Zahn specifically. Rankin must long for the day when he gets to play a character that isn't a racist redneck. But he does it so, so well!

The movie is moving and full of great performances. It also serves another purpose. Those who recall the early days of AIDS remember the hysteria well. It wasn't "just another disease." it as God's wrath and the "gay plague" come to kill us all. This movie brings you back to that time and is something of a cautionary tale.

It also, oddly, since the intent is likely the opposite, leaves you with a feeling that ultimately the system works. It just lacks compassion for individuals. That isn't the job of "the system" it is the job of actual humans.

12 Years A Slave is a moving story. How could the story of a free man kidnapped into slavery not be? It is also a very good movie with excellent performances in even small roles.  It is, likewise, an interesting piece of direction and cinematography.

In several instances in the film there are close ups that linger to the point of almost uncomfortableness. One instance where a character is left hanging, feet barely touching the ground as the day goes on about him, is as harrowing and disturbing as any scene in any horror film.

The movie brings the horrors of slavery to life in a way that isn't often seen. The beatings, the cruelty, the horror of separating families have been explored many times. What often is lost is how the institution of slavery corrupted the slave owners-- and not just psychopaths like Edwin Epps, portrayed with a performance destined for a supporting Oscar nomination by Michael Fassbender. Benedict Cumberbatch appears as a more "benevolent" slave owner but his personal decency? In the end it counts for nothing against the putrid system he is part of and institution he supports. The film does a good job of showing the human degradation of slavery. The slaves lose their freedom and the owners their humanity.

But the shoe-in for an Oscar nomination--and it is hard to imagine a better performance--is Chiwetel Ejiofor. His portrayal of Solomon Northup is both understated (yes, my favorite word!) and emotional in turns.  As his situation deteriorates, with just his bearing, Ejiofor, shows the stress on Northup but always maintains his dignity. He is a powerful presence as he has shown in smaller roles in the past (Serenity springs to mind). The actors around him show, again often without words, how their situation has worn them down.

It is all superbly done.

And while all the actors acquit themselves well, there is one other--one who might wind up ignored--who deserves Academy Award consideration. Lupita Nyong'o's portrayal of Patsey, a slave that is the object of the sadistic Epps' sexual obsession, is every bit as good as Ejiofor's.  She is both favored and the subject of terrible abuse. This is also another subtle way this film shows how all encompassing was the evil of slavery; Patsey is a "favorite" of Epps but this makes her the subject of special abuse by Epps' wife.  And, of course, being Epps' "favorite" includes rape and jealous rage. Her position dooms her and makes her even more miserable.

Director Steve McQueen, in his third feature film, creates something great and disturbing. If anything the story of slavery has been under-told in American cinema. We need movies like this that focus on those held in bondage and we need them to be based on fact and not wishful thinking. Basing this on Solomon Northup's account of his ordeal makes it all the more powerful. This is also so well written. There is never a moment where you feel it isn't real. It isn't just the dialog but the action and the non-verbal communication in the film.

Everyone should see this film.

There is nothing whatever wrong with Captain Phillips, the latest film starring Tom Hanks. Sounds like faint praise but there are plenty of films in the theaters that have a great deal wrong with them. Having nothing wrong puts a movie well ahead of the curve.

The acting is solid, the film never slows down or gets distracted by side plots. We all know the basics, if not the details of the story. And unless you were on the ship and wanted to be paid for your part of the story worrying about it being 100 percent accurate is silly too. What Hollywood "real life" film is 100 percent accurate?

But Captain Phillips is not the sort of film that is likely to stay with you after you see it either. As noted, the story is still fresh in the minds of many. There are few surprises here. Nor is there any attempt to get at deeper issues--Phillips family life, the conditions in Somalia that lead to such acts etc. It wise decision for the sake of this movie that these topics were only glanced on--any more would have risked dragging the movie down into the briny deep (as much as I am usually for more Catharine Keener screen-time)

We get just enough of Phillips at home to see he has a wife and kids. We get just enough of how and why the Somali pirates do what they do to make them more than just "bad guys." The audience knows they are put in the position they are, largely, by forces beyond their immediate control (ie the men who make the money on such crimes are not the ones racing through the seas on a skiff).

Of course this didn't stop one audience member, upon seeing the sentence one pirate received blurting out "I wonder how much WE are paying for that." Interesting sociological reaction and indicative of America today. Everything boils down into how much something costs. It would have been interesting to hear what this woman thinks should have been done to an apprehended and unarmed man. Some torture perhaps? And how much better are we as a people than they? Really? think about it.

But I digress.

Captain Phillips never gets into these issues and they have only a very peripheral place in this film. It is, however, very clear that the pirates are not operating out of ideology but for money. "No Al Queda." says the "captain" of the pirates--ably portrayed by Barkhad Abdi. Abdi mixes a sort of pathos with menace in his role. He brings a real tension, not necessarily because he is waving around a gun but because you see some sort of internal conflict in him as he makes his decisions, some sort of doubt.

The previews may make the film seem like a U.S. Navy action film. It isn't really about that, although the ending of the film certainly has that element (done quite well).  Most of the movie is about the crew and Phillips avoiding being boarded and then resisting the pirates once aboard. There has been some criticism of the film making the real Phillips seem overly heroic. This is baseless, Hanks portrayal is as an everyman. He does nothing overly heroic--aside from his job.

In fact, one of the interesting parts of the movie is that there is no individualist hero. The "hero" here is procedure. Things do not go well for the crew of the Maersk Alabama in the movie but they certainly do not go as poorly as they might have. The film puts forward that the reason was that captain and crew stuck to the rule book. This is an unusual--and realistic--take on how to survive a crisis in a Hollywood film.  Usually in Hollywood there has to be a hero--a highly paid bankable star with a machine gun. You need Brad Pitt to save you! In real life you need to keep your head and stick with what works (in most cases anyway).

This sense of the realistic animates this movie and while it isn't the most memorable film you will see this year? You will be entertained in the theater. Again, this puts it far ahead of the curve.

Gravity is a tense movie. The audience is barely in its seat before the action begins and from there it barely lets up. It is, in some way, a difficult film to discuss;the character development is minimal and there are only three characters that the audience sees on screen. The plot is fairly simple; astronauts, in space, face a catastrophe and try to survive.

It sounds like it isn't much of a movie, based solely on this synopsis. But it actually is a pretty remarkable film. It looks fantastic. It might even give you a little bit of vertigo and it clearly isn't intended to be a recruiting tool for NASA. Sandra Bullock's character states, at one point, "I hate space."

The film is also, as mentioned, tense, even stressful.

One of the reason the film manages this tension is that it resists Hollywood's usually irresistible desire for a back story, for a love story or maybe a montage where Bullock tries on clothes. There are no flashbacks, no Apollo 13-like anguished family on the ground wringing their hands. The action takes place in space.

That puts the film, beyond the special effects, on the backs of Bullock and George Clooney. Clooney pays the story-telling, wisecracking commander or the mission, Matt Kowalski to Bullock's mission specialist, Ryan Stone. To say there is no back story isn't entirely accurate. We learn about these people how you would learn about someone in real life--through snippets of conversation (in this case under great stress). You do care what happens to them.

Alfonso Cuarón has made a couple of provocative films in the past (Y Tu Mamá También and Children of Men). This film is not really provocative but it is close to perfect. It never lets you rest, never makes you bored but, at the same time, it does not rely on random explosions.

The film is about the action. And it begs the question; why do so many other films fail in this regard?. In many cases it is bad editing. In others someone just decides that MORE explosions is really all you need. Here the "explosions" happen at the right times and are not overdone. You even are given a sort of countdown to when they happen in some cases. It all ticks along like clockwork and the editing is so tight that you are never given a chance to relax. The special effects are not gaudy but truly give the feel of space flight. It seems real even when some of the action maybe strays a bit from reality (it IS a movie).

This isn't to give short shrift to the acting--both Bullock and Clooney do well in their roles, as fairly minimal as they are. Imagine them as people you just meet (in space). They do exactly what they need to in the roles.

It is a peculiar film to try to describe or recommend because it is so focused on what happens rather than the story or the characters. It is also one of those rare films that viewers should consider seeing in XD 3D. A great deal will be lost in 2D viewings of the movie. It is about the visuals.