Birdman

"I just kept thinking, 'That's Mr. Mom, man!'" -Jon

This is a story about the internal dialog/struggles/petty drama of an actor, self-absorbed and exhausting to watch battle his inner-demons but...

...this guy's inner demons include not just a failed marriage, dried up career, mountains of self-doubt, and a just-out-of-rehab daughter (though, those are there); this guys biggest demon is a Birdman character he played 20 years ago...and some some magical realism...and some incredible meta-dialog wrap-around storyline gymnastics. I was engrossed in it from the first scene to the last.

Like all of director Alejandro González Iñárritu's work, this is painstaking, tense and beautiful. There are moments of comic relief, but always at the expense of someone. 

The camera work is fantastic...edited and cut as if it were one continuous shot (almost) which gives it a cinéma vérité look and feel (although this is certainly not), which is also a nod to how the play unfolds within the movie as real-life bashes its way onto the stage and stretching the boundaries of the fourth wall become the key to resolution of the story.

I'd love to talk to a theater person about this movie...it's been a LONG time since I was on the stage or behind it and I think that would add another dimension all together.

Michael Keaton is really, really good in this.  

Inherent Vice

Ahhhhh crap.  I fell off the wagon so quickly.  I vow to do better and write these damn  things up before I forget if I liked them or not.

So!  A couple things I loved about this:  Its very gritty /over-exposed look were super-reminiscent of late 60's early 70's sunbaked (baked) Southern California.  The costumes, the telephone, the cars...all spot on as P.T. Anderson can do. 

It was laugh-out-loud funny at times and had some great twists and surprises.

Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix were brilliant together in Walk the Line, so it was fun seeing them here too.

There is something Big Lebowski-ish and quotable in this missing person romp.  It's LA, it's a decade piece, it has fantastic characters (Martin Short absolutely steals the show about 2/3rds of the way in).

I wanted to watch it again as soon as it was over.

Citizenfour

"I dunno" I shrugged at Jon. "Aren't these kinds of things more your thing?"  I was worried that I would need to know more about Edward Snowden than I did.  Not wanting the subtleties of the film (or even the greater meanings) to be lost on me because I don't read news with any regularity anymore. I was wrong. This movie was totally my thing.  It was exciting. Tense. Human. It made me mad. It made me appreciate that there are people in this world who will act when they see something that is wrong. It made me respect Snowden for his smarts and bravado and for choosing the right journalists to tell his story. 

Snowden was a high level computer engineer, contracted at the NSA, who had access to any level of classified of data. He wrote code and managed systems on which metadata is being captured on everyone (literally) and cataloged in searchable ways.  He knew this was wrong so he decided to reach out to two journalists who he knew would respect the story and its weight and told them what he knew and shared documents with them. The film unfolds mainly over a week or so and follows journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras as they meet with Snowden to hear what he has to say in a Hong Kong hotel room. It is informative and revealing, emotional and haunting.  

What I liked most about this documentary are the times that you see the person behind the story...Snowden's nervous tics and awkward phone conversations with the hotel staff . The long, steady shots of him thinking, looking out the hotel window or fussing with his hair. He's a person. You can feel his resolve even when he is clearly uncertain about what comes next.

The story is still unfolding and, truthfully, I felt helpless when the movie ended. We are still being listened to and watched. Drones, cell phones, search engines - the tools are in the hands of the watchers. It feels like it's too late.

Back in the Saddle!

After a five year hiatus, I am firing up the movieblog again!  I've got an unofficial goal of 26 movies in the theater this year.  Wish me luck!