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.