The Imitation Game (2014)

Had this review come out before this year’s Oscar nominations were announced, I would have begun this review with all the intonations of a futurist predicting a nomination for Benedict Cumberbatch (one I don’t expect he’ll win, but it’s an honor to be nominated, right?).  Safely ensconced in 2015, however, the best I can do is say, “I would have told you so.”

Cumberbatch stars as Alan Turing, the father of modern computing and a genius codebreaker who developed a sophisticated piece of machinery to break the Nazi “Enigma” code during World War II.  With the help of fellow scientific wunderkinds (Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode among them), Turing develops his machine, amid flash-forwards that reveal just how rankly abused he was after the war.

When we look back on 2014 at the movies, we’re going to see a lot of things – the persistence of the superhero renaissance courtesy of Marvel’s best and a talking tree, the surprise revival of at least one career, glimmers of hope in the form of original, non-franchise films – but what stands out to me more than any of these is the abundance of science-oriented pictures.  Neil deGrasse Tyson ought to be proud; he’s on record lamenting the lack of scientific imagination in America these days, and I can’t help but feel 2014 has been an attempt to redress that wrong.  To recap:  Big Hero 6, Interstellar, The Theory of Everything, now The Imitation Game.  Heck, I’ll even count Mr. Peabody & Sherman.

As for the historical accuracy of the piece, I’ve read that a fair bit of it takes creative liberties, all of which I think is in service of the dramatization and not at the expense of the truth.  The film conveys its message quite clearly and effectively, declaring what difficult work the codebreaking was and how ultimately immaterial Turing’s sexuality was in his work.  What matters to the film – and what should have mattered to his persecutors – was his genius and his service to his country, and the film’s sequences which depict the ill effects of Turing’s chemical castration are truly heartbreaking.

The heartbreak is entirely the fault of Mr. Cumberbatch, who rebrands his socially awkward Sherlock shtick in service of something less quirky and more earnest, the kind of performance which has been known to scream for awards but which smacks of none of the desperation so often found in such roles.  Cumberbatch’s Turing is quite natural, eager to get on with the job with none of the distractions along the way.  Because his performance is so totalizing, he does eclipse, unfortunately, his ostensible co-star Keira Knightley.  As Joan Clarke, an invaluable figure in the actual business of codebreaking, Knightley isn’t given as much to do, making her more ancillary than I might have liked.  Seeing the film from Clarke’s perspective might have been intriguing, though I understand The Imitation Game’s project is elsewhere.

Surprisingly, I will say that the film is very nearly stolen by Charles Dance and Mark Strong, who play two of Turing’s superiors during the war.  Dance plays the more standoffish military man, where Strong’s real life analogue was apparently also the inspiration for M in the James Bond novels.  While they’re clearly first and foremost foils for Turing, showing who he is by what they are not, Dance and Strong are consummate performers in the sense that they nail characterization within seconds of debuting on screen and continue to captivate.

I had lamented that The Theory of Everything was somewhat formulaic as a biopic, and in a sense the same is true of The Imitation Game, but I think it isn’t to the film’s detriment because The Imitation Game is a story that hasn’t been told (whereas Theory didn’t innovate as far beyond the “handicapped doing the remarkable” archetype as I would have liked, relying more as it did on the strength of Eddie Redmayne’s transformation).  On top of all that, it’s captivating in a way that manages to subvert the fact that the audience already knows the broad strokes of how the story will end.  I liked it, and I liked Cumberbatch; I’m glad to see him nominated, and though I’m sure the Oscar will go to Redmayne or to Michael Keaton, I hope to see more top-caliber work from him in the future.

The Imitation Game is rated PG-13 for “some sexual references, mature thematic material and historical smoking.”  There are oblique and passing allusions to Turing’s homosexuality, culminating in his prosecution for indecency.  The film addresses bullying and the cost of war, including one scene of bombing.

Into the Woods (2014)

I had so desperately wanted to begin this review with the fabulous line given to Little Red Riding Hood:  “Nice is different than good.”  Unfortunately for the sake of the pun, Into the Woods is both nice and good, a fine close to what has been another good year for Disney and perhaps the more sober alternative to the relentless cheeriness of the nation’s current Frozen mania.

The film’s opener sets the stage best:  “Once upon a time in a far-off kingdom there lay a small village at the edge of the woods, and in this village lived a young maiden (Anna Kendrick as Cinderella), a carefree young lad (Daniel Huttlestone as the bean-stalked Jack), and a childless baker (James Corden) with his wife (Emily Blunt).”  The curse of a witch (Meryl Streep) sets these characters into a quest through the woods, where they cross paths with Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), a pair of narcissistic princes (Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen), and a Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp).

As someone unfamiliar with the stage play – and deliberately so, in order to take the film on its own terms – I can’t help but see Into the Woods as another fabulous step forward for Disney in its current phase of self-reflexive reinvention.  Those who don’t know the play might be surprised, as I was, by the film’s clever fake-out climax which delivers the “happily ever after” about forty minutes too early and then dissects just how untenable that ending would have been – warts, discontents, and unfinished business.  It’s smart stuff, the kind of revisionist fairy tale that we’re seeing played out in stuff like the Fables comics and, more closely to Into the Woods, the true-love fallacies of Frozen and Brave.

As for the lyrical elephant in the room, Stephen Sondheim’s trademark syncopated style of “talk singing” isn’t for everyone, and even folks who liked Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd adaptation from a few years back will find Into the Woods somewhat less melodic, governed more by motifs than catchy tunes.  For me, I liked the music enough to go out in search of the soundtrack, if only for the tour de force “Prologue,” a fifteen-minute introduction to all the characters and major plots that also gives us the whimsical eponymous chorus “Into the woods / It’s time to go...”

I like the music, but I’m sure it’s because the performers are all quite charismatic.  I can’t think of many actresses who could sell a line like “I caught him in the autumn in my garden one night!” – but, as the oft-quoted line from Modern Family goes, “Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice.”  Streep, who did Mamma Mia! with more class than anyone expected, lends the Witch an equal dose of class, and she does wonders with the maternal scenes with Rapunzel as well as absolutely killing it in the witchier bits.  I honestly don’t have a bad word about any of the aforementioned cast, although I’ll throw in the two-cents that I really could have used more Johnny Depp.  Touted as a centerpiece of the ensemble cast, Depp only appears for about five minutes – which are captivating, don’t get me wrong, with his vaguely pedophilic Wolf devouring scenery and children in one fell gulp.

I think the reason I fell so fast in love with Into the Woods, aside from the equally captive audience sharing the theater with me, is that the characters are very well-crafted and – tragically, a rarity these days – eminently likeable.  Everyone, from the Baker and his wife to Red Riding Hood, has a story arc, compelling motivations, and at least one ingenious turn of phrase (either by smart rhyme or admirable manipulation of rhythm).  When things don’t go well for them, the audience feels it; when the characters triumph, we feel it even more.  This is a musical adaptation that remembers those of us who don’t already love the story, so director Rob Marshall works extra hard to get all of us swept away by the once-upon-a-times.

And while I’m on the subject of the captive audience, Into the Woods is an effortless crowd pleaser, even amid a somewhat gloomy ending.  There’s something for everyone in here, plenty of year-end spectacle and spectacular performances:  “It Takes Two” is a catchy and slyly romantic duet, where “Agony” is the musical number that’ll elicit the most laughs as the Princes compare male-privilege sorrows.  Into the Woods manages to be self-reflexive without being overtly cynical – “Careful the tale you tell” seems to be the moral of this story, and it’s evident that the filmmakers have been very careful indeed.  What more can I say?  I had an infectiously good time, escapism layered with enough narrative criticality not to feel like a brain-drain.  I’d happily go back into the woods once more.

Into the Woods is rated PG for “thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material.”  There’s fairy-tale discussion of curses and creatures, though the film darkens considerably in the second half when a giantess walks the earth and several characters die in emotionally-charged sequences.  The Wolf is played as a metaphor for sexual awakening with pedophilic overtones, while the Prince’s philandering ways lead to serious questions about seduction and fidelity.  All told, though, this is no less appropriate than most of, say, Disney’s late-90s offerings.

Taken 3 (2015)

If I were the kind of reviewer who did video or audio reviews, my write-up of Taken 3 would begin with a very clear and audible sigh of disappointment.  I’m not sure with whom or what I’m most disappointed – the film itself, the people who created it without much regard for it actually being a proper Taken film, or myself for possessing expectations some would consider to be unreasonable for a film bearing the alternative title Tak3n.

Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), he of the “particular set of skills,” is framed for the murder of his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen).  Pursued by a police inspector (Forest Whitaker) who doesn’t take his skills for granted, Bryan works to clear his name, identify those responsible, and protect his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).

As repetitive it was, though not as offensively so as the brutally unnecessary The Hangover 2, Taken 2 established a formula for this sort of thing – someone goes to Europe, said someone gets “taken,” and Liam Neeson has to save them, usually with some artificial time constraint, and dismantle an unprecedented amount of foreigners to do so.  As patently silly as that premise sounds on paper, there’s something alchemical about the first Taken which made it solidly one of my favorite action movies of all time.

What we have here is a film that doesn’t do any of those things.  Instead, Taken 3 is formulaic in another direction, aligning it more closely with a very generic action film premise, the wrongfully accused protagonist against all the odds.  Aside from the fact that Bryan buys his daughter a large and not-age-appropriate gift at the beginning, there’s little in this character that resembles the man we met in the first film.  Even his special skills are supplanted by an overemphasis on technological research and a “secret hideout” in which Bryan’s friends do most of the skilled labor.

Taken 3 swaps out all of what made the franchise distinct with a script that could be substituted for any action hero at all.  Even the architecture of the film – man being framed – doesn’t fit with the Taken persona.  Forest Whitaker’s cop character seems out of place, too; he walks around reminding us how good Bryan was in the first two films, but he’s still two steps behind while running what appears to be his own parallel investigation into Lenore’s murder which revolves around, bizarrely of all, eating bagels found as evidence at the crime scene.

The film also does a dismal job of stepping all over the character of Kim.  Where Taken 2 had done a nice bit of character development by having Kim more actively involved in the action sequences and rescue mission, Taken 3 reduces her to bystander and then, as the film draws to a close, a sort of obligatory hostage.  To top it all off, she’s pregnant, a plot point which has nothing to do other than invoke paternalistic feelings of protectiveness, a very retrograde approach to female characters.  Much of the film feels dated, including its soundtrack and action editing, but the inability to do something at least a little creative/progressive with Kim is discouraging.

Taken 3 steps away from its immediate predecessor in another dispiriting way when it completely fails to follow up on what I felt was the best part of Taken 2, the beat in which Bryan wearily admitted, “I am tired of it all.”  I loved the idea of a man drawn begrudgingly into an endless cycle of violence and bloodshed, a man who just wanted to settle down with what was left of his family.  Instead, when the plot of Taken 3 really ramps up, Bryan doesn’t show any of that fatigue.  His revenge-o-meter goes from zero to sixty without hesitation, an inconsistency all the more surprising since Olivier Megaton directed both Taken 2 and 3 yet seems to have overlooked what could have made this film stand apart from all the other generic action outings. 

Then there’s the litany of actual film offenses, those moments of flawed logic and absurdities that stretch the boundaries of even the most suspended of beliefs.  The film includes, among other scenes that got me to laugh but not in a good way, a corpse whose wounds do not bleed and indeed which manage to heal postmortem, the collection of evidence that has no material value for the plot, and a Porsche which can outrun a small aircraft on takeoff.  Granted, the first film gave Bryan Mills near-superheroic abilities, but that’s something intrinsic to the character and, I’d argue, somewhat essential in the genre.  Don’t even get me started on the headscratcher of the plot, which is unnecessarily complex in a way that manages to be both predictable and borderline incomprehensible.

Taken 3 isn’t actually bad – it’s engaging enough and Neeson is still enjoyably gruff – but it is preposterous and, I think, ultimately unnecessary.  The real joy of Taken was that it felt fresh and brisk, and stretching it out over the course of two more films just doesn’t add enough to the equation to justify more movies.  My final analysis is that I want to run into the arms of the original Taken and hope that it hasn’t been sullied in the stretching.

Taken 3 is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action, and for brief strong language.”  The same standard of bloodless but very physical violence continues here, with gunshots, stabbings, and visceral punches.  Taken 3 has more car chases than the other films, as well as one F-word.

Friends, 2015 is not off to a good start.

The Gambler (2014)

Wherefore art thou, William Monahan?  Whither went the man who won an Oscar for the screenplay to my single favorite movie of all time, The Departed?  Well, it seems we know; he had a hand in the dismal Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and now this.  The Gambler isn’t on par with the disappointing and ultimately unnecessary Sin City sequel, largely on the strength of the performances, but it is a tragically unengaging affair.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Jim Bennett, a literature professor and novelist with a gambling addiction and a laundry list of sharks (Michael K. Williams and John Goodman among them) to whom he owes money.  While he wrestles with his debts, he borrows money from his mother (Jessica Lange) and enters into a semi-illicit romance with one of his top students (Brie Larson).

As someone who has taught literature at the college level for some time now, I must begin by saying that the classroom scenes in The Gambler are halfhearted at best and, at worst, horribly ill-conceived.  They seem to serve only to introduce the character of Lamar so that he can be in place for the climax of the film, because top student Amy (more about whom, later) doesn’t contribute much.  It’s evident that Monahan hasn’t set foot in a classroom in a very long time, even setting aside the utter absurdity of placing Camus next to Shakespeare on a survey course syllabus.  Bennett’s class sessions, which oscillate between a packed lecture hall and a group of barely ten students, are longwinded, unfocused, with little to no actual literary content; instead, Bennett insufferably berates his students and himself until dismissing them early because one is sick of the other.

Maybe that’s the point, you suggest, to which I’m willing to listen – at which point, however, I respond that the very characterization of Jim Bennett is a colossal misstep.  Either he’s deliberately unlikeable, or Monahan’s script has failed the character.  I’m inclined to think the latter based on the film’s conclusion.  Without spoiling anything, the character pulls off an eleventh-hour personality change and becomes really quite clever – this after two hours of the gambling equivalent of Leaving Las Vegas.  I’m sorry, Gambler, you can’t be both an unflinching look at the woes of addiction and then go for the Hollywood ending.

Then there’s the whole problem with Larson’s character.  As near as I can tell, the sum purpose of her character is that Amy is someone with whom Mark Wahlberg’s character can have sex.  I’d forgive the script the intensely problematic aspect that Bennett has a relationship with a student if the script didn’t explicitly point out how inappropriate this is and then proceed to do nothing with that detail.  The worse crime is that the character is virtually devoid of personality and could be removed from the film entirely without any impact on the plot whatsoever.

None of this, incidentally, is the cast’s fault.  Wahlberg, Williams, and especially Goodman all turn in grand performances, and if the production starred rank amateurs I’d have walked out.  This holy trinity, however, does the best they can with the material, and my faith in them maybe even elevates the material.  There are a few really snappily-written monologues in the film, mostly leading up to scenes in which Bennett borrows money, monologues that make me long for the William Monahan with whom I fell in screenplay love.

If you’ll indulge the concluding pun, I think The Gambler is something of a gamble for moviegoers.  Either you’ll have the patience for the uneven screenplay or you won’t, but the game is rigged in favor of an unearned Hollywood ending amid a host of master showmen brandishing their hands.

The Gambler is rated R for “language throughout, and for some sexuality/nudity.”  The language is as salty as the popcorn, rife with the F-word, and a brief scene in a strip club shows topless women.  Wahlberg gets roughed up a bit by the folks to whom he owes money.