Bridge of Spies

Let the Oscar Games begin.

Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and the Coen brothers start the 2015/16 Oscar season with a bang with the first truly good movie of the year. Let's hope that they can keep the momentum going.

Bridge of Spies tells a (inspired by true events) story that may not be as well known but definitely inspiring and aspirational. Penned by Matt Charman with the Coen brothers, the story in itself was relatively straightforward but tucked beneath this Cold War drama was a simple exploration of the themes of morality, justice, faith and humanity. All of which fall directly into Spielberg's wheelhouse.

Spielberg, on his part, has directed a great movie with wide-spread popular appeal - especially with Hanks in the lead. The story had shades of his under-rated Munich and the modern classic Schindler's List, but albeit one with a more pro-American shade reminiscence of  Lincoln. All his trademarks were present, lens flare (waaaaay less then JJ Abrams), back lighting, purposefully awkward angles to frame shots and even one thrilling action sequence that was done much better than most directors these days.

The film, even at 141 minutes, did not feel long at all. The pace was clipped and characters - especially foreign ones - were kept to a minimum; events unfolded as they should. Spielberg really made this film very accessible to the mass public.

However, all of this would not have been possible without Hanks in the lead. Hanks - the all american everyday man, whom Matt Damon is in the flanks to takeover - exuded a quiet and strong presence. His lines delivery was so believable regardless of how hokey they may actually be, and you really felt that he cared about the outcome - and thus you also care about it.

But, in my opinion, the most valuable actor of the film was Mark Rylance of BBC's Wolf Hall fame. Rylance gave a truly outstanding and memorable performance. He created a character with whom we can sympathise and empathise with. Without which the basis of this film would have fallen apart.

Hanks may get a Lead Actor nomination, but I think Rylance will more likely be the one to get and deserve Oscar recognition.

Amy Ryan also stood out with her small role as Hanks' onscreen wife. A strong presence with a voice and not just a long-suffering wife.

Sebastian Koch and Alan Alda round out the excellent cast.

Frequent Spielberg collaborators Janusz Kamiński and Thomas Newman did the cinematography and music respectively. Through Kaminski's lens, East Berlin seemed so desolate, harsh and cold; Newman's score was very apt and did not distract at all even during the above-mentioned action sequence unlike in most typical action movies.

With this film Spielberg and co has set the bar quite high for the rest of the awards season, and it will be exciting to see how the other contenders will compare to it!

The Martian

A very likable and enjoyable nerd/sci-fi thriller that had humour, suspense, and pathos, but despite all that something was still lacking in it to make it really superb.

Ridley Scott finally scored a real hit after the so-so Exodus: Gods and Kings, the well-acted but incoherent The Counselor and the disappointing Prometheus, and writer Drew Goddard definitely played a role in the success because the script was the strongest of the lot. It was direct, straightforward and made sense (within the scope of cinematic/artistic licence).

However, therein also laid one of the main problems. Goddard's script was essentially script-writing 101. There were no surprises and nothing unpredictable about how the story unfold. Scott himself also presented it such that you knew what was exactly going to happen next and that made any sought of tension in the film appeared overly drawn out and tedious. Character development and emotional investments were sacrificed on the altar of narrative cohesiveness and continuity. Debate.

Goddard - a alumnus of Whedonverse - peppered the screenplay with many snarky one-liners and most of them actually worked. However, a few - especially those uttered by side characters - fell flat and distracted the momentum of the story.

Speaking of which, Scott's pacing was excellent in the beginning. The action and story kicked in almost immediately which really grabbed the audience's attention from the get go. However, as the story progressed, and the predictability level got higher - and more tedious - the film began to dragged. And then we rushed to the finale.

Scott had assembled a great cast of actors and they all fitted their roles really well, even Kate Mara who managed to be less (not non-) annoying. And there was a surprising number of Marvel-related actors which really did make Goddard's running gag of Iron Man worked.

Matt Damon is a really relatable, everyday-sort-of-man. and that made his character someone the audience can really get behind with. Furthermore, he delivered the snide snarks with aplomb - which recalled back to his brilliant and often underused comedic talent (see The Informant! and the Ocean's Eleven trilogy). However, as the script had no mention of his emotional and mental state of mind, we do no get much in terms of dramatic chops.

That laid solely on the shoulders of the brilliant Jessica Chastain. Sadly there was not enough of her. But those few scenes we have, she conveyed more in her body language than the words she uttered. Just like in Interstellar she was the best actor in the whole film.

Michael Pena who had the best lines in Ant Man again had the best lines here, and his relationship with Damon were one of the highlights.

Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean and Chiwetel Ejiofor rounded out the ground crew trying to bring them back and they all played their roles to the tee.

The weakest "major" characters were the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) and Sue Storm (Kata Mara). They were there purely for narrative reasons but then out-of-the-blue, some sort of romance, that made no sense, crept in which added nothing to the supposed tension/risk of their characters.

The cinematography and music by frequent Scott collaborators Dariusz Wolski and Harry Gregson-Willaims also stood out especially the gorgeous wide-angled landscaping of the former. The latter's music slowly became overly drawn out towards the end when the action sequences themselves also felt tedious.

In the end, this was an optimistic exploration of the nature of humanity and a triumphant return to form by Ridley Scott. Definitely a better movie than Interstellar  and more easily accessible to the public than Gravity.

It Follows [SQ Inflight Entertainment]

A fairly original horror/supernatural film, and that in itself is a rarity these days, that was suspenseful and entertaining throughout relying less on jump scares but mood, atmosphere and directing to inject fear and trepidation. It felt a lot like last year's great horror flick The Babadook, especially in terms of the ending.

A standout performance by the central damsel-in-distress - Maika Monroe - and here's hoping that she can break out of her stereotype. However, the rest of the cast were fairly non-memorable.

I liked that story-wise writer/director David Robert Mitchell did not lay out any background or mythology to the supernatural entity. Just accept that it is what it is. However, one of the most important things in horror films is that the villain/ghost/spirit/demon/etc has got to be consistently portrayed and its capabilities/powers need to be consistent regardless of how exagerrated it might be, and in this case the inconsistency got to the point where it was rather distracting.

The directing too was great and the way it was shot with the wide-angles and the pannings, etc really added to the mood and elevated the fear factor.

The ending itself <spoiler alert> left much to be desired and felt like a cop-out, leaving the door wide open, instead of just a sliver, for a sequel <end spoiler alert>.

It Follows was definitely a good horror film but maybe not as exalted to the heights as a "new modern classic" as claimed by Eli Gold of The Good Wife. Though, as it seems, it has already integrated itself into modern pop culture lexicon.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl [SQ Inflight Entertainment]

An indie version of The Fault in Our Stars, but with more originality and sincerity such that its emotional climax was much more deserved.

Directed by one of Glee's usual and more visually exciting director, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, the exuberance and angst of youth was deftly captured. The story itself was nothing new and the way it was told was also not very original, but putting them together gave us something interesting. Think Perks of Being a Wallflower meet John Green.

Thomas Mann made for a good narrator and his self-effacing mannerisms made him endearing to the audience. Similarly, Olivia Cooke is a rising star worth keeping an eye out for. Especially since she landed the lead in Spielberg's Ready Player One.
 

The character of Earl, on the other hand, was interesting. And a smart choice. He served as both the audience surrogate and as Mann's character voice of reason.

In the end, like an episode of Glee, there was even a lesson to be learnt. But here, it did not sound Ryan Murphy-preachy or overly dramatic. 

Remember: there are always things to be discovered about people. 

Black Mass

With this movie, Johnny Depp has placed himself on this year's long list for Best Actor. However, despite a fascinating story of an equally intriguing character, Scott Cooper failed to really explore beneath the superficiality to uncover what could have been a complex character study.

Depp was really not very different here in this film than his last offerings. He has completely changed himself physically but the only difference now is that Black Mass is not a Disney film. He was creepy as hell, with an icy cold stare that would freeze even the White Walkers of GOT, and he really did inhabit the character - losing himself but without the caricature-tendency of Jack Sparrow or The Mad Hatter.

The story by Jez Butterworth and Mark Mallouk was straightforward but as aforementioned, it focused more on the life of James Bulger rather than explore deeper into the man himself. What that resulted in was a missed opportunity to mine the rich relationship dynamics that existed between Bulger and John Connolly (played by Joel Edgerton), his brother William Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his partners.

Martin Scorcese's The Departed (and the original HK version) had it right when they really dug into the relationship between a criminal and the law-enforcer. So, although Depp was up to par, Edgerton was not given enough material to make Connolly anything more than two-dimensional.

Similarly, Cumberbatch was wasted here as the younger brother and Senator. That relationship could have been a whole movie by itself exploring the complex co-existence of blood and money, and of power and familiarity.

David Harbour and Julianne Nicholson stood out amongst the rest of the extended cast, with Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Rory Cochrane and a late-entry Corey Stoll rounding out the large cast.

Music was by Junkie XL which was really different from what he did for Mad Max: Fury Road. But that cello at the end was awesome.

In the end, this suffered from the Iton Lady syndrome - a good actor but a story that failed him.

Everest [IMAX 3D]

Disclaimer: I am so glad that after climbing Mt Kilimanjaro I have no further need to satisfy myself to scale any higher peaks.

This movie should be seen in the big screen and preferably in 3D. IMAX if possible. The cinematography is gorgeous and you need that screen size and the 3D depth to really appreciate the scale and the harrowing horror that mountain climbing can bring. Exciting misadventures notwithstanding, the narrative was ultimately as thin as the air up there, made worse by nagging inconsistencies and unrealism, and a Final Act that unabashedly dramatises the truth to milk your tears.

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur did a great job in getting straight into the story. However, that ended up being a double-edged sword. We got great shots of the gorgeous landscape and was right there in the midst of the action as the mountaineers begin their track and acclimatisation. But we barely know anything about the characters which made the final act seemed unearned and false in all its dramatisation. What we got in the end felt more like a shove in the back rather than a KO sucker-punch.

In the end, this really was just a story about two people: Jason Clarke and Josh Brolin, and this epic journey. Pity then that Kormakur had to resort to cheap dramatics to cajole us into empathising with them, but lucky for him, he got Kiera Knightly and Claire Underwood Robin Wright to be their respective spouses and our emotional surrogates.

The best actor was without a doubt Emily Watson. Watson is heads and shoulders above everybody else in this film, and to me, she really is the film's emotional core.

Clarke is everywhere these days, and this perhaps is his strongest role since Zero Dark Thirty.

Brolin - again after Sicario - really does have that annoying, smug act down pat. Unfortunately, the way his character was written really made it hard for us to care about his story.

Knightly and Clarke surprisingly had good chemistry, and she did her bit part rather well. Well enough to definitely at least tug on the heart-strings.

Wright was really just being Claire. But strangely, a good fit for Brolin's character.

Jake Gyllenhaal was really just an extended cameo, but at least his character had some purpose in an odd sort of way. Sam Worthington - poor chap really needs to catch a break - appears, disappears, appears again but for what real purpose that another already-existing character cannot do?

Kudos to cinematographer Salvatore Totino! Breathtaking!

And an excellent score by Oscar-winning (for Atonement) Dario Marianelli.

Mountain-climbers will definitely appreciate this film more but just suspense your belief - this is Hollywood! - and non-climbers might just never want to climb a mountain again. IMAX and 3D highly recommended.

Sicario

A brilliant and exciting movie by Denis Villeneuve that had almost everything going right for it - great directing, excellent cinematography, fantastic music and a top-notch cast - except for a familiarly subversive, and slightly uneven story that really only worked because the protagonist was a female, and that female was Emily Blunt. And there was Benicio del Toro.

After Enemy and Prisoners, Villeneuve returned with a home-run that is Sicario. From the opening sequence on, this slow-burning drug/crime procedural did not let down on its pacing. The action sets were not big or showy, but Villeneuve's direction was precise and notched up the tension expertly. Buoyed by Roger Deakin's gorgeous cinematography and Johann Johannsson's sumptuous music (much better than his work on The Theory of Everything), this film was a visual and aural pleasure!

Using Blunt's character as an audience surrogate, we follow the story as blind as her, and slowly understand the larger picture at about the same rate as she. That made for an effective storytelling and ensured empathy for her character.

But what was really great about the movie was the subversion of expectations. The story itself, written by Taylor Sheridan, was nothing new; it could have come from any number of spy dramas out there, and possibly even ripped off  from Homeland or 24. However, it absolutely turned the Hollywood archetypal strong female action hero on its head.

Blunt's character slowly became less relevant narratively as the plot unfolds as del Toro's role took on more significance.  However, Villeneuve still skillfully managed to maintain Blunt as the epicentre of the story although the slight narrative detour to focus on del Toro's character did disrupt the flow of the story.

Blunt absolutely nailed her role and impressed with her range of emotions that she conveyed just through her physicality, eyes and body language. By the end of the movie, we were as put through the wringer as she was, and could really empathise with her situation.

Del Toro also stood out. He started off as an enigma and really, towards the end, still remained so. However, he has an extremely strong presence stealing the scenes in a subtle, non-showy, way.

Josh Brolin played a typical role. He bordered on being overly cocky and annoying, but thankfully, managed to rein it in.

An excellent movie that really set the bar high for all upcoming Oscar-baiting movies!