Back To Life Basics In "Boyhood"

BOYHOOD (2014)
Directed by Richard Linklater
starring Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater

I know the Oscars were months ago. Boyhood is old news. But I wanted to document it here because it is indeed one of those hallmarks of maverick American filmmaking that will be referred to over and over again. If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry – your failure to pay full price at the box office didn’t prevent it from getting its kudos and making its mark. Actress Patricia Arquette was rightfully lauded, earning an Oscar (and calling down wrath for the way she called for women's rights) as well as an Independent Spirit award for her performance, though Linklater and frequent collaborator Hawke did not received as many honors.

By now you have to know the film’s gimmick, that the actors assembled for a short period annually for twelve years to shoot the film. This lengthy process gives viewers the rare ability to see the story of a boy and his family grow, evolve, and change for better or worse as the years pass. Many times the scenes were improvised without a finished script. The result is a beautiful film that captures the small moments of which real life is made: The silliness, inventiveness, resilience and cruelty of children; the struggle of average adults to make career, education, parenting, and romantic choices that don’t always pan out; the tiniest moments of childhood revelation, disillusion, and hard truth over many years that shed the layers of innocence and reveal the budding adult underneath. It’s a brilliant idea to use the same actors year after year, giving the film the weight of a documentary and allowing the characters' individual journeys to unfurl without the usual filmmaking cosmetic and casting gimmicks.

We see Ellar Coltrane grown from a beautifully thoughtful 6-year-old child into a gangly, confused, but essentially goodhearted young man whose parents have tried their best to raise him but have barely prepared him for adulthood. The film should be titled “Life,” but that one’s already been taken (what springs to mind is the underrated Eddie Murphy/Martin Lawrence prison flick).

BUT ... if you are the type of movie goer that insists on a coherent, linear story line with a big payoff, Boyhood is not for you. I’ve seen some comments where viewers feel that they lost valuable hours of their own lives to this film.

*** SPOILERS ***

As Boyhood begins, parents Olivia and Mason Sr. have already parted ways, but Mason Sr. returns after a long work bid out of town, trying to resume relations with his family. Olivia is having none of it. She’s planning to go to college to improve the family situation and needs to move them to Texas, promising their two children, precocious Samantha and dreamy Mason Jr., that they will still get to see their Dad.

Ethan Hawke plays Mason Sr. as a guy who means no harm, but whose aimless lifestyle is at odds with his ex-wife’s ambitions. He's an overgrown teenager, full of dreams and ethics that no longer serve Olivia’s needs. Despite this, he grows into a loving and caring Dad who insists upon developing a real and intimate relationship with his kids. In a scene where he picks them up in his cool convertible muscle car and endures half-hearted, monosyllabic answers to questions about the tweens’ young lives, he pulls the car to the curb and draws a line in the sand. “I’m not going to be that Dad that drives you places and buys you shit,” he declares. It’s a priceless moment where he demands both respect and engagement from his children, and from us as viewers as well. Mason Sr. starts the film as a scattered fuckup, but his devotion and his frankness with them has a profound impact on keeping both kids grounded and clear that they are loved.

Patricia Arquette gives an incredible performance, notable for its simple lack of showiness. She has never been a “mannered” performer, and here she gives us a peek at a woman who is smarter than her circumstances but often finds herself having to choose the best out of a pool of poor options when it comes to love. After breaking up with Mason, she gets involved with one of her professors, a single father who seems stable, with a career, a home, and two children of his own. For a while the blended family presents a classic picture of American domesticity. But he soon succumbs to alcoholism and abuse. Olivia rightfully runs, uprooting her children’s lives in the process. A few years later she has begun teaching at the university and falls into a relationship with a student, a haunted Iraq War veteran who ultimately clashes with the laconic teenaged Mason and also spirals into alcoholism and abuse.

Boyhood is about everything and nothing, the camera walking alongside to document an average boy reaching average benchmarks (smoking, drinking, having sex, learning his strengths and weaknesses) and evolving into an average young adult. He struggles in school, is bullied by classmates, has teenage crushes, plays video games, squabbles endlessly with his smart-aleck big sister, develops an interest in photography, clashes with his stepfathers, experiments with alcohol and pot, gets his heart broken, and is coached in sports and life through by his Dad. He gets a summer job, learns to drive, applies to college. And so it goes. In his averageness is the sum total of all human stories, of a million as-yet-undistinguished American boys of all backgrounds with that most precious and easily squandered of qualities: potential.

In this thoughtful portrayal of an unremarkable life are sparks of revelation about the universality of experience. When Mason Jr. graduates from high school, the family throws him a party; Olivia then helps him pack for college and informs him that she is giving up her house for a smaller residence now that her kids will have to now live on their own. Arquette shines in the moment that Olivia has a brief breakdown. “I thought there would be more,” she says simply. “The only thing left is death.”

There are no stunts, no car crashes, no extreme acts of daring or heroism in Boyhood. No one dies a painful death. The sacrifices are small. But that is the quiet brilliance of this film, which reminds us to savor the everyday and value the time we have with those we love.

New 'Rubble Kings' And Rediscovered '80 Blocks From Tiffany's' Look Back At NYC Gang Life

If you've read some of my posts on Words On Flicks, you know my fondness for film depictions of vintage, dirty old 1970s New York. That's the New York I grew up in, the one I survived.

My parents did the best job possible to insulate my sisters and me from the worst of New York's scuzz, focusing us on education, family, church, and a steady stream of social activities with other striving middle-class families as we came up in the southern part of the Bronx. But there was no denying what we saw from the windows of our Ford station wagon as we drove along Bruckner, Westchester or Southern Boulevards, Gun Hill or Boston Road, 161st or 223rd Street in the Boogie Down. The New York I learned to love was one where you could get mugged on the street, have your gold chain snatched off your neck on the subway, and where hookers and pimps walked openly around on 42nd Street in between the Triple X movie theaters and 3-card Monte scammers. (My mother gave me a hatpin when I first started riding the subway to junior high in mid-Manhattan; the pearl-topped sharp was for stabbing perverts and ripoff artists who preyed on innocents and I got to use that sucker!) Something about the Big Apple's very unforgiving nature in those days fascinated me. (So many stories! thought the burgeoning writer in me.)

There was a lot of talk about the black and Puerto Rican street gangs in the early '70s, particularly as we lived in the Soundview neighborhood adjacent to Hunt's Point and then Fort Apache. Tales of shootings, warnings of burglaries, news reports of murders, and rumors of impending gang rumbles abounded. As I recall there were the Black Spades, the Savage Skulls, the Savage Nomads, the Young Saints, and an Italian gang called the Golden Guineas. It was easy for me, a girl who went to all-female schools and had only a faint idea of the violence and risk involved in gang life, to romanticize these streetwise toughs.

My nostalgia for those gritty days have been triggered by two films: One is yet to be released, called Rubble Kings. This is an upcoming documentary about the New York gangs of the late 70s, and how the historic gang truce they effected in the city ultimately fed into the evolution of hip hop culture of the '80s. Afrika Bambaataa, a former leader of the Black Spades, is one of many personalities interviewed for the film. Rubble Kings is reportedly getting a theatrical release and will be released on DVD. See the trailer below.



Looking into the background for Rubble Kings helped me find the 1979 documentary 80 Blocks From Tiffany's. The title is a reference to the distance between the cool and pricey interiors of the legendary jewelry purveyor on Fifth Avenue and the crumbled and dangerous wild west of the South Bronx. 80 Blocks may not have access to Tiffany diamonds but it what it mines is pure historical and sociological gold, capturing raw snapshots of the lives of some of the Savage Nomads and the Savage Skulls of the South Bronx in the 1970s.

From interviews with members about gang life, to cheesy reenactments of some of their basic crimes, to interviews with the gang division officers committed to keeping the upper hand, to a local woman determined to broker peace between the gang members and the neighborhood residents, to reformed gang leaders reminiscing, this doc is astonishing because it lets their narratives speak for themselves. There is no voiceover, there are no title cards with statistics or warnings, and the film doesn't sermonize about right or wrong. The film just unspools, letting the viewer draw his/her own conclusions. Some might see that as the film's drawback -- the filmmakers don't take a deep dive on the more negative impact that gang culture had on the neighborhoods, springing from poverty, crime, and drug use to perpetuate those cycles. The film even makes it a point to show how in some cases -- like the New York Blackout of '77 -- gang members even protected local residents.

"I just put gang members who don't know how to act into our own version of The Hole for a few days, and they generally straighten up..."

Most revealing are two segments: first, a tense and hilarious attempt at negotiation by one gang member with a hated rival to postpone the date of their fistfight because he hasn't yet recovered from a previous beatdown. And two, the fun of a summer block party is almost destroyed by one gang member's jealousy over a romantic rival, with a scene-ending cut to an interview with the gang moll in question who -- now sporting a busted eye -- offers a flimsy story about how it happened.

80 Blocks From Tiffany's isn't well known, but the documentary was enough to inspire the name of a 2013 mixtape put together by none other than Pete Rock with Camp Lo.

If you want to take a trip back to experience the gang codes, train graffiti, burned and abandoned buildings, the beat and the look of '70s New York, 80 Blocks From Tiffany's is your vehicle. And I'm looking forward to checking out Rubble Kings.

'70s Blood & Guts: "Eddie Coyle" & "Alfredo Garcia"

I'll be the first to admit that sometimes there is no logic to my taste in movies. I don't like horror films or grossout comedies, but I do like a gritty, well-done action, thriller, or gangster movie. Yes, I can overlook violence, misogyny, and even racist overtones as part of the experience of the story in whatever world the director is trying to depict. You have to see these things before you can have an informed reaction.

So, flash back to 2009 when I was living in Los Angeles. It was a rainy Friday afternoon and I was on the phone with my dear friend Scott, who told me that he was going to an American Cinematheque presentation at the historic Egyptian Theater in Hollywood to see these two rare ‘70s "guy" flicks. I admit that the combination of hanging with my best movie-going pal, seeing the unique architecture of a classic Hollywood movie palace like the Egyptian, and the prospect of a testosterone double feature set in the '70s was catnip to this fan. I drove like a bat out of hell in the rain to get to the event.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

First on the bill was a grim little crime gem called The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, directed by Peter Yates (Bullitt, Mother, Jugs & Speed, The Deep, Breaking Away, among others). Adapted from a novel by George V. Higgins, this hard-boiled flick features a broken-down, middle-aged Robert Mitchum as a bakery truck driver who also deals in stolen guns. His loose-knit gang of bank-robbing pals have just pulled off a sloppy series of bank jobs and it's Eddie who has to keep them supplied with weapons. Meanwhile, he's trying to maneuver his way out of going back to jail on a driving-stolen-goods rap. With a wife, a mortgage, and thoughts of spending his golden years relaxing, Eddie mulls whether to squeal on his pals in exchange for leniency in his case. He's caught between giving the feds enough tips to make arrests, and not giving away so much info that he'll rouse suspicion among his gang. Let’s just say that there is no honor among criminals and Eddie hasn't a clue as to who his friends are.

Mitchum, whose history playing dozens of heavies and leading men in Hollywood is long behind him here, plays it way down as a taciturn, former up-and-comer who's now too old for the game. He's marvelous for the simple fact that he is not trying to act, other than struggling with a consistent Boston accent. Mitchum's world-weary Eddie does his best to use his wits, formulating a plan that will keep him from ratting out the linchpins of the bank robbing game and still earn him some money, while keeping himself out of prison and the graveyard.

Unfortunately, things don't go as planned; a pal who's been informing all along pins the squealing it on Eddie, who hasn't a clue. And here the picture goes against the standard Hollywood wisdom of having the hero survive against all odds -- Eddie Coyle catches a bullet in the head before the picture creeps to a close. But Eddie wasn’t a hero — he was a mook trying to outmaneuver a bunch of other mooks, and that's the brilliance of the movie: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and Eddie loses.

Friends of Eddie Coyle is a tough flick, filmed in that fuzzy, near-sepiatone color stock, with great dialogue and superb performances by Mitchum, Peter Boyle as his bar-tending informer pal, and Richard Jordan as his FBI contact. Admittedly some of the nuances of the plot are easy to miss on first viewing, and a couple of the scenes seem to be played for laughs. I attended college in Boston in the late '70s, so it's sheer nostalgia to see Government Center, Faneuil Hall, the old Boston Garden, and the MBTA trolley system and hear the heavy Boston dialect again. One caveat: The story concerns Irish hoods from Southie and the Bopston 'burbs, so they have some not-so-politically-correct things to say about people of color. The Friends of Eddie Coyle got good reviews at the time, but you don't hear too many people talking about it these days. See it with the Sean Penn starrer Mystic River for a sense of continuity.

Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

OK, so I read a lot. I'd gleaned that Sam Peckinpah had a reputation as a director who employs a great deal of screen violence in his storytelling. I hadn't seen a Peckinpah flick until this night. My reaction: Oh Lord. This picture is so insane, I mean, it’s out there. I had caught little bits and pieces of Garcia on TV, which was required to censor it to pieces, but never saw it all the way through. I'd always liked the affable and offbeat Warren Oates; because he’s the star I had assumed that he plays the titular Alfredo Garcia. But, no. His character is shallow, sleazy, conniving, insensitive, and sarcastic. But it's Oates, so you can't help rooting for him.

Oates plays Bennie, an American ex-pat piano player at a bar in Mexico. When a call goes out from a wealthy Mexican underworld don to have this Garcia’s head on a stick in revenge for his young daughter’s pregnancy, Bennie hears about it and decides that this is an opportunity knocking for a lucky money day. So, although he finds out from his Mexican prostitute girlfriend that Garcia, her former lover, is already dead, Bennie is undeterred. He makes a deal with El Jefe's henchmen -- who don't yet know the quarry is deceased -- to hunt down Garcia for a hefty price. Then, with his girlfriend Elita in tow, Bennie sets out to drive across Mexico to the town where Garcia was born. The plan is to dig up Garcia’s head out of the grave, deliver it to Big Man and get his big payoff. Except things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Forces are arrayed against him. He's not the only one searching for Garcia, and then there are the dead man's relatives to consider. Bennie finally gets the stinking, fly-speckled, bloody, decapitated head into his possession but the price is steep. Dozens die along the way; and in the end, Bennie loses his girl, his sanity, and finally his life.

I tell you, images from this flick have haunted my sleep. And not because it was too gory or violent, though it was that, but because Oates was so freaking convincing and the cinematography was so good. Some of the lines are classic, too. Bennie to two guys, one of them Kris Kristofferson, who are holding them up to rape the girlfriend: “You guys are definitely on my shit list.” I mean, that’s an understatement! And so funny. When Bennie and Elita get a crummy room for the night in the little town where Garcia is buried, and Elita is looking doubtful, Bennie says: “Have you ever been drunk in Fresno? This is a palace.” He also has crazy scenes where he’s having long conversations with Garcia’s head in the front seat of his car.

Just – wow. Glad I saw it. But as in Eddie Coyle, the protagonists learn that when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Eddie and Bennie know the score, they know the risks of their lifestyles. For both Bennie and Eddie Coyle, the journey ends up being fatal.

The Glory Of "Selma" (2014)

SELMA (2014)
Directed by Ava Duvernay
Starring David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Tessa Thompson, Common, Tim Roth, Lorraine Toussaint, Oprah Winfrey, Wendell Pierce, Giovanni Ribisi



First off: Ava Duvernay and David Oyelowo were robbed when the Academy Award nominations were announced this past week and they did not receive recognition.

I find the snubbing of Ms. Duvernay especially egregious because what she has done with the writing and direction of this film is a feat of artistic excellence. Selma has been nominated in the Best Picture category, with its John Legend/Common anthem "Glory" competing as Best Song. Very rarely does a film win Best Picture without an Oscar nomination also going to its director (though the Best Picture has been won without its director also winning; two years ago Argo won Best Picture, but director Ben Affleck wasn't nominated).

Setting out to portray the life of a revered and historic icon on screen can be a harrowing endeavor. It is universally recognized that Martin Luther King Jr.'s approach to attaining civil rights for people of color in the U.S. was pioneering, audacious, brave, noble and indelible. His tactics proved effective in shedding light on longstanding injustices and in gaining a measure of equality before the law. He gave his life to the struggle. As such, the example of MLK has become a story for the ages, a brilliant and complicated man who came to be seen as a martyr for all African Americans and others suffering under the yoke of inequality in this country. His legend has been told countless times, on the big screen and in television movies that impress upon audiences the greatness of King's travails.

The brilliance of Selma is that the movie refrains from painting Martin as a superman who singlehandedly strikes a blow for freedom. This is a beautifully conceived, carefully reconstructed set piece in which King is presented as a very human figure confronting an entrenched way of life in the South and an intractable political system, doing so through the coordinated efforts of a team of strategists and the support of everyday people.



What Ava Duvernay does brilliantly is breathe life, wit, and soul into the figure of King, and capture him during one of the pivotal episodes of the civil rights crusade, the march from Selma to Montgomery. Actor David Oyelowo embodies this King brilliantly: Not as a caricature or an imitation, but presenting him as a man with a heartbeat committed to a compelling cause but beset by detractors and a range of conflicting emotions, including the real awareness that his mission is a danger to everyone involved.

There are moments of discomfort in watching Selma, as when we are reminded of the horrors of the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church that took the lives of four little girls, the terror and violence of Selma's police action against African American protestors, and the stinging indignities of Southern Jim Crow racism. But the film must remind us of those realities to present a full understanding of what King and the movement had to push against. And yet this is not a preachy film; it is a carefully rendered story about this episode in the fight for justice, told in a way that taps into the deepest emotions of every viewer. That is truly the power of the film, its humanity.

While a nod from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences would have been thrilling, Oscar should not be the final arbiter of the merit of this film. It is whether it is remembered, viewed over and over, and valued within the culture that gave rise to it. We know of many Oscar winners that have been forgotten.

Remember Selma.

OSCAR Nominations Are Announced!

Nominations for the 87th Annual Academy Awards were announced this morning. Here's the field.
(Wish there was more recognition for Selma, though it is up for Best Picture.) The awards ceremony will be telecast on February 22nd with host Neil Patrick Harris.

Best Picture:
American Sniper
Birdman
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Selma
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash

Best Director:
Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game
Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher

Best Actor:
Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
Michael Keaton, Birdman
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

Best Actress:
Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

Best Supporting Actor:
Robert Duvall, The Judge
Ethan Hawke, Boyhood
Edward Norton, Birdman
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

Best Supporting Actress:
Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Laura Dern, Wild
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Emma Stone, Birdman
Meryl Streep, Into The Woods

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Damien Chazelle, Whiplash
Jason Hall, American Sniper
Graham Moore, The Imitation Game
Anthony McCarten, The Theory of Everything
Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice

Best Original Screenplay:
Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness, The Grand Budapest Hotel
E. Max Frye & Dan Futterman, Foxcatcher
Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr, Armando Bo, Birdman
Richard Linklater, Boyhood

Best Animated Feature:
Big Hero 6
The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Song of the Sea
The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Best Documentary Feature:
CITIZENFOUR
Last Days in Vietnam
Virunga
Finding Vivian Maier
The Salt of the Earth

Best Original Song:
"Everything Is Awesome," The Lego Movie
"Glory," Selma
"I’m Not Gonna Miss You," Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me
"Lost Stars," Begin Again
"Grateful," Beyond the Lights

Best Film Editing:
American Sniper
Boyhood
The Imitation Game
Whiplash
The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Cinematography:
Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman
Ryszard Lenczewski and Łukasz Żal, Ida
Dick Pope, Mr. Turner
Robert D. Yeoman, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Roger Deakins, Unbroken

Best Costume Design:
Colleen Atwood, Into The Woods
Milena Canonero, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Jacqueline Durran, Mr. Turner
Anna B. Sheppard, Maleficent
Mark Bridges, Inherent Vice

Best Production Design:
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Interstellar
Into the Woods
Mr. Turner

Best Animated Short:
The Bigger Picture
The Dam Keeper
Feast
Me and My Moulton
A Single Life

Best Live Action Short:
Aya
Boogaloo and Graham
The Phone Call
Butter Lamp
Parvaneh

Best Documentary Short:
Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Joanna
Our Curse
The Reaper (La Parka)
White Earth

Best Sound Editing:
American Sniper
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Interstellar
Birdman
Unbroken

Best Sound Mixing:
American Sniper
Birdman
Interstellar
Unbroken
Whiplash

Best Visual Effects:
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
X-Men: Days of Future Past

Best Foreign Language Film:
Ida (Poland)
Leviathan (Russia)
Tangerines (Estonia)
Timbuktu (Mauritania)
Wild Tales (Argentina)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Foxcatcher
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Guardians of the Galaxy

Best Original Score:
Alexandre Desplat, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Alexandre Desplat, The Imitation Game
Johann Johannsson, The Theory of Everything
Hans Zimmer, Interstellar
Gary Yershon, Mr. Turner

Words On Flicks: 2014 Wrap-Up

2014: WOF's Year In Film

Can you believe that we're at the end of 2014? It went by way too fast!

Though I had begun Words On Flicks last year, this was the year I really started posting about current and past films, doing synopses, analyses and reviews. I haven't done a great job promoting the stuff here, I do it because I love it, but in 2015 I plan to do a better job at posting about new flicks in a more timely way and promoting the posts better. (The WOF post with the most views this year was about Think Like A Man Too. Thanks!

In 2014 there were just too many release, and I didn't get to see them all. That was often due to my work sked or the fact that the more indie flicks aren't first run here. I tend to avoid most of the studio tentpole genre series like the Hunger Games and Hobbit sequels; I also missed the Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Night At The Museum and the like. The big crowd-pleasers are occasionally appealing to me, but I didn't didn't go that way this year.

The list of things I wanted to see and didn't is embarrassingly long. On the WOF Wish List:
1. Boyhood.
Can't believe I didn't see it! It did make its way here to the hinterlands of metro D.C. finally. Must see it before the Oscar nominations!
2. Wild *
I'm reading the book now; author Cheryl Strayed was one of my MFA lecturers. Just found out we share a birth date. (*Saw it December 31!)
3. The Theory of Everything
Just because Eddie Redmayne is fascinating to watch, and this looks like one of his biggest onscreen challenges
4. Whiplash
You can't say enough good things about J.K. Simmons and his awesome versatility as an actor. Plus, it's about music education! Another one to see before Oscar time...
5. St. Vincent
I didn't see it because I was waffling. Love Bill Murray, but is the loveably quirky curmudgeon thing getting old?
6. The Skeleton Twins
Kristen Wiig. Nuff said.
7. Rosewater
Looked like an interesting story about the dangers of reporting from the middle East. Directed by Jon Stewart? Yeah. Shoulda seen it.
8. Interstellar
This year's Gravity? Only in the sense that it has something to do with outer space, it's out toward the end of the year, and everyone's talking about it -- just like Gravity. Didn't see that one either. So shoot me.
9. Nightcrawler
Working as an entertainment reporter for so long began to feel almost like ambulance chasing to me, so this tale about the underside of the news biz looked pretty interesting.
10. Love Is Strange
John Lithgow and Alfred Molina portraying a longtime couple forced to live apart by
circumstance. The flick looked like a chance to see a workshop in great acting.

Still To Be Seen As 2014 turns into 2015:
1. Selma * -- kudos to director Ava Duvernay! Seeing this ASAP. (*saw it 12/31!)
2. Annie -- mixed reviews but I need to support this cast and these producers!
3. Inherent Vice -- gritty whodunit in '70s California with a great cast. Looking forward ...
4. The Gambler -- gritty thriller with a great cast. We'll see if it lives up to the hype.

WOF's "Why? Why? Why?" List:
1. The Other Woman
They finally turned the game and funny Leslie Mann into a completely unfunny pathetic nightmare. A comedy that only confirms outdated stereotypes about women
2, Sex Tape
Raunchy comedies are nothing new, but this one just ventured from mawkish to TMI. Some laugh out loud moments, but mostly way too much and embarrassing.
3. Hercules
I love my Dwayne Johnson, yes I do, but if The Rock is going to do Hercules, you want to see him perform the Twelve Labors -- a series of legendary feats glossed over in the film's preamble. What? Maybe the producers blinked when told that another Hercules film was being released the same year, but this post-legend yarn about Herc as the leader of a band of a mercenaries was just uninvolving.
5. A Million Ways To Die in the West
Too many episodes of Family Guy led me into the theater, hopeful to see what Seth McFarland had up his sleeve. Not much, as it turned out. This was like watching an old episode of F-Troop or Petticoat Junction with bad language and raunch. Pleasant but not worth the price of the ticket.
6. Gone Girl
Yeah, I said it. I'm sure the book was amazing, but I didn't read it. Transferring the novel to screen made all of its plot holes and implausibilities glaringly evident and at times bordered on camp. Ben Affleck seemed comatose, and I couldn't tell if that was his character or just his usual acting job. But kudos to Rosamund Pike, who outdoes herself here, but this reminded me unpleasantly of The Talented Mr. Ripley.

WOF's Favorites of 2014 in no particular order:
Dear White People
Sly, clever commentary on the so-called "postracial" existence on a college campus shatters stereotypes but offers no easy answers.
Get On Up
A snapshot of the life of one of our most complicated musical legends, driven by a towering performance from Chadwick Boseman
Top Five
Not a perfect film, but thoroughly enjoyable mix of comedy and thoughtfulness about relationships, the powers of media, and being our best selves.
Under The Skin
Scarlett Johanssen is one of the most brash, fearless actresses working in Hollywood today. In this eerie and disturbing film, she portrays an alien fallen to earth in Scotland. Assuming human form, she lures unsuspecting men to a horrifying fate in order to survive. The straightforward, documentary style and unique special effects give this film a stark and haunting power.
Selma
Beautifully photographed, painstakingly designed, this is a masterful, breathing portrait of the civil rights legend during a pivotal time in our nation's history. Director Ava Duvernay has wrung strong performances from an impressive cast.

What were your favorite films of 2014 and why? Post in the comments section below and share your views.

Happy New Year and here's to a great 2015 in film!

"Into The Woods" (2014)

directed by Rob Marshall
starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Anna Kendrick, Christine Baranski, and Johnny Depp

After growing up on the romantic expositionism of Rodgers & Hammerstein, I've found that Stephen Sondheim has taken some getting used to. I guess my first exposure was to his oeuvre was hearing the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, a project I happen to love -- but which makes many Puerto Ricans grit their teeth over the film's main Puerto Rican characters being played by a Russian-American (Natalie Wood as Maria) and a Greek-American (George Chakiris as her brother Bernardo). But straight Sondheim has been more difficult for me to swallow; A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum is more memorable to me for its insane story line than its songs (quick, sing me any other song besides "Comedy Tonight"). Only recently did I fall in love with a revival of 1970's Company, thanks to a recent staging featuring Neil Patrick Harris, a meditation on marriage; and Sweeney Todd, which is his most operatic work, has become one of my favorites due to the impassioned performances the work demands.

I had never experienced Sondheim's James Lapine collaboration Into The Woods in any form -- had not seen the show nor even heard any more of the score than the repeated phrasing of its title song. But the idea of fractured fairy tales has always intrigued me because so much of my sense of story and storytelling is centered on those childhood tropes penned centuries ago by the likes of Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen -- formalized European folk stories that, when you get down to it, are actually horrifying and grim morality lessons. Into The Woods the musical looks with a wink at the perennial presence of "the woods" in so many of these tales, a mysterious place of retrospection, danger, trial, and magic that transforms those who enter there. The more dominant theme of Into The Woods -- which begins with many characters singing "I wish" -- is "Be careful what you wish for." Because what happens after you get your wish? What are the ramifications for your life and the lives of others around you? What must you give up to attain your wish? What and who have you sacrificed and was it worth it? By also touching upon the ever-changing nature of what it is to be human, the story examines what happens beyond the "happily ever after" of most fairy tales and the results aren't so pretty.

Into The Woods the movie is an attempt to take the stage action of this alternately charming and preachy little piece and put it into a semi-realistic setting. As such, I don't think it works as well as it probably did on the stage. But it's not for lack of trying.

This Into The Woods stars some extremely capable personalities: Meryl Streep (a veritable and literal blue streak of impressive acting, as always), Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Anna Kendrick, Christine Baranski, and a sly cameo from Johnny Depp, all under the direction of James Marshall, who did stellar work with Chicago (but also confounded us with the opulent but less cohesive 9, let's be frank). And it starts with promise.

A witch (Streep) reveals to the childless Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Blunt) that because of an ages old dispute with the baker's father, she has cursed his descendants with barrenness. To reverse the curse, the witch tasks the couple with bringing her four items known from fairy tales. In the pursuit of these items the couple heads to the woods and crosses paths with an obnoxious, overeating red-caped girl headed to her grandmother's place; a dunderheaded kid who will trade a beloved cow for a pile of seemingly worthless beans; a conflicted, golden-gowned cinders hauler (Kendrick) weighing life amid familiar surroundings with a mean stepmother and stepsisters, or a restricted life of privilege as the bride of Prince Charming (Pine); and the witch's stolen and adopted daughter whose abundance of hair is the only entry to the doorless tower where she lives. Because we know the stories of Red Riding Hood, Jack & the Beanstalk, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, it's fun to see them given life in the first half of the film -- even when the story veers into the "I wish I hadn't just seen that," as in Little Red's confrontation with The Wolf (nice to see you, Johnny Depp, but did we really need you for those four minutes?).

After the momentum of its first half, the film's second half sags considerably. Though the audience already knows the fairy tales by heart, the author and director of Into The Woods count on this and choose not to show on screen the climactic moments of two of those tales. We do not get to see Jack face the giant and steal the goose that laid the golden eggs, nor do we get to see much of Cinderella's preparation for or interaction at the "festival" (OK, I tipped ou to the ladies', so correct me if I'm wrong) -- Cindy is whisked into a new dress by the spirit of her dead mother and sent on her way, pumpkin coach be damned, and escapes not because of the threat of being revealed in rags at midnight, but because of her own apprehension over being Prince Charming's choice.

Weighted down by issues of marital infidelity, fear of abandonment, class conflict, cowardice, disappointment, despair, disfigurement, and the ultimate downer -- death -- Into The Woods staggers like its unwieldy, half-seen, final act Giantess to an unsatisfying conclusion.

Into The Woods is a must-see if you have a real fondness for musicals and a musical Meryl. I think I'll have to see this one again at some point to get a deeper read on it. But if fantasy paired with passable music isn't your cup of RedBull, I'd say steer clear.