Reviews

Despite all of this greatness jostling for screen time at your local cinema and art house theatre, The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch has managed to make a strong case for your precious $14.50. The film is based on British mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing's quest to crack Nazi Germany's Enigma code and bring an end to World War II. By way of flashback and flashforward, director Morten Tyldum and screenwriter Graham Moore trace three crucial timelines in Turing's storied life: his awkward coming of age at boarding school; his top-secret work for the British government in the 1940's during which he developed the automated electromechanical machine known as the bombe, the device that cracked the Enigma code and is widely regarded as the predecessor to the modern computer; and his tragic and deplorable conviction for gross indecency (read: homosexuality) which led to compulsory chemical castration in lieu of jail time, and ultimately, his suicide.

Remarkably, this is the first time Turing's story has been dramatized on the big screen, though for U.S. distributor The Weinstein Company, it has been well worth the wait. After topping the prestigious Black List in 2011, the script was picked up by Warner Brothers for a seven figure sum, subsequently dropped when certain casting talks disintegrated, eventually produced by Black Bear Pictures, and sold to the Weinstein Brothers' shop for a cool $7 million (the most ever paid for U.S. distribution rights at The European Film Market). The end result is a well-crafted, vindicating exploration of one of the twentieth centuries most impressive and perplexing minds.

Based on Andrew Hodges book Alan Turing: The Enigma, the adaptation first and foremost accomplishes what it set out to do by telling a story that needed to be told. Turing's contributions to the Allied war effort, artificial intelligence, and theoretical computer science (not to mention his world class marathon running talent) transformed the way intelligence and data are gathered and implemented on and off the battlefield. That Benedict Cumberbatch was able to so beautifully embody the arrogant, antisocial genius who seemed more at home tinkering with aluminium and copper and dissecting Nazi ciphers than attempting the insurmountable task of engaging with other people makes The Imitation Game an inspiring watch. The actor's self-assurance and wit that audiences have grown accustomed to through his BBC role as a modern day Sherlock Holmes prove useful as he tackles Turing, but it is the added layer of chronic angst and heartbreak that truly breath life into the character. It's hard to walk away from the movie's final scenes unaffected.

Despite Cumberbatch's ability to build real empathy for his subject, the film at times regrettably falls into cliché. An oft repeated, audience-pleasing one-liner and a handful of generic biopic moments cast a delicate haze of predictability over the story. Tyldum and Moore also seemed to shy away from the scientifically fascinating nuts and bolts of Turing's work and instead dwell in shallower waters, namely the man's social ineptitude and his complicated engagement to co-codebreaker Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley). It was as if every time a stretch of dialogue (and the film is nearly all dialogue) veered too far off course into discussions of cryptanalysis, bombe rotor settings and logical deduction, you could feel the filmmakers reeling it back in to safer territory. To be fair, The Imitation Game is a narrative about the life of Alan Turing and not an episode of How It's Made. Nevertheless, engrossing speech doesn't always have to be grandiose; the best part about Apollo 13 is getting lost in the complicated details of physics and spacecraft engineering. Letting people figure out for themselves that something is incredible is always better than telling them yourself.

However, the conceit of Turing as an enigma in and of himself is a powerful one that distinguishes the film from predecessors in its genre. In a pivotal interrogation scene, Turing invites his interviewer to play the logician's famous imitation game—or Turing Test—where through a series of questions one tries to discern if their counterparty is a human or a machine. Following the interrogation, Turing challenges the questioner to define him: is he a man or a machine? Or is he a monster? A homosexual? All of the above? To judge a person on just one of their marginal attributes without recognizing all the others, much like the British government did in its shameful conviction and sentencing of Turing in 1952, is to neglect the imperfect dynamism that makes a human a human. While posthumous awards, royal pardons and cultural media can't right the wrong that was done to one of Britain's greatest minds, The Imitation Game at the very least shares Turing's greatness with anyone willing to seek it out.

One of the trademarks of a smart film is that the audience doesn't know that it's being smart. Or at least they don't realize it at the time. Dan Gilroy's LA crime dramedy Nightcrawler isn't necessarily the "smartest" film of the year, but Jake Gyllenhaal's mesmerizingly creepy performance and Gilroy's tightly rendered story make succumbing to a convenient myopia about Nightcrawler an easy pitfall. That it is about an ambitious sociopath's descent into and subsequent rise through the reprehensibly bloodthirsty cesspool that is the nightly TV news industry is obvious from the trailer. But to the filmmaker's credit and the audience's benefit, Nightcrawler has a bit more than that going on beneath the surface.

Filmed across dozens of LA's shadiest street corners, the movie follows a young smooth talker named Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) as he discovers a passion for capturing local tragedies on camera and selling the footage to crime-obsessed TV news studios. At first, he's just one of a cadre of nocturnal freelance photographers looking to profit off of the city's nightly carjackings and homicides, but gradually Lou develops a knack for the job to the point where Nina, a local network's news boss (Renee Russo), starts crafting the daily broadcast around Lou's consistently shocking videos. With the specter of ratings season looming just a few weeks away, Nina's desperation grows and her dependence on Lou's material puts her in precarious positions. When Lou's competition finally catches up to him (embodied by a husky Bill Paxton) and his comparative advantage in being the first guy on the scene dwindles, Lou deems it necessary to create the stories on his own, both to realize his dream of growing a successful business and to maintain his chilling influence over Nina. Journalistic integrity and ethical questions get raised—although only by one of Nina's peers (played by Kevin Rahm)—and the cops suspect Lou has more information about an especially savage crime than the footage he sold to Nina. The story crescendos as Lou sets a plan in motion to capture his most astonishing—and dangerous—video yet that blurs the lines between documentarist and subject while revealing Lou's true colors in the process.

Nightcrawler's release this past weekend was aptly timed, what with the recent backlash against mainstream media's sensationalist fear mongering over cases of Ebola in the United States. To a lesser—but still relevant—extent, Nightcrawler's themes of privacy invasion and the bastardization of an individual's sense of self at their most vulnerable moment conjures the similarly complicated sentiments that tend to accompany celebrity nude photo hacking scandals. No matter where a shooting/structure fire/car crash occurs in the film, Lou Bloom's camera manages to find its way right in front of the victim's face like an ominous proboscis. He enters homes, films emergency surgeries and manipulates crime scenes before the cops arrive, all without the faintest sign of remorse. The resentment audiences will feel towards Lou and his behaviour is part of Gilroy's intent, and probably tells us something about his worldview regarding a currently developing culture of the anonymous public exploitation of other people's private lives, seemingly with impunity.

The manner in which Gilroy chose to tell his story is as compelling as the message he tried to convey. Sharp, deliberately manufactured dialogue highlights one of the year's stronger scripts that succeeds in both weaving a fascinating high-stakes narrative and piquing an unsettling interest in a character that resonates with the audience until the final shot of the film. Aside from a couple of alienating scenes that take you out of the movie, Nightcrawler preserves momentum even when we're just watching Gyllenhaal and his homeless employee (Riz Ahmed) monitor a police scanner in Lou's gas guzzler. No doubt, the film lives and dies on Gyllenhaal's portrayal of a recession- battered millennial poster boy looking for his calling in life. In interviews, Gyllenhaal has likened his character to a coyote, the unofficial SoCal mascot. The comparison comes through in the film, where Lou is scrappy, hungry, often unaccompanied, and a survivor (the actor's physical transformation into a slender sunken- eyed creep amplifies the metaphor). Scene after scene for nearly the movie's entire running time Gyllenhaal doesn't so much add depth to his character as much as methodically peel back the curtain to reveal what we already know to be true about the archetype he represents. Lou is self-interested, obsessive, lacking in empathy, and—above all—overtly charismatic. Most of his lines read like mantras pulled right out of Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, as if the self-educated loner had found it necessary to conduct extensive research on how to fit in with normal people (think if Patrick Bateman attended the University of Phoenix). It would appear Lou is so used to being alone that every interaction has degraded into a business relationship: people are assets to be used and negotiated with, while work, friendship, sex and everything in between have become points about which to be negotiated. When it's all said and done, Gyllenhaal's nightcrawler isn't all that different of a person from the enterprising novice we see in the very first frame. If anything, it's more likely that Gilroy and Gyllenhaal (who also co-produced the film) wanted to use Lou as a sort of stress test for evaluating the ratings driven TV news business where sensitivity, compassion and discretion are career limiting attributes. The film's core narrative then becomes how far a soulless alien like Lou can go without anyone stopping him or calling for reason.

For some, Lou will be too one-dimensional and lack the almost always unnecessary complexity audiences have come to expect from the typical cinematic sociopath. On the other hand, Gyllenhaal's subdued quasi-realistic depiction of an antisocial charmer with relatable motives is much more terrifying of a concept. No mommy issues, no master plans. Lou is just a morally flexible opportunist who happens to excel at exploiting the fear and suffering of others. The disturbing part is that he's finally found somewhere he fits in.

Adapting novels into screenplays is tough: not only does the writer have to pack 400+ pages of backstory, characterization and plot into 100-120 pages of script, but the director is forced to make important choices about where within those pages to point his or her camera. They have to decide what the story is actually about and discriminatingly pluck snippets from the source material to tell it effectively, all while staying true to the author's intent. Luckily for David Fincher and his latest film, Gone Girl, he had Gillian Flynn—the author of the New York Times bestseller of the same name—manning the typewriter. While many will still prefer Flynn's original hardcover to its adaptation (myself included), the Fincher/Flynn tandem spawned a darkly intoxicating film riddled with its fair share of surprises and hilarity, even for those familiar with the story. It's safe to say that if you're planning on seeing 10 movies this year, Gone Girl should be near the top of the list.

The film is about Nick and Amy Dunne, a married New York couple in their mid-thirties who lose their print magazine jobs at the height of the recent recession and are forced to move back to Nick's hometown of North Carthage, Missouri after his mother is diagnosed with breast cancer. Through a series of rosy flashbacks, we catch glimpses of what used to be Nick and Amy's life together in New York: the night they met at a party in Brooklyn, the night Nick proposed at the release party for Amy's parents' most recent children's book (Amazing Amy and the Big Day—based on their daughter), and the first few years of their blissful marriage. Subtract two jobs and one Manhattan loft, add a substantial loan to Amy's parents from her trust fund and multiply it all by Amy's reluctance to leave the East coast and shack up in a McMansion along the Mississippi River, and it becomes quite clear that the Dunne union has seen better days. Then on their fifth wedding anniversary Amy disappears. The local police scour Nick's house where there are clear signs of a struggle, as well as a letter from Amy: the first clue for the treasure hunt she plans for Nick every year on their anniversary. Gradually, the national media spotlight descends on the small Missouri town and the public turns on Nick when he's suspected for having something to do with his wife's disappearance. As the police investigation develops and the noose continues to tighten around Nick, everyone is left wondering one question: where is Amy Dunne?

However, the question Fincher would rather the audience ask themselves is "Who is Amy Dunne?" To be sure, there is a reason Flynn's novel has sold over 8.5 million copies. It's a thrilling murder mystery that tantalizes us with many of the familiar concepts we've come to expect from both Hollywood and the serial dramas of the small screen, which seem to be more and more concerned about killing than the people doing the killing or trying to stop it (there is even a show called The Killing that ironically, as Grantland's Andy Greenwald laments, just won't die). But Gone Girl avoids the missteps of its peers and provides the audience with considerably more existential questions than what happened to its title character. Fincher, working off of Flynn's themes, crafts his film around the most salient elements of the story that leaves the audience feeling at once shocked by its absurdity and terrified by its implications. At its core, Gone Girl is about serious relationships and the importunate questions that almost always hover above them. Who Amy and Nick are—as individuals and as a couple—prior to the former's disappearance is just as important to Fincher as what happens to Amy (Rosamund Pike) and Nick (Ben Affleck) in the film. Affleck turns in his finest performance to date as the people-pleasing, unintentionally smug Nick Dunne, opting for downplayed, restrained acting choices much like Christian Bale's subtly scintillating role in last year's American Hustle. Surely a number of other actors could have shined in Gone Girl, but Affleck's dopey charm and topsy-turvy career arc truly resonate with the character.

While staying true to the general ethos of the novel is admirable, actually augmenting the material in some respects is downright impressive, and not many directors can do it. One of Fincher's greatest gifts is his mastery of light and shadow, so much so that there is something definitively and obviously congruent about all of his work, and specific minutia stand out: the perpetually-stormy, decaying city streets of Seven; the organic, filthiness of Tyler Durden's house in Fight Club; the moody, gloomy halls of Harvard in The Social Network. In Gone Girl, it happens to be from a scene in the trailer where Nick Dunne is standing in the gazebo with the spotlight all over him at a vigil for Amy, explaining to the hundreds of skeptical mourners and reporters that he's innocent. It's a scene that recapitulates Flynn's prose regarding the proliferation of mass media celebrity culture and the gotcha journalism that promotes the sexiest story over the legitimate one. And while chastising the news media is nothing new in film (e.g. Natural Born Killers (1994), Network (1976), and the upcoming Nightcrawler it would appear to a certain extent), there is something simultaneously intimate and surreal about watching Nick and Amy's story unfold, as if we're watching a realty TV show about people we know personally.

There are at least another dozen scenes that gracefully sew the story together, which is no small task given the manner in which Flynn wrote the book, vacillating between Nick's account of the investigation and Amy's old diary entries, which serve as a flashback mechanism. One scene as reimagined by Fincher evoked literal gasps from the entire theater, while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' haunting soundtrack had people squirming in their seats. It's why we pay to go to the movies.

Apart from seriously lackluster box office revenues, the major trend sweeping through Hollywood this year is the overhaul of the romantic comedy, as evidenced by the recent releases of the unapologetic Obvious Child, the satirical They Came Together, and the tell-it- like-it-is What If. Recognizing an underserved niche in the movie-marketplace, independent studios and distributors are churning out low-budget, high-brow rom-coms that blur genre- lines and tackle unchartered subject matter (see Brooks Barnes' August 5th article in the New York Times). The latest addition to this script-flipping canon comes from producers Jay and Mark Duplass, writer Justin Lader and director Charlie McDowell. The One I Love is a premise-driven examination of one couple's relationship on the verge of falling apart. The film opens with Ethan and Sophie (Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss) struggling through couples therapy with their marriage counselor (Ted Danson). Clearly at a communication impasse and still unable to overcome Ethan's long-past infidelity, the therapist recommends a weekend getaway in the country, and he knows just the place. Willing to try anything to recreate the love they once had, Ethan and Sophie find themselves spending the night at a quaint, orchard-covered country-style home complete with a pool and a guest house (spoilers ahead). Before long, the couple realizes that this is no ordinary home: they soon discover that whenever one of them enters the guest house alone, they are greeted by an exact replica of their partner. While in the guest house, Ethan and Sophie can converse, interact, and yes, sleep with what appears to be clones of one another. After overcoming their initial reservations about how utterly bizarre the scenario is, Ethan and Sophie establish some ground rules and decide to embrace the phenomenon and use their time in the guest house as therapy. Over time Sophie begins to grow quite fond of the Ethan that she spends time with in the guest house, and the real Ethan becomes nervous. Sophie gradually divulges— implicitly, though not always—that the Ethan in the guest house is essentially a more clever, emotionally-involved version of real-world Ethan. He's funny and always knows the right things to say. He's accessible and willing to work through problems with Sophie. They talk about the time he cheated, and are able to come to a resolution. Even his hair is "beachier," and he doesn't wear glasses. As Sophie and real-world Ethan grow apart, jealousies lead to betrayals and just as the audience starts wondering where this story is going, the film makes a delightfully unexpected pivot into its third act, which I won't reveal here. Aesthetically, The One I Love has a few impressive attributes. Duplass and Moss are very entertaining together and carry the entire film by playing the two versions of their characters for over 90 minutes alone on screen. With the help of some subtle hair and makeup work, they both adeptly portray their parallel selves as eerily, unsettlingly different. It was nice seeing Moss do more film work, as she has a perplexing quality of being weak-in-the-knees charming at one moment and scarily forthright the next. Duplass delivers on most of the key scenes, but also channels his comedy background (querying "What plan does he even have?" after learning bizarro-Ethan has a cell phone got a lot of laughs). The orange and gold hews of the film are beautiful, as if entirely shot at twilight, and the music is typically meant to make the viewer uncomfortable. Thematically the film broaches some interesting questions about love and relationships, playing largely off the concept that your worst enemy in a relationship can often be yourself. It could be that you've grown or changed and the other person is still stuck on some older version of you that they prefer, or it could be that they've idealized you into something you're not, but rather something that they want you to be. The Ethan that Sophie sees in the guest house is in many ways the best Ethan she could imagine, and the real Ethan pales in comparison. The film dramatizes the intriguing question: what if you could get exactly what you want? Interestingly, where Sophie is enthralled with guest house Ethan, the real Ethan has no feelings for the Sophie he sees in the guest house, because he knows that she's not the same Sophie he fell in love with and married. The dichotomy of Ethan's love as self-evident and Sophie's as circumstantial—and Sophie's apparent acceptance of this fact—is a fascinating opinion on the nature of love. Similarly, it's true that people tend to glorify the past, often at the expense of moving forward. In Ethan and Sophie's case at the beginning of the film, they've lost the spark and will try anything to get it back, even reenacting their spontaneous first date. They each harp about growing together, looking to the future, and having new experiences, yet their penchant for nostalgia prevents them from doing any of this. It's not uncommon for people to have a couple good years together then spend three times as long fighting an uphill battle, trying to get back to where they once were. By trying to revive their relationship through re- creation, Ethan and Sophie drive each other apart. The film overall is a fun, uneasy experience that took some courage for the filmmakers to produce and the small cast to take part in. However, towards the end of the film the "magic" of the situation plays too large a role and the audience finds itself having to trust the filmmakers vision, but the payoff is slightly less than satisfactory. By its conclusion, the highly compelling thematic overtures mentioned above are still top-of-mind for the viewer, but a lack of clarity in the climax holds it back as a body of work. Nevertheless, The One I Love is still a noteworthy constituent in the growing stable of rom-coms designed for the modern age.

Calvary is a movie about difficult people living difficult lives. It's also about good people and bad people and how that distinction doesn't really exist. It starts out with an intriguing premise and some fun characters. It ends with a crush of emotion. It's sometimes funny, but mostly it's very dark. It's hard to stop thinking about after you've watched it. It's the second feature film John Michael McDonagh has directed and the third he's written. It's in theaters now and it's most definitely worth seeing.

Set in rural Ireland, the film begins when a priest named Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is told in confession by an anonymous man that he will be murdered one week from Sunday. The man tells the priest that he was viciously abused for many years by a since-deceased man of the cloth and that he aims to make a public statement by killing the innocent Father James. Over the next hundred minutes or so, we follow the marked priest in what could potentially be his final days as he goes about his typical clerical duties amongst the members of his congregation, any of whom could be his assailant. Through Father James' eyes, we're introduced to many of his flock in what amounts to a veritable laundry list of deadly sins: a wealth-crazed banker; an atheist physician; a jailed serial killer; an apathetic fellow priest; a prostitute and his client; a wifebeater, his adulteress wife and her lover. Worst of all, none of these people seem to feel any remorse for their crimes (although the banker does admit to a "modicum" of guilt for Ireland's recent financial crisis). On top of it all, Father James' daughter—who's been estranged since her mother's death and her father's holy vocation— has returned home following a post-breakup suicide attempt. As the week marches on and bloody Sunday gets closer and closer, Father James must handle the problems in his parish, try to mend his relationship with his daughter, and decide what to do about his tormentor when the time finally arrives.

This all may sound unmercifully grim, but whenever the film begins to feel anchored down by all its melancholy the story untethers itself through witty writing, Gleeson's always-charming deadpan dark humor, an ethereal symphonic soundtrack, and startlingly beautiful panoramic shots of the washed-out Irish coastline. Gleeson's also supported by a stellar ensemble including the increasingly serious Chris O'Dowd, a powerful Kelly Reilly, and the delightfully sinister Aidan Gillen, whose nihilist doctor is something akin to Game of Thrones' Lord Baelish with a medical degree. Without such a talented cast it's unlikely the script's heavy material could have been so delicately portrayed as it is in its current version.

Apart from its stunning cinematography and superb acting, there is also beauty in Calvary's story and message. To classify it as a whodunit is a misnomer, nor is it a "religious" movie: this is a film about living and dying that is grounded in humanism. Without a doubt, the creative, murder-driven plot gives the narrative a solid framework, but the impending confrontation is always on the backburner. Within the first five minutes we know that the movie starts in a church and will end on a beach, but McDonagh's focus is on exposing the complexities and nuance of being a flawed person in a tough world. No one—not even a priest—is virtuous all the time, and people sometimes do bad things for what might be perfectly justifiable reasons, if we only took the time to learn about them.

What truly sets Calvary apart is how it skillfully builds audience empathy for its characters through very brief interactions. And the fact that most of these people are deplorable human beings compounds the film's impressive achievement. For example, McDonagh actually makes us pity the eventually penitent banker whose wife and kids ran off on him. In a more extreme instance, we can't help but wonder along with a deranged murderous cannibal who asks Father James why God made him the way he is. McDonagh pinpoints the underlying emotional dynamics that fuel bad decisions, many of which we all can relate to at least at one point in our lives: feeling detached from other people, being frustrated with the opposite sex, becoming disillusioned with life, refusing to let go of past resentment, etc. It's a complex view of the world that grays the lines between being evil and doing evil things as a result of forces out of one's control.

But for all the bad on display, McDonagh also shows us lots of good: an elderly writer gracefully embracing his mortality, Father James' reconciliation with his daughter, and the unshakeable fortitude of people who truly have faith in something. In an unexpectedly emotional encounter with a French woman who just lost her husband in a car accident, Father James counsels the woman against renouncing God because of her unfair ordeal. She explains to him that there's nothing unfair about losing her husband because of the many years of happiness she shared with him; what's unfair is that there are people in the world who never get to experience that kind of love. It's one of a handful of demonstrably powerful scenes in the film that splice a much-needed tenor of hope into the otherwise dismal atmosphere.

Calvary is a well-made, entertaining and introspective piece of art. At times dense and hopelessly somber, it's a movie with a moral argument and biblical overtones that accomplishes what it set out to do. Like last year's Prisoners, Calvary more than anything ponders the idea of forgiveness, particularly of "those that trespass against us." The final minutes of the film are a fitting manifestation of this principle that leaves the audience with a lot to think about.

Based on the popular 2008 John le Carre novel of the same name, A Most Wanted Man is a subtle, carefully spun espionage thriller that features Philip Seymour Hoffman's final leading role before his untimely death last February. Director Anton Corbijn's adaptation not only effectively captures many of le Carre's thematic overtures regarding the mid-2000's global war on terror spearheaded by the United States government, but it manages to do so in a realistic, contained manner atypical of its genre.

The film opens with a textual reminder that the port city of Hamburg, Germany served as a hub for the masterminds behind the September 11th terrorist attacks, and that it continues to be a hot bed of extremist activity and a key focal point for American and German counterterrorism efforts. Hoffman plays Gunther Bachmann, a German intelligence agent exiled to Hamburg following a shameful operational flub in Beirut, later revealed to be the fault of the American operatives in the area. We learn that Bachmann is currently under pressure to deliver information linking a respected Muslim professor and philanthropist named Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi) to a money-laundering scheme that provides funds to terrorist organizations. Seemingly stumped on how to proceed, Bachmann's prayers are answered when a half-Chechen, half-Russian Muslim named Issa Karpov (Grigoryi Dobrygin) sneaks into Hamburg after fleeing Turkish and Russian prisons where he was brutally tortured. After learning that Issa is the reluctant beneficiary of a multi-million Euro inheritance from his famous late father, Bachmann and his team set a plan in motion to gain influence over Issa, convince him to entrust the fortune to Abdullah, and track the funds as they are directed towards illegitimate recipients, hopefully implicating those at the very top of the money-laundering operation and sequestering the flow of finances towards terrorist activity.

Not surprisingly, A Most Wanted Man has a lot to say on the means by which the war on terror is fought by governments like those of the United States and Germany. Whether it's chastising American methods for obtaining intelligence (e.g. detain first, ask questions later) or questioning the ultimate value and intentions of these covert activities, the film makes it clear that the status quo is not an acceptable policy option. In addition, the audience is shown how the impatient demand for tangible results by government and military officials, the media and the general public cannibalize potentially effective courses of action. Like any investigation, bringing a handful of mid-level offenders to justice is laudable, but it's even better to take down those with real authority. By truncating successful operations before they reach the point of producing any major results, policymakers and intelligence officials run the risk of trading sustained global change for near-term applause. It's this exhausting, cyclical struggle that the protagonist seems to have been railing against his entire career, but to no avail.

Unlike the sprawling, jet-setting international mysteries and manhunts that tend to find their way to the silver screen, A Most Wanted Man stands out for its narrowness of scope and its refinement of focus. For instance, almost the entire story takes place in a single city and revolves around the events happening to a handful of people at the nexus of an otherwise fragmented global battle. Although the aftermath of said events could impact millions worldwide, the film trusts its audience to understand the gravity of the contained story unfolding before them. No doubt, the business of intelligence gathering, asset acquisition and impeding nefarious international finance practices are at the crux of the United States and other governments' bulwark against acts of terrorism—the film doesn't feel compelled to spell it all out for us.

Strangely enough, where the film opts for detail over breadth in terms of story, it fails to provide the same level of attention to its characters, with one major exception. While McAdams' lawyer, Wright's CIA agent and Dafoe's banker all serve as pivotal engines for the plot by propelling the story forward from one clandestine activity to the next, their characterization felt a mile wide and an inch deep. Perhaps it's because of the story's steady grounding in realism, but it often proved challenging to get invested in what perils may or may not befall these people, and it was equally hard at times to tease out what a given character thought or felt about what was happening. This evaluation, however, comes down to viewer preference of an intriguing plot versus detailed character development—movies only have a relatively strict and finite amount of time to achieve their purpose (although the previous adaptations of le Carre's The Constant Gardener and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy managed to excel at both telling a great story and making us care about the people taking part in that story).

That being said, it would be a mistake to not commend Hoffman's portrayal of the gruff, worn down Bachmann. Chain smoking and inhaling brown liquor the entire film, Hoffman graces the audience with one final demonstration of his cavalcade of talents. His abilities to draw purpose and subtext out of every line and provide nuance and signature to what may have otherwise been bromidic characters in the hands of other actors are unlike any class of acting that I've personally ever witnessed. Of particular note in A Most Wanted Man is Hoffman's mastery of pitch, volume and accents. The standard deep, soggy speaking pattern we've come to recognize him for is augmented by a somber German accent that gives his character authenticity and singularity enough to rank favorably against even his other remarkable performances. A Most Wanted Man will certainly be regarded as a unique thriller with interesting perspectives on a difficult issue, but it will be remembered mostly for one thing, as pointed out to me by a stranger on our way out of the theater: that we won't get to see such a fine actor like that again for a very long time.

Zach Braff's Kickstarter-funded Wish I Was Here is a strange, confused, and more than occasionally profound and moving film about family, life, relationships and death. The film tells the story of Aidan (Braff), a 35-year old struggling actor who is forced to pull his kids out of private elementary school when his disapproving father, Gabe (Mandy Patinkin), informs him that his cancer has returned and the tuition money needs to be put towards treatment. Unable to afford the prohibitively expensive Jewish school the devout Gabe had since bankrolled and unwilling to risk their development in a lackluster Los Angeles public school district, Aidan begins homeschooling his children while his wife, Sarah (Kate Hudson), continues to "support his dream" by toiling away at a mundane data entry job. What follows is a series of episodes in which Aidan imparts life lessons onto his son and daughter (Pierce Gagnon and Joey King) as he examines his own path, all the while coping with the impending loss of his father.

As in the case of his previous film, Braff's latest foray succeeds in exposing something decidedly truthful about a particular phase of adulthood, albeit in a peculiar, meandering fashion. While 2004's Garden State explored the unexpected struggles and complexities of journeying home, Wish I Was Here is a warning that things aren't any simpler once you're there. Stuck between what he wants for himself and what his family needs from him, Braff's Aidan represents a generation that was raised to do what makes them happy, but is now being told that that's not good enough. Whether it's from his father, his wife or the rabbis at the school, Aidan is frequently reminded there are other people depending on him, and that striking out at audition after audition is far from a sure fire way to instill confidence, let alone put food on the table. Naturally, then, one of the key conflicts the film flirts with is the question of when, if ever, should dreams be allowed to die? The resolution here is somewhat unsure of itself, but maybe that was Braff's intention: what is it to be in your thirties if not transitional and restless, constantly oscillating between living your life for yourself and suddenly having to fragment it for the sake of the goals and well- being of others, namely your spouse and children. This is a valid argument, to be sure, but unfortunately this is also part of the reason why much of the film's comedy doesn't totally land, as the audience is forced to feel severely concerned for the future of Aidan's kids given his stubborn dedication to his career and inability to provide a semblance of security; at times it even feels like he's less a father and more a cool babysitter going on adventures with someone else's progeny.

Similarly, the arc of Aidan's marriage seems to lose velocity and direction over the course of the film. Save for one early scene where Sarah expresses disappointment over having children so young and another involving some washer/dryer-assisted coitus, her role in the story as far as Aidan is concerned is to serve as an obligation for which he is supposed to be responsible. Their union and her character in general, for whatever reason, lack substance and take a back seat to Aidan's educational jaunts with their kids.

For all its shortcomings in developing Aidan's relationship with his wife and children, the film undeniably delivers on the storyline with his father. Patinkin plays his character phenomenally despite spending most of the movie in a hospital bed. Hudson, too, delivers a surprisingly genuine performance and in one particular scene—probably the best of the entire movie— trades tear-soaked lines with Patinkin to the point where it's impossible to tell who's stealing the scene from who. It's a shame the story failed to give her more to do, choosing instead to split screen time with Aidan's forlorn, Comic-Con-going brother (Josh Gad) and a string of bizarre, heroic fantasy sequences plucked from the recesses of Aidan's childlike mind (coincidently—or perhaps not—the Braff-produced documentary on the development and distribution of video games also hit theaters this weekend). The narrative purpose of these departures isn't completely lost on the viewer, it's just unclear why they need to trump the more compelling, real-world drama.

Nevertheless, the emotion of Wish I Was Here imperceptibly builds as we watch Gabe gradually and peacefully come to terms with his mortality and seek reconciliation with his sons. Without divulging too much, his final scene in the film is a powerful, timeless admonition to experience the beauty and tragedy of life each and every day we're graced with the opportunity to participate in it. At a time when it's impossible to ignore the disturbing and inexplicable loss of life all over the world, Braff's charge to the audience seems eerily appropriate: for us to be the lead actors in our lives and not just spectators in the crowd, because whether or not we've prepared ourselves, it could all be over before we even knew it began.

Released overseas in 2013 to widespread critical and box office success, the long-anticipated Snowpiercer has finally hit U.S. theaters, and it did not disappoint. Joon-ho Bong's English-language debut is a uniquely thrilling and allegorical film that is sure to delight action lovers and sci-fi buffs alike. Bong's carefully balanced close-quarters combat sequences and ponderances on the capacity for human civility (and lack thereof) in the terrifying dystopian future illustrated by the film's source material—the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige—work in harmony to create a provocative story that demands the viewer's attention from beginning to end.

The film opens in 2014 with a failed attempt by the governments of the world's most powerful countries to mitigate the effects of global warming by releasing an experimental substance called CW7 into the atmosphere. And as experimental substances are apt to do, CW7 has severe unintentional effects, chief among them reducing global temperatures to uninhabitable levels and killing all life on Earth. The few survivors of the disaster were those that were fortunate enough to board the Snowpiercer, a technologically-advanced train designed by the mysterious transportation tycoon, Wilford, to circumnavigate the planet once every year via a perpetual motion engine and withstand the harshest conditions imaginable. The story jumps ahead 17 years where an oppressive caste system has emerged aboard the Snowpiercer in which society's elites inhabit the front of the train with everyone else relegated to the back where life is nasty, brutish and short, to say the least. We quickly learn that a faction of the oppressed led by a reluctant hero named Curtis (played by Chris Evans of recent Captain America mega-success) is planning an uprising in order to seize control of the engine car at the helm of the seemingly never ending train. Assisted by his compatriots Edgar (Jamie Bell) and Tanya (Octavia Spencer), Curtis and his revolutionaries break out of their holding car and begin their march towards the front. Following a series of creatively shot and violent battle sequences as well as some welcome respites of comedy from security specialist Namgoong Minsoo and his daughter Yona (played by Bong regulars Kang-ho Song and Ah-sung Ko, respectively), a battered and bloodied Curtis finally reaches Wilford's train car, setting up an unexpected and plot-pivoting confrontation.

What is clearly evident after watching Snowpiercer is that Bong has an uncanny mastery over story and cadence. Not only does the film successfully keep its audience focused on what the characters are doing (which is more than one can say about most recent blockbusters), the storyline at times develops at a feverish pace, careening like a crazy-train towards some resolution that the viewer doesn't even have the time to anticipate. To be sure, a portion of this fervor can be attributed to the plot device of the train, where Curtis & Co's systematic movement from car to car—and foe to foe—naturally keeps the audience focused on the here and now, left only to wonder what awaits them in the next car and at the end of the line. However, that Bong is able to make his audience care about what happens to his characters despite the speed and chaotic nature with which the plot develops is truly impressive in its own right.

Speaking of chaos: the action in this movie is gripping and full of impact. While the close-proximity camera and small sets should be enough to create a sense of claustrophobia for the viewer, Kyung-pyo Hong's cinematography coupled with attentive film and sound editing transform the train into a veritable hot box of kinetic energy and gore. In one particularly bloody train car brawl, the audience feels as if it is right there, ducking and dodging scores of battle axes alongside Evans' grizzled Curtis. Though that's not to say the world of Snowpiercer lacks depth. Sprawling, desolate landscapes of abandoned cities and capsized freightliners caked in ice stand in stark contrast to the mayhem indoors; the outer world would almost have a peacefulness about it if it weren't so eerily presented.

While many apocalypse and disaster movies are catalyzed by events that humanity largely cannot control (aliens, pandemics, zombies, etc.), it seems an increasing volume of cinema output concerns itself with mankind's self-inflicted rapture (Bong's 2006 monster thriller The Host, for one). A bevy of films have warned us against the follies of ignoring climate change, and although Snowpiercer's story begins with this idea, it is not the central conflict with which Bong is concerned. More interesting to the filmmakers is what happens to society after the stable walls of civilization have crumbled and the pre-existing dividing lines of social class are replaced by something else (a train, for instance). Pessimistically, the film's view of the world is one of power and control. With resources scarcer than ever and the entire world confined to just a few compartments of haves and have-nots, the train steps in as a surrogate habitat for mankind to continue business as usual in a microcosm of its former self. Those in power use familiar discourse of "preordination" and "knowing one's place" to force-feed the current state of things to the masses. One authoritarian monologue harbors religious undertones, with the speaker rationalizing that the social hierarchy was decided this way "in the beginning" and should not be altered. The question of whether this is a type of world worth being apart of—for both those at the bottom and the top of the social ladder—is what Curtis is eventually tasked with deciding for everyone on board.

If the "us versus them" trope is a tired and redundant one for some viewers, the action and excitement of Snowpiercer should still make it worth the price of admission. Evans turns in a solid performance, but it is Tilda Swinton's energetic and often hilarious Minister Mason that shines above the rest. For some, this will be their favorite film of 2014. For others, just another summer action flick.

Shot with the same cast over the course of 12 years, Boyhood chronicles the childhood and young adulthood of a boy in Texas as his family,surroundings and perspective on the world are gradually and drastically altered. The boy, Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane, who literally grows up on screen in front of the audience's eyes), experiences the full gamut of youth development as we follow his maturation from a timid 5-year old into a thoughtful college freshman trying to bridge the gap between his old life and a new one. Although the film's ambition credentializes it as unlike anything to hit theaters, its execution and award-worthy performances justify the lofty expectations that preceded its release.

The film's running time of 164 minutes, which may be daunting for some, is mitigated by its highly engaging structure in which the same characters are presented to the audience as they endure the very real effects of time, and where the characters, tone and story are treated as malleable reflections of real-life sentiments and struggles about gracefully getting along in the world (in a recent interview Ethan Hawke referred to the film as a "crucible" for the cast and Linklater to deposit their evolving notions of childhood and parenthood). The relatively long running time is also helped by an unexpected and unique brand of comedy, mostly centered on the awkwardness and pitfalls of navigating youth and the buoyant relationship between a child and his childish father.

Through the film's linear structure, we catch glimpses of many recognizable and accessible milestones in Mason's life: collecting rocks, camping trips, ballgames, new friends becoming old friends, facial hair, trying beer, first relationship, first serious relationship, trying drugs, visiting colleges, asking big questions, trying more drugs, getting a car, moving into the dorms etc. Supporting cast members sporadically pop into Mason's life in the form of friends, classmates and flings, naturally causing the viewer to recollect their own childhood memories of people and places they thought to be forgotten forever.

While this compatibility with the common notion of what "growing up" means is part of what forges the film's connection with the audience, Boyhood's broad swaths are heavily complemented by the specificity of Mason's experience. His development and identity are informed by much of what happens in his particular youth, such as living in West Texas, being raised by a single mother, surviving abuse, frequently changing schools, losing touch with friends and family, and discovering photography. We intimately observe his relationship with his mother (Patricia Arquette) as she doggedly and frustratingly trudges through her own life in search of stability and fulfillment, uprooting her children and moving them from town to town as boyfriends and husbands transform into ex's and monsters. We similarly watch Mason's bond with his biological father (brilliantly played by an upbeat and hilarious Ethan Hawke) strengthen over the years as the destitute drifter reinserts himself into his children's lives to offer advice and cautionary tales sourced from experience. So while the film's goal is to capture Boyhood with a capital "B," it is not without a healthy dose of characterization and story to disaggregate Mason's life from the audience's.

However, a specific cohort of viewers (myself included) will find this problematic considering the influence time and place have on how Mason's formative years are depicted. Linklater's canvas is early to mid 2000's America and he brilliantly colors it with pop culture and iconography appropriate for the times, including but not limited to a catchy soundtrack (Coldplay, Blink 182, Sheryl Crow and The Hives narrate Mason's early years) and the increasingly pervasive presence of technology (Gameboy, online pornography, deleting Facebook and hiding his "digital ghost" from the NSA maintain varying levels of importance to the protagonist). We are reminded that Mason is coming of age in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 in a highly politicized climate that Linklater captures with uncanny accuracy; one of the inarguable benefits of filming over 12 years is the ability to eschew a backwards looking perspective, thus minimizing the risk of missing the targeted essence of not only what happened at a specific time in history, but also what it felt like to actually live through it.

A common theme of Boyhood—and to an extent Linklater's work in general—is that development and change are constant. Not only is it clear that Mason is not fully grown up when the credits roll, he's downright confused about his place in the world and what he's meant to do—which is almost exactly where nearly every college freshman finds themselves on that first night away from home. And although the film is about Mason, Linklater wants us to know that the process is age-agnostic; Mason's father, for example, doesn't get his act together until what looks like his mid 30's. His mother, forced into parenthood by an early pregnancy, had to forego college initially and spend much of adulthood grasping at self-sustainability, to the point where Mason muses that she's "just as confused as I am." In the same vein of his Before series where Celine and Jesse's personalities and relationships are continually in flux, Linklater's Boyhood offers an indelible and refreshing reminder that life is a constant stream of consciousness, not a compartmentalized sequence of phases. More importantly, he wants us to know that there is always time to change, grow, and have new and beautiful experiences with the important people in our lives.

If the point of movies and storytelling in general is to elicit an emotional response, it's hard to find a better proverbial string to pull on than nostalgia. Boyhood is peppered with the little idiosyncrasies of being a kid and becoming an adult that sum up to a deeply personal and reflective viewing experience. Coupled with the sheer impressiveness of actually completing the film in spite of obvious execution risk, changing technology and potential cast attrition, this makes for a unique and rewarding movie-going experience.