Rashomon

Gathering for shelter at a desolate city entrance, two witnesses to a vicious rape/murder recount the court testimony of the atrocious affair from the viewpoint of the perpetrator (Toshiro Mifune), his surviving victim (Machiko Kyo), her slaughtered samurai husband (Masayuki Mori) as told through a seer, and the sole witness (Takashi Shimura) to view the actual crime. By breaking free, not only from traditional cinematic narrative forms and perspective, but also in how movies could actually be filmed, through Rashomon Akira Kurosawa would forever change the way in which movies would be made. Working from two short stories from Ryunosuke Akutagawa, using stark settings and featuring unforgettable performances from Mifune and Shimura, perhaps the film's greatest achievement is the way it imbues humanity into a lurid story.

**** out of ****

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Dr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) return to their posts on the Starship Enterprise when a formidable and mysterious alien life force wreaks havoc on a neighboring planet. Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the long gestating adaptation of the popular Gene Rodenberry series, is a somnolent, murky affair that loses a lot of the campy fun and appeal of the original, and features a welcomed but tired, aged cast.

** out of ****

The Judge

A sleek and arrogant big city attorney (Robert Downey Jr.) returns to his hometown to defend his estranged, alcoholic father (Robert Duvall), a respected local judge and community lion, when he is accused of vehicular homicide. The Judge is trite, well worn fare boasting pathetic dialogue along with lazy plotting, and culminating in a laughably schmaltzy wrap-up. RDJ delivers yet another one of his tired stock performances and Duvall, though garnering critical accolades for his part, is way over the top and hard to accept at face value.

** out of ****

Black Mass

The story of Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp), a relatively unknown South Boston crime lord and sociopath who built his bloody legacy not with the help of his State Senator kin (Benedict Cumberbatch) but through an unholy alliance with childhood friend and ascending FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton). From the unthinkable, cold-blooded crime story that served as partial inspiration for The Departed, Black Mass is really just another tiresome attempt to remake Goodfellas (and the third or so that Depp himself has been involved with), here with Irish tough guys being portrayed (poorly) by Brits, Aussies, and other Hollywood  flakes. Edgerton's performance is given to mugging and frankly is embarrassing (which sadly has become standard with him), Cumberbatch brings nothing to the table, struggling with his accent and seeming an unlikely casting choice, and Depp does his best screen gnawing Nicholson impression while combing his hair back, adopting steely blue eyes, and wearing far-fetched Nosferatu makeup. Further, Scott Cooper has yet to establish himself as a competent director (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) and really seems out of his element here with a poorly written screenplay and an irritating camera addressing narrative approach as told in flashback by Bulger's cohorts during interrogation. The film is saved from becoming a total wash by talented actors inhabiting very minor roles, namely Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Adam Scott, Corey Stoll, and Julianne Nicholson.
* 1/2 out of ****

Ferrell Takes the Field

Raising funds for a USC classmate's cancer charity and inspired by Bert Campaneris, a popular young Oakland A who became the first MLB player to play all nine positions as part of another publicity stunt in 1965, Will Ferrell travels the Cactus League circuit playing 10 different positions (DH included) for 10 different teams in the course of one day. Ferrell Takes the Field is presented as a mockumentary with Ferrell playing his usual incensed, deadpan character to amusing effect.

*** out of ****

Inglourious Basterds

A Jewish woman (Melanie Laurent) escapes slaughter at the hands of a ruthless SS colonel (Christoph Waltz) and both of their fates will intertwine with that of the Basterds, a ruthless band of Jewish American brothers led by a bloodthirsty lieutenant (Brad Pitt) who specializes in taking Nazi scalps. Inglourious Basterds is inspired, intelligent, intense, entertaining, and sometimes off-putting and self-indulgent revisionist World War II fare from Quentin Tarantino, with an over-the-top ending that thwarts at least some of the great work that preceded it. Waltz steals the show in his brilliant, multilingual star making performance, Pitt is entirely effective in an amusing comic turn, and Laurent is quite good in a challenging role.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales

When the New Wave landed on shores of France and rocked world cinema, Eric Rohmer quietly but intently observed the work of his contemporaries from the Cahiers du Cinema offices where he worked as an editor. There he plotted a series of ostensibly related films, all dealing with a middle class protagonist's responding to a temptress, which were filmed over the period of a decade, and were grouped together as the Six Moral Tales.

The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963) is a short two reeler, simple, offbeat, talky, icy, and beautifully shot, effectively setting the tone for the entire series. Featuring future directors Barbet Schroeder in the lead and Bernard Taverneier as narrator, it tells the story of a young attorney who makes increasingly frequent visits to a neighborhood confectionery to encounter the title clerk.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Suzanne's Career (1963) followed, and is an intelligent and incredibly prescient, here detailing a woman coming in between the friendship of two friends, one a skirt chaser the other a bashful introvert.

*** 1/2 out of ****

La Collectionneuse (1967) was the first feature film realeased in the series but was actually intended as the fourth tale, bumped up on the shooting schedule when Rohmer failed to achieve weather effects and postponed My Night with Maud. It tells an idyllically set and beautifully shot story of cruel intellectualism about two friends vacationing on the Riveria who find their vacation impeded by a promiscuous guest. 

*** 1/2 out of ****

My Night with Maud (1969) may be the best known of the lot and is my candidate for the finest realization in an unrivaled program. An uptight intellectual bumps into an old friend around the holidays, is invited for dinner to a recently divorced knock-out's chateu, where the two wind up alone, discussing love and philosophy before getting down to business. Perceptive, crisply filmed, and wonderfully acted

*** 1/2 out of ****

Claire's Knee (1970) involves a diplomat on vacation and awaiting marriage who, while visiting with an ex-lover, becomes obsessed with the idea of caressing his landlady's stepdaughter's knee. 

This fifth entry is somewhat creepy, but again retains the film values of its predecessors and remains very watchable

*** 1/2 out ****

Chloe in the Afternoon (1972) concluded the series and, true to form, is involving, low key, and dialogue heavy. Its plot revolves around a happily married Parisian lawyer who hopelessly pursues a bohemian seductress.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Stroszek

An alcoholic, mildly retarded street performer and recent parolee (Bruno S.) befriends a prostitute (Eva Mattes) and is harshly harassed by her pimps. Together, along with an elderly friend (Clemens Scheitz), the trio decides to flee Berlin for Wisconsin seeking a better life but only find their miseries compounded. Werner Herzong's Stroszek is a humorous, hauntingly strange, and ultimately powerful film filled with bizarre, unforgettable imagery, heart aching interactions, and one of the most shocking and fascinating finales ever put to film.

**** out of ****

A Most Violent Year

A proud, self-made foreign born business owner (Oscaar Isaacs) finds his crucial upcoming business deal thwarted by a series of truck hijackings, a government investigation into his books, and a loyal but calculating wife (Jessica Chastain) who remains insistent on the issue of retaliation. A Most Violent Year is gritty movie making from writer/director J.C. Chandor who adopts an enriched, spectacular color palette of films of a bygone era while telling a story that great urban filmmakers of the 1970s would have felt at home with but, like Chandor's other films (Margin Call, All is Lost) the slow burn style employed is alternately potent and dull. Isaacs is strong in a role where he perhaps channels too much of Pacinco, Chastain also is forceful in a somewhat diminished role, and Albert Brooks has a nice turn playing Isaacs' attorney.

*** out of ****

Finding Vivian Maier

The story of a secretive spinster nanny to several Chicago families who, after her death in 2009, was revealed to be the capturer of over 100,000 polished photographs and has since become one of the most esteemed photographers in the world. Finding Vivian Maier begins with an intriguing story that successfully interweaves Maier's narrative and surreptitious lifework before becoming stagnant for much of its duration until it takes a dark and very satisfying final turn.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Two Days, One Night

A disconsolate mother and wife (Marion Cotillard) receives her walking papers at her factory job and is told by management the only way to retain her position is to rally a majority vote among her coworkers favoring her job retention over their yearly bonus. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night is made in the esteemed Belgian brothers' trademarked stripped down, realistic style that normally works so well but here, with its repetitive and barebones plot line, makes the pacing seem glacial. However, if there ever was a compulsively watchable actress to cast in such a movie, it would be Cotillard, who nobly and subtly inhabits her role.

** 1/2 out of ****

Frank

A would be musician (Domhnall Gleeson) rescues a suicidal keyboardist and falls in with the band, led by an inscrutable vocalist (Michael Fassbender) who never removes his oversized paper mache mask. Frank is yet another sterile little indie exercise, an excruciating, painfully unfunny film providing putrid performances (Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal included) and headache inducing songs, all the while purporting itself as a brilliant satire on the creative process.

No Stars out of ****

Hardcore

When the daughter of a staunchly religious midwestern businessman (George C. Scott) goes missing on a bus trip to California, it is quickly revealed by the aid of a shifty P.I. (Peter Boyle) that she has fallen in with a circle of pornographers, and the shattered father decides to take it in his own hands to find her. Paul Schrader's Hardcore features a powerful performance of melancholic rage from Scott but the movie is continually off-putting (as it should be) and certain elements of the picture seem to work against each other.

*** out of ****

Night Will Fall

At the close of World War II, the British government assembled a team of filmmakers (which included Alfred Hitchock) to capture the liberation of several German concentration camps and document the atrocities committed there. Although the film faced financial difficulties in post production and the final product was never released, the footage has survived and the story of its circumstances is presented here. Night Will Fall is comprised of haunting, visceral footage, an informative story, and illuminating contributors, a few of whom that survived the ordeal.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Calvary

A humble and reputable Catholic pastor (Brendan Gleeson) hears confession from a troubled young man who claims he was abused by a priest as a child and vows to kill the good reverend in exactly a weeks time. With the threat of mortal violence hanging over his head, the cleric must tend to his distressed daughter (a product of his layman days), his dying dog, and the troubled flock of his rural Irish diocese. Reteaming with John Michael McDonagh following The Guard, Gleeson is absolutely tremendous in a powerful and nuance performance.  The film boasts outstanding direction and gorgeous photography even though much of the dialogue is irksome and tends towards self-righteousness.

*** out of ****

Venus in Fur

An arrogant playwright (Mathieu Amalric) is about to lock the theater doors following a frustrating day of casting the female lead in his latest play when an disordered unwieldy blonde (Emmanuelle Seigner) arrives to read. Following great protest and many tears, the director finally concedes and, after being astonished that she knows the script like the back of her hand and is a natural for the part, finds himself falling under her spell. Based on the NYC based play by David Ives (who drew on Leopold's von Sacher-Masoch's 19th century novel Venus in Furs) and reset in Paris by Roman Polanski, Venus in Fur is intelligent, funny, and alluring with great acting from Amalric and  

Seigner, the director's real life wife.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Irrational Man

A college student (Emma Stone) is drawn towards the latest faculty newcomer at her idyllic Newport college: a brilliant, burned out, suicidal philosophy professor (Joaquin Phoenix) who stumbles across a perfect philanthropic murder plot which he sees as lifting him out of his existential funk. Woody Allen has explored similar themes before to more compelling ends (Crimes and Misdemeanors, Match Point) here borrowing Hitchockian motifs (Strangers on a Train and even Shadow of a Doubt to a greater degree) and again explicitly citing Dostoevsky. Although not all of the ideas come together in the film, Stone strains to hit dramatic notes later on, and Phoenix surprisingly is off key when attempting to play the Allen type, and I find myself saying this whenever one of Woody's movies is panned (here likely the result of a recent tabloid resurgence), his films are still more engrossing than most of the other shit to come down the Hollywood pike.

*** out of ****

Nymphomaniac (Vols. I and II)

A woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is found beaten in an alley by a lonely stranger (Stellan Skarsgard) who takes her home, providing food and shelter, while she relays her promiscuous biography and her growing and alarming propensity for perilous sexual encounters. With over four exploitative, sadistic, explicit, dull, and uninvolving hours (and an even greater duration in a godforsaken director's cut), Nymphomaniac represents Lars von Trier at his boorish, pretentious worst, and features putrid acting from an embarrassed cast except for a strong though disturbing performance from von Trier's perpetual punching bag Gainsbourg.

1/2 * out of ****

Virunga

A meager and underfunded though determined group of park rangers defend the gorilla inhabitants of their forested Congo terrain from poachers and other external forces that threaten their existence. This Academy Award nominated documentary depicts a fascinating story presented somewhat aloofly in a narrative that, considering its subject, surprisingly lacks urgency.

*** out of ****

Hannah Arendt

When Adolf Eichmann was captured by Israeli forces in Argentina and taken to Yagur to stand trial for war crimes, German Jew intellectual Hannah Arendt took a leave of absence from her teaching post  to cover the hearings for The New Yorker. Instead of the hateful, cunning monster most had painted in the press, Arendt viewed Eichmann as unassuming and even kindly, leading to her controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Margarethe von Trotta's Hannah Arendt is thought provoking, academic filmmaking although its story is slight and would have benefitted from expounding. Barbara Sukowa is impressive in the title role and trial scenes including actual footage are effective.

*** out of ****

The Double

A government pencil pusher (Jesse Eisenberg) finds his life in free fall with no sign of solid ground when the latest hire at his grim agency turns out to be his perfect match in appearance and complete opposite in every other way. After his fresh and uniquely structured freshman outing Submarine, Richard Ayoade follows it up with this lifeless, uninspired, and somewhat muddled adaptation of a Dostoevsky story, which contains a strong dual performance from Eisenberg but totally wastes Mia Wasikowska in support.

** out of ****

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

As the IMF faces Congressional oversight and inclusion in the CIA, Ethan and friends are forced to thwart another threat of global domination, this time led by a crafty and ruthless British agent, a mysterious femme fatale, and a squad of lethal, once presumed dead operatives. M:I - Rogue Nation is a step back from its outstanding Brad Bird helmed predecessor with a lazy, formulaic script from writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, a weak villain in Sean Harris, and a downgrade from Paula Patton in the drone like Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson. The installment is not without its entertainment value with some exciting chase sequences, an affable principle cast, and a 53 year old Tom Cruise maintaining his signature bravado.

** 1/2 out of ****

Southpaw

A Brooklyn orphan (Jake Gyllenhaal) sits undefeated atop the light heavyweight world with his  foster care sweetheart (Rachel McAdams) by his side until his temper and a tragic accident cost him everything forcing him to regroup, with the aid of a lowly, faithful trainer (Forest Whittaker), to win back the title and the thing that matters most in the world: his daughter. Southpaw seems like a 12 year old stayed up all night watching 8 Mile and The Rocky Marathon, wrote a screenplay, and invited his friends over to film it on his phone. Antoine Fuqua's punchless pugilistic saga isn't only packed to the gills with boxing and standard movie cliches, it is shockingly lacking in style and form, hurried to the point of sloppiness, and contains bout sequences that couldn't have been filmed with any more disinterest. The cast is either out of their element (McAdams, 50 Cent) or strong in roles that give them nothing to work with whatsoever (Forest Whitaker, Naomie Harris) and the usually reliable Gyllenhaal enters the ring with an impressive build and coughs up a lot of blood in the process but is surprisingly unconvincing as a slimshady.

* 1/2 out of ****

River's Edge

A high schooler strangles his girlfriend and fetches his friends to regard her unclothed, unburied body on the shielded river bank who in turn respond with horror or disinterest and ultimately decide to aid in concealing the crime. River's Edge is a bizarre, tragic, genre bending, purportedly true story featuring an amusingly manic Crispin Glover, a surprisingly appealing Keanu Reeves, and an oddly affecting Dennis Hopper.

*** out of ****

Umberto D

A pensioner lives alone in his bare one room apartment, his little dog his only companion with occasional visits from a pregnant teen maid. After losing then retrieving his partner, desolation grows and he considers suicide as his best option. Filmed in the tradition of Italian Neorealism Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D is a sparse, doleful, observant, and beautifully filmed character study featuring a brilliant performance from nonactor Carlo Battisti.

*** 1/2 out of ****