Some Movies Out This Weekend, November 14, 2014

Some Movies Out This Weekend, November 14, 2014

There are some big ones opening this weekend, folks. There's the off kilter romance, the decades later comedy sequel, the dramatic feature film directing debut by one of our least dramatic media figures, and another dramatic turn – zany makeup and all – from a guy best known for being America's dumb boss. And that's not even everything. As usual, there's so much to see this weekend at the movies.

Beyond the Lights

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Writer: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nate Parker, Minnie Driver, Danny Glover

From a surface glance, this looks like an case of Lifetime's influence stretching to a wide Hollywood release. But for every moment that could be an overwrought mess – in the trailer, at least – it is underplayed. There doesn't seem to be much over acting going on in this enterprise, which is a sign of a good cast.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays a pop star in the Rihanna/Britney Spears mold, with a domineering stage mom played by Minnie Driver. In a bout of depression, she tries to commit suicide, but before she can jump from her hotel balcony, a police officer, played by Parker, grabs her. Then they fall in love.

This sounds dreadful on paper, but there's something going on in this short preview that's enticing. The mismatched couple, the means by which they met, and ideas about duty and ethics are present. That doesn't mean the movie will explore these themes, or explore them well, but it's ripe for drama.

Dumb and Dumber To

Directors: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly

Writers: Sean Anders, Mike Cerrone, Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, John Morris, Bennett Yellin

Starring: Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, Rob Riggle

The sequel I've been clamoring for since I was five years old is finally here. Harry (Daniels) and Lloyd (Carrey) reunite 20 years after their last adventure to Aspen, “California,” which formed the basis for one of the most re-watched movies of my life. Turns out Harry has a daughter he never knew about, and she might be able to help him out with a kidney. He and Lloyd, who is “hot for [Harry's] daughter,” try to find her.

Could be good, right? I sure hope so. I really do love the original. It was one of those movies I snuck my way into watching with my older cousins when I shouldn't have been allowed, and it has stuck with me, probably because I watch it about once a year. But I have seen the trailers too many times. It's one of those weird situations where, if you go to the movies enough, you get stuck with that one film whose preview you see before everything. I can't get that “na na na na” song out of my head, no matter how many times I plead with my brain. And sadly, the trailers all seem to be the same jokes as the first movie, but said in different locations. But I'm holding out hope the rest of the movie has new material to offer.

Foxcatcher

Director: Bennett Miller

Writers: E. Max Frye, Dan Futterman

Starring: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo

Bennett Miller has made two of the best films of the last 10 years. Capote may mostly be remembered for Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-winning inhabitation of Truman Capote, but there is some astonishing, austere filmmaking on Miller's part that opens the film up to being more than an acting showcase. Same thing with Moneyball, based on a book about the least cinematic part of baseball: the analytics. Miller made a movie about mindfulness, fatherhood, and outside-the-box thinking that is one of my favorite sports movies.

And now here we are with his third non-documentary, a based-on-a-true-story drama about an mentally unstable multimillionaire John du Pont and his unhinged foray into funding a wrestling team in the 1990s. Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo play brothers, with Tatum being the Foxcatcher Wrestling top prospect and Ruffalo his trainer. There's some disturbing stuff on display in the trailer, and Carrel is in a neat transition in his career where he's developing into a pure character actor rather than a comedic heavy hitter. I'm very excited for this one.

Rosewater

Director: Jon Stewart

Writer: Jon Stewart

Starring: Gael García Bernal, Kim Bodnia, Dimitri Leonidas

In a roundabout way, Rosewater is responsible for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – if Stewart hadn't been off shooting this movie last summer, Oliver would not have filled in at the Daily Show desk and likely wouldn't have been offered the HBO gig, which is one of the best and most unexpected places for investigative journalism in television – so I am already eternally thankful for its existence.

Now, whether Stewart has the chops to direct a movie, let alone one not in his comedic wheelhouse, I can't be sure. But he has brought with him Gael García Bernal, whose turns in The Motorcycle Diaries, Y Tu Mamá También, and The Crime of Father Amaro, among others, have made him one of the strongest actors of his generation. Rosewater's story – a journalist is kidnapped while covering the failed Iranian “Green Revolution” and held by government forces because of trumped up charges he may be a spy – is a harrowing one. We'll see if the king of late night satire can make this work.

Interstellar Review: Bad Habits Get In the Way of Greatness

Interstellar Review: Bad Habits Get In the Way of Greatness

Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway

When I walked out of the theater after Interstellar ended, a woman commented loudly, “Maybe they'll have translators waiting for us to explain to us what that meant.” Either she wasn't paying attention or she doesn't have working ears, because Interstellar is a movie that fails the old “show don't tell” test at every turn. How anyone could walk out of a theater confused by a movie so burdened by over explanation is astonishing to me. Director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception) has a habit of holding his audience's hands, not allowing his evocative visuals and stellar casts to do the heavy lifting they could. Maybe he isn't sure of the strength of his visual acumen or maybe he doesn't believe in his audience, but either way the result is preventing the audience from being able to make up their own minds about his movies. They tell us exactly the filmmaker's intent, an often suffocating one-way street that takes out a lot of the fun, and sometimes the longevity, from his films.

Interstellar suffers this problem more acutely than many of his other films. Whereas Inception was a movie built like a multilayered puzzle, with completely fictional rules that needed explaining, Interstellar takes place in a possible future for the world we live in, much of it well researched by Nolan and his screenwriter brother Jonathan. The concepts of relativity, space flight, global warming, wormholes, the effects of loneliness, and parenthood are explicated ad nauseam. It's a shame, too, because Nolan, through the use of the camera and his actors, especially conflicted protagonist Matthew McConaughey, makes the emotional effects – emotion being the thing cinema does best – tangible. When McConaughey explains his decision to go on the humanity-saving mission to Anne Hathaway's scientist-astronaut, he makes platitudes about how parenthood is all about making your children feel safe. This was made abundantly clear in his loving – and occasionally truth obfuscating – interactions with his children in the hour or so the (nearly three hour long) movie spends on a dying Earth. We don't need the movie to tell us this, because we're already hard-wired to understand visual stimuli, particularly the kind related to self-preservation. The same goes for Nolan hammering us with information about why the Earth is ravaged by climate change and how it works – we get it with the dust storms, the dying crops, the people dying of lung infections.

And unfortunately, the worst of it is in the space scenes, including a planet on which spending an hour equals seven years in Earth time. The initial mention of it is fine to make sure the audience understands the stakes, but the hemming and hawing McConaughey and company do once they land is exhausting and undercuts the thrill of seeing the existential danger facing them. This continues time and again, all the way through the climax, which takes place in what looks like a box covered in puke green plaid wrapping paper – go see the movie and you won't be able to unsee that description – a scene that could be done in complete silence and it would still be fairly clear, but with more subtlety and, heaven forbid, some ambiguity.

But I mean it when I say go see Interstellar, because, for all its faults and distrust in the audience's ability to stick with it, it remains thrilling and emotionally satisfying – from a full range of emotions. I mentioned earlier how the first hour takes place on Earth, and despite the qualms with explanation, it's not boring. McConaughey's character, Cooper, is a man stuck in a bad situation trying to make the best of it. He's a former pilot and engineer pushed by circumstances into farming, which the conventional wisdom of The People says is the only truly noble occupation in a world where a harshly warming planet makes every morsel necessary – other occupations and ambitions must be put aside to ensure a survival that still isn't likely. He lost his wife because of that deemphasis on grander plans, and he sees things getting worse. His son is locked into a life of farming, too, because of mediocre test scores. His daughter, Murph (played by Mackenzie Foy as a child and Jessica Chastain as an adult), is clearly brilliant and driven to be in charge of her fate. The connection between father and daughter is the crux of the film, and the scene when McConaughey must say goodbye to Murph after deciding to embark on the adventure at the cost of possibly never seeing her again is a doozy, packed with the weight of Steven Spielberg's best – it makes sense, given that Spielberg was originally slated to be Interstellar's director. I got a lump in my throat, which is rare for me in a movie, and even rarer for a Nolan film, given his emphasis on the brain in lieu of the heart.

Interstellar is a solid adventure film despite its flaws, but its disappointment lies in how close it is to being a great one. The bones are in place for sublimity, but its constant insecure – whether that insecurity is linked to Nolan's belief in himself or the audience, I'm not 100 percent on – insistence on explaining itself shoots itself in the foot.

Nightcrawler Review: Thematic Confusion Keeps it from Greatness

Nightcrawler Review: Thematic Confusion Keeps it from Greatness

Nightcrawler

Director: Dan Gilroy
Writer: Dan Gilroy
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton

In Nightcrawler, spectacular performances, pacing, cinematography, and editing combine for a thrilling, satirical indictment of television news. Unfortunately, this mastery of the cinematic canvas serves a theme that is too cynical and confused about how that industry works to be true. It pushes false ideas about the causes of modern television news' proclivities toward violence and sensationalism, only to succumb to the same inclination by using the flashiest tools in the filmmaking box to focus on surface level ideas.

Gyllenhaal is tremendous as the freelance videographer Lou, a sociopath with a can-do attitude, long, greasy hair, and a squirrelly frame that fits his life as a thief. Once he comes across Rene Russo's TV news producer, he finally finds himself a steady gig videotaping the most gruesome crime news in Los Angeles. Writer-director Dan Gilroy shoots the film in a way that is both scuzzy and shiny, perhaps because of his mixed use of both film and digital cameras for different settings and times. He paces Nightcrawler meticulously, with each scene providing an emphatic push to the next, never once stopping as the stakes grow and grow.

Gyllenhaal is a force of nature, one of the year's best characters, but unfortunately he's a false pawn in Gilroy's attempt to portray the media as craven fear mongers only ever in search of a buck -- he goes so far as to suggest they create the violence to get more visceral (re: moneymaking) stories. Everyone with a sense of agency in the film, like Russo and Gyllenhaal, is only out for themselves, desperate to preserve and expand what they have, manipulating each other and their television audience to get everything they want. They brush away suggestions that what they're doing is ethically wrong, and conspire to do the unethical thing at every turn, almost as a form of spite. This in itself suggests Gilroy believes the “good” people in TV journalism – portrayed here by Mad Men's Kevin Rahm – those concerned with doing the right and fair thing for subjects and victims, aren't important to news creation. They get pushed aside, treated as silly nuisances and buzzkills. They are soon kept out of meetings about how to maximize the impact of the violence for ratings, incentivizing the less scrupulous – hello, Lou – to go hog wild in first staging, and later orchestrating the grand finale.

It's a shame Gilroy cares so much about this aspect, which is possibly true in some cases across the TV news landscape, but it overlooks what is a simpler, and much more widespread, truth about broadcast news: All this "if it bleeds, it leads" stuff (as a person with a journalism degree, I'm pleading with you, Hollywood, to stop using this phrase when discussing journalism) is easy. People don't need to centrally process it. They get it, and they get it quickly. It's harder to do the stuff Lou says only takes up 22 seconds of an average broadcast, like covering the complicated worlds of public policy, business deals, and the like. Nuance is hard in an immediate medium like TV, and these news organizations are, I'd argue, lazier than they are malicious. That's a real outrage, one with basis in fact, unlike the false theme of the media's orchestration of violence Gilroy finds more interesting.

And it's disappointing Gilroy and Nightcrawler don't go for the media's throat on the subject of laziness. It diminishes the film's power as satire. Because for satire to work, it needs to be about a real problem. That's why the satirical moments of recent films like The Wolf of Wall Street and Gone Girl work so well. We recognize what they are doing. We're supposed to be outraged by Jordan Belfort going through life like he owns everyone, defrauding thousands, and essentially getting away with it and moving to a career where his horrendous efforts are applauded. We see the Nancy Grace-style host in Gone Girl's recreant attempts to reframe the story for her ratings' purposes multiple times, always relying on gut feelings in lieu of actual facts, and we understand it because it happens in cable news all the time. There is proof of these things in reality, and for all the heightened absurdities of Martin Scorsese's and David Fincher's films, they run in the same circles as truth. Nightcrawler's satire is more guesswork, cynically assuming this is what happens without supporting evidence in real life. It is conspiratorial thinking, probably giving the media too much credit for their abilities to shape stories to their will rather than being able to exploit what they come across as lazily as possible.

Some Movies out This Weekend, November 7, 2014

Some Movies out This Weekend, November 7, 2014

The three big releases this week all have something to do with science in one way or another. We have the latest from a Disney Animation Studios that has been on both popular and critical rolls for several consecutive releases, a space epic from one of the biggest blockbuster filmmakers of our day, and a biopic of one of science's most important figures.

Big Hero 6

Directors: Don Hall, Chris Williams

Writers: Don Hall, Jordan Roberts, Robert L. Baird, Duncan Rouleau, Paul Briggs

Starring: Ryan Potter, T.J. Miller, Scott Adsit, Damon Wayans Jr.

After a string of massive success with Tangled, Wreck It Ralph, and Frozen, Disney has dipped into the Marvel well – they own the comic book company – for their newest, about a boy, his robot, and a mystery involving bad looking guys with nano technology.

The adventure and CG animation look top notch, but it is the comedy that looks like the movie's driving force. Scott Adsit, formerly of TV's 30 Rock, plays Baymax, the artificially intelligent used car balloon man. The trailer has been all over the place before almost every movie I've seen recently, and Baymax seems on the verge of being the next big crowd pleasing character, with the now famous “Scotch tape sight gag” moment making people – including me, the guy who's seen the trailer probably 15 times now – laugh every time.

Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writers: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Wes Bentley

Christopher Nolan is one of the preeminent purveyors of blockbuster filmmaking these days. His smart, dark takes on superheroes (The Dark Knight trilogy), the world of magicians (The Prestige), and dream thieves (Inception) have done wonders for people looking for more than to shut their brains off while eating popcorn and watching explosions. However, deserved or not, Nolan has a reputation for being heartless, more concerned with the machinations of the brain than the ticker. In many ways, Interstellar seems like his attempt at Spielberg-inflected (Spielberg was the director originally attached to direct) warmth and spectacle.

Set in the near future, the world is falling apart because of climate change, and humans need to figure out what to do. Matthew McConaughey, a pilot, is recruited to search for a habitable planet to relocate the human race. He has to leave his family behind to maybe die, and from the trailers it looks like he's gone a while (Jessica Chastain plays his grown daughter, who is about 11 when he leaves), so there could be some big themes about abandonment and duty tossed about.

Interstellar is getting some mixed reviews, but overall people seem to enjoy it. We'll see.

The Theory of Everything

Director: James Marsh

Writer: Anthony McCarten

Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, David Thewlis

Stephen Hawking has probably contributed more to astrophysics than any other human being, alive or dead. That alone makes him an extraordinary figure. The fact that he's done it while overcoming a disease that paralyzed him and stole his ability to speak is even more remarkable. The Theory of Everything tracks that story, his love with his wife, Jane, and probably a healthy dose of simplification of Hawking's theories.

For all the likely schmaltz – the meet-cute in the trailer involves a charming discussion about how Tide makes clothes glow brighter in black lights – there's some pedigree here. Redmayne was one of the few bright spots of 2012's Les Misérables and director Marsh directed the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire. There's some harrowing stuff in Hawking's life, so the sentimentality of the trailer might give way to some harder-to-watch stuff later on.

Birdman Review: A Baffling and Glorious Mess

Birdman Review: A Baffling and Glorious Mess

Birdman

Director: Alejandro González-Iñárritu

Writers: Alejandro González-Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo

Starring: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough

When people write about films with mixed reviews, they most often refer to some people enjoying the experience and some disliking it. There are glowing reviews and bitter takedowns contained within the critical reaction, often with little in between. It's a rarer thing to have a movie that deserves both, often at the same time.

Birdman is that film. It is at once dazzling and disastrous. Its storytelling devices are as forceful, and repetitious, as a jackhammer. It has so much to say about aging, the entertainment industry, family, manhood, grace, artistic affectation, insecurity, and ambition, and it doesn't stop making those points over and over again. It suffers from “importance”-itis, where every line that ties into its themes – so, so many – makes itself known, with the music building to bombastic heights so you are absolutely sure you understand what's happening. These are the makings of passable melodrama. However, director and co-writer Iñárritu takes extra steps during each of these moments to call the movie out for its pretension, a wink, a joke that shows he and his collaborators “get it.” It's all part of the plan. It's making a point about silly people pretending they're not silly. But it still seems to mean the initial point.

So which is it? Are these people lying to themselves and deserving of ridicule? Are they striving for something transcendent and therefore worthy of commendation? Is it both? Neither? The movie, and Iñárritu, have no idea, and that's part of the tantalizing and frustrating nature of the picture. It doesn't know what it wants to be, can't choose a path, so it tries to do everything and its failures are as terrible as its successes spectacular. In doing so, Iñárritu is like the baseball player who admires a long fly ball off the bat only to be shocked when it bounces off the wall for a single -- there's value in that, but it's not what it could be.

The stars and their characters fair extraordinarily well given the schizophrenic confines of the narrative. Michael Keaton, in a meta exploration of his own career, plays Riggan, a middle aged former onscreen superhero who throws himself into a stage adaptation of a Raymond Carver story, in which he has invested everything to write, direct, and star. Keaton lets out his unhinged, maniacal side to paint a character breaking under his self-imposed pressure to be more than he is. His daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), is a recent graduate of a rehab program and trying her best to connect with her distant dad as his assistant during the production. Edward Norton is the infuriatingly fickle Broadway star who “pretends” in every part of his life except for his moments of “truth” onstage.

If it were those three wrestling – literally at times – with each other, Birdman would probably be a phenomenal cinematic achievement. Each distinctly represents fundamentally divergent worldviews, and that tension is the stuff of magic. Norton and his artiste affectations, for all their sometimes brilliance, serve as a detriment to getting the play done with the efficiency Keaton's shattered psyche – where his superhero alter-ego talks to him in voiceover – requires. Stone represents the pull of modernity and the wakeup call everyone needs to stop thinking the world revolves around them.

But those three aren't the only focus. There are former wives, current (possibly pregnant) girlfriends, a stressed best friend trying to bring the money together to simply make the show go on, an influential critic threatening to destroy the play sight unseen, and more that pull the film away from its strengths.

It's a shame because the muddled, multi-plotted film achieves so much on the technical side of things, too. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity) again shoots a visual masterpiece, with Steadicam photography, extreme color saturation, and lighting that complements every emotion the characters feel at a given moment. The way he and Iñárritu stitch lengthy shots together to create the illusion that the film is all done in one long take is as ambitious as anything I've seen, period – and it mostly works.

These technical, visual, and performative accomplishments are what make Birdman such a fascinating misstep. If Iñárritu had trusted himself enough to let the visual medium speak for itself, he'd have a masterpiece on his hands. But his constant unnecessary intrusion to clarify what his themes mean actually serves to confuse his message.

Stuff to Do, Movies to See this Weekend, October 31, 2014

Stuff to Do, Movies to See this Weekend, October 31, 2014

Normally I use this space to preview the weekend's new releases in theaters. This installment, though, takes place on Halloween, and there are special things happening to commemorate the fun, scary holiday, like a weekend-long bash at Parts and Labor celebrating the history of horror filmmaking.

The Logan Square bar and grill (2700 N. Milwaukee) is showing the slasher, body horror, and supernatural flicks on two giant HD projectors. In addition to the gigantic list of films (19 are listed with 22 promised, so be on the lookout for surprises), the bar and grill offers a special of burgers with fries and a beer or shot all for $10. I can attest their food is good, and I look forward to eating more of it when I attend at least one of the evenings. You can expect a report next week, Halfstackers, but for now, here is the lineup of old and new scary movies alike.

Friday, October 31, from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

The Fly

The Thing

The Cabin in the Woods

Evil Dead 2

Poltergeist

Saturday, November 1, from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Night of the Living Dead

Shaun of the Dead

American Psycho

The Shining

Sunday, November 2, from 12 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Pan's Labyrinth

Nightmare on Elm Street

Carrie

28 Days Later

Event Horizon

Near Dark

The Descent

Midnight Meat Train

Whiplash Review: Genius is Harsh

Whiplash Review: Genius is Harsh

Whiplash

Director: Damien Chazelle

Writer: Damien Chazelle
Starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons

Genius is rare, perhaps even fleeting. It is also not about talent alone. Platitudes about the duration of Rome's construction apply even to the most brilliant people, and it's an unpleasant, sometimes unhinged exercise where things like real life and social pleasantries fall by the wayside in pursuit of greatness.

Writer-director Damien Chazelle's Whiplash unpacks that idea with laser focus. Miles Teller's Andrew is a first-year jazz drummer at the best music school in the country. He's more than raw talent, as established by the film's opening shot, a dolly push-in from a hallway to the practice room where Andrew toils away, sweaty and exhausted. A cut reveals the camera's point of view to be that of Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the conductor of the school's prestigious jazz band. Their first encounter is not the easiest first impression scene to sit through, and the movie only gets harder from there.

Andrew and Fletcher spar throughout the film. Fletcher is the worst case scenario negative reinforcement teacher, with a motivational style that includes throwing chairs at his pupils' heads and never once offering a word of encouragement. Mirroring the drumming depicted in the film, Fletcher's behavior is constant, repetitious abuse of their physical, mental, and emotional faculties. Even in his more “teacherly” moments, he is a calculating monster, only asking about Andrew's family background to gain an emotional cudgel moments later when Andrew makes a miniscule mistake in practice.

But is Fletcher really the bastard he seems to be? This is where Chazelle moves the film from straightforward character drama into a thesis on the manipulative nature of cinema. Despite the opening shot, most of Whiplash is shown through Andrew's subjective, go-getting eyes. He is not a heroic character. This is not an example of Chazelle showing how his protagonist is flawed or bringing a level of “real world” humanity to him while retaining likeability – he does and says some despicable things to the people who surround him. This may not be on the same abusive level as his teacher, but his tunnel vision to perfection sends him into callous fits of egoism. He emotionally tramples his girlfriend and holds an air of superiority over his father's dinner guests for not having his gifts, which pale in comparison to the way he treats his bandmates, with belittling statements about their abilities and a possible bit of sabotage to gain early sway with Fletcher. Even the climax of the film revolves around an act of spiteful showboating that makes it about the conflict between these characters. This is uncompromising storytelling, some of the best film has to offer. But from a character standpoint, and for the other musicians who have to be bystanders to this drama, with their futures just as much on the line as Andrew's, it's selfishness.

This calls into question Andrew's emotional stability and maturity, as he cannot see at times obvious tricks, cruel as they are, to put him on the right path. One of his rival drummers, of a good natured personality, reminds him that Fletcher is “all bark, no bite,” which could be closer to the truth than Andrew's mind allows him to perceive. There are pointed scenes where Chazelle shows some non-grotesque aspects to Fletcher's personality, cracks in the mask, with the camera pausing on Simmons's face during moments of horrible self-realization/public deception, or voyeuristic peeks at a good nature outside of his practice room behavior. Fletcher even goes so far as to lay out his ethos in clear terms to Andrew in a third act scene, but his pettiness makes it worse for both of them, setting up the grand finale of selfish oneupmanship. Or is it just another Fletcher motivational ploy to wring greatness from Andrew? That's the wonderful mess Chazelle leaves for the audience to decide.

Andrew's goal is to be “one of the greats,” and he'll probably do it if he doesn't collapse under his own and his teacher's pressure. Chazelle, the first-time director, might be on the same route, and his first features is probably already there.

Some Movies Out This Weekend, October 24, 2014

Some Movies Out This Weekend, October 24, 2014

The fall season eclecticism continues at full speed this weekend. You have your choice of gonzo action, spooky exploitation of childhood games, and a romantic comedy with some of the best talent in Hollywood on board.

As usual, these three aren't everything you can find in theaters this weekend, but they represent a good mix. So if you Halfstackers aren't at any Halloween parties, a trip to the movies should give you lots of options.

John Wick

Directors: David Leitch, Chad Stahelski

Writer: Derek Kolstad

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane

An outlandish premise – mobsters (?) steal a reformed assassin's dog, he goes to get it back, gleeful violence follows – brings Keanu Reeves back to form as a big time action hero. The cast is filled with fun ringers (Dafoe and Leguizamo) and HBO vets (Allen, McShane) alike. The directors are former stuntmen on some of the best action movies of a generation, like The Matrix – hence the Reeves connection. This is getting the highest of marks and could be the perfect movie to see with a crowd this weekend.

Ouija

Director: Stiles White

Writers: Juliet Snowden, Stiles White

Starring: Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff, Bianca A. Santos

Halloween is only a week away, everyone. You need to get plenty scared. Disregard the flimsy, market tested premise (“People recognize this product, so let's make a movie out of it!”) and focus on the atmosphere. I've seen this trailer a handful of times in theaters recently and I've come away feeling creeped out.

Will the movie be any good in the traditional sense? With the trailer giving away the movie's lazy expository device – the original girl shot videos to warn her friends before she was killed – I doubt it. But I'm anxious and jumpy. Stuff gets to me, especially surprises. I bet this will be an effective movie in that regard.

Laggies

Director: Lynn Shelton

Writer: Andrea Seigel

Starring: Keira Knightley, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sam Rockwell

A play on the man-child narratives that have been so popular for the last decade, Laggies stars Keira Knightley (with an impressive American accent) as a woman who can't grow up. She befriends Chloe Grace Moretz, a high school student, and “lay[s] low” at her dad's (Sam Rockwell) house. Life lessons are learned, romances are kindled, advice is imparted. On its face, it all seems pretty conventional.

But! The cast is among the best in Hollywood, with heavyweights in talent if not pounds (they're skinny, you see) Knightley and Rockwell making a sweet if surprising romantic pair. Director Lynn Shelton has worked on some of the greatest television of the last several years – episodes of New Girl, The Mindy Project, and even a Mad Men thrown in – and her features, especially Humpday and Touchy Feely, have gotten great reviews. There is some solid pedigree at work.

Some Movies to See This Weekend, October 17, 2014

Some Movies to See This Weekend, October 17, 2014

It's another eclectic (eccentric?) weekend at the movies, with the wide releases covering as huge a range of interest and audience as possible, and the latest acting showcase from one of cinema's best premiering at the Chicago International Film Festival. As usual, this isn't a completely comprehensive list of everything you can find, but you're likely to find something of interest when you look at a marquee this weekend.

The Book of Life

Director: Jorge R. Gutierrez

Writers: Jorge R. Gutierrez, Douglas Langdale

Starring: Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum

This is the big time animated family release, featuring the voices of big time stars and showcasing a big time adventure. In a faux-stop motion CGI style, a lovesick young man (Luna) has to return from a party-filled afterlife to reunite with the woman he loves (Saldana) and save his town from destruction at the hands of other supernatural beings.

The trailer features two frustrating modern crutches, a dated pop culture reference (Biz Markie's “Just a Friend”) and the use of “Seriously?” (see also: “Really?”) in place of a constructing a true punchline. Pet peeves aside, there's some pedigree here, with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim) producing a fairy tale that is refreshingly non-Anglophile in origin. Luna and Saldana always do strong work, and Tatum's dopey charisma is palpable even in animated form. You're probably in good hands here, especially if you have kids in your life.

The Best of Me

Director: Michael Hoffman

Writers: J. Mills Goodloe, Will Fetters

Starring: Michelle Monaghan, James Marsden, Luke Bracey, Liana Liberato

The latest from the Nicholas Sparks adaptation factory, The Best of Me spans two decades in the lives of a pair of high school sweethearts torn apart by drug-related prison time. They reunite 21 years later, looking absolutely nothing like their high school selves – the Bracey-Marsden age-up is particularly mystifying – to give it another go despite some big life obstacles.

Sparks adaptations are overwrought with schmaltz, but sometimes they can work – The Notebook is a fairly strong melodrama – plus Monaghan and Marsden (Mr. Liz Lemon himself) have done strong work elsewhere. This fulfills the romance portion of the weekend bill.

Fury

Director: David Ayer

Writer: David Ayer

Starring: Brad Pitt, Shia LeBeouf, Logan Lerman

The grim, horrific nature of war is on full display in this men-on-a-mission film from End of Watch writer-director David Ayer. I wouldn't count on much uplift here, despite the premise taking place at the very end of the European theater, with our heroes on the cusp of their most triumphant moment.

Ayer is working in John Ford-Sam Peckinpah territory here, with camaraderie, duty, violence, and masculinity being the driving forces. Brad Pitt does his gravitas thing as a tank sergeant and the no-way-he's-possibly-22-years-old Logan Lerman (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) continuing his progression toward leading man status. Despite its gritty violence, this is likely to get a big Oscar push, so you can probably expect to be seeing it mentioned a lot in the coming months.

Two Days, One Night

Directors: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Writers: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Starring: Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Pili Groyne

A woman (Cotillard) on the verge of losing her job has to make a frustrating, demeaning choice to visit her coworkers, one-by-one, over the course of a weekend in order to convince them to give up part of their salary to leave her position off the chopping block. They have already voted on pay raises for themselves at her expense, so she's in a precarious, frightening spot.

Coming off The Immigrant earlier this year, the already great Cotillard (Inception, Rust and Bone) is at the height of her skills as an actor, able to turn desperation into strength and tenacity. It's a theme that has followed her throughout her career, and she is able to make broken characters become something more than victims, avoiding easy sympathy-only pathos and creating rounded, human people. And she gets to do it again Sunday at CIFF.

Stream Oscar Season Now: Snowpiercer Review

Stream Oscar Season Now: Snowpiercer Review

It's Academy Awards season. Halfstack's resident film critic, Rob Samuelson, has been hard at work catching up on many of the year's most important movies through on-demand and streaming services.  You all want a great top 10 list, don't you? As a way to join in the fun, read his reviews of movies you can see right now on a variety of platforms. First up, this summer's Snowpiercer, now available to rent on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and YouTube.

I can't use copyrighted material here according to our blogging service, so enjoy my artistic rendition of the movie.

Snowpiercer

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Writers: Bong Joon-ho and Kelly Masterson

Starring: Chris Evans, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Kang-ho Song, Ed Harris

Anytime a powerful body starts making claims about the necessity of everyone knowing their rightful place, they should be viewed with supreme skepticism and, sometimes, outright opposition if their policies begin to demean, subjugate, and effectively dehumanize the less powerful. But these policies often spring from the minds of those looking to preserve something about humanity, and in their fear, stress, and yes, sometimes greed, their choices can become hellish. That doesn't mean their initial urge to protect the system was necessarily wrong, but an unquestioning faith in a system or ideology leads one to miss its imperfections and cause problems. Those not in power aren't always altruistic victims, either, often making choices for survival that are contrary to any human decency. And if, by some miracle of chance, the roles get reversed, the allure of power almost always prevails. In Snowpiercer, director Bong Joon-ho – in his American filmmaking debut – explores these themes to their wrenching logical ends, never losing control of any aspect of cinematic storytelling in the process.

In the decades following the worldwide climate collapse, caused by a catastrophic decision to flood Earth's atmosphere with a cooling chemical, what's left of humanity resides on a gigantic train, the Snowpiercer of the title, barreling through an uninhabitable tundra. Like in any social system, winners and losers emerge in this deal. The wealthy, the opulent, the gilded reside up front, with all the markers of high society bestowed on them. Snowpiercer shows how they are probably not bad people, per sé, rather blissfully lucky and unwilling to lose the relatively nice situation they've found themselves occupying.

But they're not Bong Joon-ho's primary concern. He's worried about the lowest ebbs of the order, those at the back of the train, greedily consuming – eating is not the right word for it – bars of gelatinous protein and biding their time to move up in the world by force if necessary, and those tightening their grasp of power at will. The back of the train world is reminiscent of a nightmarish coal mine, dank, frozen, barren yet overcrowded. Worse, the train's overseers, headed up by a gleefully twisted Tilda Swinton, don't show any kindness when these poor creatures get out of line, like opposing the theft of their children for reasons they aren't aware of. Questioning in any way the logic or morality of the powered leads to torture-as-public-service-announcement, a way of saying, “We're in charge – The More You Know.” Limbs are lost, the children are taken anyway, and Chris Evans's Curtis, the caboose's reluctant leader, begins an assault to upend the social order and take control of the train's undying engine.

What follows is one of the most functional films in recent memory. Every train car takes a different shape, the colors and costumes change dramatically, Joon-ho's camera moves more fluidly to take in an aquarium and rigidly in a claustrophobic, yellow steam room when the cronies of power are bearing down on their diminishing rebellion.

But it's not just production design and camera movement that makes Snowpiercer such a strong film from a pure cinema standpoint. Joon-ho has one of the deftest hands in modern movies at dispensing vital plot points. Characters mention a threat, the train's constructor and conductor, Wilford (Ed Harris), but they don't need to explain his role to each other. They already know. In a lesser filmmaker's work, the characters would say something clunky like, “Wilford, the man who built this vessel and has kept us in chains for years.” But Joon-ho understands this is silly and unnecessary. At Wilford's first mention, we get a statement of purpose from Curtis to kill him and a subtle tilt pan up to a Wilford Industries emblem forged on the walls behind him. This tells the audience everything they need to know about who this man is, and what he stands for has already been established by the brutality of his army. It doesn't talk down to the audience with momentum-crushing exposition, but it realizes it's also not the type of movie that can thrive by willfully obscuring information from the audience, either. Joon-ho finds the perfect use of his visual medium to explain who the MacGuffin-villain is. It is the simplest, most efficient way to impart these useful messages and it almost never happens in movies. This should be taught in introductory film classes.

Joon-ho's staging and fight choreography changes throughout the journey, too, never once relying on a trick multiple times. There are blunt object brawl-a-thons, gun fights, stabbings, a bit of parkour, and one central set piece in the middle of the train involving an army of ninja-reminiscent men donning night vision goggles and cutting the lights. Besides the stunning technical nature of the fight sequences, this violence always derives from or informs character motivation while working as their own miniature narratives. Losses are cut, eyes are kept on the prize, order is instilled, and personal spite enters the equation multiple times to raise the stakes higher.

Evans's superhero film background has prepared him well for those fight scenes, but where he truly matters to the film is in his quiet moments. He's wracked with guilt over the horrific things he did as a younger man, the ways he pushed aside his basic humanity for sustenance. The rage in his eyes can almost scorch through the final door to meet his adversary. But it's not just rage at Wilford. It's a cancer inside him, growing because he allowed it. He had the chance to say no to his urges and keep his dignity and goodness intact, but the situation corrupted him. He is livid at himself and the world for what those two entities combined to make him do.

But even the darkest of pictures need some levity. Swinton is the perfect slippery public face of the Snowpiercer, always looking for the positive, propagandized spin on things to keep the caboose people in check. The noises that come out of her when things startle her are hilarious, and her constant clumsy self-preservation provides many of the film's laughs. Ditto Kang-ho Song's drug addict security expert and his daughter (Ah-sung Ko), who can't stop sniffing noxious bits of what amount to large wads of gum while performing dangerous, complex tasks, always asking for more as a pat on the head for a job well done.

If there is one qualm with this film, it is the unnecessary clairvoyance angle Joon-ho takes with Ko's character. She can see the future but is unable to stop it, noticing several threats before they arise and then watching in horror as they commence anyway. A supernatural subplot doesn't make much sense here, given the hard sci-fi trappings of the setup. It doesn't work and it isn't integral to these characters reaching the engine room. The movie could have cut these mentions of her powers, lost maybe two minutes of screen time, and been just as functional in the end.

But that minor quibble aside, Snowpiercer is an extraordinary piece of cinema. It's gorgeous, with unending innovation in mise en scéne, framing, and camera movement. It wrestles with some of the biggest themes we have to contemplate in society – how to treat each other and what is fairness – and lets these themes embody actors perfectly suited to personify them. Bong Joon-ho is a modern master.