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.

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.

Kill the Messenger Review: More "Mediocre" Like This, Please

Kill the Messenger Review: More "Mediocre" Like This, Please

Kill the Messenger

Director: Michael Cuesta

Writer: Peter Landesman

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oliver Platt, Andy Garcia

Walking out of Kill the Messenger, I was reminded of something that has bugged me for a while. “Good not great” is often seen as a mark of the limp, the middle of the road, disappointment. We're always on the lookout for perfection and we don't always appreciate when things are pretty all right. Take our city's hockey team for instance. They're entering their seventh year of league dominance, with two Stanley Cup championships in that span. But because they were a lucky bounce away from possibly adding a third ring last year, I am upset and struggling to get back on the “full throated fandom” horse with a new year of possible greatness having just started while I was in the theater. Instead of enjoying the fun ride, I worry about their window closing and that the fun will dry up.

This is a silly thing to worry about, but we movie buffs do it all the time. We look at the state of Hollywood – billion dollar franchises of dubious quality, sequels and remakes galore, et al – and freak out when something that doesn't fit within that narrow moneymaking bracket isn't perfect. When Argo won Best Picture at the Academy Awards a couple years ago, the narrative had it that it was because Ben Affleck's third straight solid, thinking adult's entertainment was a mediocrity that was hard to root against – more difficult art was somehow forgotten. Same thing with the awards season hype for American Hustle last year, which failed to take home the Oscar, but was unfairly maligned by some as a bad movie when it was merely a not perfect one – pretty good, in fact, but nothing to knock you over. Kill the Messenger, I worry, is headed for the same fate. And often, in our less reflective moments, we worry about these entertaining mark hitters – they don't fail, but they don't transcend the medium to teach us something new about ourselves or the world – mean that filmmaking is in danger or has already crossed the Rubicon into the banal and therefore, death. I'd argue that's a huge mistake. These are the types of movies we need more of. They should be the baseline and be treated as such, because they are better than the Transformers of the world, no matter what our emotions tell us when we're disappointed in non-perfection – what hubris. And Kill the Messenger is part of the solution.

In it, Jeremy Renner stars as Gary Webb, a journalist for the San Jose Mercury News who discovered through what amounts in the film – I cannot vouch for how it happened in reality – to a fluke of clerical error that the CIA had worked with Nicaraguan rebels who also happened to be flooding the United States with cocaine. Perhaps the CIA weren't the ones selling the drugs and conspiring to addict the poor on crack, but their planes were used and they supported these cartel-rebels because they were on “our” side of the Cold War. Webb follows the story where it takes him, and he uncovers a slew of corruption along the way. He publishes a harrowing story and gets commended, wins awards, goes on national television. Then the denials come flooding in. Some sources change their stories. Others disappear. Soon he looks less reliable, possibly fraudulent to the public's eyes.

It is in this, the fallout, where the movie lives. His triumphant publication, which, in a lesser movie, would have been the end of a long line of hard work, tenacity, and do gooding, instead forms the basis for a sadder story about perception and how it can quickly turn on the weak when the powerful have their say. It's a tremendous, powerful story, populated by terrific actors – Renner has been on quite a roll these last several years – and the way it pursues its theme about telling the truth no matter the consequences is stupendous.

Don't sleep on Peter Landesman's script, either, because he never forgets or sells out his central characters, Webb and his family. Rosemarie DeWitt is forgiving, strong, and wounded as Webb's wife, and their family life as depicted is one of great effort to make everything work, despite indiscretions and obsessions that can easily derail it. Renner as Webb is abrasive, sure of himself, and self-righteous when called for, but he's not without his deep flaws. He doesn't always make it easy on himself when interviewing people, often reverting to combativeness rather than necessarily looking for understanding. It's exceptional character building.

But a great script, layered characters, and a thematically satisfying ending – though not a happy one – do not make a great film. The direction of Kill the Messenger is competent and nothing more. Director Michael Cuesta comes from the world of television, one that rewards efficiency. That's how things need to work in such a tightly scheduled medium, where there are only eight days or so to shoot an episode. Unfortunately, this rarely leads to great artistry on the filmmaking side of things. Having directed several episodes of Dexter and Blue Bloods, Cuesta has developed a style that is handsome but nondescript. It stays out of the actors' and script's way, allowing them to do often great work.

However, on a film where there is only an approximately two hour window to do things right, more is needed from the director, particularly on a film like this, which requires a boatload of exposition. I understand the idea to present things as realistically as the medium will allow because of the journalism angle, but this isn't a documentary. There are different requirements, and Cuesta barely addresses those, let alone the requirements of the paranoid thriller genre. There's one moment in a parking garage that Cuesta shoots as a pair of tracking shots, with Renner in the foreground of each and a blurry-faced man following him. It's thrilling and the blur of the possible pursuant's face is subjective, concise, and offers all the information the audience needs while simultaneously ratcheting up the tension. It's a superb bit of how to do both efficient and artful direction, but it's the only notable moment in the film of that variety. The rest is filled with straight-on shots of Renner thinking, lots of conversational two-shots, and that's about it. Cuesta doesn't invalidate the story's claim to being worthy of the cinematic medium, but he doesn't use that medium to its full extent.

And that's okay. I remained entertained, shocked, moved, and most of all informed by Kill the Messenger. Just because it's not going to end up in any future editions of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die doesn't mean it's not good. It's a well made picture that happens to have flaws. Let's welcome that and embrace it, then hopefully there will be more like it. I know I like to experience those feelings mentioned above, even if they aren't the strongest versions I've ever felt.