This week: The remarkable Boyhood, the ridiculous No Good Deed, and a third round of Girls.
► The word ‘epic’ gets thrown around a lot for movies which don’t deserve it, but Richard Linklater’s BOYHOOD truly earned the title last year. Its story is folklore by now, but no less amazing: The same actors filming portions of one movie over the span of 12 years, including Eltar Coltrane who starts the movie as a six-year-old and is 18 by the time it finishes. It would seem like a gimmick if not for Linklater’s nuanced script, about adolescence and the boy’s painful relationship with his broken parents (Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette). If you go by lists, this was the most beloved movie of 2014 – expect plenty of Oscar nominations to follow.
► The dismal NO GOOD DEED might have made for fun, sleazy drive-in fare back in the ‘70s, but it’s a laughable waste of Idris Elba now. He plays a killer who escapes after denied parole, and is invited into the home of a frustrated wife (Taraji P. Hensen) after he crashes his car in a storm. Despite the fact his face has been all over the news, neither the housewife or her flirtatious friend recognize him – one of a dozen or so bewildering things you just have to accept here. It doesn’t help that Elba just doesn’t make for a convincing psycho. Elba and director Sam Miller have done several episodes of ‘Luther’ together…but this is no ‘Luther.’
► Tate Taylor’s GET ON UP is about what you’d expect from a PG-13 James Brown bio directed by the guy who did ‘The Help.’ You get a basic outline of the legend without the fascinating (and often unsavory) things that complete the picture, many of them relating to the groundbreaking music itself. Chadwick Boseman is tremendous, but for a more thorough look at Brown’s life head to the recent HBO doc ‘Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown.’
► Get past the tiresome backlash, and GIRLS managed to nicely shift its tone in Season 3. The girls’ friendships are strained – especially in an outstanding episode where they all snap at each other during a cottage getaway – and the realities of jobs and responsibilities sink in. As always, Adam Driver gets the best scenes as Hannah’s newly ambitious boyfriend, showing he isn’t the doofus we met in Season 1. The buzz may be over, but ‘Girls’ is still smart and relevant as it settles into middle age.
► What’s that? You thought Nicolas Cage already hit rock bottom? No, as LEFT BEHIND proves, he’ll find a way to keep digging. Remake of the Christian apocalyptic flick which gave Kirk Cameron a whole new career 15 years ago. Cage plays a pilot trying to keep his family together when the Rapture hits and people across the world start disappearing. Even Christian film critics ripped this one. (“An ignorant piece of garbage,’ says Paul Chambers). One of the absolute biggest dogs of 2014.
► Todd Douglas Miller’s doc DINOSAUR 13 recounts the story of a near-complete T-Rex fossil unearthed in 1990, and the legal fight which followed involving the team which discovered it, the federal government, and the land owner whose property the bones were dug from. Things got so ugly that paleontologist Pete Larson spent 18 months (!) in prison. Not just a great tale of discovery, but a cautionary one about greed and shady government seizures.
► Leaving the spy agency ISIS (for, uh, obvious reasons) gives ARCHER a fresh slate for its fifth season as the gang use a hidden vault of cocaine to form their own drug cartel. It becomes Bizarro Miami Vice, as Archer deals with his fear of crocodiles, Cyril becomes president of San Marcos, and a flop sweating Pam absorbs a huge stash through her skin and gets addicted.
► Season 2 of FX’s THE BRIDGE ended up being its last, after co-developer Meredith Stiehm left to rejoin ‘Homeland.’ The final 13 episodes shift the scene to the El Paso/Juarez border, as the cartel sends a female ‘fixer’ (Franka Potente) to add to the problems of detectives Marco (Demian Bichir) and Sonya (Diane Kruger).
Also out this week:
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