Greetings ladies and gentlemen! As I noted a few days ago in
my Quentin Tarantino directorial retrospective, I’ve been spending a lot of
time developing my ‘Top 12 Favorite Films of 2015’ posts for you folks, which I
can confirm for you all will start being published on this blog on January 6th.
Until then, as a result of me being primarily focused on those posts, I haven’t
had much time to do full reviews for the films that I usually see around this
time of the year; in other words, anything I see during the last few days of
2015. As I’ve established before, I’ve been partaking in an annual
post-Christmas tradition in the form of a double feature run that I have been
doing with my good friend Matthew Goudreau, who’s currently working as an
Entertainment Staff Writer with ‘The Young Folks’, every year since 2012. But due
to the both of us being rather busy, we actually weren’t able to do it until
the first day of 2016 but even if it wasn’t 2015 anymore, this should still be
considered as our 2015 run. In 2012, it was ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Django
Unchained’. In 2013 it was ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘American Hustle’. And
last year, it was ‘Into the Woods’ and ‘The Imitation Game’. So today, as one
last post before the big ‘Best Films of the Year’ posts, I’ll be doing a pair
of quick reviews of the two films that we saw back-to-back this time around.
But this time, however, I’ll be adding in an additional review of a film that I
saw the day before I did the double feature screening with Matt on the last day
of 2015.
First up on the list
is the film that I saw on December 31st, 2015, New Year’s Eve. It
was the last ‘new’ 2015 release that I watched in 2015.
JOY
David O. Russell and Jennifer Lawrence have become one of
the biggest director-actor duos in recent years. The two first collaborated on
2012’s ‘Silver Linings Playbook’. That film not only landed Lawrence her second
Oscar nomination for Best Actress, after her breakout turn in 2010’s ‘Winter’s
Bone’, but also her first win. The two teamed up again the following year,
along with her ‘Silver Linings’ co-stars Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, for
‘American Hustle’. While only in a supporting role this time around, Lawrence
once again got major award buzz for her performance as the unstable wife of
Christian Bale’s character and earned her third (and second straight) Oscar
nomination, this time for Best Supporting Actress. And while Lupita Nyong’o
ended up winning that award that year for her turn in ‘Twelve Years a Slave’,
Lawrence was still regarded as being one of the best parts of ‘American
Hustle’. This year the duo of Lawrence and O. Russell are at it again, along
with Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, again, for ‘Joy’. This time Lawrence is
the true star of the show in this semi true story about Joy Mangano, a divorced
mother from Long Island who became famous in the 90’s for her invention of the
Miracle Mop, a self-wringing mop that kept users from having to touch the wet
mop head as they would have to have done if they used a regular mop. Her
invention was a huge success and Mangano became a highly successful entrepreneur
for the Home Shopping Network. She’s been developing new inventions for the
network ever since.
I say ‘semi’ true story because O. Russell has gone on
record saying that the film is not entirely based around Mangano’s life.
Instead, the screenplay is based around several different stories of women who
dared to change their lives around. So while the film may not delve into the
full story of Mangano’s rise to fame, it’s still a solidly-executed story of a
young woman with the weight of the entire world on her shoulders who manages to
overcome all of that through both her perseverance and her ingenious invention.
Her life struggles make her easy to sympathize with and relate to and Jennifer
Lawrence is superb as always in the role of Joy, as are Robert De Niro as Joy’s
father Rudy, who gets quite a lot of humorous lines of dialogue (If you recall
my review of ‘American Hustle’, I questioned why that film was being regarded
as a comedy when it really wasn’t. ‘Joy’, on the other hand, does a much better
job when it comes to comedic dialogue), and Bradley Cooper in the role of an
executive from QVC who helps Joy sell her product on the network. Admittedly
the film takes a little while to get going and there is quite a bit of
uncomfortableness that comes from Joy’s mother’s (Virginia Madsen) role in the
film, a woman who spends all of her time watching soap operas and never leaving
her room. But once Joy starts to produce and sell her new invention, that’s
where the film really starts to shine. Many of you are aware that even though I
really liked ‘Silver Linings Playbook’, I wasn’t too big on ‘American Hustle’
and thought that it was one of the more ‘overrated’ films of that year. ‘Joy’,
on the other hand, is a film that I’m happy to say that I’m much more positive
towards. This one has been more polarizing with critics but at the very least I
feel that Lawrence should at least get another Oscar nomination for her work on
this film.
Rating: 4/5
And now we move onto
the two films that I saw with Matt on January 1st, New Year’s Day.
THE HATEFUL EIGHT
Good ol’ Quentin Tarantino is back with yet another
balls-to-the-wall cinematic experience with his eighth feature film, fittingly
titled ‘The Hateful Eight’. A western set in post-Civil War Wyoming, the film
centers around a group of eight strangers who end up stuck together in a
Haberdashery due to a harsh blizzard. These people include bounty hunter John
Ruth (Kurt Russell), known as ‘The Hangman’ due to his insistence on making
sure his bounties hang, his current prisoner/bounty Daisy Domergue (Jennifer
Jason Leigh), fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson),
‘new sheriff’ Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), the haberdashery’s caretaker Bob
(Demian Bichir), ‘hangman’ Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), cow-puncher Joe Gage
(Michael Madsen), and former Confederate general Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern).
The major selling point of the film was that it was shot in Ultra Panavision
70, a format that hadn’t been used since the 60’s with films like ‘Ben-Hur’ and
‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’. Ever the film buff, Tarantino prepared a
special ‘roadshow’ release of the film, complete with an overture,
intermission, and special booklet, that was 20 minutes longer than the version
that would be released nationwide and would be screened in any theaters that
still had 70 mm projectors. Of the roughly 100 theaters that screened this
special version of the film, the closest to me was the Providence Place Cinema.
However, I saw the film in Lincoln so, yes, I only saw the film in its ‘digital
release’ form and not in the way that Tarantino had intended. I will see if I
can get to see the film’s roadshow release while it’s still running.
But even though I didn’t see the film in the 70 mm format,
it is still a beautifully-shot film in terms of its vast landscapes and fresh
color palette. As for the film itself, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a
Tarantino film. The first half of the film is mostly build-up and exposition
between characters but Tarantino is easily one of the best in the business in
terms of establishing tension that keeps the audience guessing as to what’s
going to happen next and, perhaps most importantly, who’s going to be on the
end of another person’s bullet by the end. Admittedly the film is a bit flawed.
It loses some momentum in the second half, you do feel the film’s hefty 160+
minute runtime in places, and admittedly Tarantino’s violent action sequences
are starting to get a little ridiculous, from heads exploding to people
coughing up tons of blood after they drink poisoned coffee. But at the same
time, as noted earlier, Tarantino’s direction in terms of establishing suspense
and tension is once again superb and the film’s ensemble cast is superb as
well. If I had to name the biggest standouts of the film, I would have to go
with the three that most people are talking about. Those three are Samuel L.
Jackson, of course (this is a Tarantino film after all), as the badass Major
Warren, Walton Goggins as arguably the most charismatic of the bunch (even
though you really wouldn’t use that word to describe any of these characters)
as Mannix, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as, to put it as nicely as I possibly can,
the extremely feral Domergue. For Tarantino fans, ‘The Hateful Eight’ will
deliver on everything you come to expect from the legendary filmmaker. It’s by
no means his best work but still a must-see in every sense of the word.
Rating: 4/5
THE BIG SHORT
Finally, we have ‘The Big Short’, an interesting
against-type project for director Adam McKay. Known for his numerous
collaborations with Will Ferrell on comedies like ‘Anchorman’ and ‘Talladega
Nights’, ‘The Big Short’, based on the book of the same name by ‘Moneyball’
author Michael Lewis, is more of a drama that focuses on the financial crisis
of 2007-2010 that came as a result of the fall of the housing market and
build-up of the credit bubble. The film primarily follows the stories of three
separate parties; hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale), who is the
first to notice the impending collapse of the market, another hedge fund
manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) who is notified of this by trader Jared
Vennett (Ryan Gosling) and uncovers the fraudulent practices of collateralized
debt obligations (CDOs), and up-and-coming investors Charlie Geller (John
Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), who get involved with the credit
default swap market with their help of their friend, retired banker Ben Rickert
(Brad Pitt). All of these characters spend their time in the film working to
take advantage of the practice of credit default swap that would bet against
the housing market. And despite the fact that obviously this ends up working in
their favor, they pretty much all come to the conclusion that in doing so,
they’re profiting at the expense of pretty much everyone else in the world
except for the banks, resulting in the question of how are they any better than
the banks for doing this.
So yeah, sounds like a pretty downer story, right? Well,
that’s where McKay’s comedic talents come in as the film manages to have a lot
of comedic dialogue that for the most part sort of makes up for the more
depressing elements of the story. A lot of the humor comes from Ryan Gosling,
whose character Jared Vennett serves as the film’s narrator and Gosling brings
a charismatic and also quite boisterous attitude to the role. Now I’ll admit
that I know very little about all of this stuff about the housing market and
the credit bubble and so on and so forth. And that’s okay because the film is
totally aware about that too. It knows that a lot of us aren’t economics
majors. So what it does in order to at least make more sense for people like me
who don’t know anything about all of this is by cutting to random cameos where
celebrities like Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez address the audience and give
us a better understanding of all of this trading business, from Robbie talking
about loans while in a bathtub to chef Anthony Bourdain talking about CDOs. I’ll
admit that there’s sort of a surreal nature to these scenes but thanks to
McKay’s direction, a superb cast (if I had to pick a standout I’d go with Gosling
for his aforementioned narration work), and an actually solid mix of comedy and
drama, ‘The Big Short’ is a fascinating look into one of the biggest incidents
in the recent history of this country while also pointing out all of the BS
that was responsible from it; BS that, as Brad Pitt put it, hasn’t gone away.
Rating: 4.5/5
