Cinematic Considerations

Year: 2016

Academy Awards Preview: Picks to win and a shoutout to the boys at Filmventure

Most years, picking Academy Award winners can be pretty straightforward. There’s a movie that’s heads and tails above the rest and you can hit a pretty high percentage of correct predictions by picking that movie as the winner in every category it’s eligible in. You’re not going to hit them all, but that’s okay.

2015 isn’t one of those years because instead of one lead movie, you could make a reasonable argument for four different films – the Leonardo DiCaprio led The Revenant, the Matt Damon led The Martian, George Miller’s post-apocalyptic adventure Mad Max: Fury Road and the journalism ensemble film Spotlight – to be the presumptive favorite.

Those who have taken the time to read my Best of 2015 column can probably guess where I’m coming from with many of these selections and it’s a good piece to accompany this one when filling out your Academy Award ballots. You can read it at https://m.facebook.com/notes/cinematic-considerations/2015-a-cinematic-year-in-review/890223587752295/?refid=17&_ft_=top_level_post_id.890223587752295%3Atl_objid.890223587752295

If you absolutely can’t get enough Oscars talk – and I know I can’t – check out this podcast from Hill Country Film Festival alumni filmmaker Nathan Crenshaw and his podcasting partner Kory Hill. The Filmventure podcast is a great fun ride to listen to and gets my highest recommendation for those times you’re driving around town and need something enjoyable to listen to. Check them out at http://filmventure.libsyn.com. Episode 23 is their Oscar nominations pod.

I’ve included their picks to win if you don’t have time to check out their podcast, which you should do anyway. You can sleep when you’re dead.

Writing (Original Screenplay): Bridge of Spies, Ex Machina, Inside Out, Spotlight, Straight Outta Compton

This category is ultimately a two horse race with Best Picture contender Spotlight leading the way and sci-fi thriller Ex Machina on the outside. The underappreciated Straight Outta Compton blew everyone away with how well of a film it actually was as opposed to how bad it could have been and is just as much of a surprise as the sleeper hit Ex Machina, if not more so.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks Spotlight, Kory picks Ex Machina

Will win: Spotlight

Should win: Straight Outta Compton

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): The Big Short, Brooklyn, Carol, The Martian, Room

It’s strange to think that neither of the leading contenders for Best Picture – Mad Max: Fury Road or The Revenant – received an adapted or original screenplay nomination since that typically feels like a given based on Oscar history. What is left in the adapted category is a wide assortment of top films that all have winner potential, but this award has to go to a film that took overly complex financial concepts and made them understandable for wide audiences.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks Room, Kory picks The Martian

Will win: The Big Short

Should win: The Big Short

Visual Effects: Ex Machina, Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Martian, The Revenant

A lot of CGI work was done by four of the nominees in this category, but only one used 90 percent practical effects to mesmerize audiences, making George Miller’s post-apocalyptic epic a no-brainer.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Kory picks Mad Max: Fury Road

Will win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Sound Mixing: Bridge of Spies, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Variety has a fantastic primer online that explains the intricacies of sound mixing and sound editing and what makes them different. They also rightly make the case for more technical awards for George Miller’s movie. Check it out at http://variety.com/2016/artisans/production/oscars-sound-editing-mixing-explained-1201682457/

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Mad Max: Fury Road

Will win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Sicario, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Filmventure says: Nathan picks Mad Max: Fury Road, Kory picks Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Will win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Short Film (Live Action): Ave Maria, Day One, Everything Will Be Okay, Shok, Stutterer

Short films are such a crap shoot for 99.9 percent of Americans (like me) because we haven’t seen any of them. This is just a guessing game.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks Day One, Kory picks Shok

Will win: Everything Will Be Okay

Short Film (Animated): Bear Story, Prologue, Sanjay’s Super Team, We Can’t Live without Cosmos, World of Tomorrow

Sanjay’s Super Team debuted in front of the Pixar film The Good Dinosaur and World of Tomorrow is on Netflix, but again, total crapshoot.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick World of Tomorrow

Will win: We Can’t Live without Cosmos

Production Design: Bridge of Spies, The Danish Girl, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant

It’s a shame that Brooklyn isn’t nominated here over Bridge of Spies with its superior vintage feel, but the film is way underappreciated as a whole. This is either Mad Max or The Revenant with an outside shot for The Martian.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick The Revenant

Will win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should win: The Revenant

Music (Original Song): Earned It from Fifty Shades of Grey, Manta Ray from Racing Extinction, Simple Song #3 from Youth, Writing’s On The Wall from Spectre, Til It Happens To You from The Hunting Ground

Do yourself a favor and Google Spectre, the unreleased title track from the Bond film of the same name by Radiohead. It’s the best song associated with the latest James Bond movie and FAR superior to the whiny, bland Sam Smith song Writing’s on the Wall that will ultimately take this category. Diane Warren plus Lady Gaga for Til It Happens to You is a great combination among the actual contenders.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Writing’s on the Wall

Will win: Writing’s on the Wall

Should win: Til It Happens to You

Music (Original Score): Bridge of Spies, Carol, The Hateful Eight, Sicario, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Legendary composer Ennio Morricone, known for his iconic scores to the Clint Eastwood Man with No Name trilogy and Once Upon a Time in America, has never won an Academy Award in this category despite five decades of masterful work. This feels like a sure thing.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick The Hateful Eight

Will win: The Hateful Eight

Should win: The Hateful Eight

Makeup and Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared, The Revenant

There’s only two options of note here and either could win, but my bet is that voters will appreciate the more striking makeup of Mad Max over the more subtle looks of The Revenant.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Mad Max: Fury Road

Will win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Foreign Language Film: Embrace of the Serpent, Mustang, Son of Saul, Theeb, A War

Nobody has really seen any of these movies, especially your average Oscar voter, and the win will go to the film that everybody has heard of since it’s on an awards winning streak.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Son of Saul

Will win: Son of Saul

Film Editing: The Big Short, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Spotlight, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Perhaps the most underrated element of The Big Short is how rapidly the film jump cuts through scenes and uses superior editing to help set viewers up in the time period with quick snippets of pop culture references. It’s also the nominee easiest to pick out the work of the film editor, which helps voters who don’t normally pay attention to the way a film is pieced together.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks The Big Short, Kory picks The Revenant

Will win: The Big Short

Should win: The Big Short

Documentary (Short Subject): Body Team 12, Chau beyond the lines, Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, Last Day of Freedom

Hey, here’s a crapshoot.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks Body Team 12, Kory does not pick

Will win: Last Day of Freedom

Documentary (Feature): Amy, Cartel Land, The Look of Silence, What Happened Miss Simone?, Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

Perhaps the best slate of documentaries in quite some time, this year’s Oscar nominees pack a lot of firepower, from the dynamic biography of Amy Winehouse filled with exclusive performances and home movies to the spectacular looks at the war against a Mexican drug cartel in Cartel Land and peaceful student revolutionaries in Winter on Fire.

The boys from Filmventure, mainly Kory, are wrong when they make it sound like these films aren’t worth watching. Some of the year’s best filmmaking can be found in this category and three of the nominees – Cartel Land, What Happened Miss Simone? and Winter on Fire – can all be found on Netflix.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks The Look of Silence, Kory does not pick

Will win: Amy

Should win: Amy

Directing: Adam McKay for The Big Short, George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road, Alejandro Inarritu for The Revenant, Lenny Abrahamson for Room, Tom McCarthy for Spotlight

Let’s start with the elephant in the room here. No Ridley Scott in this category is a downright shame, especially since The Martian was absolutely dominant at the box office AND was one of the three best films of the entire year. It’s a snub at the same level as Ben Affleck getting passed over for Argo. Absolutely no reason for it.

That being said, this category should be simple, but isn’t. Alejandro Inarritu would have won this category hands down if he wasn’t just coming off a win in the category last year. There’s too many other talented directors in this category for a repeat. George Miller created a world unlike anything we’ve seen in Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie nobody saw coming until Cannes.

But this will be a major surprise win for Adam McKay, who helmed a film based on economic concepts the vast majority of Americans still don’t understand.

Not only does The Big Short make credit default swaps, mortgage bonds and massive fraud on Wall Street relatable for the average viewer, but it’s entertaining as hell to boot. The film’s upset win at the Producers Guild Awards could be a preview of major surprises to come.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick George Miller

Will win: Adam McKay (in a massive upset)

Should win: Alejandro Inarritu

Costume Design: Carol, Cinderella, The Danish Girl, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant

Again, this is another category that Brooklyn deserves to earn a nomination for, but among the actual nominees, a win for Mad Max or The Revenant could foreshadow a Best Picture win. Probably, this will be an opportunity for the Academy to honor Carol or The Danish Girl, which will likely be shut out of the acting awards.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Cinderella

Will win: Carol

Should win: The Revenant

Cinematography: Carol, The Hateful Eight, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Sicario

Emmanuel Lubezki – winner in this category the last two years for Gravity and Birdman – will win again. The expert use of natural lighting in The Revenant far outshines all the other nominees in the category. Just watch a trailer. You will agree.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick The Revenant

Will win: The Revenant

Should win: The Revenant

Animated Feature Film: Anomalisa, Boy and the World, Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep Movie, When Marnie was There

One of these days, it will be easier to choose a winner in this category when all the nominees are widely available. This year is not one of those years, but thankfully, the front runner and eventual winner is the biggest animated film of 2015, Inside Out.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks Anomalisa, Kory picks Inside Out

Will win: Inside Out

Should win: Inside Out

Actress in a Supporting Role: Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight, Rooney Mara for Carol, Rachel McAdams for Spotlight, Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl, Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs

Jennifer Jason Leigh gets the absolute crap knocked out of her all throughout Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and while the performance will have its supporters, the film as a whole feels far too violent and brutal for Leigh to get the serious consideration she deserves.

Ultimately this will be a two-horse race between Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl and Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs. Even though Winslet won the Golden Globe, Vikander may be the favorite for a performance few Americans outside the Academy have seen.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl

Will win: Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs

Should win: Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight

Actor in a Supporting Role: Christian Bale for The Big Short, Tom Hardy for The Revenant, Mark Ruffalo for Spotlight, Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies, Sylvester Stallone for Creed

Sylvester Stallone will be the sentimental choice here for his solid performance as his famed boxed Rocky Balboa in Creed. The Academy’s desire to honor a film with diversity following the events of #OscarsSoWhite should help propel this performance to a win.

That being said, Tom Hardy is an absolute revelation as the antagonist fur trapper Fitzgerald in Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant in a performance that few are talking about with Leonardo DiCaprio’s run at a first Oscar win and the stunning visuals dominating every conversation about the year’s best film.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Sylvester Stallone for Creed

Will win: Sylvester Stallone for Creed

Should win: Tom Hardy for The Revenant

Actress in a Leading Role: Cate Blanchett for Carol, Brie Larson for Room, Jennifer Lawrence for Joy, Charlotte Rampling for 45 Years, Saoirse Ronan for Brooklyn

Brie Larson is a terrific actress and sneaky good in the Amy Schumer-led Trainwreck. She’s also the presumptive winner for Best Actress for her performance in Room and nothing I say can dispute that, since like most of America, I haven’t seen the film myself. Larson is winning this category at every awards show around, so this should be simple.

Saoirse Ronan (it’s pronounced ser-sha, like inertia) offers the year’s best performance by a female, leading or supporting, that I’ve seen for her work in the romance film Brooklyn and it’s just a shade below DiCaprio for the year’s single best performance. Run see this film as soon as you can.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Brie Larson for Room

Will win: Brie Larson for Room

Should win: Saoirse Ronan for Brooklyn

Actor in a Leading Role: Bryan Cranston for Trumbo, Matt Damon for The Martian, Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant, Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs, Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl

In another year, Matt Damon should win for his all-encompassing performance in The Martian, a movie that just completely bombs in the hands of almost any other actor.

But this is DiCaprio in The Revenant. Everything that needs to be said about his work in this film can be found here https://cinematicconsiderations.com/2016/01/13/the-revenant-dicaprios-lead-performance-oscar-worthy/.

Filmventure says: Nathan and Kory pick Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant

Will win: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant

Should win: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant

Best Picture: The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, Spotlight

Bet you won’t see this one coming.

There’s an outside chance – I’d put it at like 20 percent – that a film many would think the studio behind the film, Paramount Pictures, is just happy to be nominated will end up winning the whole shabangabang. Don’t discount my upset special, which will need things to break right for it to have a clear shot. If Mad Max and The Revenant split votes from Academy members who can’t come to a decision on a clear-cut victor, then a secondary faction strongly behind another film may have a chance.

That being said, a betting man would probably put their money on The Revenant, and that’s the best option on the board.

Filmventure says: Nathan picks The Revenant, Kory picks Mad Max: Fury Road

Will win: The Revenant

Should win: The Revenant

Upset special: The Big Short

January 30, 2016
The Power of Cinema

I love movies.

I know. That seems like an all too obvious statement for a film critic to make, but I still feel like it needs to be said. People can like movies, or people can love A movie, but less people just love movies.

Smart ones, dumb ones, big ones, small ones, ones that make you think, ones you can turn your brain off while watching. I’m down with them all. Yes, I sound like Dr. Seuss when I write like that, but it’s just coincidental.

Typically, when I review films, I do my best to leave the words I or me out of the conversation, because at the end of the day, this isn’t really about me or who I am; it’s about the movies. I also don’t subscribe to the argument many film critics will make that they are journalists and have to write about movies as such.

But it’s important for you, the reader, to know where I’m coming from, since Cinematic Considerations isn’t going to be like any other movie review you ever read. So this is me and my cinematic journey.

I liked movies as a kid – even owned and re-watched more than your average child probably should – but I couldn’t really say I LOVED movies.

It wasn’t until college and those long lonely nights in an otherwise empty dorm room where I truly found the allure of film, falling asleep to the same two or three movies on rotate (with or without the commentary track).

I’d fall asleep to Bill Murray sort of romancing Scarlett Johansson in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 dramedy Lost in Translation, or watching Jim Carrey pine over the fading memory of Kate Winslet in 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. My irrational obsession over the career of Matt Damon thanks to the Jason Bourne trilogy also happened over this period of time.

I learned then something I find to be completely true still to this day. The right movie seen at the right time in the right frame of mind can work wonders for the soul.

Now I’m not talking about watching Pineapple Express or Zombieland while hung over on a Saturday morning eating cold pizza, though that does happen from time to time in people’s lives and both are excellent choices on such occasions.

I’m talking about how watching The Devil Wears Prada when you’ve had yet another rough day at the office and you just can’t stand another second working for a terrible boss can give you some perspective. Or how watching It’s A Wonderful Life can put you in the holiday spirit. (I really mean Die Hard, but that’s a topic for another time.)

As a film critic, my goal isn’t to get you to race out to the theaters to catch a new release or save you the time and trouble of sitting through something terrible (as much as I may want to).

Cinematic Considerations is about starting a conversation and getting your interest piqued in a movie or genre you hadn’t considered before, but in the end, you’re going to be the one to decide whether or not you should go see whatever film I happen to be reviewing.

Be a smart moviegoer. Watch the trailer before you go see a movie, read my review and head on out to the theaters. Know what you’re getting into in advance. Don’t be the person who walks into a movie hoping to see Meryl Streep, wait two hours for her to appear and then bitch when she isn’t even in the film you saw.

I read a lot of movie reviews – typically after I watch a movie, but sometimes to pique my interest as well. Even us critics don’t want to watch EVERYTHING Hollywood tries to cram down the throats of the general public.

Nine out of ten reviews will spend an inordinate amount of time telling you what happens in the movie, and with the word counts prevalent in print media across the country, all too often you’re getting 80 percent plot synopsis and 20 percent actual review of the film. That’s ridiculous.

You didn’t check out a review of American Sniper to have the writer spend most of his space telling you who Chris Kyle is or what he was doing in Iraq that made him so famous. You want to know if the movie’s any good or not (Spoiler alert: it’s amazing) and what the deal with that fake baby is.

I refuse to dumb things down in my reviews because I believe you, the reader, aren’t dumb. (You’re reading Cinematic Considerations, so that makes you pretty damn smart in my book.)

As a result, I’m not going to waste time writing about what happens in a movie you’ve either already seen and remember what happens, or haven’t seen the film yet and don’t want to be spoiled. Enjoy the movie on your terms, not based on what a critic thinks or doesn’t think is important for you to know before you see a movie. That’s what trailers are for.

I’m going to give it to you straight with no frills and no apologizes. If a movie sucked, I’m not going to say it wasn’t that great. That movie sucked.

What I will offer you, readers of Cinematic Considerations, is unfiltered analysis and opinions on today’s newest releases with hopefully some conversation starters, classic movie reviews and independent film highlights along the way.

You’ll usually get references to other movies in my reviews, which are mainly there to spark a dialogue, get people thinking about other films in the context of the one I’m reviewing and to possibly give you something else to watch on Netflix or the like when you get home from the theaters.

The power of cinema is something unrivaled by other mass media these days. Good movies can give you just what you need, bad movies can put you on the wrong track and great movies can inspire beyond anything you might have dreamed possible.

Thanks for letting me help guide you along the way.

January 29, 2016
Brooklyn: Beauty in duality

Describing “Brooklyn” to someone who has never heard of the Oscar-nominated film based on the novel of the same name by Colm Toibin isn’t as easy of a task as one might think.

It would be a gross over-simplification to call the film a romance period piece where a young Irish immigrant named Eilis – played by Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan – falls in love with an Italian-American plumber, Tony, and is torn between her life in America and her homeland, where her mother and a rich suitor await her return.

“Brooklyn” isn’t even just a simple story of immigration following the tale of one of millions of European youth who move to America’s great melting pot of New York City during the mid 1950s. Nevertheless, director John Crowley’s film is a refreshing take on an increasingly lackluster topic in modern cinema.

There’s a true duality about “Brooklyn” beyond choosing between Ireland and New York or an American love versus an Irish one.

At its core, the period drama is about Eilis, a 20-something girl learning to find herself and become her own woman, and it’s about Ronan, the 21-year-old future star and two-time Oscar nominee discovering herself as an actress, all while audiences get to experience their growth and change alongside them like flies on the wall.

Ronan masters the real heart of the film – a young girl’s evolution into womanhood – within each major beat of “Brooklyn,” emoting with simple changes in facial expression during Crowley’s frequent close-ups to further Eilis’s journey ever so slightly.

Moment by moment, Ronan breaks Eilis out of her cocoon subtly and effortlessly in such a way that audiences may not recognize how beautiful Ronan’s performance truly is on a first viewing.

Emory Cohen, doing his best Marlon Brando impersonation, charms the hearts of both Eilis and audience members as young Italian-American plumber Tony while Domnhall Gleeson – growing in his own right as an actor with a magnificent leading role in the sci-fi indie “Ex Machina” as well as supporting roles in “The Revenant” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” – offers the perfect, subdued counterbalance to Cohen as Eilis’s Irish suitor Jim Farrell.

The film also rightly surrounds Ronan with a pair of elite character actors to guide her along the way including Academy Award winner Jim Broadbent as a Catholic priest who helps Eilis travel to America.

Julie Walters is a sensation as the brash, stern mother hen who lords over the boarding house where Eilis and several other young Irish immigrant girls stay until they find a husband.

Walters commands the room at all times with a ruthless efficiency of Meryl Streep, but can also connect with Ronan quite tenderly in one-on-one moments and deliver side-splitting quips at the drop of a hat.

Unlike most of the year’s best films, “Brooklyn” isn’t going to hit viewers over the head with a grand, showy entrance or fancy technical wizardry.

Director John Crowley doesn’t swing for the fences, trying to hit a home run each and every scene. “Brooklyn” is a slow burner, a film that solidly builds on a scene to scene basis, captivating and mesmerizing audience members willing to let Ronan take their breath away.

At key moments throughout the film, Crowley expertly focuses in on Ronan with beautifully framed close ups, allowing the viewer to peer inside Eilis’s soul and further explore her emotional transformation, which is simultaneously matched with an increasingly refined wardrobe, hairstyle and makeup.

Crowley and his production team – criminally left out of costume design, makeup and hairstyling categories at this year’s Oscars – aid in the construction of a refined young woman step by step, scene by scene with care that sloppier directors would gloss over. That, along with Ronan’s awe-inspiring performance, elevates “Brooklyn” above typical period dramas.

“Brooklyn” is refreshing in how quiet and simple it is as a film, especially when sidled up next to much flashier acting performances and grandiose visuals in the seven other films nominated in the Best Picture category at this year’s Academy Awards.

The film harkens back to the golden age of cinema when films like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” dominated the big screen and this film feels pulled straight from a Hollywood soundstage in 1952, a credit to Crowley’s vision for the film.

In spite of how layered it is as a movie, it doesn’t seem diminishing to say that “Brooklyn” is the best romantic drama since “The Notebook” more than a decade ago.

Simply put, “Brooklyn” is classic moviemaking in its purest form, with an Oscar-worthy leading performance from Ronan and masterful storytelling worth making an effort to find in theaters.

“Brooklyn” ranked fifth in the Cinematic Considerations Best of 2015 column, now available at http://www.facebook.com/cinematicconsiderations.

January 27, 2016
13 Hours: Check politics at the door

Politics will likely play a large role in how audiences respond to Michael Bay’s latest action adventure film “13 Hours” because with a subtitle like “The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” it’s going to prove nearly impossible to check preconceived notions at the door.

There’s no politicians in “13 Hours” – from President Barack Obama to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all the way on down – as Bay focuses on a procedural day by day, minute by minute account of the fateful attack by Libyan insurgents on a U.S. consulate housing Ambassador Chris Stevens and a small State Department detail on Sept. 11, 2012.

Most of the harrowing account – taken from the 2014 novel “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi” – focuses on six military veterans working as CIA security contractors (known as the Global Response Staff or GRS in the film) at a secret annex less than a mile from the consulate.

To Bay and screenwriter Chuck Hogan, who the individual members of the GRS team are as people is wholly secondary to what they did in the days leading up to and during the Libyan assault on first the compound and later on the CIA annex.

In this effort, Bay casts a ragtag group of secondary actors who, in the heat of battle, looks nearly identical, save for an African American member of the State Department’s security detail played by Demetrius Grosse and “The Office” star John Krasinski.

Where as patriotic military films released in the last few years have relied on box office heavyweights to carry the bulk of the load – Bradley Cooper in “American Sniper” and Mark Wahlberg in “Lone Survivor” – “13 Hours” has the nuts and bolts story of what happened in Benghazi take center stage, trumping character development or storyline.

The film’s battle sequences are especially authentic thanks to both Bay’s tremendous finesse with handling high-octane action movies and three of the actual CIA security contractors – John “Tig” Tiegen, Mark “Oz” Geist and Kristian “Tanto” Paronto” – serving as special consultants working with the actors during shooting.

“13 Hours” opts for style over substance at every turn, with a visually dynamic, seemingly endless montage of wartime violence that many viewers would find exhilarating if the events were simply fiction. There’s a constant state of surrealism that leaves audiences thinking “How did this happen?” that makes the whole story feel false except for the fact that we all know it to be a largely truthful account based on dozens of reports from boots on the ground and analysts at home.

The frantic nature of the action – and relative obscurity of most of the actors and extras playing combatants on both sides of the battle – prevents viewers from orienting themselves within the fray for much of any initial viewing of the film. Bay jumps from battle location to battle location with such frequency that getting any semblance of how the combat is progressing or where events are occurring in the context geographically proves incredibly difficult.

Audience members will likely find themselves emotionally latching on to Krasinski, the most recognizable of any of the film’s stars, like a guiding star to navigate in the blood, guts and darkness of “13 Hours.” He offers as compelling a performance as you’re likely to find in a Michael Bay film, given how paint-by-numbers the script feels and how little attention is paid to offering any more than a bare bones profile of the soldiers involved.

At nearly two-and-a-half hours long, “13 Hours” wears on viewers in the latter stages of battle as it’s easy to feel a similar mental and emotional toll to what the soldiers experienced witnessing the initial attack on the U.S. consulate and having to idly stand by and watch.

The biggest flaw within the film lies in the editing bay, where sequences within “13 Hours” could have been better organized and/or tightened to improve the viewing experience. Sitting in the theater, the film feels about 20 minutes longer than it needs to be, especially in the days prior to the attack.

Unlike “Zero Dark Thirty,” where the search to find Osama bin Laden is as important (if not more so) to the success of that film than the actual mission to kill the Al Queda terrorist leader, the Benghazi attacks are more important to both Bay as director and the audiences watching the film.

Despite its flaws, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” signifies an upward trend for Bay, the once successful director of action smash hits like “The Rock” and “Bad Boys” lambasting in overplayed, poorly made “Transformers” sequel fodder. The less he recycles his own films and finds new and original ways to attack the action genre, the better off we as audience members are.

Setting aside right and left wing divisiveness, audience members who check their personal politics at the door will find “13 Hours” to be a riveting and harrowing portrayal of one of America’s most tragic and yet heroic moments this century.

It isn’t about the politics, it’s about what happened on the ground. Through that lens, Bay and his team get things right and honor the memory of those who served and those we lost.

January 20, 2016
The Revenant: DiCaprio’s lead performance Oscar-worthy

As you’re sitting in the theater watching Leonardo DiCaprio eating raw bison liver, it’s hard not to wonder to what lengths perhaps the greatest actor never to win an Academy Award will go in pursuit of his art.

Once you’ve seen “The Revenant” – the closest thing to an absolute lock for a Best Picture Oscar Hollywood produced in 2015 – go online and read what sort of actual hell DiCaprio went through making the epic frontier saga of survival and revenge. It will blow you away nearly as much as the two-and-a-half hour visual masterpiece did.

Scene by scene, you’ll watch him do something more incredulous and crazy than the last and think aloud director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and his team faked it. Odds are, they didn’t. DiCaprio nearly kills himself in by far the best western film in more than two decades, with his performance as frontier scout Hugh Glass making John Wayne and Clint Eastwood look like scared little children.

Within every frame, DiCaprio pierces the audience with his eyes and brings them inside the soul of a frontiersman struggling with loss and pain in the most visceral of ways. His physical performance speaks novels while his mouth rarely opens to speak.

There’s something hauntingly beautiful about the way DiCaprio is able to transform himself into a character we’ve never seen him come close to portraying before. Hugh Glass is the pinnacle of DiCaprio’s tour de force career and one moviegoers will remember him by for decades to come.

As much as “The Revenant” is an one-man show, DiCaprio isn’t the only award worthy performer on screen. Glass’ foil as it were – Fitzgerald, the complex man who leaves Glass for dead in the middle of nowhere – is played by acting chameleon Tom Hardy, who melts away into the vigilante fur trapper. Powerful yet subdued, Hardy crushes every scene with a finesse usually found in older, more seasoned performers. Hardy not only deserves, but needs, to be nominated for his first Academy Award for the role, as his performance also elevates scenes with DiCaprio late in the film into the cinematic stratosphere.

As expedition leader Captain Andrew Henry, Domnhall Gleeson finishes off a stellar 2015 acting run with a compelling performance in support of DiCaprio and Hardy. Gleeson, who wowed with a leading turn in sci-fi thriller “Ex Machina” and supporting roles in both “Brooklyn” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” has certainly proved to be one to watch out for in the coming years.

The only flaw within “The Revenant” – if there is one at all – comes from the film’s slow, arduous pace, which will daunt some viewers. Inarritu stretches each scene to its absolute limit visually, in the performances he pulls from his actors and even in length. It takes a deft hand to make such painstaking trials and tribulations feel emotionally rewarding to watch and the Oscar-winning director succeeds to a large extent.

Inarritu continues the same visual style that made last year’s Best Picture winner “Birdman” so striking, with long, uncut tracking shots following the action of “The Revenant.” Though not made to look like one continuous take spread over the course of nearly three hours, scenes go by for eight to 10 minutes at a time effortlessly, most notably during a harrowing bear attack and the opening action sequence, which sees DiCaprio and his band of fur trappers attacked by a tribe of Native Americans.

Action pulsates during this scene from gun battle to hand-to-hand combat and back again so flawlessly that it’s difficult to comprehend in the moment just how beautifully the artistry of creating that scene was possible. The opening battle favorably evokes the emotions and awe viewers felt the first time they watched U.S. troops storm the beaches at Normandy at the beginning of Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece “Saving Private Ryan.” Inarritu opts for more artistry in his work than the gritty realism of Spielberg’s WWII classic, but “The Revenant” still manages to feel authentic and immersive.

There’s a lot of violence on screen – not to the extent as Quentin Tarantino’s self-indulgent “The Hateful Eight” – and all of it feels necessary and dynamic within real contexts, though viewers might occasionally find themselves wincing at the sight of a bloodied and beaten DiCaprio at the paws of a grizzly. The bear attack scene will likely become the film’s most iconic and is transformative in the sense that it feels less like part of a fictional movie and more like an in-the-moment observation of a genuine attack.

The coup de grace that brings “The Revenant” together as a whole is the camerawork of director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki, a two-time Oscar winner for “Gravity” and “Birdman” and a certain nominee for the same cinematography prize this year. For all the grand bravado of George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” or Denis Villeneuve’s quiet and dark “Sicario,” you won’t find a better looking movie visually than “The Revenant,” shot entirely using natural light in cold, wide open expanses of Canada and Argentina which evoke the frontier Pacific Northwest of the film’s setting.

Lubezki’s genius – with obvious and immense credit to Inarritu as director – pours out on screen as viewers are immersed into the world of frontier fur trappers. If it’s possible to feel cold just by watching events unfold on screen, “The Revenant” does that. Natural lighting helps put the audience in the moment in ways few other films are able to. Watching “The Revenant” on the biggest possible screen is an absolute must. Smaller screens – especially TVs and tablets – won’t do this film justice at all.

While Inarritu, Hardy and certainly Lubezki are all worthy of accolades during this awards season, all three pale in comparison to DiCaprio’s acting masterpiece, which is in the highest stratosphere of 21st Century performances. The raw, visceral nature of his work prove without a shadow of a doubt that if DiCaprio doesn’t win an Oscar for his performance as Glass, he never will.

Don’t make the mistake of waiting to see “The Revenant,” hoping to catch one of 2015’s four best films on DVD or Bluray months from now. Run, don’t walk to your local movie theater and catch a piece of cinematic heaven on screen.

January 13, 2016
The Hateful Eight: Frontier western offers best, worst of cinema

Quentin Tarantino just isn’t for everyone.

His most ardent fans – ones who’ve seen “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” countless times and can quote “True Romance” by heart even though Tarantino just wrote the script – would argue that the director is a cinematic icon and leading provocateur for this generation of filmmakers.

Others would argue that Tarantino’s movies overtly glamorize violence to the point of poor taste and are unworthy of the critical acclaim they almost universally receive.

His newest film, “The Hateful Eight,” is sure to exacerbate those arguments as Hollywood’s most in-your-face director wrings tension within close quarters better than any filmmaker this decade, locking a terrific ensemble cast inside a small haberdashery snowed in during post Civil War Wyoming and letting the chaos ensue.

The film starts in picturesque expanses along the frontier and squeezes down into a claustrophobic, Alfred Hitchcock-esque mystery thrill ride that will leave viewers on the edge of their seats in the movie’s final hour.

Describing what occurs in “The Hateful Eight” would deprive potential viewers of the narrative’s glorious twists and turns, but Tarantino’s screenplay effectively utilizes a six chapter structure with dialogue banter closely mirroring a cross between Tarantino’s own “Pulp Fiction” and an Agatha Christie novel.

All the trademarks of a vintage Tarantino script are there, from the snappy verbal repartee to the scene-smashing monologues and more blood-quenching brutality than one could hope for from one of the masters of gore.

Moviegoers will be hotly debating Tarantino’s stance on femininity and violence towards women thanks in large part to a revealing and powerful performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh, the only woman among the main cast, and the primary villain at the film’s outset.

Despite playing a role where she must be brutally beaten by a morally righteous Kurt Russell, Leigh takes the punches and spars right on back with the best of Tarantino’s stellar ensemble. Her performance as the murderous Daisy Domergue, which puts her among the leading contenders for a Best Supporting Actress nomination and the presumptive favorite to win the prize, is as shockingly visceral and poignant as any other performance to come out in 2015.

Tarantino goes to severe lengths to make Daisy the most androgynous character in recent memory, reinforcing the notion that the character’s gender would not matter and that a male version of Daisy would be treated in the same manner. His take on gender (and racial) equality issues are hammered home with brutal effectiveness, leaving viewers apt to engage in social issues dialogue following a screening in a way no other film has done in years.

While certainly not the biggest name in the cast, Leigh represents the true on-screen star of “The Hateful Eight,” though Tarantino reminds everyone he’s center stage with plot driving narration throughout.

Amid the ensemble, Russell – and for that matter an incredibly weathered Bruce Dern – offer the spaghetti western adventure grit and nostalgia in a film that needs gravitas to anchor down the chaos.

Though it appears from the outset as if Russell will do most of the heavy lifting, Tarantino turns to his most frequent muse, Samuel L. Jackson, to bully his way through the script, dominating scenes filmed in tight quarters like he takes up half the room, no small feat with this ensemble.

Indeed, Jackson’s crucial monologue at the end of the third chapter is so perfectly crafted that the scene alone represents the hardest working character actor in the business’s best performance since “Pulp Fiction” in 1994.

“The Hateful Eight” represents Tarantino’s most self indulgent, arrogant entry in his illustrious filmography and the most overtly excessive film since Martin Scorcese used excess to visually describe financial gluttony in “The Wolf of Wall Street” starring Leonardo DiCaprio. At nearly three hours, “Hateful Eight” is almost painstakingly long and feels like the director’s cut of a film half as long. Tarantino wants viewers to feel the length of his movie and it’s impossible to miss.

Not since “Khartoum” in 1966 has a major motion picture been shot using entirely UltraPanavision 70 mm film, a fact the filmmakers don’t want anyone to forget for a second. The format allows for extreme panoramic shots with exceptional detail in a way matched only by the likes of “Ben-Hur.”

Sitting in “The Hateful Eight,” there’s never a moment where veteran consumers of Tarantino’s work can believe another director was involved. Tarantino might as well have signed the film reels himself and been in the projectionist’s room in every theater across America.

He’s there whether audiences want him to be or not. That’s the brilliance of his arrogance. The stench of inevitable death pervades the air moment to moment and scene by scene until the bitter, tumultuous end.

It’s a cinematic style that will dazzle and insult moviegoers simultaneously, forcing them to turn away and insisting they keep watching over and over again for nearly three hours.

No other film – and especially no other director – would insist upon the most grandiose, over the top viewing experience, with a pre-film overture, mid-film intermission, retro filming and even a souvenir program shouting “This is how ‘Ben-Hur’ did it” with all the arrogance that implies about his film, the modern day “Ben-Hur” of his mind.

You want to look away, but you can’t. You want to hate this film, but it’s impossible to on a strictly cinematic level. The brilliance of an arrogance like this is that you hate how right Tarantino is, the best and worst of cinema at the same time.

“The Hateful Eight” could accurately be described as racist, misogynistic and accepting of both women and minorities all in the same breath. It’s a film that demands thoughtful conversation following screening and compelling cinema for true fans of the visual art form.

January 6, 2016