January is hit and miss, as some Oscar caliber films finally see mainstream release but bad ones sneak into the market without advance hype (example: the dreadful “Mortdecai”). There are some good ones currently playing well worth the popcorn. A few others? Skip ’em.
I use a 5-finger (high-five) rating system where 5 is outstanding, 4 very good and worth seeing, 3 is mediocre, with 2 not worth paying to see. Since decency prevents a one-finger rating, a truly bad film scores a zero — the Dreaded Fist of Badness. We have two this month and may need to weather a few more during the winter doldrums. February, of course, is the time of year where bad movies go to die.
Feel free to share you thoughts if you disagree with any of these. Everyone’s opinion matters equally, which is on the joys of film.
Here are my 11 one-sentence reviews for January:
The Captive – 4 fingers. Taut, well crafted ensemble drama about a living nightmare – a child snatching – delivers excellent performances by Ryan Reynolds as a fundamentally broken father and Rosario Dawson as a determined child protection officer.
The Gambler – 2 fingers. Even John Goodman’s great work in a supporting role can’t salvage this forgettable, hollow remake about an irresponsible college English professor whose lack of discipline spirals his life into a very precarious situation.
PK – 5 fingers. The long (2½ hours) but clever Bollywood romcom is a fun and ultra-entertaining ride with a displaced alien who is dropped off in rural India and comes to draw his own conclusions about the world’s odd insistence on arguing about a wide variety of organized religions.
Selma – 4 fingers. It took 50 years for this respectful (and long overdue) biopic about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 50-mile Alabama civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery that changed American history, but fortunately the movie will still be worth watching 50 years from today.
Mr. Turner – 4 fingers. This period drama about eccentric British landscape painter J. M. W. Turner—the dominant force of his era—is a slow but very well made character study worth the time for those who enjoy 19th century period pieces.
Inherent Vice – 3 fingers. Too many irrelevant characters, cluttering single use scenes settings, and a disjointed plot drag down the always fun Joaquin Phoenix in this bizarre high concept comedy about a pot smoking private eye who falls into a preposterous story and ho-hum plot.
American Sniper – 5 fingers. Director Clint Eastwood gleans inspired performances from Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller to deliver a grim but thought-provoking story about the victims and walking dead who suffer debilitating physical and emotional trauma from the unwinnable urban war in Afghanistan.
Mortdecai – 0 fingers, The Dreaded Fist of Badness. This mortifyingly dreadful mess “starring” Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow pretending to be funny and British—is worse than any opening night junior high homage to William Powell and Myrna Loy could possibly be — but it has one true highlight: Eventually it ends.
Black Sea – 2 fingers. Jude Law stars as a crazy submarine captain trying to secretly recover $180 million of World War II gold from the bottom of the sea using a recycled rust-bucket of a sub, but this limited location drama is a patchwork of clichés and forced pseudo drama that just doesn’t work.
Blackhat – O fingers, The Dreaded Fist of Badness. Not a single component of a watchable film exists in this cluster of awful execution about a computer hack genius (played by a laughably bad Chris Hemsworth) that director Michael Mann patches together so pitiably that describing its width and scope of discombobulation would require a novel of Michener length.
Wild Card – 3 fingers. Action puncher Jason Statham does a good job carrying a formulaic premise to entertaining heights in this Las Vegas story about a man with a lot of issues who ends up taking out a bunch of bad guys without needing a gun. (P.S. The fight scenes are the best in years).
That’s it for now. The Oscars are coming and the nominations are fair and the early event winners deserving. See you at the movies!