Christmas Season Movies: 9 Quick One-Sentence Reviews

28 December 13

I despise commercials and rarely watch television or listen to the radio. Instead I go the movies to study the art and craft of motion pictures. I am not a big fan of CGI (computer special effects) or kids animation cartoon pictures but try to watch a wide variety of independent, studio, and foreign films.

For me a trip to the theater is a two-hour escape that gives me a chance to learn as well as be entertained. I am very much a story guy and love to watch a good one unfold, especially when great actors deliver the goods. Like all moviephiles, I emerge each time with an opinion about the feature film I just paid to see.

Listed below are one-sentence reviews for nine recently released Christmas season motion pictures. Each is judged by my almost famous “5-finger” scoring system.

Ratings: 5 fingers = a great film. 4 fingers = excellent and well worth the money. 3 fingers = just a movie. 2 fingers = disappointing. 1 finger = well, decency demands that I skip using a single finger to score a bad film — so instead of 1 finger I use 0 fingers (a closed fist). A zero rating means that every paying customer should be allowed to do two things: get his or her money back, and punch everyone involved for foisting such a dreadful mess upon a gullible and unsuspecting public.

As we navigate the movie industry’s busiest season and head toward New Year’s, we are awash in hype, blizzards of exaggerated advertising, and shouts of Oscar worthiness. Cutting through all that, here is my take on these nine current releases:

Saving Mr. Banks – 4 fingers. Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson showcase their prodigious acting chops while carrying this fine film about Walt Disney’s 20-year struggle to convince author P.L. Travers to let him adapt “Mary Poppins” to film, relying on revealing flashbacks of Travers’ childhood to reveal her emotional reluctance to let Disney do so.

Nebraska — 3 fingers. This ultra-slow and dirt simple Alexander Payne film, shot in black & white, gives Bruce Dern a star turn as a failing old man who thinks a magazine subscription sweepstakes mailer means he’s won a million bucks; and although it features one of the year’s funniest scenes when Dern and his sorely miscast son (SNL alum Will Forte) visit relatives, the movie’s ponderous pace saps too much of its situational comedic energy.

Out of the Furnace — 4 fingers. Director Scott Cooper’s follow-up to his 2009 Oscar winning country music film Crazy Heart is gritty and harsh, and its terrific cast — led by outstanding work by Christian Bale and Casey Affleck — maximizes this grim story about hopeless, cold-blooded, nasty scums who punch, thump, and shoot each other amidst hopeless frustrations in rural Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Inside Llewyn Davis — 2 fingers. If you love a movie with no discernable story arc that jams bad folk music down your throat for two grating hours, then the Coen brothers’ latest effort — with its most notable contributors being a wayward ginger cat and ten minutes of John Goodman in a cameo as an unexplained junkie — is your nirvana.

The Book Thief – 4 fingers. Every Christmas we get at least one “Hitler was evil” movie and this year’s foreign effort by director Brian Percival and music score legend John Williams (5 Oscars) stars rising young actress Sophie Nélisse in a wonderful turn as a spirited young girl trapped in the hell of World War II Germany who brightens the lives of those around her thanks to her love of sharing books.

American Hustle – 5 fingers. Christian Bale’s titanic performance and Amy Adams’ always-on-display braless cleavage dominate this fun David O. Russell ensemble about a likeable group of late-1970s riff-raff con men and women who get sucked into entrapping New Jersey politicians hungry for Atlantic City payola and mousetrapping an overzealous cop.

The Wolf of Wall Street — 0 fingers, the dreaded Closed Fist of Badness. It seems incomprehensible that famed director Martin Scorcese would sign off on the holiday release of this three-hour mess of wandering bad taste, lousy editing, and gratuitous crudeness that causes customers to walk out early, middle, and late — and makes Showgirls look like Chicago, Ishtar like Lawrence of Arabia, and Grownups 2 like Casablanca.

Grudge Match — 2 fingers. Two old boxing rivals, 30 years retired, square off in the ring to settle a 30-year score but no one wins except those who got paid to make the movie.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty — 3 fingers. Ben Stiller stars and directs this kind and gentle remake of the James Thurber short story about a boring man who lives through his daydreams, but it’s slow to develop and lacks any oomph — much like a bowling ball that misses the headpin and knocks down six.