Black Mass
Dir. Scott Cooper
Yet again, Johnny Depp is keeping the make-up department busy with his latest role - not as a pirate, or a vampire, or a Native American with a dead bird on his head, but as Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, whose ties with the FBI made him nearly untouchable for decades (until he was eventually caught...at age 81). The story of such a notorious figure in US crime is ripe ground for a quality gangster flick, but unfortunately, Black Mass is a black hole of entertainment. It treads the same exact ground as dozens of other "banality of evil" movies and TV shows, including The Departed which was loosely based on Bulger (it's a losing competition to pit Depp and Cooper against Nicholson and Scorsese). Black Mass drones on and on until it's over, employing cliches and cringeworthy Boston accents along the way. Despite its solid central performance, I'd say you could ship this movie straight to Alcatraz.
Depp's performance is the only thing that really stood out to me - though it definitely feels like a Steve Carell-in-Foxcatcher, "OK, I'm ready for my nomination"-type role. He totally transforms himself, and selected scenes are really gripping thanks to his cold, hard stare with his uncannily blue contact lenses. It's impossible to forget that Depp is wearing prosthetics (especially with his eyes and bald cap), but overall I didn't mind watching him "play pretend." Depp, as per usual, totally loses himself in the film, and this is probably his best live action role since the first Pirates movie. He has a number of speeches (alluded to in the trailer), that seem destined to play as clips on talk show appearances. But just because he now has some nice new acting clips to put on his sizzle reel, doesn't make Black Mass a great movie; it's a mediocre movie with a solid central performance. Everyone else: as talented a cast as Cooper hired, the Boston accents ranged from iffy to as heinous as Bulger's actual crimes (Mr. Cumberbatch, please henceforth stick to your proper English self).
We've seen so many of these types of gangster portrayals through the years, and unfortunately Black Mass doesn't do anything new or particularly interesting with its real life source material, besides provide the basis for a stand-out performance for Depp. It's slickly produced, lifeless, cliched drama that will live out its life on basic cable.
Rating: C+
The Visit
Dir. M. Night Shyamalan
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I remember when the trailers for a little horror movie called Devil played in the theaters. It started out seeming like a gimmicky genre flick set in an elevator, and then, in big menacing red letters: FROM M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN pops up on the screen, and everyone in the audience laughed out loud. The guy who went from directing modern masterpieces like The Sixth Sense and Signs had literally become a laughing stock. His decline as a director has both fascinated and irritated me, because as a HUGE fan of his first four major films (Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable, and The Village), I really want to see more from the guy who made those movies. The Visit, while being as unintentionally campy as The Happening, and as uncomfortably personal as Lady in the Water, does manage, in small doses, to re-capture some of that original M. Night magic. When it's dumb, it turns the dial to 11, but it also stays at 11 when it needs to be creepy. I don't know how he did it - but the jarring tones from a so-bad-its-good mockable pile of crap to an intense horror film centered around mentally unstable grandparents made this a fun, watchable experience that I recommend seeing with a full crowd.
The film follows a mock-documentary format, as Becca (Olivia DeJonge), an aspiring filmmaker, and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), an aspiring rap artist (yes, you read that correctly), leave home to visit their grandparents that they've never met in the middle of nowhere. But Grandma (Deanna Dunagan) and Grandpa (Peter McRobbie) are getting older and sometimes act strangely. To describe the ways they act strange in the film would ruin the fun, but it's totally worth seeing for these two old actors who completely commit to their insane parts. The kids, on the other hand, are really awkward and uncomfortable and seem more suited for something tame on the Disney Channel than the over-the-stop emotional ride I think Shyamalan tried to forced out of them. Becca is intolerable in this movie (to no real fault of the young actress); the character was annoyingly snobby about her documentary, spouting out "industry lingo" to insult her brother, which to me felt like M. Night vicariously critiquing his critics over recent years. And the brother is beyond annoying. Did I mention he RAPS?
Shyamalan does almost nothing unique with the "found footage" aspect, though as a general fan of the aesthetic I was satisfied (rather than, say, a lavish tracking shot through a hallway, we just see things how they'd "actually" look). The climax to this movie, in my opinion, is brilliantly staged and legitimately scary - to me anyway. Again, I don't want to induce spoilers, but I have to say it was kind of disturbing and I felt violated watching it. I didn't expect such a turnaround in my opinion of the film after having to sit through a little white middle class bowl-cutted twerp attempting to gangsta rap, but The Visit, though FILLED with problems, was a fun mess that I can't not recommend you see just for how insane it gets!
Rating: B-
The End of the Tour
Dir. James Ponsoldt
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Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about David Foster Wallace and have not yet attempted a crack at his 1000+ page tome called Infinite Jest. I enjoyed the movie without this knowledge, but fans will likely have a completely different experience.
Whenever a creative mind "hits it big," whether it's an author or a filmmaker or a comedian, the first question that everyone seems to ask is "where do you get your ideas?" The underlying meaning of this statement usually infers: "what's the magic formula for me to be as successful as you?" The End of the Tour, James Ponsoldt's film dramatizing the recorded conversation between the tortured artist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) and his interviewer from Rolling Stone, David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg), deals with this very notion, and much more. Like Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, The End of the Tour somehow manages to make the act of people talking into a rich cinematic experience.
I really enjoyed watching these two performers bounce off each other; Lipsky sees Wallace as the guy he so desperately wants to be (a successful writer), and when he turns out to be just another "normal guy," it can be frustrating - for both parties. Both the friendship and tension that results from their brief relationship felt totally natural, at times funny, dramatic, and melancholic. James Ponsoldt (who directed one of my favorite films of 2013, The Spectacular Now) is fantastic at making his characters feel like real people and not just "impressions" of their real-life counterparts. I think anyone who's felt insecure in their lives (and god knows I have) will be able to gleam something from The End of the Tour. It's a thought-provoking (too many ideas to write about here!), fun, and to me, at times moving movie that anyone should enjoy, even if you're unfamiliar with Wallace's work.
Rating: B+
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