Dogs Bark

HAL’s Daughter - - Ex Machina (2015, UK) - - 25 April 2015

Recommended.  This is one where I agree with everyone else; I really enjoyed Ex Machina.  British writer - - now director - - Alex Garland’s (28 Days Later...) robo-femme-fatale flick is constantly entertaining and much less obscure than the mildly similar, and despicable, Under the Skin. This movie was better because the seduction of the male was more clever and ambiguous, making Ava the Android (Alicia Vikander, A Royal Affair) a real character . . .  not just a trope on male stupidity. I won’t be a spoiler by revealing her motives but I was delightfully unsure until the ending. Domhnall Gleeson (Anna Karenina) - - sort of a young David Thewlis (Naked) - - plays Ava’s Turing tester and Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) creates Ava's hipster Frankenstein. All three of these previously lauded actors are marvelous herein. The question of whether this is a misogynistic or feminist film, I’ll leave open . . . although loyal readers should quickly guess my opinion.

The Empathy Machine - - Life Itself (2014, USA) - - 13 April 2015

Strongly Recommended.  Pray, how does a critic review a movie about a movie reviewer? Dunno . . . but from hereon, compare it to Steve James’s (Hoop Dreams) excellent, Life Itself, Roger Ebert’s memoir and study of how that life slips away. The documentary is only tangentially about movies, suggesting Ebert’s passion for cinema was a driver but not a purpose.  Although the film frankly reveals the physical pain and sadness Ebert felt succumbing to cancer, his spiritual transformation gets top billing.  Ebert began his newspaper career as a quarrelsome drunk and ended it . . . beloved, also collecting the first Pulitzer Prize for film criticism. Life Itself delightfully confirms that the often unkind quarrels with ‘At The Movies’ co-critic Gene Siskel were also transcended, particularly when Siskel faced his own death.  A life well-lived is a gift but a death well-died is a gift for those left behind; we should all go that way.  

Mercy, Had - - Leaving Las Vegas (1995, USA) - - 10 April 2015

Strongly recommended.  Although I greatly admire Leaving Las Vegas . . . for most, it’s a hard movie to love.  Those who do recommended it - - like the Oscar voters - - base their opinion on Nicolas Cage’s (Moonstruck) gut-wrenching, career-defining role as Ben, an alcoholic on his final bender, drinking himself to death over four weeks in a seedy, way off the Strip motel.  A few of us sadly remember when Cage was an SNL guest host, not Andy Samburg’s prison bitch. Elizabeth Shue (Adventures in Babysitting), another performer whose career was derailed by bad choices, plays Sera, a self-abusive hooker with a compulsion to ease Ben’s last days. Shue’s role isn't that complex, but she transcends it. My affection for the film is clarified by Sera’s final words, explaining the open-eyed acceptance the pair had for each other. . . an act of compassion challenging the moralism that society still chains to drunks and hookers.

Alma Mammy - - Dear White People (2014, USA) - - 31 March 2015

Recommended.  Based upon his debut film, Dear White People, a lot of people have compared Justin Simien to Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing). This is more than just grabbing the only black director with a condo at Cannes. Mr. Simien shares with Mr. Lee a talent for smartly spoofing our post-racial Fantasyland and extracting both the humor and deep tragedy therein. Simien focuses here on academia, not misplacing the irony of Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s moment of shame. White fraternities have never been models for intelligence in the field of social justice and Simien amusingly updates that reputation. The dialogue is at times a bit clunky but issuing from the mouths of ethereal Tessa Thompson (Selma) and the ethereally funny Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris), this problem is mitigated. Overall, and despite the occasional false note, this is a wonderful first film. I can’t wait for Simien’s sophomore project.