FILM REVIEW: Arrival

The movie Arrival was one of my most anticipated movies of this year, as the director Denis Villeneuve has previously helmed some of my favorite films: Incendies (2011), Prisoners (2013) and Sicario (2015).  I blogged about some of the trailers for the movie, which stars Forest Whitaker, Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner and is based on an award-winning short story by Ted Chiang called "The Story of Your Life."

I saw it with a friend at the AMC Tysons Corner 16 in Northern Virginia opening weekend. The fact that the movie's source material is a novella is not surprising because in some sense it feels like there are a limited number of characters in the story, almost like a play. The main character is obviously Amy Adams who plays Louise Banks, a Prius-driving, professor of linguistics who it appears has recently(?) suffered the loss of a child after a long illness (these events are told in a prologue).

The movie really begins with the sudden arrival of a dozen egg-like spaceships, suspended in mid-air in various locations around the world. It turns out that the ship in North America is somewhere in Montana. Forest Whitaker's Colonel GT Weber shows up in Professor Banks' office soon afterwards and on the helicopter we meet Renner's Ian Donnelly, a theoretical physicist. Eventually, the three principals don the world's bulkiest hazmat suits to enter the alien ships and try to find out a way to communicate with our alien visitors in order to discover why the aliens have come to our planet and whether their intentions are peaceful or violent.

One of the memorable aspects of Arrival is the design of the ship and the aliens, which do not look like anything we have seen before, i.e. they really appear to be extra-terrestrial. In particular, the language and the manner in which the aliens communicate is so mind-bendingly original that it sets Arrival apart from other first-contact movies like Contact and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Some people have issues with the ending of Arrival but I thought this was the key point which elevated the film into one of the more thought-provoking cinematic experiences of the year. Some aspects of it were a surprise but there were some hints dropped at earlier points in the film which led me to make some conclusions before they were revealed in the narrative. Even though I was not surprised by the eventual twist at the end this did not diminish its emotional resonance with me.

Overall, Arrival is a brilliant, well-crafted depiction of first contact between humans and aliens which gets resolved in a way that reveals an existential question that confronts the viewer.

Title: Arrival.
Director: Denis Villeneuve.
Running Time: 1 hour, 51 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.
Release Date: November 11, 2016.
Viewing Date: November 13, 2016.

Writing: A+.
Acting: A.
Visuals: A+.
Impact: A.

Overall Grade: A/A+ (4.16/4.0).

WATCH: Final Trailer for Arrival (In Theaters 11/11)

Next week, Friday November 11th is when Arrival finally hits movie theaters! The other half and I will be in Arlington but I definitely intend to see it on opening day. The movie is helmed by one of my favorite directors Denis Villeneuve (Incendies, Prisoners, Sicario) and stars Oscar-nominated actors Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker. It's about the sudden arrival of aliens and the importance of communication.

WATCH: Trailer for Arrival Features Difficulty Of Intraspecies Communication

I"m very excited about the imminent arrival of Arrival, the new film by director Denis Villeneuve (Incendies, Prisoners, Sicario) starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker based (loosely) on an award-winning short story by Ted Chiang. Villeneuve has made some of my favorite films over the last decade (notwithstanding my constant fan-boy love for Christopher Nolan) and I'm thriller he is working in my favorite genre of science fiction for the first time.

In this "Common Ground" trailer, the difficulty of communicating with people who share common experiences but not a common language is depicted as a means of emphasizing the key point of the film which is about the arrival of aliens whom humanity needs to communicate with.

My Top 10 Best Films Seen in 2013

This post contains the list of my Top 10 films that I saw in 2013. Last year my favorite film was A Separation. This year it was very hard to decide between the very best film of the year, with the two contenders being very different from each other but each very powerful in their own way.

Anyway, here is my Top 10 list of best films seen in 2013

1. 12 Years A Slave. This was the best film I saw all year. Although it is a difficult movie to sit through, and despite the fact it is a cinematic rendering of a terrifying and terrible historical period, 12 Years A Slave has a lot to say to contemporary audiences. Unlike last year's Lincoln, which was another one of Steven Spielberg's forays into historicized verisimilitude in pursuit of racial reconciliation, I never felt like I was completing a dutiful chore by experiencing Steve McQueen's version of Solomon Northrup's stranger-than-fiction life story. A free black man who gets kidnapped and manages to endure and then escape any Black person's worst nightmare is the source material for a work that you would think would mostly resonate with predominantly black audiences, but from the rapturous critical responses and significant Academy Award recognition (Nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress). I hope that it wins as many awards as it can but regardless of what happens on Sunday March 2nd, the value of 12 Years A Slave is not measured by the number of Oscars it wins but by the number of people who are impacted by the film now and in the future.
2. Gravity. Although I did not end up ranking Gravity as the best film of the year I would not be upset if the Academy disagrees with me and recognizes it for  the technological tour de force that it is. Structured around a gripping performance by Sandra Bullock, the central mission of the film is director Alfonso Cuaron's desire to make the experience of watching the film to be a truly immersive experience. This is an especially effective and ambitious goal because the film is set in space and only the voices of four individual actors (and live faces of two) are ever seen on screen. I saw the film in 3-D but it is my understanding that even watching the film in other formats the strength of the film to suck you in and make you believe that you are also in space along with Bullock as her character encounters an unfortunate sequence of harrowing events which literally set my pulse racing.
3. Prisoners. The most suspenseful moments I spent in the theater in 2013 were watching this film from Denis Villeneuve, who made my favorite film of 2011, Incendies. The cast is incredible, with memorable performances by Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Melissa Leo, Viola Davis, Terence Howard and Paul Dano. The story is about the the kidnapping of two little girls (Jackman and Bello, and Howard and Davis play the parents) investigated by police detective Gyllenhaal with Dano as a strange guy who is the prime suspect in the kids' disappearance. Prisoners explores how far decent "regular" folks will go when faced with extraordinary circumstances as Jackman's character begins to unravel under the pressure of the diminishing chances of survival of his beloved daughter as time elapses and the desire to do something, even the unthinkable, in order to see his child alive again.
4. American Hustle / Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Even though these two movies were released in two consecutive years they are linked together in my mind because they are made by the same director (David O. Russell) and feature some of the most noteworthy performances stars of both years. In fact, both movies star some of the same people: Jennifer Lawrence (who won her Best Actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook and who is nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her work in American Hustle) and Bradley Cooper (who was nominated for Best Actor for Silver Linings Playbook and for Best Supporting Actor for American Hustle). Russell has a richly deserved reputation as an actor's director, since in his last two movies actors received Oscar nominations in all four of the acting categories. Of the two films, I think that American Hustle is superior, and this is primarily due to the presence of Christian Bale and Amy Adams as well as a more compelling storyline, which is a comedic depiction of the infamous AbScam scandal of the 1970s. The film is both richly entertaining and quite suspenseful, as Bale and Adams inhabit their characters with such vivacity that the audience becomes quite invested in what happens to them,
5. Zero Dark Thirty (2012). This was Kathryn Bigelow's follow-up film after her Oscar-winning turn in The Hurt Locker about the search for Osama bin Laden which made Jessica Chastain an above-the-line movie star. This would have been near the top of my list of best films for 2012 but I didn't see the film until January. It's quite extraordinary that Bigelow is able to make such a suspenseful, engaging film about a story in which we already know the ending. 
6. Dallas Buyers Club. This film was a pleasant surprise, centered around two astonishing, transformative performances by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto.  The powerful story is a clear-eyed depiction of some of the darkest days of the AIDS crisis when people had to be creative to get access to potential life-saving drugs against the wishes of a heartless government bureaucracy. Jennifer Garner (Mrs. Ben Affleck) has a key role as a doctor who abandons the establishment for the good of her patients. Both Leto and McConaughey give revelatory performances and one and perhaps two of them may receive Oscars for their work.
7. Fruitvale Station. This film is a heartbreaking depiction of the last few days of the life of Oscar Grant, who was fatally shot in the  back by a BART officer while he was face down in the early hours of 2009. Grant is portrayed powerfully by Michael B. Jordan and the film is effective at humanizing a story that could have easily become an unwatchable hagiography but instead  is as compelling and horrifying as a slow-motion car crash.
8. Star Trek Into Darkness. My favorite action film of the year was this entry into the Star Trek franchise directed by J.J. Abrams and stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain. There's an exciting twist to this movie which fans of the earlier Star Trek films willl greatly enjoy. There's great chemistry between Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine as Kirk and Scott and Simon Pegg basically steals the movie as Scotty.
9. Her. This film features one of the most creative screenplays of recent memory, another Spike Jonze joint. The story is about  a man played by Joaquin Phoenix who falls in love with an operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in a near-future time where this event is not remarkable. In addition to the very original screenplay, the production design and vision of Los Angeles are also remarkable. 
10. Lee Daniels' The Butler. Although some people dismissed this film as "the Black Forrest Gump" due to the travelogue version of history it depicts of great moments of the civil rights era, it features compelling performances from Oprah and Forrest Whitaker. Additionally, there are amazing cameos from  a dizzying array of actors portraying real historical figures.

2013 was an even better year for movies than 2012. I hope that 2014 turns out to be just as good!

FILM REVIEW: Lee Daniels' The Butler

The film  Lee Daniels' The Butler (formerly known as The Butler) has been getting a lot of attention lately because it stars the Queen of all Media, Oprah Winfrey in a very dramatic role along with Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker and a huge cast of well-known actors portraying well-known political figures. The cast includes Jane Fonda (Nancy Reagan), Alan Rickman (President Reagan), John Cusack (President Nixon), Robin Williams (President Eisenhower), James Marsden (President Kennedy), Liev Schrieber (President Johnson) and whole lot of black actors. Mariah Carey (somewhat controversially appears as a field negro who is also the Whitaker character's mother), Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette from True Blood plays Martin Luther King, Jr.) Lenny Kravitz, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Terence Howard are all also in the movie.

Daniels is the first openly gay and Black man ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Directing for 2009's Precious (which won 2 Oscars, for Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) and so his movies are bound to get more attention now.

The movie is based on (or inspired by) a real story that is quite extraordinary. The story in question is the life of Eugene Allen, who served as a butler in the White House for seven Presidential administrations. In Danny Strong's screenplay he is called "Cecil Gaines" and played by Whitaker, while Oprah plays his boozy, adulterous wife Gloria. He has two sons Louis (played by David Oyelowo) and Charlie (played by Elijah Kelley) and the film's main action is the depiction of important American historical events starting in about 1960 and their impact on the Gaines family.

The film depicts a gripping version of important events in civil rights history: the lunch counter sit-ins, the freedom riders, the national guard enforcing school desegregation orders, Black Panther movement, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Kennedy, among others. The film is enthralling because it shows you these well-known events from the perspective of the ultimate insider by following Cecil as he works inside the White House serving the Presidents who were involved at the time.

One key thread in the film is the strategic debate between the people who felt it was necessary to but their bodies on the line to force change (represented by Cecil's son Louis) and those who wanted change but who did not feel like their individual efforts would be enough to cause the change to happen (as represented by Cecil). The film shows Cecil opposing Louis' desire to get involved in the civil rights movement as well as Louis' evolution from non-violent protester in college to Black Power militant to permanent agitator against the status quo and eventual establishment politician (as an elected Congressperson). The other  main thread in the film is the relationship between Gloria and Cecil. Cecil works very long hours in the White House and at first Gloria is proud that he is working for the First Family but eventually she becomes jealous and bitter because she believes that he cares more about that family than his own. She also drinks a fair amount and as the kids grow up and leave the house the relationship between Cecil and Gloria becomes more central to the story.

Overall, I enjoyed Lee Daniels' The Butler quite a lot and thus understand why it has become a box-office hit, especially with the big 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington happening this week.


Title: Lee Daniels' The Butler.
Director: Lee Daniels.
Running Time: 2 hours, 6 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for some violence and disturbing images, language, sexual material, thematic elements and smoking.
Release Date: August 16, 2013.
Viewing Date: August 20, 2013.

Writing: B.
Acting: A.
Visuals: A-.
Impact: A+.

Overall Grade: A-/B+ (3.50/4.0).

FILM REVIEW: Fruitvale Station

The other half and I saw Fruitvale Station at the Arclight Cinemas Pasadena when I was back in Los Angeles last week. Fruitvale Station is a movie based on the life of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African American man who was fatally shot (in the back, while face down on the pavement!) by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in the early hours of January 1, 2009 in front of a group of his friends while taking the train from partying in San Francisco. The shooting was caught live on multiple cell-phone videos that went viral on the Internet in the days and weeks following the killing. Mehserle was eventually charged with murder, the trial was moved from Alameda County to Los Angeles County but he was only found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to two years. He served 11 months in prison and was released. He was the first peace officer to be tried for murder for a line-of-duty fatal shooting in over 15 years. The Oscar Grant case was a cause celebre for several years and every New Years Day there are events to remember Oscar in Oakland and Northern California.

Fruitvale Station is the movie about the famous Oscar Grant case. It is filmmaker Ryan Coogler's very first film (although it was executive produced by Oscar winner Forest Whitaker) and stars Malcolm B. Jordan (Chronicle) and Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer (The Help).

Stylistically, Fruitvale Station is somewhere between a documentary and a drama. It is most definitely not a hagiography of Oscar Grant. We seem him make foolish choices as well as bad ones. But the film makes it clear he loved his daughter Tatiana and her mother very, very much. When he is on the floor of the BART Fruitvale Station after being shot he says to the officer who shot him "Why did you do that? I have a daughter." It is an absolutely devastating moment in the film, which is replete with them. Spencer plays Oscar's mom and the two have a very close relationship. She knows that he has a tendency to wander astray and you can see it in her eyes as she watches her son carefully. The other emotionally devastating scene in the film is the one in which we see Oscar's mom get the news about her son's death and then again when she views the body of her son.

A word must be said about the performance of Michael B. Jordan in the lead role. He is absolutely mesmerizing, despite being on screen for almost every scene one never gets bored or uninterested in what he is doing, even when one is annoyed with the choices his character is making. Hopefully this performance will not be forgotten when the end of the year comes around and film accolades for the year are announced.

That being said, even though it is an emotionally draining experience Fruitvale Station is most definitely worth your time and attention to see. It is exactly the kind of film the medium is made for, to impact the audience in a meaningful and lasting way another art form may not have been able to.

Title: Fruitvale Station.
Director: Ryan Coogler.
Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for some violence, language throughout and some drug use.
Release Date: July 26, 2013.
Viewing Date: July 30, 2013.

Writing: A-.
Acting: A.
Visuals: B+.
Impact: A+.

Overall Grade: A/A- (3.85/4.0).

Celebrity Friday: Mariah Carey Plays A Field Negro in The Butler

This photo of Mariah Carey playing a slave working in the fields in openly gay director Lee Daniels' latest movie, The Butler, is causing a stir on Twitter and other social media online. Carey and Daniels have worked together before, in the Oscar-winning (and controversial) Precious, for example, where again Mariah played against her  image as a diva, to good reviews. The Butler is about the story of Eugene Allen, who was a butler in the White House serving 8 presidents of the United States.

Actually, I am happy about the controversy because it alerted me to the existence of the film, which has a jaw-dropping cast including Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Forest Whitaker, Terence Howard, John Cusack, Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Williams, Melissa Leo and many more. It also has a pretty strong trailer:


This looks like it might be a must-see next Fall!