January 5: Foxcatcher (2014 -- Bennett Miller)

★★★★★

This film is a compelling drama that relies on its surprising acting.  In the film, du Pont heir, John, wants to sponsor and coach a wrestling team at his estate with the aim of entering and winning the Olympics. Toward that end, he first convinces Olympic gold medalist Mark Schultz to train at his estate, Foxcatcher, and he then recruits Mark’s brother, Dave Schultz, to train and coach there.

But Foxcatcher’s script and acting give unexpected nuance to this simple story.  One of the strongest roles here is Channing Tatum as Mark Schultz.  Under Bennett Miller’s direction, Tatum’s Mark is a dull, inarticulate, physically-imposing man who is a follower despite his athleticism.  As a competitor, he’s strong and quick, but he’s unable to connect with others or make friends.  He’s defined by an inferiority complex towards his older brother Dave throughout the film.  Tatum creates this character with small touches like a hulking stride and a slightly bent posture. And in this film of close-ups, when Miller’s camera lingers on Dave’s face, Tatum’s Dave has a blank, confused look as he tries to figure out how to respond in each situation.  This Dave is a man of arresting physical bearing but a weak, passive personality that calls to be led.

Foxcatcher follows Dave as he oscillates between two men who lead him.  His sharp, gregarious, family-oriented older brother Mark is one of these men.  A father himself and a coach, Mark also tries to take care of his younger brother, and though Dave can’t articulate how he feels, a strength of Tatum’s performance is that we can see that Dave is envious of his older brother’s success but that he can’t manage to accomplish the same on his own.  The early sparring scene between the two, a mixture of aggression and affection, defines their relationship better than any amount of exposition would.

Trying to strike out on his own, Dave falls under the leadership of a second man, Steve Carell’s John du Pont.  This odd millionaire is an uncertain, awkward man who is middle-aged and dumpy, but he’s deeply motivated by a desire for power and domination.  Never able to please his mother, du Pont uses the wealth available to him to buy power.  He loves guns and weaponry and subsidies local law enforcement so they practice at his estate.  He buys heavy military armaments as a hobby.  His wealth secures a deference that insulates him, but the aggression in wrestling also attracts him, so he starts a team on the estate and postures as their trainer.  Carell creates many of the most uncomfortable moments in Foxcatcher, as when his ungainly du Pont wins a match that is thrown or when he wrestles around on top of the handsome athletes his wealth has bought.  In one particularly uncomfortable scene, Dave clearly feels he has to let du Pont clamor on top of him in the middle of the night, a scene whose power comes as much from Tatum’s and Carell’s acting as from the situation.  And as with Dave, close-ups on du Pont create discomfort.  After Dave tells du Pont that money won’t convince Mark to come to Foxcatcher, the camera lingers on du Pont’s face as Carell’s eyes go blank and he keeps silent and immobile for several seconds, his nose in the air.  John du Pont expects his money to win the day for him, and he doesn’t know how to react to this information.

The characters and acting alone would make Foxcatcher a worthwhile film, but Miller brings important cinematic elements to bear, too.  Throughout, the script interweaves strands of patriotism, class, power, weakness and love, and Miller so deftly handles his images that every detail onscreen seems to speak to these themes, whether it’s painting of George Washington or horse trophies.  Miller also brings an independent filmmaker specificity the settings.  In the early part of the film, the school that Dave visits and his apartment have a great uniqueness to them as do, later, Mark’s home and du Pont’s.  And the cinematography makes this film compelling.  The close-ups put us uncomfortably into dialogs and actions, and the shallow focus compels us to look at a limited range of what’s happening onscreen.  Miller’s direction compliments the story, acting and settings here to make Foxcatcher even more intense.

Foxcatcher is a significant exploration of today’s America.  Though the story follows the relationship among three individuals, the concerns that run through their interactions run also animate our time, when our American competitive spirit is running up against increasing inequality and limited social mobility.

January 4: Selma (2014 -- Ava DuVernay)

★★★

December 30: Into the Woods (2014 -- Rob Marshall)

December 21: Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940 -- Ford Beebe & Ray Taylor)

★★★

This Flash Gordon serial is at least as engaging as the two earlier and, in some ways, even more so.  Like the two previous, it starts with a threat to the earth, but while the other serials spend some time on discovery of the problem and pulling together a response, by the time this series has told us about the threat, Flash, Dale and Zarkov are already in space and engaged in an air battle.  And just as the episode's opening benefits from the condensed story, the rest of these episodes compress action and race forward.

Art director Harold MacArthur appears to have been given free rein to use any costumes he could find at Universal, and he embraced that freedom with relish.  Flash starts his adventures with his hunky body discretely wrapped in a military uniform, but he’s soon in tights and a Cossack hat, showing his contours.  Queen Fria’s court has an historical drama look that sometimes slips into a beauty pageant, while Ming and those who dance for him suggest an oriental adventure.  The local costume of Prince Barin’s realm appears to be cut from Robin Hood films with caps, sweeping feathers, tights and tunics.  And there are some plucky rock men in papier-mâché costumes perhaps created for the series.  The art design here is a great overview of the look of film of the 30s.

But the US was preparing for war in 1940, and that atmosphere is clear in many elements of this Flash Gordon.  While air battles had been a staple of the series, they’re far more common here than in previous Flash serials.  Ming is occasionally called a “dictator” instead of an emperor here, and there’s a whiff of eugenics in Fria’s condescension to the Rock People who, being dumb and blocky, should die.  Flash’s initial uniform is yet another index of the times, as are the long-range canon and the bombing of the castle.  And the presence of double agents and spies on both sides are new to the Flash serials, too.

And like the other series, Flash 40 lends itself to playing Spot-the-Star-Wars-Elements.  The game can start early as the first narrative titles, which scroll from the bottom of the page and recede into space above, just like they do in all the Star Wars movies.  Cloaking devices render spacecraft invisible to opposing armies, and Ming’s programed robots attack Flash & co.  Of course, there is both an emperor and a princess here, and there’s a particularly strong connection between the Rock People and the Jawa traders in Episode IV.  The Rock People blend in and out of the environment and speak their own language, just as we see the Jawa do on  Tatooine.  It’s a striking connection.

But the most fun in this Flash Gordon is the rush from one noble act to the next and the sincerity that Buster Crabb brings to the hero.  At one point here, Zarkov says of Ming: “We can destroy him and his palace, but that would mean our death as well.”  Undeterred, Flash responds, “It would be worth it if we could save the universe by doing so.”

They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

December 20: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014 -- Peter Jackson)

★★★

December 19: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013 -- Peter Jackson)

★★★

The Desolation of Smaug is a small step up from 2012’s Hobbit.  One of the improvements here is that the action sequences, still long, are more fun than those in Jackson’s 2012 film.  Smaug features a lively barrel run with the dwarves in the barrels being pursued by orcs onshore, who are themselves pursued by elves.  The bouncing barrels coupled with the aggressive orcs and agile elves makes for far more animated, martial arts-inflected fun than does a similarly active sequence in the first Hobbit, where dwarves are tossing plates around in Bilbo’s house.  And though this film pauses overly long to allow Bilbo and Smaug to engage in the Lonely Mountain, Smaug’s slithering, sardonic fire breathing is more interesting that the overly long escape of the dwarves from the goblin underground in The Hobbit. 

Another improvement is a subtlety that exists here more than in the previous Hobbit.  Throughout The Desolation of Smaug, we encounter hints and signs of the expansion of evil.  We learn, for example, that the spider incursions are getting worse in Mirkwood, and we see that the Nazgûl tombs are empty, surely a bad sign but one we can't completely interpret.  While the orc armies of Azog and the reveal of Sauron are rightly on-the-nose, little signs like the tired weakness of Thranduil and the isolated Smaug's awareness of Sauron’s rise all imply the increasing range of evil rather than making it explicit with exposition.  And on a purely visual level that the dialog doesn't even note, Smaug's eye looks remarkably like Sauron.  This Hobbit film has much more subtlety than the former.

Desolation of Smaug still has some serious flaws, though.  The worst problem with this long film is that it doesn't go anywhere.  There’s no resolution of an issue, and there’s no movement or idea at its core.  Dramatically, the film also has even less character development than The Hobbit, and vast majority of the script is declamation rather than dialog.  And there is so much CGI in Smaug that most of the film looks like a video game, one that someone else is playing and that we only get to watch.  And some parts of the film are simply hard to understand.  It’s difficult, for example, to catch that the orc in charge of catching Thorin, Bolg, is the son of the Azog, the orc commander.  And as to why that would be worth noting, perhaps the next film will tell.

Like its predecessor, Desolation of Smaug is not a great film.  People who love Middle Earth and its lore will relish the film’s visuals and the way Jackson weaves in background to create a sense of time and history.  But the overlong action sequences, the lack of character, and the meandering storyline here will leave many audiences on the side.

December 18: Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938 -- Ford Beebe, Robert F. Hill & Frederick Stephani)

★★★

Better isn’t always better, and the distance between the 1936 and the 1938 Flash Gordon serials is a case in point.  Flash ’38 has a tighter, more cohesive narrative than the earlier one.  For example, a parachute jump in the first episode prefigures several batwing jumps that are important on Mars, and though there are still some narrative gaps, they aren’t as numerous here as they are in Flash ’36.  Even the acting of Buster Crabbe has some of its rough edges chipped off.  Crabbe was positively bursting with enthusiasm in the ’36 Flash, hopping into the air as he ran short distances across a stage to simulate effort; in ’38, he doesn’t hop quite as high.

There’s a bit more self-consciousness in Flash ’38, too, and less of the “golly, gee” that’s endearing in the ’36 series.  We have the new character of the reporter, Happy Hapgood, whose wiseacre comments give this serial a distance, even irony, that it completely missing in the first serial.  Flash Gordon ’38 even winks self-consciously at the audience when the earth, as seen from space, resembles the Universal Studios logo.

But despite these updates, Flash Gordon ’38 is still a load of fun.  Sparking switches still typify the laboratories on Mars, and smoke drifts uncooperatively above the model spaceships as they circle and land.  The Incense of Forgetfulness shows the persistence of an interest in mind control.  A little, two-person car that runs in tunnels underground helps Flash and friends infiltrate the castle of Queen Azura, who is herself decked out like a contestant in the swimsuit competition of a beauty contest.  Ming is even more vile here than in the ’36 serial, and though Crabbe has clearly toned his acting down, he is no less committed to the role.  He shows less skin and pecs here than in the ’36 series, but his sense of honor propels the narrative and inspires.  Having saved the earth, Flash stays on Mars to honor his word and help free the Clay people from Queen Azura.  

Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars still works today.  Its visual inventiveness and cheesy gusto engage us, and even the drifting spaceship models and flat line delivery are a part of a cohesive whole that, no matter how contrived the ending of one episode, on some basic level, we want to find out what happens next.