Mini-Reviews of Recent Movies IV

The Big Short: Ok, this is a fabulous film. It is the combination of an amazing screenplay, great direction, and a cool cast. It is all the more amazing because "The Big Short" is all about things like Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's) and Tranches. The exposition of these concepts is done in a very funny way by intercutting explanatory clips by people like Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez. What this film is really about is the subprime mortgage crisis that caused the great recession of 2008. It is a true story, following three groups of investors who realize what is going to happen and bet against the bad mortgages by selling them "short." It is amazing because there was no way to do this so the first investor to think of this (Christian Bale) had to invent it. Then two other groups led by Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell hear about it in a bar and by getting a wrong number call. Finally, two young men call in an older retired investor (Brad Pitt) to help them. These groups all sell the mortgages short and then try to hang on while everyone around them tells them that they are crazy and are going to lose their shirts. Well, Spoiler Alert, they weren't wrong. "The Big Short" could have been titled, "Revenge of the Nerds," because the all the people involved are more or less Asperger's. There is a lot of energy that comes from the great performances of Bale, Gosling, and Carell. With "Foxcatcher" and "The Big Short," Steve Carrell is making a great transition from comedy to drama. The screenplay and direction by Andy McKay make this movie fast-paced and entertaining even though the content is all about CDO's and Derivatives. "The Big Short" is funny, suspenseful, and very, very scary. In some ways, this is a horror film. It will be in my Top Ten Movies of 2015 for sure.

Joy: This is the third movie in a row, written and directed by David O Russell, and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert De Niro. Silver Linings Playbook was sublime, an almost perfect movie, so anything else might pale by comparison. The second movie, American Hustle, was an entertaining mess. Joy is probably the weakest of the three movies. This isn't because of the performances which are strong, particularly by Lawrence. But the story and the pacing of this movie don't seem to work. There isn't a nice flow to Joy. It always seems to be starting and stopping. In addition to his regular cast, Russell has added some great actors, Diane Ladd, Isabella Rossellini, and Virginia Madsen. They are a bit wasted as only Ladd rises above the one-dimensional. Joy follows the "real-life" story of the inventor of the Miracle Mop. Lawrence plays Joy and much of the story revolves around her dysfunctional family, her divorced parents (Madsen & De Niro), her ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez), and her grandmother (Ladd). My favorite part of the movie is that the soap opera that Madsen is always watching stars Susan Lucci! Cooper plays the head of QVC on which Joy eventually becomes a star and sells tens of thousands of Miracle Mops. This part of the movie works best. The rest of it including a long involved subplot about the nasty people who are manufacturing the mop and trying to steal the patent is not very interesting. So go and see Joy just to see Lawrence shine while all is chaos around her. Or maybe just watch Silver Linings Playbook again.

The Revenant: I don't know what to say about this movie. The director, Inarritu, has made some great films including last year's well-deserved Oscar winner, Birdman. The trailer for The Revenant didn't really make me want to see this, in large part due to the star, Leonardo DiCaprio. Sometimes I like him; more often I don't. I hated his last movie, The Wolf of Wall Street. Anyway, The Revenant is a major motion picture that some people say will get Leo his first Oscar. He has been nominated 5 times previously. The Revenant is based loosely on a real person, Hugh Glass. He was a frontiersman in the early 1800's who crawled 200 miles to safety after being attacked by a grizzly bear. And as portrayed in this movie, Glass later went after the guys who left him to die. I have to say that I didn't care whether DiCaprio's character lived or died, and as this long (156 minutes) movie grinds on, the crowd began to giggle with each successful disaster that befell DiCaprio and his fellow characters. In addition to being attacked by a grizzly, he is buried alive, attacked by native americans, shot, stabbed, falls off a cliff, is immersed in freezing water, strangled, falls off a horse, and well, you get the idea. At the beginning of the movie, he is on a fur trapping expedition. Domhnall Gleeson plays the leader of the expedition. He is having quite the year. He is also has big parts in Star Wars, Brooklyn, and Ex Machina. The two fellow trappers who leave Leo to die are played by Tom Hardy and Will Poulter. The reliable Hardy is also having a big year, starring in the new Mad Max and playing two roles in Legend. I'm not saying the cast is bad. They are good, but most of the lines in this movie are uttered as grunts or whispers so it isn't clear what people are saying. But I didn't care much. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but Inarritu is trying to create another film with Magical Realism that worked so well in Birdman, but here not so much. And the cinematography is great. The wilderness has never been more beautiful. This is for DiCaprio the kind of role that gets Oscar nominations and awards. But for me, this is the kind of role where he gets to overact and chew the scenery, which I hate in general and specifically from him. I hope he doesn't win. And as you can guess, I basically hated The Revenant. See it if you must. It will be in the Oscar race.

Hateful Eight: The name, Hateful Eight, refers to the number of films directed by Tarantino. The other seven are, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Inglourious Bastards, and Django Unchained. I don't hate these movies and I loved Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. But I really hated Hateful Eight. It is over three hours long and for no good reason. The worst things about this movie are that it is boring, and I didn't care whether any of the characters lived or died which, spoiler alert, was a good thing because they mostly all died. Hateful Eight is typical Tarantino fare in that buckets of blood are constantly thrown across the screen. There is a nice cast that is completely wasted unless you enjoy seeing their brains exploding. It has Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson as bounty hunters, Bruce Dern as an ex-Confederate General, Tim Roth as a Hangman, and Channing Tatum, Michael Madsen, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as various outlaws. Leigh is nominated for Best Supporting actress. It is very nice to see her, but her performance consists mostly of getting punched many times and getting drenched in blood and brains. Hateful Eight starts slowly, very slowly, with a stage coach driving through a snowy landscape. Russell is transporting Leigh to be hanged for various crimes. This fact drives the story but really who cares? They arrive at a way station for the night but then are trapped by a blizzard with all the characters who haven't already been killed. Then they start to die. This takes a very long time and occurs without the usual witty repartee that we expect from Tarantino. Jackson can read from the phonebook and still be interesting which is basically what he seems to be doing here. The point of this pointless film seems to be that no matter how good or bad you are, no matter what your motivations or dreams are, none of that matters because someone is going to put a bullet in your head and you will be dead.  I just wish Tarantino had delivered this message in under three hours.

Mini-Reviews of Recent Movies III

Star Wars, Episode VII: NO SPOILERS. First of all, it is really great. It has a 95% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and I agree. JJ Abrams, who did such a good job of bringing back Star Trek, has teamed with Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi, to make everyone forget the abomination of Episodes 1, 2 and 3, and get back to the Galaxy, Far, Far Away that we know and love. We should all thank Disney for buying the rights to Star Wars from George Lucas. They have done a great job with this movie. The look and feel of Episode VII are just right, and the return of some familiar characters made me smile. Thirty years have passed both here on Earth and on Tatooine when the action begins in Episode VII. There are some nice new characters, and this is yet another movie with a female lead, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, a scavenger for junk. She is joined by a sometime stormtrooper (John Boyega), and a fighter pilot (Oscar Isaac). This film stands on its own, but it is also a paean to the original trilogy. Many scenes hearken back to the original films and warm the heart. I won't say anymore except what Han Solo says in the trailer, “It’s true. All of it. The dark side, the Jedi, they’re real.” Everyone should get out and see this movie as soon as possible.

Trumbo: I hate to say it but America needs to see this movie. The Hollywood Blacklist and the House Un-American Activities Committee happened in my lifetime and they could happen again. Unfortunately everyone in the theatre was old enough to remember Joe McCarthy. Ok, it's Star Wars weekend. But Trumbo is also a good movie. It stars Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) as Dalton Trumbo, a screenwriter, ok not just a screenwriter. After he was blacklisted for being a member of the Communist Party, he won two Oscars while writing under pseudonyms. He wrote Roman Holiday, Spartacus, and Exodus. The supporting cast is also great including Diane Lane as Trumbo's long suffering wife and Elle Fanning as his daughter. John Goodman shines as the producer of B-films who hired Trumbo and various other Oscar winners to write movies such as The Alien and the Farm Girl. Then people like Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger start showing up at Trumbo's home. This one is worth seeing.

Legend: My first introduction to the Krays was through the Piranha-Brothers sketch on Monty Python. Doug and Dinsdale Piranha led a gang that terrorized East London in the 1960's. The only difference between the Piranha brothers and the real-life Krays is the giant hedgehog named Spiny Norman. Legend tells the story of identical twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray both played by Tom Hardy. This an entertaining movie with a fair amount of blood and gore. The brothers, particularly Ronnie, are sociopaths who,like the Piranha brothers, rose to fame and power by terrorizing East London. The state of CGI today is such that you don't even notice how seamlessly the wonderful Tom Hardy plays the two brothers, who are frequently onscreen together. He does a great job of making Ronnie and Reggie very different characters. Emily Browning plays the young woman who makes the mistake of falling in love with Reggie. Legend is written and directed by Brian Hegeland. He won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for L.A. Confidential, and wrote and directed A Knight's Tale, one of my fav movies. Tom Hardy makes this a fun movie to watch even if you have to close your eyes once in a while. 

Youth: The average age of the actors in Youth is pretty high. Youth stars Michael Caine (age 82), Harvey Keitel (age 76), and Jane Fonda (age 78). I wanted to see this movie because of the cast, also including Rachel Weisz and Paul Dano, but I was surprised at how good and, well, interesting this movie is. Youth tells the story of a retired composer and conductor (Caine), and his lifelong best friend, a film director (Keitel) who is working on his latest script. They meet each year for a holiday at a swanky Swiss resort. Caine and Keitel have been friends for 60 years but as they say, they only tell each other the good things. Youth is about working out some of the bad things that have been ignored and repressed. Caine is trying to repair his dysfunctional relationship with his daughter (Weisz), and Keitel is struggling with his latest project and his star (Fonda). Paul Dano plays a well-known actor who is chilling at the resort before his next role as Adolf Hitler. One of the joys of this film is all the other guests at the resort, including a levitating Buddhist monk and Miss Universe, and how they interact with the main characters in unexpected ways. The ending is very unexpected as well. Youth is worth seeing.

Carol: The director of Carol, Todd Haynes, seems to like this kind of story. A few years ago he directed "Far From Heaven," the story of a woman in the 1950's with marital problems. This is also the plot of Carol but with the added frisson that the married woman, here played by Cate Blanchett, is having an affair with another woman played by Rooney Mara. Blanchett's husband played by the reliable Kyle Chandler is not very happy about it. In fact, Mara is Blanchett's second girlfriend. The first played by Sarah Paulson is still around and is tolerated by the husband, but when Mara arrives on the scene it is just one lesbian too much, and the husbands decamps with their young daughter. You can guess the rest. That's the one weakness of this film which has a great cast. The plot is pretty predictable and it isn't breaking any new ground. Carol isn't meant to be a happy film but everyone is pretty dour throughout. And they smoke a lot. The people against smoking in movies must be going crazy this Christmas. In the last four movies I have seen, other than Star Wars, Trumbo, Youth, and Legend, as well as Carol, everyone is smoking all the time. Most of the smoking takes place in the 1950's, and so is realistic, but it makes you realize how much things have changed from then to now. Anyway, Carol is worth seeing but don't see it if you are having a down day. 

Mini Reviews of Recent Films II

Spotlight: In this film, some investigative reporters report on a major cover-up while working for an editor named Ben Bradlee. But this is not All The President's Men. It's the Boston Globe not the Washington Post, and the reporters are investigating the cover-up of paedophile priests by the Catholic Church. The editor is Ben Bradlee Jr, the son of the famous Washington Post editor. The name of the film refers to a group of investigative reporters at the Boston Globe, played by Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d'Arcy James, who investigate the Catholic Church in Boston when a new Editor-in-chief (Liev Schreiber) is hired. This is a true story about how the Boston Globe reported in 2002 that 249 priests in Boston alone had been abusing children for decades with the knowledge of the Cardinal of the Archdiocese. Spotlight is a good movie with a nice cast and a compelling story to tell. But it lacks the high tension and sense of danger that keeps you on the edge of your seat during All the President's Men.

Creed: You can hear the music in your head. Duh duh dah, duh duh dah. Yes, Rocky is back. And it's great to see him. In case you don't get the title, Creed refers to Apollo Creed. As we know Apollo is dead but his illegitimate son (Michael B. Jordan) is all grown up and surprise surprise, he wants to box and he wants Rocky to train him. So we are back in Philly and Sylvester Stallone as Rocky gets to channel Burgess Meredith and be the crotchety old trainer. Except, Rocky is too sweet to be crotchety. The plot is the same but Creed Jr and his girlfriend are a fair bit more socialized than Rocky and Adrian. I was happy to hear that it still weakens the legs! Creed is a very nice heartwarming movie about boxing. So there's some blood and some shots to the head but Stallone should get an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Rocky near the end of road. You should see this.

Suffragette: This is an unusual film, not because of its subject, but because it was written by a woman, directed by a woman, and produced by two women. Suffragette is about the British movement to get the vote for women in the early 20th century. The film tells the true story through a combination of real and fictional characters. The main characters, a young washerwoman with a husband and son played by Carey Mulligan, and a pharmacist and bomb maker played by Helena Bonham Carter are fictional. But the leader of the movement, Emmeline Pankhurst, is played wonderfully by Meryl Streep but unfortunately appears only briefly, and Emily Wilding Davison, who was killed at the Epsom Derby when she ran onto the course, is played by Natalie Press. The non-female characters include Mulligan's husband (Ben Whishaw, better known as the new Q in James Bond), and a police detective (Brendan Gleeson, best known as Mad-Eye Moody) who becomes sympathetic to the cause. Suffragette is very well put together and gives an unvarnished view of the lives of working-class women in London a century ago. Bonham Carter gives a nice low-key performance, and Gleeson is great as always. Mulligan is excellent as the woman who loses everything while fighting for the vote. The whole Suffragette movement is seen through her eyes. I was a bit verklempt at the end.

Brooklyn: This is just the most enjoyable film. I'm sure it appeals to the romantic in me but it is pretty much perfect. Saoirse Ronan is only 21 but she seems to have been around forever. Her first film was Atonement when she was 13, followed by The Lovely Bones, Hanna, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Ronan grew up in Ireland and is perfect in Brooklyn as the young Irish woman who emigrates to America and makes her own life there. The cast is great, including the old pros, Julie Walters and Jim Broadbent as the young woman's landlady and priest. Ronan's two suitors in New York (Emory Cohen) and in Ireland (Domhnall Gleeson) are both very appealing. But the thing that appealed to me most in the film was the color palette. The direction, cinematography, art direction, and costume design all conspire to make Brooklyn seem like it was made and set in the early 1950's. And it didn't hurt that Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay. It made me feel good just to watch this movie. 

In the Heart of the Sea: I was very disappointed that this was such a lackluster film. First, because I am a big fan of Ron Howard as a director, and also since I have been going to Nantucket for over 50 years and am well-acquainted with the story of the whaleship Essex. It is a fascinating true story. In a lot of ways it is like another true story brought to film by Ron Howard, Apollo 13. In 1819, the Nantucket whaleships going on voyages to the Pacific that lasted for 4 or 5 years might as well have been going to the Moon, except without radios. And Nantucket, itself, was a unique place in 1819, controlled by Quakers, with no slaves, and a very diverse population which was represented in the crew of the Essex. But none of this really makes it into this film. Only a few minutes are devoted to Nantucket and the preparations for the voyage. The first mate played by Chris Hemsworth (Thor in The Avengers) seems to live right where my house is today. The voyage itself consists of one storm staged to show how the ill-fated Captain Pollard (Benjamin Walker) is unfit for his post, and then before we know it, the ship has been stove by a whale. The whale is supposed to be some "hound from Hell" like Moby Dick, but it has none of the White Whale's sinister qualities. No spoilers but the crew is trapped in three small boats for a long time and bad things happen. I blame the screenplay for a lack of character development beyond one dimension and for a complete lack of emotion. Ron Howard seems to have mailed this one in. If you compare it to the excitement and suspense of Apollo 13, In the Heart of the Sea is very flat. You don't particularly care whether the crew of the Essex lives or dies, and they don't seem to care much either. I recommend a visit to Nantucket and the Essex exhibit at the Whaling Museum.

Mini Reviews of Recent Films

Mockingjay Part 2: The first thing you need to know before I say anything about the movie is that I am a Katniss/Gale Shipper and a Peeta hater. So while I really liked the first book of the series, I threw the last one against the wall at the end. Little has changed from the book in this last film of the Hunger Games series. The gag-me-with-a-spoon ending is unchanged.

But that aside, the series in general and the last film in particular has many strong female roles and passes the Bechdel test repeatedly. The casting is great. Included are, Julianne Moore, Jena Malone, Natalie Dormer, and if they aren't strong enough, Michelle Forbes of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica fame, is also there. Donald Sutherland is amazing, doing President Snow as a kind of evil Hawkeye Pierce. And, in his last role ever, augmented by some CGI, is Philip Seymour Hoffman. The three sides of the dystopian, high-school love triangle are all perfectly cast, with Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, and Josh Hutcherson. The best casting of all, if you've read the books, is Woody Harrelson as Haymitch.


I can't say much more without spoilers. There are lots of explosions. Some people die and some don't. And I always tear up when they kiss their three fingers and hold them up.

Room:
This film has a lot of buzz. It has won the Audience Award at six film festivals including Toronto. The title refers to the very small space in which a woman and her young son live. The woman, played by the amazing Brie Larson, was kidnapped 7 years previously and is being kept in a backyard shed by her captor. He is the father of her son. Jacob Tremblay, who plays the 5 year-old boy, pretty much steals the movie with his performance although Larson is great too. Her previous move, Short Term 12, is very good. Room is simply shot and is split into two parts, before and after life in the Room, and shows how the mother and son deal with the change. The son has never seen the outside world. The violence of the captor real and implied is almost completely off screen, but is seen in Larson's expressive face. This movie is definitely worth seeing.

Spectre:
The new movie may not be Skyfall but it's still lots of fun. The opening sequence in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead parade is amazing. The new M, Q, and Moneypenny are back. M has been demoted to work for C who is played by the guy who plays Moriarty in Sherlock so you know he's not a good guy. Christoph Waltz makes an excellent rebooted Blofeld and the white cat is back. And there's even an older woman as a Bond Girl, Monica Bellucci. She's 4 years older than Daniel Craig. They are both looking good.

Steve Jobs: 
Nobody is seeing this movie. Everyone needs to see this movie. It is my early pick (I've only seen 54 movies this year) for Best Movie of the Year. And Steve Jobs made me cry at the end. Ok, it was Aaron Sorkin and Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) that did that. This movie is all talk from beginning to end. Did I mention that it was written by Aaron Sorkin? It is divided into three parts, the Introductions of the Mac, NeXt, and iMac computers. The cast, Michael Fassbender (Jobs), Seth Rogen (The Woz), Jeff Daniels (John Scully), and Kate Winslet (Joanna Hoffman, Jobs' factotem) really kill. It doesn't matter if you liked Steve Jobs or believe that this film bears any resemblance to reality, you need to see it.

Bridge of Spies:
Spielberg plus Hanks. Ok, very good but very conservative choices to bring an iconic moment in American history to life when the U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged for the Russian spy Rudolph Abel. But a screenplay by Ethan and Joel Coen? And Mark Rylance playing Abel? Wow. Rylance is fantastic. We last saw him killing as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall. The scenes, mostly early in the film, between Hanks and Rylance make this a very good movie. The rest of the characters are a bit one dimensional although Amy Ryan and Alan Alda try their best. This film also resonates strongly with politics today. James Donovan (Tom Hanks) gets a lot of flak in 1957 for trying to give Abel a good defense and by wanting to actually follow the US Constitution. Worth seeing.

The Walk: 
This is an amazing film which no one is seeing. It is the first time I can say that 3D is necessary and integral to a film. And I could barely watch it. I have a fear of heights and the end of the film when he is walking between the towers is agonizing but really incredible. This is an emotional and poignant movie especially since it is centered on the Twin Towers. The movie is set in 1974 but the present is always present. Go see it.

The Martian

I read the book, The Martian, this summer and the moviemakers have done a very good job of bringing it to the screen. Most of all, I love this movie because it is a fantasy about NASA the way I wish it were, with infinite budgets to do really cool stuff. In reality, funding cuts have prevented NASA from developing a mission to send astronauts to Mars. But The Martian, like the movie Gravity, is science fiction that seems like reality. It is set in the present day or the near future, and it makes use of technology and knowledge that we have available today. In fact, The Martian is so realistic that some people on the internet believe that it is based on real events. Unfortunately, we haven't been to Mars yet. But it is wonderful to see it on the screen.


I really love the main character, astronaut Mark Watney. His running commentary and one-liners for every situation, no matter how dire, keep the movie entertaining and help to inform the audience about what is happening. Matt Damon is the perfect choice to play Watney. Watney's character and his being stranded alone on Mars reminded me of the movie, Cast Away, with Tom Hanks. Both movies concentrate on one character alone trying to survive while cut off from the world. In both cases, this person is an everyman who the audiences like and can identify with.

The director of The Martian is Ridley Scott, who is one of my favorites.  He has directed several Science Fiction films and he likes to have strong female characters. Previously, he directed Alien, Blade Runner, and Thelma & Louise. In The Martian,  two of the astronaut crew are women including the commander of the mission played by Jessica Chastain. In real life two female NASA astronauts have been commanders of the International Space Station. And The Martian does pass the Bechdel test. We have two female characters discussing making a bomb among other things. There was very little romance in the book and what there was has been mostly cut out of the movie. Scott does a very good job of creating a believable picture of living on Mars (which was actually filmed in Jordan).  On the whole, this is a very enjoyable movie that, like Gravity, makes an effort to do the science right.  There are a few things that are wrong scientifically. The storm on Mars in the first scene would not have been able to blow Watney away because the air on Mars is too thin, and the sunsets should have been blue not red. The most unbelievable physics in The Martian is the "iron-man" rescue scene at the end. It reminded me of the scene in WALL-E with the fire extinguisher and is about as realistic.

There are a few funny scenes in The Martian for geeks like me. I laughed out loud at the discussion of Project Elrond and there is a nice reference to Apollo 13 in calling Rich Purnell a steely eyed missile man.  And then, Watney's line, “I'm going to have to science the shit out of this" will be the new meme for all of us geeks. I need to get a t-shirt! I liked The Martian a lot.

Top Ten Movies of 2014

As usual, my list is a bit different from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Three of the eight films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar are also on my list, Boyhood, Birdman, and Whiplash. I actually liked all of the Oscar nominated films except for American Sniper.


1. Boyhood
I saw this film way back in June at the Nantucket Film Festival but it has stayed with me. It is a wonderful piece of filmmaking. Some people say Boyhood is boring or is just a gimmick. Well, yes, it is a gimmick, but it was an incredible idea to shoot a movie every year for 12 years, and watch the actors age along with their characters. The director, Richard Linklater, took a huge chance in picking a 6-year-old boy (Ellar Coltrane) to play this part. Think about Star Wars Episode I. But Ellar turned out to be amazing and so are the more well-known actors, Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, who play his parents. The beauty of this film is that it allows us to watch a family's normal life for 12 years, all without explosions or car chases. I loved it.

2. Birdman
Together with Boyhood, these are the top two films of the year according to most critics, and one of them should win the Best Picture Oscar. Birdman really blew me away. The cast, including Michael Keating, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, and Amy Ryan, is amazing but they also had a really nice script to work from. My favorite movie line of the year is in Birdman when someone asks Watts how she knows Norton. She says, "We share a vagina." There is a huge energy crammed into a small space in this film, which follows the cast backstage at a Broadway theatre in long uninterrupted scenes. The person responsible is the director, Alejandro Inarritu. This film is the story of a washed-up actor, who used to play a superhero, attempting a comeback, who is played by a washed-up actor, who used to play a superhero, attempting a comeback. At the end, you wonder what really happened, what is real, and what is fantasy.

3. The Monuments Men
This was the first film I saw in 2014. It definitely suffered in the Oscar race by being released so early in the year but it is a great film with a great cast and an amazing true story to tell. Who could make up a plot where a bunch of art historians and artists are drafted into the army to save the art of Europe after D-Day? I've seen The Monuments Men three times and I have cried at the end every time. Some people think it must be a comedy since it has Bill Murray, John Goodman, and Bob Balaban. But these guys can act and their presence along with George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin (The Artist), and Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) makes for a very enjoyable movie. George Clooney also directed and shows once again that he has great taste in movies. He gives The Monuments Men a nice combination of action and camaraderie.

4. The Fault in Our Stars
I've been a fan of Shailene Woodley since I first saw her in The Descendants in 2011. She is also starring in the Divergent series, the best of the current crop of young-adult dystopian dramas. The Fault in Our Stars, from the book by John Green, tells the story of two high-school kids, suffering from cancer, who meet and fall in love. The two kids are played by Woodley and Ansel Elgort, who also plays Woodley's brother in Divergent. They are both great and this movie does an excellent job of portraying them as people, not just cancer victims. It's was nice to see Laura Dern as Woodley's mother. Dern also plays Reese Witherspoon's mother in Wild, for which she is nominated for Best Supporting Actress. The Fault in Our Stars is a very romantic story where disaster is always waiting around the corner. And it has the most unusual setting for a  first kiss that I have ever seen.

5. Whiplash
This is the third film, along with Boyhood and Birdman, that is on my list as well as being nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. This is a small film that will leave you feeling like you have post-traumatic stress disorder. It tells the story of a young man (Miles Teller) whose dream is to be drummer like Buddy Rich. He joins a jazz band at a prestigious Julliard-like school which is run by a teacher (J.K. Simmons) who likes to push his students to the breaking point. Thus begins a battle of wills that continues until the last seconds of Whiplash. The tension just builds and builds until the amazing last scene. Teller is a rising star, seen last year in The Spectacular Now, and in Divergent. He is excellent, and Simmons who is one of the hardest working character actors in Hollywood is nothing short of amazing. And he is also very scary. Simmons is nominated for Best Supporting Actor and is expected to win.

6. Calvary
As you know, I see a lot of movies and, once in a while, I am rewarded by discovering a gem. Calvary is a gem that almost no one has seen. It won "Overlooked Film of the Year" from the Phoenix Film Critics Society which is very appropriate. Even though Calvary is a small film, it has a powerhouse Irish cast including Brendan Gleeson (best known as Mad-Eye Moody in Harry Potter), Chris O'Dowd (Girls), Kelly Reilly (Sherlock Holmes), and Aidan Gillen (Little Finger in Game of Thrones). Gleeson plays a priest in a small town in Ireland who is threatened with murder during confession in the first scene of the movie. This sets off a cataclysmic series of events leading to a shocking end of the film. The cast is great and the screenplay is amazing. This is an excellent movie.  Rent it!

7. Edge of Tomorrow
I'm not big on Tom Cruise films these days, but the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow was appealing,  and I like Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada, Into the Woods) a lot. But, when I saw it, Edge of Tomorrow really blew me away. It is a very clever film, set in the near future when Earth is being attacked and destroyed by an alien invasion. Tom Cruise is a soldier with no experience forced to fight the aliens and he gets killed very quickly, but he wakes up and has to relive this day over and over. He realizes that another, much more accomplished soldier (Blunt), is also having this experience. They work together to try and defeat the aliens. This film has many nice echoes of Groundhog Day, and also mimics everyone's experience playing video games where you try to get a little bit further every time you play. Blunt is great as usual, and this is a very good role for Cruise. Bill Paxton has a nice supporting role as Cruise's Sergeant.

8. Love is Strange
This is another film I saw way back at the Nantucket Film Festival. Love is Strange tells the story of two men (John Lithgow and Alfred Molina) in New York City, who have been together for 30 years but now have the opportunity to get married. As a result, Molina loses his job with the archdiocese, and the couple lose their apartment in NYC. They are forced to live with friends and relatives, including Lithgow's niece (Marisa Tomei) and her son (Charlie Tahan).  Lithgow and Molina are incredible as the old married couple. My favorite scene is when they are forced to share a teenage boy's bunkbed. This is a very bittersweet movie about love and I fell in love with it.

9. The Lego Movie
This movie came out of nowhere. Who expected a Lego movie to appeal to adults as well as kids and have nice characters and a good script? But it does. This film, with the song that everyone ends up singing, tells the story of a lonely Lego piece named Emmett, who is trying to figure out his life. Along the way, he makes a bunch of friends, including an interesting woman, Wyldstyle, who happens to be dating Batman. The Lego story is framed by the story of the real-life boy who wants to play with the Lego and his father (Will Ferrell) who wants him to not to touch it. The plot is a bit like The Matrix, where Emmett is the "Special" who will lead all the Lego pieces to the promised land. The characters are all very inventive and the script is very funny. My favorite character is Batman. I love his song about darkness.
Anyway, like the song says, Everything in this movie is Awesome!

10. Interstellar
This was a pretty good year for Science Fiction movies, including Edge of Tomorrow, which made my Top Ten, and Guardians of the Galaxy, which almost did. The other great SciFi movie of the year was Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's latest film. I was looking forward to seeing it from when I saw the first teaser trailer and it did not disappoint (Sorry Robin). In Interstellar, the Earth is becoming unlivable due to global warming, and astronauts are sent through a wormhole to look for a new planet to live on. The amazing cast includes Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon, Michael Caine, and John Lithgow. Physicist, Kip Thorne, acted as technical advisor for the movie and designed the special effects of the wormhole and black hole. This time travel, inter-dimensional story is really a love story between a father and a daughter, and between two people who have lost the ones they love. I liked it a lot.