REVIEW: Nebraska

By Chris Luckett

4 stars out of 5

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Despite colour being the predominant form of filmmaking, black-and-white pictures are still made every year. Nowadays, however, it’s generally for artistic reasons, like in The Artist or Sin City. The small-town feel of Nebraska is so perfectly suited to black-and-white, it’s hard to imagine what the movie would look like in colour.

Written and directed by Alexander Payne, Nebraska explores the relationship of a father and son in Montana. The father, Woody (Bruce Dern), has been an alcoholic all his life and is struggling to find something to live for in the boredom of old age. The son, David (Will Forte), divides his time between working in a home electronics store and taking care of his aging parents.

Photo: Paramount Pictures

When Woody receives a letter in the mail saying he’s won a million dollars, he doesn’t understand that it’s a scam used to sell magazine subscriptions. He doesn’t trust mailing the letter in to receive his money and he’s too old to drive anymore, so he repeatedly sets out walking to the magazine office in Lincoln, Nebraska.

After David keeps catching him and taking him home, David finally decides to drive his father to Nebraska – to keep him to wandering off again, to show Woody there is no million dollars, and to bond with the father he never got to know over one last road trip.

Dern is haunting as a man slowly fading away and unsure of what’s going on much of the time. For a man who’s given many great performances, Woody is one of Dern’s best and a guaranteed ticket to the Oscars.

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Even more impressive is Forte, who has previously been known purely for his comedic work on shows like Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, and Clone High. Forte conveys desperation, sadness, naiveté, bemusement, and flabbergast all with just a look in his eyes or a quiet sigh. It’s a remarkable performance that shows great promise for Forte’s future in TV and movies.

Director Alexander Payne’s best movies are about relationships, whether it’s between friends in Sideways, between a teacher and a student in Election, or between family in About Schmidt and The Descendants. Nebraska is no exception.

It can be seen as a road trip movie, as a one-last-hurrah movie, or as a dysfunctional family movie – and it is all of those things, but it’s more than just its pieces. It captures the feel of small-town living and the relationships therein in a way recent movies like August: Osage County and The Family weren’t able to. Part of that is the black-and-white look of the movie, part is the acting, part is the writing, and part is the directing. But the true power of Nebraska lies in the sum of those parts.

REVIEW: Her

By Chris Luckett

5 stars out of 5

Photo: Warner Bros.

Sometimes, brilliant movies have concepts that sounds incredibly dumb when you first her them summed up in a single sentence. (Who honestly expected a movie about the creation of Facebook to be very interesting before they saw The Social Network, for example?) The new movie Her is, boiled down to a single sentence, about a man falling in love with his computer. Explored using the nuances and flavours afforded by a feature-length running time, though, Her is an absolutely magnificent movie.

Her takes places in the near-future, probably just 15 or 20 years from today. Fashions have changed, skyscrapers have grown taller, and technology has advanced. Despite futuristic touches, though, the world of the movie is very much our own.

Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) works for BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, a service that composes personal letters on behalf of people too preoccupied with technology to write letters themselves. Theodore’s still hurting from a recent divorce and feels not just lonely but alone.

Photo: Warner Bros.

Then he gets OS1, “the world’s first artificially intelligent operating system.” As soon as Theodore answers the setup question of whether he’d like it to have a male or female voice, Her begins down a dangerous and thought-provoking path that reels you in and forces you to watch it all the way down its twisted rabbit hole.

The operating system in the movie, which dubs itself Samantha and is blessed to have Scarlett Johansson’s voice, gets to know what Theodore likes and tailors her system to his lifestyle’s needs. Being intelligent and self-aware in her own right, Samantha also is capable of learning and adapting, leading to her continuous “improvement,” both in her eyes and in Theodore’s. As they each begin to develop feelings for the other, Her slowly begins exploring territory that is at once fascinating and unsettling, walking a delicate line without ever becoming ridiculous.

Photo: Warner Bros.

Her touches on every emotion that a movie really can. Over the course of the film, it’s funny, it’s worrisome, it’s sad, it’s joyous, it’s infuriating, it’s heart-warming, and it’s disturbing. (Often, it’s several at once.) It’s an incredibly rich experience that tackles realistic, modern romance in a remarkably clever way, while also containing important messages about technology and intelligent insights into the value of love in any form.

Told over a two-second sentence, Her sounds pretty dumb. Told over a two-hour story, it’s one of the very best films of 2013.

REVIEW: Inside Llewyn Davis

By Chris Luckett

4½ stars out of 5

Photo: CBS Films

After nearly 30 years of making movies, from the goofily comedic Raising Arizona to the Oscar-courting Fargo, the Coen brothers have attained a rare status nowadays: directors the general public pays attention for. “Coen brothers movies” aren’t released; they arrive.

Inside Llewyn Davis, the brothers’ 18th film, centres itself on the folk singers of Greenwich Village in 1961. The titular character, played by 10 Years’ Oscar Isaac, is one such artist. In the wake of his former singing partner committing suicide, Davis grumpily sings his songs for heckling crowds, struggles to make meagre amounts of money, and sleeps on a different acquaintance’s couch every night.

Photo: CBS Films

As a character, Llewyn Davis is a horrible person. He sleeps with a married woman (and possibly impregnates her), he gets angry with everyone close to him while abusing their generosity, and he even heckles an elderly woman to tears. Isaac has such a curmudgeonly charm, though, that it elevates the character. Davis is his own worst enemy, by Isaac still makes you feel bad for him.

Much like the aimless Davis, the plot of the movie bounces around from setting to setting. One the one hand, the movie’s lack of kinetic action is smartly reflective of Davis’s stagnation as an artist. On the other, many scenes in the middle third of the movie could almost be shuffled around with negligible effect on the overall film.

Photo: CBS Films

While the story leaves something to be desired, nothing else about the film disappoints. The performances, from Isaac’s to Carey Mulligan’s to Justin Timberlake’s to John Goodman’s, are all fantastic and the characters feel completely three-dimensional. The soundtrack, sung entirely by the cast, is haunting and catchy. The lighting, the cinematography, the directing, the costumes – it’s all beautifully done.

Inside Llewyn Davis feels like a fusion of the Coens’ comedic and dramatic sensibilities, and the tone mostly works. It isn’t as outright funny as The Big Lebowski nor as prestigiously dramatic as No Country for Old Men, but Inside Llewyn Davis arrives in style and makes a lasting impression with a voice all its own.

OSCARS 2014: Nominee Predictions

By Chris Luckett

This year’s Oscar nominations are being announced tomorrow morning. In the wake of surprise wins and snubs at Sunday’s Golden Globes, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Academy Awards will line up, but for two factors.

Firstly, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (which awards the Golden Globes) has no overlap with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which awards the Oscars). Secondly, the nomination ballots for the Academy Awards were already sent in weeks ago, so there’s no opportunity for Sunday’s wins to affect the Oscars – at least, as far as nominations go.

Still, with 2013 being the relatively weak year that it was, there is a limited pool from which to nominate movies, so a lot of the same movies will be in contention. Here’s how we at The Apple Box see tomorrow’s announcement going.

BEST PICTURE

12 Years a Slave

American Hustle

Captain Phillips

Dallas Buyers Club

Gravity

Her

Inside Llewyn Davis

Nebraska

The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST ACTOR

Bruce Dern (Nebraska)

Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)

Robert Redford (All is Lost)

Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips)

Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

BEST ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)

Sandra Bullock (Gravity)

Judi Dench (Philomena)

Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)

Daniel Brühl (Rush)

Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)

Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)

Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)

Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave)

Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)

June Squibb (Nebraska)

Oprah Winfrey (The Butler)

BEST DIRECTOR

Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)

Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips)

Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)

David O. Russell (American Hustle)

Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

American Hustle

Blue Jasmine

Her

Inside Llewyn Davis

Nebraska

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

12 Years a Slave

Before Midnight

Captain Phillips

Philomena

The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

The Croods

Despicable Me 2

Frozen

Monsters University

The Wind Rises

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

12 Years a Slave

Captain Phillips

Gravity

Inside Llewyn Davis

Prisoners

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

12 Years a Slave

American Hustle

The Great Gatsby

Inside Llewyn Davis

Saving Mr. Banks

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

20 Feet from Stardom

The Act of Killing

Blackfish

Stories We Tell

Tim’s Vermeer

BEST EDITING

American Hustle

Captain Phillips

Gravity

Rush

The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST FOREIGN-LANGAUGE FEATURE

The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium)

The Great Beauty (Italy)

The Hunt (Denmark)

The Notebook (Hungary)

Omar (Palestine)

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING

American Hustle

Bad Grandpa

Dallas Buyers Club

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

12 Years a Slave

All is Lost

The Book Thief

Gravity

Saving Mr. Banks

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

“Let it Go” (Frozen)

“Ordinary Love” (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)

“Sweeter Than Fiction” (One Chance)

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

12 Years a Slave

American Hustle

The Great Gatsby

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Saving Mr. Banks

BEST SHORT (ANIMATED)

Feral

The Missing Horse

Get a Horse!

Mr. Hublot

Subconscious Password

BEST SHORT (DOCUMENTARY)

CaveDigger

Facing Fear

The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life

Recollections

SLOMO

BEST SHORT (LIVE-ACTION)

Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me)

Dva (Two)

Helium

Record/Play

Tiger Boy

BEST SOUND EDITING

All is Lost

Captain Phillips

Gravity

Iron Man 3

Rush

BEST SOUND MIXING

12 Years a Slave

Captain Phillips

Gravity

Inside Llewyn Davis

Rush

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Gravity

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Iron Man 3

Pacific Rim

Star Trek Into Darkness

REVIEW: American Hustle

By Chris Luckett

4½ stars out of 5

Director David O. Russell has consistently made great movies in the last decade, like I Heart Huckabees and The Fighter. Last year’s Silver Linings Playbook was Russell’s best movie yet, setting the stage for his first masterpiece. American Hustle is not that movie, but it’s still remarkably good.

Photo: Columbia Pictures

Uniting cast members from Russell’s last two movies, American Hustle tells the tale of a con artist (Christian Bale), his wife (Jennifer Lawrence), his mistress (Amy Adams), and the FBI agent after him (Bradley Cooper). For good measure, Jeremy Renner is also thrown into the mix as a New Jersey mayor eager to do what it takes to revitalize Atlantic City.

The plot of the movie spins itself out of the Abscam FBI sting operation that took place in the ‘70s, which led to the arrests of half a dozen corrupt politicians. When Agent Richie Di Maso (Cooper) busts hustlers Irving Rosenfeld (Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Adams), he negotiates a deal to let them go if they help the FBI take down some bigger fish. Soon, as tends to happen in movies like this, everybody’s conning everybody.

Photo: Columbia Pictures

From a technical standpoint, American Hustle is flawless. The costumes, make-up, soundtrack, and set design are all pitch-perfect to the period, giving the movie the feel of a film that doesn’t just take place in the 1970s but feels like it was actually filmed then. The movie has a time-warp effect, completely transporting you to the “Me” decade.

The best con artist movies, however, from The Sting to Confidence, always keep the plot moving quickly. If the story slows down enough, audience members have time to start guessing how everything will end, which kneecaps the twists and double-crosses that often punctuate movies about tricksters. As long as the right hand keeps distracting someone, they won’t notice what the left hand is actually doing.

Photo: Columbia Pictures

American Hustle, by making its characters as detailed and elaborate as the plot, ends up being its own worst enemy. During slower scenes of character development wherein the plot stands still, too much time is left for audiences to piece together the ending. Russell seems so used to taking the time to fully form his characters that he forgets to keep the audience distracted with plot.

When the ending does come, it fails to leave the impact of a powerful climax. The movie seems to simply deliver its finale with a shrug and make a quick exit. So much of American Hustle is meticulously thorough, but if just some of that attention had been taken away from the characters and setting and shown instead to a more distracting plot, David O. Russell could have pulled off his greatest trick yet.

REVIEW: The Wolf of Wall Street

By Chris Luckett

4 stars out of 5

Photo: Paramount Pictures

A year before The Wolf of Wall Street came out, Leonardo DiCaprio gave one of his best performances in Django Unchained, a three-hour movie that rarely took a wrong step for the first two-and-a-half hours, but went on for 30 minutes too long. The Wolf of Wall Street suffers from the same affliction.

Adding to the list of real-life people he’s portrayed of film, DiCaprio here plays Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street stockbroker who got ridiculously rich in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s through boiler rooms and stock fraud. Belfort lived a life many millionaires envied – until Belfort’s arrogance and greed sets him up on a disastrous collision course with the FBI.

Photo: Paramount Pictures

DiCaprio gives another excellent performance as Belfort, turning him into both modern-day Jay Gatsby and a Reagan-era Walter White. Everyone else in the cast, including Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler, Margot Robbie, Rob Reiner, and Matthew McConaughey, is also top-notch. But the acting isn’t the movie’s problem.

The Wolf of Wall Street marks DiCaprio’s fifth team-up with director Martin Scorsese – after Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, and Shutter Island – and its their longest movie yet. Clocking in a minute shy of three hours, The Wolf of Wall Street is long.

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Its real problem, though, isn’t that it’s too long but that it feels long. The plot reaches a point where, as with Django Unchained, the movie could reach a natural end around the 150-minute mark, but it keeps going and eventually ends with more of a whimper than a bang.

For all the excesses of the movie, it ends up reflecting its antihero rather appropriately. As depicted by Scorsese and DiCaprio, Belfort was a man who was never satisfied with what he had and didn’t know when to cash in his chips and walk. The Wolf of Wall Street is great for most of its running time, but ultimately doesn’t know when to just call it quits. There’s a fine line between enough and too much.

SPECIAL: The Worst Movies of 2013

By Chris Luckett

2013 hasn’t had as many great movies as recent years, but it’s certainly had its share of stinkers. A Bottom Ten list doesn’t even do justice to some of the rotten pieces of cinema that have come audiences’ way in the last 12 months. As bad as Paranoia, Safe Haven, and Identity Thief may have been, they all at least had some redeemable value. The following movies did not. If you have the choice to watch one of these, refrain.

Dishonourable mentions: Pain & Gain, G.I. Joe: Retaliation

10. 21 & OVER

A tired re-tread of The Hangover – which, let’s be honest, was already a re-tread of Dude, Where’s My Car? – with three teens that feel like first-draft rejects from Project X. The plot is dumb, the jokes are puerile, and the characters are incredibly racist. If 21 & Over achieves anything, it’s leaving you with a stupidity-driven headache to rival the hangovers contained within.

9. HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS

Photo: Paramount Pictures

After The Hurt Locker, The Town, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and The Avengers, Jeremy Renner was on an unbelievable hot streak. That ended with a loud thud when this stinker limped into theatres in January. Dealing with the fairy-tale characters as grown-ups had potential, but turning them into witch hunters for hire was an incredibly bone-headed move that reeks of desperation. Jeremy Renner deserved so much better than this.

8. THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

The post-Harry Potter era is stuffed with YA adaptations, from The Hunger Games to Beautiful Creatures, but even the worst of the Twilight sequels is better than this horribly derivative and boring mess. Even when the movie occasionally gets mildly interesting, the horrendous CGI takes you right out of the experience. The Mortal Instruments book series has six entries in it. Based on this first movie, there likely won’t be five sequels.

7. MOVIE 43

A great cast does not necessarily make a great movie. DVD bargain bins are littered with dreck starring gargantuan casts of solid actors, like Valentine’s Day, North, and Rat Race. After the filmmakers managed to get Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet to film a scene for it years ago, they tricked two dozens other famous faces to film scenes and stitched them together into a horrible movie. Almost all the actors have denounced their involvement in Movie 43. If you let it eat 90 minutes of your life, so will you.

6. RIDDICK

Pitch Black was good, but not great. The Chronicles of Riddick was worse, but wasn’t completely awful. Riddick is the absolute worst of the trilogy. Every scene is derivative of scenes from much better movies, like Aliens, Jurassic Park, The Road Warrior, Starship Trooper, and even the first Pitch Black. It’s the worst movie Vin Diesel has made – and in the shadow of Babylon A.D. and The Pacifier, that’s saying something.

Photo: The Weinstein Company

5. SCARY MOVIE 5

The Scary Movie franchise has one of the worst track records in modern cinema. Even the first one, which was the best, was pretty bad. The sequels have all been terrible, but usually each had at least one or two mildly funny moments. Scary Movie 5 is the new low point for the series, with all the jokes aiming at the ground and still missing the landings.

4. GETAWAY

Remember when, as a kid, you’d go over to a friend’s house and they wanted to show you their new video game, but wouldn’t let you play and you just watched them race around and shoot without getting to participate yourself? That’s what watching Getaway feels like. Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez are ordered to commit countless crimes by an evil mastermind whose ultimate motives turn out to be so stupid, the already brainless racing movie sputters to an absolutely moronic end.

3. A HAUNTED HOUSE

It’s a truly bad year when the worst Scary Movie sequel still isn’t the worst horror-genre parody of it. After the atrocious Scary Movie 2, White Chicks, Norbit, and Little Man, Marlon Wayans’s A Haunted House continues his streak of making some of the worst excuses for comedies in the medium of film. Not a single “joke” can elicit even a smile from anyone with an IQ higher than that of a six-year-old’s. And even a six-year-old would probably find its humour too immature.

2. BATTLE OF THE YEAR

Dance movies are Guitar Hero/Rock Band games of modern cinema. They’re all basically the same, regardless of the franchise or the number at the end of the title. Battle of the Year is a new low for the sub-genre, cramming every clichéd character and plot development into a story about a breakdancing contest that involves students society has given up on, a alcoholic has-been who comes out of retirement to train them, and a climactic dance-off with every stake on the line. The movie works best as a party game, competing to guess what hackneyed line will be said next.

1. GROWN-UPS 2

Photo: Columbia Pictures

The Waterboy. Little Nicky. Eight Crazy Nights. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. Grown-Ups. Just Go with It. Jack and Jill. That’s My Boy. Grown-Ups 2 is worse than pretty much all of them. The first five minutes includes a deer urinating on Adam Sandler’s face, a teenage boy being caught masturbating in the shower by his mother, and the said deer urinating all over the naked son while his mother watches. And the other 95 minutes are even worse.