Adam Donaldson
1) Under the Skin
Jonathan Glazer continues his filmmaking trend to confound and amaze with Under the Skin, the touching and creepy tale of an alien seductress who trolls the streets of a city in Scotland looking for virile young men to… Um. That’s not exactly explained, but it’s gross and beautiful at the same time. The hypnotic intersection of the alluring and the frightening is what drives Under the Skin, a rare movie that presumes a) you’re either smart enough to follow along without exposition, or b) that you’re objective enough not to mind being lead around without any clue or hint as what’s coming next, or where the story’s going.
As a bonus, Under the Skin achieves on two counts, the technical and the artistic. Glazer had to develop new technology to allow for the film’s cinéma vérité inspired first half, as a number of regular everyday Scotsmen find themselves unwitting co-stars. The (un)lucky few who end up heading back to the alien lair are toast, but the audience are treated to lush photography and simple but effective “how’d-they-do-that” camera effects that sells the alienness of the situation in a way that’s not overly elaborate.
But the real credit for Under the Skin’s success is Scarlett Johansson, who as the film’s unnamed protagonist is required to be robotic and expressive, both emotionally and physically naked, and by portraying something other-worldly while instilling characteristics we can all recognize. Johansson might have a pretty face, but Under the Skin deftly and permanently proves to her critics that she’s far more than that.
2) The Grand Budapest Hotel
Although it sounds like something tailor made for the DVD cover, I’ll go right ahead and say it anyway: The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson’s best since Rushmore. Maybe his best ever. I’d have to go back and re-watch both Rushmore and Fantastic Mr. Fox before passing judgment, but it might not be too much to say that it’s Anderson’s best yet. Why? Thank Ralph Fiennes. He may be one of those actors, like Bill Murray, that really gets Anderson’s aesthetic and attacks it with exuberance. Fiennes’ portrayal of Gustave H, the cultured and courteous concierge of the titular establishment, is the glue that holds Anderson’s madcap romp of a thousand characters together.
Of course, “madcap” is relative. Anderson has produced here what is more likely to be described as a black comedy, one so dark that it wears its gallows humor so well that it makes you to look into the ugly face of war and dares you not to laugh. Some have interpreted Anderson’s aesthetic as cold and distant, but I think he’s so sentimental that his longing for a bygone age can never be fulfilled, and so he realizes that longing in films so meticulously designed that movie theaters are sent specs for optimum projection. True, there are some dark turns and some dark inferences in The Grand Budapest Hotel, but the lesson is that we, like Gustave H., can offer some faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.
3) The Lego Movie
This movie… Should. Not. Work. It should be everything we hate about modern filmmaking with a brand name, media crossover potential and “four-quadrant appeal,” not to mention the fact that it’s based on a line of toy building blocks. Leave it to directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord to take lemons and make delicious fruit punch with The Lego Movie, a jovial, energetic and maddeningly creative kids movie that has enough fun and zaniness for six films while juggling some surprisingly adult themes.
What works? What doesn’t work?! Our supposedly ordinary hero Emmet brought to life with tremendous glee by Chris Pratt. Will Ferrell’s brilliantly over the top villainy as Lord Business, (and his unexpected but delightful cameo). The biggest collection of licensed characters brought together in one film since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The purposely bland yet still addictive ditty “Everything is Awesome!” The hilariously misidentified “artifacts” like The Kragl and the Sword of Exact-Zero. Really though, the amazing part is that Lord and Miller took a project that could have simply been a 90-minute toy commercial and turned it into a fable about the power of creativity, the limitations of conformity, and that you’re never too old to learn how to share.
Rarely is a movie so genuinely delightful, and unapologetically so.
4) Only Lovers Left Alive
Vampires are done, right? Twilight went out with a whimper, True Blood is hobbling to the finish line, and The Vampire Diaries is spinning around an endless maze of its own mythology that occasionally intersects with a revolving door of dead characters brought back to life. And then there’s Jim Jarmusch. Thank God! His vampires don’t pine for teenagers they think they’ve fallen in love with at first sight. They don’t get a work around where they can hang out in daylight. They are creatures of the night, and what music they make. Literally. Because one of the vampires in Only Lovers Left Alive is a musician.
Tom Hiddleston easily shakes off the eager super-villainy of his Avengers character to play the much more melancholic Adam, who lives in a Detroit neighborhood that’s been vacated by all but himself. Tilda Swinton brings her decidedly other-worldly charm to Eve, Adam’s wife of several hundred years who comes to the Motor City in the hopes of releasing Adam from his omnipresent ennui. Adam and Eve’s perceptions on the fall of civilization are echoed by the eerily empty streets and buildings of Detroit, as the film makes you truly think about what kind of terrible miracle immortality might be. Is there life after you’ve seen everything, done everything, and said everything? Can you still be surprised, or are the occasionally surprises even predictable because of life’s limited number of options. A thinking person’s vampire movie? Perish the thought.
5) The Unknown Known
He’s the documentary subject you want to hate, but can’t help but to love: Donald Rumsfeld. The former Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush is grilled by filmmaker Errol Morris about all aspects of his career, from his days as an advisor to Richard Nixon after Watergate broke, to his policies on war and military prisoners during his years at the Pentagon. It makes a nice bookend with The Fog of War, another Errol Morris’ interview with a former Secretary of Defense, specifically Robert McNamara. But while Fog was about regret, Unknown is… not.
If you’re one of the majority who saw the Iraq War as an adventure in hubris, over-reaching, and misspent power and authority, and you’re expecting any sense of contrition from one of its main architects, sorry, this movie will not give you what you want. Still, Rumsfeld is a charming and well-spoken subject, and the fact that you came in wanting to see him hung by his own petard makes you hate to love him and love to hate him all the more. This is not a show trial, and I’m not sure that was Morris’ intent, but like any good documentary it challenges your perceptions and shows you something you’ve never considered. In this case, a human being named Donald Rumsfeld.