Birdman

All the world's a stage, and all upon it merely players.  We proceed telescopically from our past, our perceptions, and our interactions.  We wander the maze of back stage warrens until we emerge.

Birdman is billed as a comedy.  Certainly, there are wry moments of irony, visual and verbal humorous juxtapositions, references that tickle. But a comedy? Nah. More like a teetering ride on a vertiginous edge.

This film percolates for days.  Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu redefines "costume drama" to include Speedos in a (rented) sun bed, layers of wigs and toupees, and superheroes in Times Square.

The sound editing is incredibly deft, with the sure beat of drummer Brian Blades for the pulse of life on the edge.  The cast is splendid.  Michael Keaton and Edward Norton inhabit roles worth their skills, due to an intelligent and layered script.  Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki seamlessly conveys the maze of back stage warrens as we leap into our roles.

Boyhood

Ah, the swift arrow of time, and the fleeting connections we make on that flight! This is the poignant and essential subject of Boyhood.  Richard Linklater wrote and directed this exquisitely quiet film experience in the time flow of 12 years.  The river of time, the persistence of change, the utter impossibility of resistance to the waves of life, are depicted with the grace and credibility of actual time passing for the actors and the characters depicted.

Some other more Hollywood directors would have applied formulaic structure.  Linklater had the courage and confidence to allow life to supersede drama.

All performances in Boyhood are nuanced and true.  Life happens, moments pass, we change just by living.

It's always now.

The Only Lovers Left Alive

Jim Jarmusch films typically weave skeins of dark and quiet with musical threads in the weft.  He allows time. The Only Lovers Left Alive redefines dark, quiet, time (and potentially music) by depicting a very long term conversation, an undying love.

Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are two stylish, sophisticated vampires, married to one another and deeply conversational for centuries.  They don't always reside in the same location.  After all, they have had, and will have (with care), millennia to explore being together and apart.  Their longevity is much due to passionate interests in literature, music and one another.  They are inspired to continue because life is worth living.

I could not take my eyes from this film for a second.  The exquisitely low lighting, rich fabrics, visual texture, shiny eyes, and elastic slow moments are enchanting.  The dance of time and love as extended over long experience is languorously and intelligently observed. There is wry insight and sharp humor.

The original soundtrack, plus Detroit classics, paces the film perfectly. Literary and musical references amuse and abound.  Tilda dancing in her moth eaten robes to "Trapped by a Thing Called Love" has an immortality all its own.

The beautiful script (by Jarmusch, of course), the cast, vision and sound make this a delicious neo-Gothic swoon. How can I join this rather exclusive vampire club?  Like the stylish vampires depicted, I have had it with the zombies.

American Hustle

There is a joyous thrilling complexity to American Hustle that is nearly unknown in current cinema.  David O. Russell directs.  He co-wrote the smart and sure script with Eric Singer.  During the entire compelling, tight wire dance, character credibility remains consistent, albeit marvelously layered.  The ensemble cast carries this off with astonishing skill.

Christian Bale engages and endears even through tinted aviators and a randomly elaborate comb over.  And now, I must digress into the hair.  There is said comb over, with glued hair piece; a pompadour; the coke-head's obsessive tiny rollers; hair piled and streaked;  tresses curled and crimped.  Hair deserves a credit in this film, as it is practically a character.

Amy Adams plays a sharp bright beam of coppery intention.  Bradley Cooper gets to go bright eyed as the intensely manic wild card.   Jennifer Lawrence plays the wily shimmering goddess of chaos to perfection.  You may never hear "Live and Let Die" the same way again, or be able to dust the house without it.

The use of music is both flawless and memorable, a rare combination.  Camera work manages to be intimate without being intrusive. There is humor, but not at anyone's expense.  There is tenderness, but suggested not indulged.  There is a confidence in connections between humans and all the complexity that connection involves and reveals.

See it for the hair, the humor, the hustle.  Just see it.

Inside Llewyn Davis

The typically inscrutable Coen brothers give us this shaggy dog tale in which the cat wags the tail, little is revealed, and Homer via the Old Testament reigns supreme.  Cue the Coen views of heavy deities and wry dry humor.

The content and composition of this story are at curiously wry odds.  Although the title suggests we will comprehend the inner workings of said Llewyn Davis,  provided insights are peripheral and momentary.  It's like Groundhog Day with Homer in charge, many deities behind desks, and portents of gloom.

Sepia tones and winter light inform the journeys depicted over several days in pre-feminist, pre-AIDS, pre Vietnam conflict protests in 1961 NYC.  Our hero is quite short of heroic, and nears Job in his troubles, mostly self inflicted.  Poor choices by our protaganist abound.

Production design and cinematography are as usual superb.  T.Bone Burnett oversees the music with reliable skill.

There are quietly humorous moments:  John Goodman as an obese jazz musician with extra chins and a deplorable hair piece gives a deliciously distracting rant.  Llewyn's manager and his manager's short elderly secretary have an amusing interchange worthy of Woody Allen.  F.Murray Abraham plays folk music impressario Bud Grossman with grave still seriousness.  We wait for Dylan to appear on the scene, and he does, briefly, in background visuals and sound.  The future obviously does not include Llewyn Davis.

Whatever the pointlessness points to eludes me.  Although I left the film dissatisfied, various details and scenes continued to unfurl in my brain.

The cat was very well played.

Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen's homage to and update of Tennesse Williams' " A Streetcar Named Desire",  is his finest, most well written and constructed film in many years.  Cate Blanchett as Jasmine deserves not only an Oscar but every possible prize for a complex and deeply credible depiction of a woman de-laminating into personal chaos.  She manages, with a terrific script, to evoke sympathy, horror, dismay, disgust and sadness, often all in a single scene.  Her mad soliloquies set a new standard for depiction of complete meltdowns in a world gone wrong.

The script deftly examines the complexity of human relationships without flinching from areas of class conflicts, self concepts gone awry, and the current economic divides.  Woody Allen has taken a classic piece of American theater into present day with moments of wry humor and an intelligent sense of tragedy.

Sally Hawkins as Ginger, Jasmine's sister in tragedy from another viewpoint, plays her character with nuance and subtle expression.  Ginger has strength as a struggling single mother that Jasmine, a fallen Park Avenue matron,  both mocks and seeks.  The scenes between the two of them resonate deeply.

All supporting cast members are wonderful:  Peter Saarsgard, Alec Baldwin, Andrew Dice Clay and Bobby Cannavale.

Not a wrong note is sounded.  Set design, costume choices, music, camera movement are all in tune for a story that hits all the beats with near perfection.

Woody Allen produces a film annually to maintain his own tenuous sanity.  I would happily endure his less than fine efforts of recent years for a film of this depth and skill every decade.

The Grandmaster

I have been eager to see The Grandmaster.  I enjoy director Wong Kar Wai's stylized moodiness, Tony Leung's handsome and inscrutable half smile, and film version kung fu fighting.  Kung fu looks like ballet with impact to me, and with lots of potential chaos to boot.

Despite all the feet featured, including a fighter with bound feet, the film falls short of finding reliable footing.  Nonetheless, the visuals are gorgeous, with all the noir detail and painterly composition.  Other than a single beautiful scene on a snowy spring day, the conditions are always dark and rainy.  The puddles provide plenty of reflective surfaces, lamp light makes faces glow, and the slow motion splashes become music video cinematic.

The fight scenes are exquisitely choreographed by the kung fu film master Woo Ping Yuen.  One fight adjacent to a still train that begins moving with increasing speed behind the action seems to bring the very concept of time under question.  Alterations in film speed for the fight scenes demand focus and suspension of disbelief.  When "real time" resumes, our perceptions are changed.

The music is, suitably, often operatic.  The percussion of fists and feet become their own tonal soundtrack. Language alternates between 2 dialects:  Mandarin for the northern kung fu groups, Cantonese for the southern.  The dialect variation adds texture to character depiction; listen for the shifts.

Tony Leung and ZiYi Zhang are lovely to watch as they linger in stillness then erupt into action.  Of course, this is Wong Kar Wai writing and directing, so love is bittersweet, defeats multiply like raindrops, and even the dead are beautiful.

The thematic footing of The Grandmaster seem a bit operatically bound even when the visuals soar.  Time is disjointed, seasons jump sequence, actions begin with a glance, and then we have the rise and fall of historical events. It's a leap to keep up and make sense of much of this.  Perhaps that is his intention, to keep us moving while we wonder.