Extra: A Few Films For You
By
Leonard Zwelling
It was way too cold and rainy to play golf. Thus, the
movies! Here are three we saw this
weekend worthy of a look.
Interstellar-This movie is
big. No, really big. We saw it on IMAX and that wasn’t big enough. But it is
not the sets, sound or locations that make it big. It’s the ideas and they come
at you very quickly. Get ready for relativity. Einstein kind and
father-daughter kind. The premise is that Earth is dying and mankind has to
find someplace else either by lifting all of us into orbit or taking some of us
through a worm hole to the other side of the universe. I told you it was BIG. I
will not spoil any of it. It is not a great film because the dialogue between
the real people doesn’t sound all that real and some of the ideas are less than
fully explained, but on the whole the conceit at the film’s center is so
audacious it is worth the wait for the last half hour is truly amazing. 3 ½
stars
Birdman-From outer space
to inner space as Michael Keaton, Edward Norton and Emma Stone do their absolute
best work in a movie about how a film star tries to become an ACTOR on Broadway
while coming to grips with himself, his movie past and his parenting past. This
film is wholly unlike Interstellar yet both films explore highly unknown
territory in magical ways. I loved this movie and suspect it will be high on
Oscar’s list in several categories. 5 stars
Nightcrawler-Playing the
creepiest guy to grace the underbelly of LA since Willem Defoe and William
Petersen competed as crook and cop in To Live and Die in LA, Jake Gyllenhaal is
a loner with a video camera looking to make his place in the world by beating
the police to the scenes of mayhem on California’s freeways and convenience
store robberies. Renee Russo is the over the hill news producer looking for a
break to hold on to her job at the last place local LA market TV station by
buying the video for “if it bleeds, it leads” on local TV news. This film is a
revelation for the actors all disappear into their roles and are no longer
movie stars (as opposed to the other two films, particularly the first where
only Jessica Chastain remembers to be believable) and the set-up for the big
finish is, as son Richard noted, right out of Hitchcock. An unexpected pleasure
that I felt no guilt in loving. 5 stars
Enjoy your popcorn.
