An occupational therapist (Matt Damon) who has taken care of his sickly mother and lived in the same house his whole life decides to undergo a new revolutionary procedure with his depressed wife (Kristen Wiig), have himself shrunk to the size of a french fry and live in opulence in a mini commune. Downsizing is a minor work and pointless satire, a real disappointment from Alexander Payne who, collaborating with his longtime work partner Jim Taylor, sadly seems to be phoning it in, with a whiny Damon, an incredibly irritating Hong Chau as the love interest, and feeble attempts at comedy and parody.

* out of ****

A musician (Casey Affleck) is killed in a car accident and, as a specter in a bedsheet with two eyeholes poked out, continues to haunt the house where he and his wife (Rooney Mara) lived through past, present, and future. David Lowery's A Ghost Story is pretentious, plotless, and self-satisfied filmmaking that tries to trick the audience into thinking that slow tracking shots and close-ups accompanied by sonorous chords equate to deep, meaningful art.

* out of ****

One of the many starlets (Lily Collins) on Howard Hughes's payroll lives by the stringent rules accorded by the aging, shadowy, and eccentric billionaire (Warren Beatty), which includes not dating your assigned driver and personal spy, in her case a straight-edged, business driven Christian (Alden Ehrenreich). Beatty's self-aggrandizing, first directorial effort in almost twenty years is a strange, tonally shifting, and shamefully bad screwball comedy that only conjures up memories of Scorsese's The Aviator, a vastly superior Hughes picture. Only Ehrenreich keeps the picture afloat.

* out of ****

An introverted, overly sensitive professional letter writer (Joaquin Phoenix), constantly attached to his mobile device and still reeling from his divorce, purchases a state of the art, highly perceptive, ever evolving operating system assigned with sexy and sympathetic female characteristics (voiced by Scarlett Johannson) and embarks on a bizarre and very real relationship with his new, formless partner. Spike Jonze's Her is one of the douchiest movies I've ever seen, an excruciating treatise on love in the modern world, as ineffectual types mope about in their skinny jeans on their cell phones and whine incessantly about their feelings. Appealing actors, in a cast that also includes Amy Adams and Rooney Mara, do what they can with Jonze's maddening screenplay, which could have undergone a few rewrites, preferably by his former working partner Charlie Kaufman. So instead of an intelligent cerebral take on modern relationships in a technology fixated culture, what we are left with instead is little more than a two hour and six minute iPhone commercial.

A Laundromat owner (a balding, pot bellied Christian Bale), with a needy wife (Jennifer Lawrence) and son at home, and his insinuating partner (Amy Adams) have perfected the art of the small con, until that is they get busted by an overly tenacious government agent (Bradley Cooper) who coerces them to use their talents in taking down a good-natured politician (Jeremy Renner) among a number of other public servants and organized crime figures. After assembling a superlative cast of A-listers and a nice little recent hot streak in The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell has found it opportune to sneak in American Hustle, a confounded, imperceptible, half-cooked con artist caper which barely contains one successfully carried out idea and even less laughs in what really amounts to the director's attempts to infuse his own blend of manic comedy into a deliberate restaging of Goodfellas. I spent half the movie wondering what its talented though misguided cast was attempting to do and the other half imploring the picture, with its interminable pace and slew of false endings, to conclude. The real hustle though, the success of which has been evident in year end critics' lists and sure to follow box office and award season glory, is that Russell's film is not only worth 138 excruciating minutes of your time but also one of the greatest films of the year.

High school sweethearts (Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg), now married and in their 30s, decide to separate and see other people, while still attempting to stay close and live together. Celeste and Jesse Forever is another obnoxious and vacuous romantic comedy from a few of the young actors who continue to pollute the genre with a style of comedy that has been stale for years with the worst part about it being that they think they are creating great art. By the time the movie arrived at its emotional climax, I wasn't even aware a story was being told at which point I turned on the reverse counter display of my DVD because counting down the remaining seconds was infinitely more interesting than anything going on onscreen.

In a London flat in 2006, a woman's decomposing body was discovered three years after her death, with the television still on and unwrapped Christmas presents under the tree. The film then alternates between reports on the incident to interviews with friends and coworkers, most of whom have seemingly no idea who this woman was. Dreams of a Life hopes to make a profound statement on loneliness and getting lost in the rush of the big city, but after its bizarrely intriguing news story setup, the documentary goes absolutely nowhere with a dense narrative structure and interviews lacking any insight whatsoever in a pretentious film that thinks it goes way deeper than it actually does.

A stickup artist (Al Pacino) is released as a geriatric after an extended prison stint. Reuniting with his best friend and partner in crime (Christopher Walken), the two pull an all nighter where they visit a cathouse, blow prescription drugs, spring their former wheelman (Alan Arkin) from a nursing facility, and rescue a damsel in distress, all before 10AM at which point the partner is expected to put two in the back of his recently sprung buddy's head per request of the local crime boss. With "Stand Up Guys", not only does Pacino continue his descent into *current* acting irreverence, but he pulls Walken and Arkin into the maelstrom with him (not that they need much pulling given stretches in their track records). This is a putrid, half-handed film, with a script that was sent through the cliche script factory and sent through once more for good measure. 

The inept son (Will Ferrell) of a Mexican rancher becomes entangled with a local crime lord (Gael Garcia Bernal) when his ne'er do well brother (Diego Luna) enters into the barbarous man's debt. What may have seemed like an amusing idea in conception, having Ferrell genuinely injected into a Spanish language, quasi low budget film, results in a paper thin, one-joke 4 minute SNL sketch, laughless at that, stretched out to feature length. This film along with "The Campaign", his other feature release from last year, finally made me jump on the bandwagon and admit that I've grown tired of Ferrell's antics (though he, along with Kristin Wiig, was a sole moment of comic relief at the Globes last night). Although "Casa de mi padre" is not a good example of his overdone film persona, it is an instance of him running an idea into the ground, no matter how confounded and unfunny it may be.

Season 2
Freddie returns from his lengthy sabbatical with a Parisian bride in tow, much to Bel's consternation, while a false accusation and wrongful arrest of Hector leads to a multilayered corruption probe used as fodder for their nightly news program. The followup series of "The Hour" is an artificial, self-important bit of faux artistry compounded by the fact that it is an absolute and dreadful bore. After slogging my way through what is a relatively short but inexplicably interminable season, I have no intention of tuning in for the next series of broadcasts.
0 Stars

Season 1

During the midst of the Suez Crisis, an irascible young reporter (Ben Whishaw) investigates the curious suicide of a childhood chum, while his friend and colleague (Romola Garai) makes the preparations for her new news program, which features a charming cad (Dominic West) who comes up short when it comes to investigative journalistic ability. "The Hour" is a remarkably photographed historical drama created by Abi Morgan, which is clearly inspired by "Mad Men" and that series' historically particular sensibilities. Garai contributes fine work as the balancing point between two very different men: West who is excellent, and Whishaw who is mostly excellent, but can be hard to stomach at points. Despite the fine elements the series has to offer, it feels awfully slight in terms of plot, and you often get the feeling the creators believe they are providing a much more intriguing chronicle than they actually are.

** 1/2

Jean Valjean, the hero of Victor Hugo's expansive 1862 novel, goes from decrepit ex-con, to reformed small town business magnate, and back to fugitive from the law while caring for an ailing prostitute and her young daughter and dodging a dogged police inspector throughout revolutionary France (how's that for summing up a 1,463 page book in less than 50 words?) in this screen adaptation of the enduring Broadway musical. "Les Misérables" is a highly anticipated project, and when reviews began to pour in ranging from lukewarm to scathing, I began to prepare my "musicals are a highly subjective genre" review. Now I realize this is not a case of a bad movie, though it is that, but rather a poor stage-to-screen adaptation. There are so many things wrong with the film, but they begin with the music. Director Tom Hooper has been roundly commended for his decision to film his actor's singing live, rather than in a studio post-filming, but this decision does nothing to aid the film, which should be a primary concern, and voices and sound come off as flat, inaudible, and unimpressive. Hugh Jackman has never been any great shakes as an actor and despite his background in musical theater, his voice is all wrong for Valjean. Russell Crowe would have been ideally suited to the role of Javert, but since this is an almost exclusive singing outing, he comes off poorly with, again, a voice ill-suited to the role. Anne Hathaway, who has been generating awards buzz, is again way too much and may as well have been belting, "Please Give Me The Oscar" during her "I Dreamed a Dream" number. Hooper's intimate, close-up heavy mise-en-scene (which I thought would have played well) is disorienting and not conducive to the material. Also, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen turn up in recurring anachronistic roles which serve only as a reminder to "Sweeney Todd", a far superior musical rendering. I wanted to love this movie, I really did. I liked a filmed stage version I had watched prior and have listened to the original soundtrack, but this movie left me feeling disconnected from the characters and their interrelationships and, sadly, it instilled in me a moderate hatred for the material.

In a parking garage overlooking the Pittsburgh Pirates playing field, a sniper methodically readies himself, notes five targets, seemingly random people enjoying their lunch break, and proceeds to pick them off one by one. A crack investigator (David Oyelowo) immediately nabs a suspect (Joseph Sikora) who, just before being beaten into a coma during a jail transport, requests the presence of Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), a military policeman with every decoration imaginable, who is currently off the grid. Once arriving on his own accord, the mysterious M.P. teams up with the suspect's defense attorney (Rosamund Pike) and begins to unravel the very minute shreds of evidence in an otherwise perfect cover-up. Director Christopher McQuarrie's "Jack Reacher" plays like it was written by the smartest hillbilly in the hunting lodge, composed of an endless barrage of bro-offs, pissing contests, and needlessly complicated plotting consisting of harebrained government and corporate conspiracies. Tom Cruise is thoroughly unconvincing (I think he had more credibility as the would be Hitler assassin in the McQuarrie penned "Valkyrie") as the hero of Lee Childs' (actually a Brit) popular series and it's curious why, at the age of 50 and with the ability to write his own ticket, he would resign himself to a dime novel series like this (the 18th Jack Reacher book is due out next year). Also being scathed in this debacle is Pike, who seems very sweet and has been very good in other films, but comes off as insipid. Also Richard Jenkins and Robert Duvall, unfortunately, add almost nothing to the proceedings. I was grateful (actually, a little disheartened) for the presence of Werner Herzog playing the shadowy dead-eyed villain who had to bite off his fingers to avoid frostbite in a Siberian prison, and now exacts the same injustice on his victims. "Jack Reacher" is a cheap, shameful, and self-satisfied picture that is all set-up and no pay-off. It's like a version of "Jaws" where Brody hunts down the mayor and his corporate thugs, Quint and Hooper square off in a fight to the death, and we never see the shark.

The crime rate in New York City has risen by over 400% and officials have decided to turn Manhattan into an penal colony, erecting a 50 foot wall around the island and lining it with explosives and armed policemen. Now nine years in the future, Air Force One has been hijacked en route to a peace conference, forcing the President to abandon the craft in his escape pod, leaving him to be taken hostage by the ruthless inhabitants of the colony. Now the only hope of freeing the president, and thus brokering world peace, is special forces convict Snake Plissken who's solo mission is to locate and extract the president before the conclusion of the police summit some 23 hours later. John Carpenter's "Escape from New York" beings with a compelling and promising 20-minute set-up which, as soon as Kurt Russell lands on the World Trade Center, at which point the film devolves immediately into an uninspired, vapid work where virtually nothing works and all the fun and life is sucked completely out of the film. As Plissken, Russell barely seems to be awake and sleepwalks his way through this bafflingly iconic role. Donald Pleasance is terribly miscast as the president and Ernest Borgnine is completely wasted in an underused role. Lee Van Cliff is strong as the hard edged police commissioner, but his role is quickly diminished, and I also liked Harry Dean Stanton, whose performance as a sketchy underworld leader is about the only thing element that breathes life into the final 85 minutes of this film. Carpenter is a wildly hit or miss director who has made his fair share of both veritable masterpieces and bonafide turkeys. The one has no place in being mentioned with the former.

In 1994, Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act, becoming the first state to legalize assisted suicide. In this documentary, the current state of the euthanasia debate is examined while we are introduced to several terminally ill patients who take their own lives right on screen. "How to Die in Oregon" is a shameless documentary that seeks to brutalize and guilt you towards its side, but never feels like anything other than a "Faces of Death" video. I do not wish to go on a euthanasia rant but, being a raised Catholic, it is very hard to approach this subject objectively and sadly, neither can the filmmakers.

In turn of the 20th century Dublin, a butler goes so unnoticed in a luxurious hotel that he is almost nonexistent. Soon it is revealed that the servant is actually a woman who has perpetuating this ruse for over 30 years, but now her secret is threatened to be exposed when it is discovered by a boarding painter. Instead, the painter also turns out to be a woman, inspiring the butler to fulfill her dream of opening to cigar shop and romancing the young and flighty maid! "Albert Nobbs" is an incredulous film from Rodrigo Garcia, a director who masters in soppy material. Not one moment of the film bears any semblance of authenticity and even worse the whole thing is played with a grave solemnity. Glen Close, who was unfortunately nominated for an Oscar after an egregious add campaign, doesn't succeed as a woman playing a man but rather as a woman playing an amorphous creature with no discernible features or characteristics. The likewise unfathomably nominated Janet McTeer also does not succeed as a woman playing a man but rather as a woman playing a screen gnashing lumbering man with breasts whom we are also supposed to take as genuine. Add this to the fact that we are supposed to believe that these two creatures met in 1900 Ireland and that no one around them even questioned them adds even more to the film's massing absurdity. "Albert Nobbs" isn't just a bad movie. It is also an insulting one and even more so in how its makers and stars have passed it off as good.

Henry (Keanu Reeves) is a reticent tollbooth worker who seems to have checked out mentally, to the point that he doesn't even realize he is the wheelman for a bank heist. While serving out his term, he meets an equally complacent fellow inmate (James Caan) who somehow instills a grain of hope within him. Upon release, Henry discovers a secret tunnel used by bootleggers during Prohibition that runs from the bank he supposedly knocked off to a neighboring theater. A flash of inspiration hits and after convincing his pal to take his parole seriously, the duo insinuate themselves into a production of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard and the live of its demanding star (Vera Farmiga). On paper, "Henry's Crime" reads like pure delight: a crackling crime caper with a clever twist. Throw in actors Caan, Farmiga, and the occasionally charming Reeves, and you've got yourself a knockout. Not so much. Director Malcolm Venville's approach to the material is all wrong, opting for a fanciful interpretation directing his actors to play way over-the-top except for Reeves who is imitating a zombie. Caan is hard to take in an overly Yiddish performance and Farmiga's performance is surprisingly hammy. I really wanted to like this film. I thought the developments with Chekov's play could have been outstanding, but not in the way the film presents them.

A young girl in hospital garbs frantically runs through a southern forest to a decrepit old house which she promptly burns to the ground. She is then picked up by the local authorities and returned to the high risk psychiatric ward where she has to deal with the unfriendly staff and patients as well as ominous ghostly visions which continually haunt her. Now with the help of a caring yet suspicious doctor, she tries to figure out the dark secret behind her institutionalization. Watching a film as inept as "The Ward", one finds it hard to believe it was directed by "master of terror" John Carpenter who has directed such revered horror outings as "Halloween" and "The Thing". This film generates no concern for its heroine, which is vital to a film like this, and employs a plot device which came as unexpected, not out of cleverness, but because it had been done before so inanely that I did not think anyone would be stupid enough to employ. it again. Hence, it comes off atrociously and this film becomes not only a miss for Carpenter but a putrid waste of 90 minutes.