Whisky Tango Foxtrot

Afghanistan unsurprisingly has been 'done' a fair bit on screen over the decade or more, but this movie doesn't do the big badda boom badge of honour action, but focuses on the lives, interactions, and mindsets of war correspondents and the people around them, within a context of light drama with (for me at least) laugh out loud moments, and does it rather well, despite the director team of  Glen Ficarra and John Requa having previously given us the soul numbing ‘Bad Grandpa’ There is a sensitive balance in tension between the seriousness and ridiculousness of reporting on armed conflict without it turning into Boo Ra!  or ‘War Inc’ pastiche, and it has something serious to say about major news services treating conflicts as fashionable commodity. It also shows, and I know ‘cos I’ve met a couple, what an utterly bonkers lot conflict journo’s are.

The storyline? Well jaundiced copy editor chucks herself into the void to escape the walls closing in, wonders briefly what the fuck she’s done, and then chases the big story. Big story nailed, she hangs in and racks up some scare miles until eventually realizing that no one in the big comfy news media offices gives a flying Taliban anymore unless it’s a biiii………iiiiiiiiiiig story. Throw in a bit of romance, some mad soldiery, droolly politicians, and warlordiness… and that’s your Kofta’s served.
Tina Fey? Well I've seen her in a few light comedies that have not exactly set my synapses on fire, but .with her particular brand of wide eyed neurosis she carries the lead in this one well enough. Margo Robbie is solid. Billy Bob Thornton continues his 'second wind' as a serious actor and gives superb sarky military in this one, and

Add caption

Martin Freeman surprises in a relatively un-type loose limbed performance, even if his Scots accent was a bit…erm…odd. The stand out for me though is Christopher Abbott (who I must confess I know little about) as Afghan guide/security man Fahim, in a remarkably nuanced performance. An actor to watch out for I reckon. The only casting blip is the choice of Alfred Molina as an Afghan minister. Seen him do some fine work previously but so miscast here it almost seems he is in a different movie to everyone else.
Where this movie really wins out is scripting and pace. There is no fat here, and I found myself engaged throughout. All in all maybe not a must see, but if you do come across it? It’s worth a punt 

The Program

Well Lance Armstrong did say they would make a movie about him one day, but I suspect he anticipated just a wee bit more creative control over its content and tone at the time. What we get here is Lance becoming a Wewy wewy bad boy, apparently because he was the wrong shape to be a wewy wewy good boy, and all of this while battling cancer, and being determined to be dressed in a very unflattering shade of yellow. To be honest I don't think it would have bothered the distributors either way, but this flick sure didn’t do the cause any favours. Interesting story cobbled by rather lacklustre and uneven tele-movie scripting, and cinematography that simply doesn’t do the subject justice. Now I’m no cycling nut, but I have seen live coverage and docu footage of Tour that is absolutely thrilling. These shots are so flat they almost level the sneckin’ Alps. There are a whole bunch of Stephen Frears directed movies I like bigly, and his name on top was a reason I picked this up. Boy does he mislay a testicle on this one.

 There are a few deviations from the Armstrong story we may have picked up through some kind of tabloid cultural osmosis, even if we thought a peloton was a slightly comedic lookin’ bird   For example Cheryl Crow fans might be disappointed that she has been washed out of the tale, though I’m pretty damned sure the lady herself ensured she wasn’t mortified on celluloid. Every day might be a winding road, but who the hell needs to build their own chicanes?

Ben Foster plays speedy speedo Lance, but despite the promo’s hailing the performance as ‘gripping’ the only things being gripped in this is the occasional handlebar and syringe.  Chris O’Dowd is up as doggedly persistent journo nemesis David Walsh, but despite his best efforts I don’t feel he was the best casting for the role, while why Dustin Hoffman agreed to be in this initially baffled me, but then I remembered that Mr. Mumbles agreed to be in 'The Cobbler' and 'The Fokkers' movies, and realized that he can do all this stuff in second gear

This movie kinda sucks. Not in a big shouty way, but in that way that sneaks up on you about 15 minutes in, just long enough to resent the shit out of it for not being so bad that someone warned you…

One More Time

Seems to have been a mini run of movies centred around elderly washed up singers recently, but unlike the lamentable Al Pacino three wheeled clown wagon 'Danny Collins', this movie pretty much nails it. The always good value Chris Walken plays slimy crooner Paul Lombard on the crotchety zimmer comeback trail, but the movie revolves around pinky haired slacker emo thirty something daughter Jude, played to great effect by Amber Heard. The flick is not big on story but essentially it's a family study of a small-time celebrity tribe limping along through the ongoing effects of crooner dad's rank egocentricity, swinging along with Dean Martinesque tunes and such an ambiguous moral compass he could be stood on the north pole.
Walken is perfect for the role, Heard handles herself well, and Oliver Platt (The long suffering manager) is solid. It's a shame though that 'other' sister Corrine, played very angsty and ably by Kelli Garner, is not given more airtime as a counterpoint to Jude/Heard's flip flop character.
If you are into people movies this one is worth checking out. I certainly found it good value, and it has a cracking musical soundtrack as well 

Inception

Why not think it over boys and join our incept nation?

So sang Adam Ant many, many years before Christopher Nolan came up with the original idea for Inception. Almost. And I agree with the lunatic king of the wild frontier, why not think it over? But then I do think it over and my head gets all filled up with crazy twisted cityscapes and fruitbat French actresses and I need to have a bit of a lie down.

Leonardo DiCaprio touches his hair a lot. It's either meant to signify something meta in the way kooky mannerisms are used to add layers to characterisation in French New Wave movies, or it's a Leo device for staying in character. The latter, I think, but forgivable. As is Nolan's habit of working with certain stars on a regular basis. I'm happy seeing Cillian Murphy and Marion Cotillard turn up to add their highbrow slant on this acting business and think Joseph Gordon-Levitt does his best work for Nolan.

It's not Nolan-by-Numbers, though. Far from it. It's a mindfuck, layer under layer, special effect thrill ride garnished with a strident score, those near-perfect Tom Hardy features, knowing winks to (literally) labyrinthine mythology such as Ellen Page's character's name and beeyooteefull scenery.

If you've seen it you know what it's about and don't need me to tell you. If you haven't seen it you're a twonk and me telling you about the film won't ever change that. I mean, seriously, it's practically the movie of the century so far when it comes to visual and screenplay innovation and you haven't even bothered to catch up with it yet? I despair, I really do.

Bet you've never even listened to Adam and the Ants either. Philistine.

Birdman

Michael Keaton plays a man who thinks he's Charlie Parker...No he doesn't, he plays an actor who used to play an action hero. Wow, like crazy art and life imitating one another shit here because Michael Keaton did once play an action hero, Batman. Oh right, that's probably why writer and director Iñárittu cast him.

Riggan Thomson has been through personal and career ups and downs since hanging up his winged cape a couple of decades previously and is trying to revive both aspects of his life with an ambitious Broadway production of a Raymond Carver short story which he's adapted, directs and stars in.

Onstage drama isn't enough, of course, so his current girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) is in the cast and his recently out of rehab daughter (Emma Stone) is his personal assistant. The female lead (Naomi Watts) seems stable until the addition of her talented but arrogant boyfriend (Ed Norton) to the play highlights the fault lines in everybody's personalities. But hey, what a cast. And that's without mentioning Zach Galifianakis who suits this smarter, cerebral style of comedy far more than the gross-out crap he usually associates himself with.

Did I mention Riggan is pestered by an inner monologue which has the voice of and eventually takes the physical form of his old superhero character? Well he does, so clearly he's not entirely well in the brain place.

Norton's compelling but brutal approach to the play ensures the uptake for preview shows is full but another spectral figure haunts Riggan, one other people can see: an influential old bag of a reviewer (Lindsay Duncan). She hates the play without even seeing it because for her it represents everything that is wrong with modern theatre - untrained screen celebrities taking up hallowed stages with vanity projects in a bid to prove they are serious actors.

Is that what Riggan's doing? His personal Birdman critic berates him for the same reasons so somewhere inside he must fear that these are his motives. Norton's insistence on reality within the piece urges Keaton further and further away from cosy notions of a small stage success but also possibly further away from sanity.

Iñárittu makes the movie look like it's one long continuous shot, adding to its theatricality and immediacy but the trick wouldn't work without powerful performances from all. While Naomi Watts seems somewhat underused and thus more of a cypher than a character her commitment to the role even manages to turn that into a reflection of theatre land. Norton is as confusingly full of rage and underlying impotence as he is in all his great performances from American History X to Fight Club.

Emma Stone is the woman of the moment. Well her and Jennifer Lawrence but Emma can actually act. Like Watts she manages to paint a relatively small canvas with huge brush strokes and conjure up possibly the finest work I've seen her do (no, I haven't yet seen La La Land. Shut up, already!)

If the other characters become scenery to Keaton's internal and externalised struggles both within himself and with the play it is because it's his film. Are any of them playing people who were once internationally famous as Birdman? No, they're not, so it isn't about them, much as they might antagonise, frustrate, encourage or otherwise impact upon his ambitions.

I think I recall an interview with Keaton from around the turn of the century where he admitted that Batman had killed his career for a while because it meant directors and audiences alike forgot that he is actually a skilled character actor. He's evidently way beyond that stage now if he was more than happy by 2014 to nod to his own past career and its effect in this. What he gives us is a nuanced, tragicomic, heartbreakingly realistic portrayal of a man searching for some kind of personal meaning within a world that still sees him not as whoever he might imagine himself to be but as a superhero they once paid the entry price to see in movie screens up and down the land.

By turns both subtle and blatantly emotive, Birdman is also one of Iñárittu's finest films, something rightly acknowledged at the 87th Academy where it won four Oscars, one of which was for best director. I can't figure it why I haven't watched it before. I know I'll watch it again.