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Out in Theaters: ‘EVEREST’

Human beings simply aren’t built to function at the cruising altitude of a 747. At 29,000 feet, you body is literally dying. Lack of oxygen becomes a toxic, poisoning the brain and forcing your body to shut down non-vital organs. At such heights, it’s near impossible to breathe without a tank of O. Beholding Everest on a proper IMAX screen, I too found myself gasping for air. It’s literally breathtaking. Read More

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Out in Theaters: THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

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To take a man’s life and dilute it down to a 123-minute biography might not be quite as daunting a task as coming up with a singular formula that describes and unites all things in the universe but it is not without its challenges. James Marsh takes on these theoretical hurdles with the problem-solving gusto of a seasoned mathematician. He attacks from all angles: emotional, intellectual, spiritual and metaphysical; delivering a film that not only gets to the core of who Stephen Hawking is but gives equal credence to the unsung plight of wife Jane Hawking. With Marsh working the material with the finesse of a Swedish masseuse – adapted from Jane’s 2008 memoirs “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen” – into something both uproariously funny and endlessly emotional, The Theory of Everything is, like its subject, a film that defies the constructs to which it ought adhere. Like Hawking, Marsh has created a film that rises above the expectations placed on it and outlives its macabre sentencing. It is quite simply an emotional powerhouse; a near flawless example of a fine-tuned biopic boasting a performance for the ages; a stunning tour de force that overcomes its crowd-pleasing elements with earnest wit and genuine, hard-won emotionality.

Behind his quirked smile and mop of ginger-brown hair, young Hawkings is a goon and Eddie Redmayne plays him with the breezy charm of a Powerpuff before his infamous affliction strikes. Aloof and smarmy, his performance is one of spot-on precision; a testament to Redmayne’s emerging talent and ability to replicate a character with physical and emotional exactitude. Hawking is a Type-A smarty pants who doesn’t study but still aces the tests and all Redmayne needs to do is cock a wormy grin to communicate the limitless knowledge trapped within that scrawny frame. Part-Goofy and part-Einstein, he’s a goober of a scholar with a heart of gold and aspirations over the moon. And there lies Jane Wilde, a wily co-ed softly won over by Hawking’s gun show of braininess and obsessively chartered persistence. After all, one can only be asked to croquette so many times before they finally submit.

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There’s a delightfully stagy homecoming ball that, while slightly hokey, showcases the humanity before the affliction; the affair preceding the infirmity; the courtship preceding all this trials and tribulations business. Hawking uneasily admitting he’s no dancer is both charming and heartbreaking – a winning equation graciously prescribed to most key junctions in the film. If Hawking’s arc is one into physical oblivion and intellectual transcendence, The Theory of Everything‘s is about overcoming hardship and finding peace in adversity.

But as the scene sets on Benoît Delhomme‘s magnificently sweltering starematography, Cinderella’s carriage turns to a pumpkin and Hawking is hit with the heavy news that he’s got less than two years to live. On the brink of his PhD and brimming with grand ideas screaming out to be proven, Hawking is a pitiable mark of the Maggie Fitzgerald degree. He’s a fighter with a flunkie body. Though Jane’s undying devotion to Hawking isn’t necessarily fleshed out in full pre-ALS diagnosis, Jane spends the rest of the movie convincing us of the earnestness of the near angelic gesture. This is after all a love story.

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As acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking continues to hunt down his titular theory of everything, we’re given a glimpse into a kind of personal reactionary spiritualism that only peeks its head into the oeuvre of film every so often. There’s no “this is the way it is”, just a lot of “what ifs?” Hawking at first refutes the existence of God. At one point, he admits to Jane that He could be plausible. Later, he’s weary and generally indifferent. He’s a character who, though stubborn in his resolve and thrust for intellectual expansion, is never adamant about being “right.” And what could be a more important figure than a man willing to go to war with his own theories? In a time of steadfast absolutism, Hawking waged war with himself from an armchair. And then a wheelchair. A man both fundamentally hubristic and humbled, Hawking’s acute generosity of spirit paired with his occasional callousness towards those closest to him helps to make him such a scrumptiously compelling character.

It takes a skilled filmmaker to get the tear ducts working early and Marsh is so queued into fine tuning our emotional clock that he barely has to breathe to twist the knife in our side. Only thirty-odd minutes into the film, he pulls back the curtain on this whole diagnosis drama sans a lick of sentimentality and yet still beckons showers of sniffles. Hawking (understandably) throws a pity party, but Marsh never does. Flipping the formula on its head, he mines tragedy in humor, allowing the most heart-rending moments to play over beats drenched in legitimate dark comedy. Even past the ability to speak, Redmayne invites guffaws that you would never even expect to experience in a film about a handicapped physicist. This guy is going to sarcastically flip his head into an Academy Award nomination.

The performance really is next level. He’s so good, he’s gorilla glue. Taking your eyes off his work for even a moment is impossible. You might as well be eyelidless Alex, you’re watching him so hard. Confined to a wheelchair for the later half of the film, we nevertheless view him through the filter of abject understanding. Without words, he’s able to communicate novels. It’s a testament to both Redmayne’s mighty take and Marsh’s voyeuristically watchful eye that once Hawking’s words turn into blinks and eventually into robotic responses, we never lose a dollop of interest in him as a character. Nor does he lose his bite as a comedian.

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Matching Redmayne blow for blow is Felicity Jones, offering a performance that delivers nuance, pathos and barrels of complexity. Though no simple task to take on the mantle of Hawking, Redmayne’s task is clear cut. Jones on the other hand has an arguably more difficult mountain to climb; she must make Hawking’s counterpart as compelling and complex as a guy who wrote a best selling novel about f*cking time. I mean seriously, if the guy can make a theory about time (of all things) into a New York Times best seller, you better believe his woman is a certifiable magnet.

Each and every scene she flutters into and out of, Jones is a force to be reckoned with. She’s left to grapple with the plight of domesticity; to battle the oft ferocious tedium of raising a family single-handedly. Jones parries with Redmayne’s monstrous portrayal with bravado, providing a fulcrum point that grounds the extenuating circumstances of their extraordinary home life into something relatable and “normal.” He’s the scientist, she’s the soul. It’s her that makes everything relatable.

At one point, she explodes, “We’re not a normal family!” And while we know that she believes this sentiment to be true, her family – and her relationship with Stephen’s – was never defined by a conformity to society norms. From the get go, their romance was a harbinger of bucked normalcy. Not just anyone would marry a ticking time bomb. It’s upon her shoulders that the success of Theory rests and Jones handles her characters transformation with a kind of poetic ease that’s stoic and touching, motherly and equally sexual. She’s basically Imhotep the way she gains layers scene to scene. An Academy Award nomination is assuredly in store.

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What’s possibly the biggest surprise of The Theory of Everything is just how winning every aspect of Marsh’s tale truly is. It functions on so many levels, attacking so many sectors of what we look for in a film. It’s futile to resist its supreme good taste.

Marsh spares us the gory details of how time actually works (new homework assignment: read “A (Brief) History of Time”) but thanks to adroit editing work from Jinx Godfrey, we’re never really worried about how it works. It just does. Add to that a nimble and whimsical score from Jóhann Jóhannsson (another nomination ought to be assured here) and nifty costume design from Steven Noble and you have a film whose technical aspects rival its visceral impact. There are bits and bobs that don’t measure up – grainy “camera footage”, underdeveloped secondary characters – but for a movie equally given to quirks, quacks and quarks, the bumbling never detracts from the charm. Marsh’s brief history of Hawkings is at once timely and timeless, matching intellect for emotion and absolutely thriving on two stunning performances. For all the accolades it’s destined to receive, The Theory of Everything is deserving.

A

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Out in Theaters: THE BOOK THIEF

“The Book Thief”
Directed by Brian Percival
Starring Sophie Nélisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, Roger Allam, Nico Liersch, Kirsten Block
Drama, War
131 Mins
PG-13

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It’s not the first time we’ve seen a World War II movie rife with Holocaust themes and the omnipresent horrors of war nor will it be the last, but The Book Thief manages a healthy dose of thoughtful introspection and rock solid performances amidst extraneous narration a la the Grim Reaper. This narrative tactic might have worked fine in book form but in the film only serves to interrupt the sense of immediacy inherent to the lifeblood of film. Death the narrator comes in unannounced to smooth over the rough edges, blunting the emotion impact of sequences that should have been the most shocking and gut-wrenching. Each time the film reaches an emotional apex, Death takes the stage and narrates us through what we ought to be feeling like we’re reading a storybook about pretty ponies.

There is nothing wrong with finding beauty in death (look no further than American Beauty for proof) but this heavy-handed dictation is not the way to go about it. All attempts to undercut the passing of life with this kind of silver-lining holistic circle of life BS just reaps diminishing emotional return and sours the visceral oomph that the actors have worked so duteously to illicit. Blending high-art performances with scribbling story-booking, the prospects of greatness sour like milk in the sun. It’s truly a shame because there are elements of excellence peppered throughout the film and the inherent power of WWII’s history, which is never something to balk at, is explored from an interesting internal perspective.

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More than anything, the film could have used a more thorough editorial sweep to really hone in on tonal consistency as some elements, such as the grating voice over, jut out like sore thumbs. Rather than tug us deeper into the emotional climaxes, the premeditated status of “death as inevitability” only serves to only take us out of the moment and draws our attention to the bumbling, childlike side of the storytelling. When the saga should soar, it instead sags.

Based on the 2006 novel that stretches 550 pages long, The Book Thief begins with a slow pan through the billowy smoke of a  train tumbling towards Germany like a black bullet. On that train rides Liesel, a shy illiterate girl, and her younger brother. Before they arrive at their destination, Liesel’s little brother dies, presumably a result of malnutrition sustained during his lengthy journey through the bowels of pre-war Germany, and sets in motion her vibrant and intuitive moral compass. On cue with her arrival to a country on the brink of a wicked social reinvention, the passing of Liesel’s younger sibling is an appropriate welcoming into this darkening realm that will soon breed sorrow and loss.

Although her adoptive mother, Rosa, is at first as stony as a Felsenbeisser, her new foster papa, Hans, is a heart barely dressed in human skin. He radiates love and understanding and quickly takes Liesel under his paternal wing, teaching her to read and cultivating her love of books and knowledge with his subterranean wall-to-wall chalkboard. Just bristling with spindles of affection, Geoffrey Rush is a fountain of warmth as Hans. His performance is perfectly balanced – a potpourri of optimism and grief, empathy and anguish. For as much eternal hope and internal goodness wells within him, he can’t help but recognize society morally melting around him.

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And as cantankerous as foster mother Rosa (Emily Watson) may seem as first, her character arc is one of the most satisfying and nuanced of the film. Even young Sophie Nélisse is quietly magnetic as Liesel, transcending the label of child actress and putting in a performance well beyond her years. As 2013 ends, she ought to be positioned at the forefront of emerging young talent because her work here is nothing less than staggering. As much as we appreciate and empathize with the core supporting characters, it’s Nélisse who guides us through the visceral darkness – a beacon of light in a vacuum of hope.

As antisemitic currents sweep through Germany, Liesel intuitively picks up on the silent horror of a changing ethos. A scene where she is singing an ironically sweet, almost songbird, antisemitic anthem and then halts her warble mid-song picturesquely captures the dawning of a new understanding. All this preaching of hatred, however cloaked in the angelic voices of children, is poison.

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But for every two steps forward the film takes in terms of thoughtful impact, it takes one back. Without fail, every time the story peaks, it reveals just how hard it’s trying to invoke an emotional reaction. Miscalculating more for more, the film has an unfortunate tendency to overstay its welcome and beat the dead horse black and blue. The most egregious instance of this comes in the final moment where the film pulls a Return of the King triple ending. Had it ended a scene or two earlier, sans voiceover, it would have been an extremely powerful and poignant statement. As it is, it’s overdrawn and self-defeating. Instead of going out with understated subtlety, it reminds you over and over again of its intention, as persistent as a politician.

Closing the book on this slipshod endeavor, The Book Thief is a film divided against itself. There are many elements of the film deserving of love but director Brian Percival is constantly sucking the wind from beneath his own wings. At once emotionally sound and fiercely melodramatic, the film, had it underwent a quick trip to the reel barber, could have been shaved into something truly excellent. As it stands, it’s modestly good and mildly powerful but lacking the vitality of a more tactful director.

C+

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New International Trailer for THE BOOK THIEF

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A new international trailer for The Book Thief, a World War II drama adapted by the bestselling novel by Markus Zusak, has been released. This follows 20th Century Fox taking out two whole pages in the New York Times to fill entirely with blank space except for a URL of the film’s website wordsarelife.com in very small print at the bottom of the page. To say that sort of promotional tactic makes an impression is an understatement, and as this international trailer certainly tries to maintain the gravity from the previous trailer. 

With a much less drawn-out introduction than the first released trailer, the inner world of Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nelisse) is given a moment to establish itself alongside the circumstances of her adoption and her recent house guest, but only a moment. Following that, the trailer is all jackboots, burning piles of books, and other horrors of Nazi Germany as Kristallnacht occurs. Liesel is made aware of the devastating consequences not just for her guest, but also for herself if he should be discovered. Bookended nicely by ruminating on Liesel as the Book Thief and what the books mean to her and to her guest, the trailer ends on an even keel that makes you wonder at Liesel’s rebellion and her inner strength.

Directed by Brian Percival (“Downton Abbey”), and co-starring Geoffery Rush, Emily Watson, and Ben Schnetzer, The Book Thief is a clear gambit for the Oscars. The film has Oscars written all over it, although the real test will be to see whether or not it lives up to those clearly-present aspirations. Set to release on November 8th in the USA, it won’t be long before we see if the writing and character development throughout the rest of the film can match the tenor of the notes struck in this trailer.

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