Birdman

Birdman - 119min - R

This movie has me in conflict on how to review it. My film student brain loves the way it was filmed and appreciates the artistry of the scenes and the performances. The regular viewer brain finds it hard to connect with the characters. If I can draw from an automotive analogy, this is a really nice car that has a dark and depressing destination. The fight in my head--very much like the one in Michael Keaton's head--makes me land on a solid yellow light.

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) starred in the series Birdman twenty years ago. He hasn’t done much with his life so he tries to jumpstart his career by directing and starring in a Broadway play. His daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), is a production assistant who is just out of rehab. His girlfriend, Laura (Andrea Riseboriugh), and Broadway newcomer Lesley (Naomi Watts) need a stand in for a recently vacated role. Lesley gets her friend Mike (EdwardNorton) to fill in but he causes problems as he is hard to get along with though he is brilliant on stage. The story focuses on the stress Riggan is under because he has poured everything into this production.

Not everyone will appreciate the labor that went into filming this picture. The film was shot to make it look like we are flying through the picture in one long take. There are obvious cut points in the film but they blend them together masterfully. The difficulty with filming in this fashion is the actors need to be spot on. If you have a six min take and one of the performers misses a cue or flubs a line, the crew has to set up from square one, especially if it’s a moving scene across the set and through another room. That is an incredibly challenging feat of filmmaking. The best part is they pulled it off. It was something the film geeks will Sqeeee over but it’s done subtly enough to not make it a distraction.  

The performances were really good but I didn't make a connection with any of them. I realize that the whole point of the film was to take a closer look at people in a rough time and place in their lives and how they are all struggling to keep afloat but it was hard to watch the level of anxiety portrayed. I walked out of the theater in a funk. As I think about it maybe it did connect with me emotionally, I was feeling their desperation and it made me depressed.

As a viewer I wasn't entertained and that is the bottom line. There were choices with the end that made me question what I was watching. I have stated before that the quickest way to lose me is to not play by the rules you set up for me. If you set the rules I will follow your story to the other end of the galaxy and different dimensions. The end made me shrug and say "Huh" and walked out.

To sum up I appreciate the film but didn't care for the ride. The best part of the journey is the going but the destination also needs to be worth the trip. What films have impacted you in such a way as to make you blue? 

The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy – 135min – PG-13

If you were a fan of the previous films, don’t get sucked into watching it because it has the same name. I was expecting an action, adventure spy thriller and what I got was spy movie that was very slow paced, and had long stretches of exposition and set up. It felt like the writer/director (Tony Gilroy) was setting this up to be an origin story to base another three films on. With out of sync pacing and a story that seemed disjointed and out of place for the established universe, I felt lost at times and begin to wonder why I even care about the characters on the screen. This movie does nothing for the franchise and could have been skipped. This is a red light film.

Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) is on a training mission in the wilds of Alaska, he doing training maneuvers so he is trying to complete and is fighting the wildlife and weather to accomplish it. The Agency is working to erase the Bourne project and everyone connect to it before a possible leak occurs. Eric Byer (Edward Norton) is a troubleshooter in charge of cleaning out this operation and preventing a scandal. Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weiss) is working on the drugs that were used to give the Bourne agents their super powers. Ok, there are no super powers but it does enhance them to higher than normal human reaction and thought. I am glossing over a lot of story here but it’s really hard to put so many story fractions into one short synopsis.

The story does incorporate some elements from the third movie. It’s hard to follow at times but from some of the people I have talked to even if you did see the third one, the connections are so faint that it almost doesn’t make any difference in clearing up the convoluted story line.

I have no issues with any of the performances. It really was the writer's fault for not giving them a better story to work with. Edward Norton was brilliant as a broody guy who scowls in a control room. Rachel Weisz gives a great performance of a brilliant woman under the stress of being taken out of her element, and Jeremy Renner is now my favorite action star. This movie was like a short sample of his prowess in this kind of film. He did a good job in Mission Impossible 4 but he really shines as the main character.

Tony Gilroy has lots of checks in the win column. He has a well proven track record as a story teller, his work on the previous Bourne movies to his work on Armageddon and Michael Clayton really highlight his skill. This is one that I think is a failed attempt to develop more of the universe from the previous films. The best description I have to explain what this movie feels like is developing Cross as a new player in this universe. It feels like they went out of their way to tell a lot of back story so the next one can kick right off into action. I just hope that he has not lost his audience in this gamble.

To indicate how slow this film is, I was at one point noticing that people were yawing during the film. I started counting as they became more entertaining than the movie. There were 25 yawns from about half way through the first half of this movie. I started to write my review in my notebook before the film was over, I was completely ungripped.

Spoiler Warring!!! No yawning beyond this point!!!!!!!!!!

Cross made a big show of hiding his meds and then going to the other agent saying he was out of meds. I have had long conversations on why he did this; some people say that it was a ploy to put himself into a position of submission with the person he was in contact with. You want the audience to talk about your movie but you don’t want them to spend all of the great talk time sorting out what your characters motivations are.

The other issue is that Cross and his pursuer, Byer never meet, and the impact of the message of "No more" on the mirror lost something when the main bad guy gets the message through a camera. I as a viewer wanted to have them meet, and they never did.

All of the action scenes were in the trailer and I think that was what lead me to believe this was an action film. Not so much really it’s just one long set up for a possible trilogy. When are they going to invest in a tripod for these films? Does every shot need to be on a not so steady cam? Even the meeting rooms where everyone is sitting down?

Movies seem to be made as one-shot gamble, rarely do they plan a story arc that spans over two or three movies. Do you think they should change that and really designate films as onetime stories or moves that you know are going to be done over several films?