Ridley Scott Scores Again With The Martian

I am a fan of neither science fiction nor outer space movies, so it's surprising how many Ridley Scott movies I've seen and loved. In fact, Scott is probably among my top three favourite directors. I saw Prometheus on Netflix and thought that it was one of the coolest science fiction films in the last decade. Then I saw Exodus: Gods and Kings also on Netflix and was puzzled why it was panned by critics!

I deliberately waited till the initial excitement around Scott's new movie The Martian died down before I hit the 3D cinemas last week. Critics asked us to be prepared for a Cast Away in space. But I found the 2000 movie starring Tom Hanks boring! The Martian, on the other hand, was exciting, nerve-wracking and extremely funny at times! It was also one of the most beautifully-shot films I've seen.

Most film critics gave credit to director Scott as well as the lead actor Matt Damon. But I think if there is any Oscar buzz, the Academy should also consider Drew Goddard who wrote the screenplay adapted from Andy Weir's book of the same name. The script was tight, humorous and witty and the film was not laboriously long to tell the moving story.

By now, you must know the story line even if you haven't seen the movie. During a mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) was presumed dead after a dust storm and left behind by his crew. Most of the film depicted how Watney tried to stay alive and on his survival skills on Mars. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists worked tirelessly to bring "the Martian" home, while his crew mates simultaneously tried a close-to-impossible rescue mission.

The film was beautifully shot in Wadi Rum, Jordan, which has a red-coloured desert; and in Budapest where the buildings representing the NASA HQ and the Chinese space centre were actually two of the city's most important cultural hubs (the film and book acknowledged China's important role to help with the rescue mission). It was not surprising that Matt Damon's solo scenes were shot for five weeks straight, after which he was relieved from the filming schedule. He did not even meet most of his co-stars until the full cast was reunited to promote the film. NASA was, of course, consulted to ensure accuracy of space and space travel.

Many people call Damon the contemporary Tom Hanks. But I think the former is a better actor. After all, in spite of the wide range of Hanks's acting skills, can you ever imagine him playing an action hero like Bourne? Because Damon led us to believe that this ingenious astronaut, who was also a PhD in Botany, survived this ordeal in space by growing a potato farm on Mars from his and his crew's excrements, we marveled at his wisdom and perseverance; laughed at his intolerance of the '70s disco music; and were moved to tears by his humanity. I thought Damon deliberately lost weight when he went from a beefed-up body at the beginning of the movie to a bone-thin physique towards the end, but I read that the director did not allow this to happen and had used a body double at the end of the movie instead.

The Martian is the perfect synergy of a triumphant journey in science and a magnificent cinematic work of art. No wonder retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said he has read the book and seen the movie and gave the latter a two thumbs up!

A Surprisingly Good Steve Jobs Biopic

I've read so many bad reviews of Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs that I thought twice before I decided to go and see it. But I was pleasantly surprised and actually liked it!

Aaron Sorkin is always arrogant, but there's no doubt that he's a screenplay genius. I'm not sure that moviegoers who have not read Walter Isaacson's biography on Steve Jobs would like the movie or not. The biography is a wonderful book and because Steve Jobs had only authorized Isaacson to interview people and write the biography without even his final approval prior to publication, I trusted its authenticity. But to condense that biography into a two-hour movie was no small feat! I think the one attribute that stood out in the movie was its sharp, tight, witty and true-to-origin script and all the kudos should go to Sorkin (The Social Network, Moneyball, The West Wing, The Newsroom).

I've never watched The Newsroom, but I understand that the actors for the movie Steve Jobs all auditioned for their respective roles by reading scripts from the award-winning TV series instead of the script from the movie. The second credit for this very enjoyable movie should go to the lead actor Michael Fassbender who does not look a bit like the late Apple founder. But throughout the film, I had no doubt that Fassbender was Jobs. Isaacson's depiction of Jobs as both a genius and a jerk was fully vivified by the actor. Having seen Ashton Kutcher in Jobs in 2013, there's no doubt that Kutcher looks more like the Apple founder, but I've always said that good actors do not need to be excellent impersonators. It requires more skills for an actor who doesn't look like Jobs to give a convincing performance, and Fassbender did that beautifully - portraying, in essence, the eccentric, intense, foul-mouthed, ill-tempered but also brilliant, charming and extremely-gifted Apple founder, as described by Isaacson in his book.

I was surprised to hear that Sorkin originally wanted Tom Cruise for this role and thank God the latter had declined. So did Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale. The latter could probably play Jobs equally well because he's such a fine actor. Apparently, Fassbender admired Bale and actually called the latter and told him that he should have taken that role.

I've also read that Kate Winslet heard of the movie in the making from her makeup artist, and immediately craved for the role of Jobs's marketing director Joanna Hoffman. She wanted to be in a film with Fassbender and director Danny Boyle and sent them a photo with herself in a black wig. Well, she got the job, but I'm not sure that she excelled in it. Her American accent sounded a bit contrived and she totally looked frumpy and unattractive in the movie, maybe by design. Frankly speaking, any actress could have played that role exceedingly well and Winslet's superb acting skills were quite wasted in this film, in my opinion.

Director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) did a decent job with the movie as the film condensed the book into three acts - the launches of the Macintosh in 1984, NeXT in 1988, and the iMac in 1998. There were flashbacks to Jobs's earlier life at the garage with Steve Wozniak (effectively played by Canadian Seth Rogen); and negotiations with the Apple board and John Scully (played by Jeff Daniels). But I did not expect the entire film to be focusing so much on Jobs's relationship with his daughter Lisa Brennan because this part did not even play a big role in Isaccson's biography at all.
Wozniak was a consultant to the movie and maybe that's why it enhanced the authenticity of Jobs really presented as a jerk even in front of his partner and co-founder of Apple. I also don't understand why it took three non-Americans (Boyle, Fassbender and Winslet) to do a movie on one of the most influential U.S. icons when there are so many other talented filmmakers and actors in Hollywood.

All in all, if you've read Isaacson's book, you would love the film. Otherwise, you might be a bit disappointed, even though if you are a fan of Aaron Sorkin and The Newsroom.

Powerful Russian Satire on Corruption in Putinland

I love watching movies because, like reading books, they stretch your imagination by telling a story in numerous different ways and sometimes blow your mind away by giving you a perspective of life that is too real. The Russian movie Leviathan, which has already swept all the Best Foreign Movie Awards so far, is almost a sure win for this category in the upcoming Oscars. It's a powerful satire on the current corrupt Russian government and on religion as well. As always, Russian literature and art excel in the reflection of the darkest side of humanity.

The story took place in a small Russian coastal town in the Barents Sea where whales sometimes appear and an ordinary working-class family was just trying to get by and seek happiness. Fishing was the main occupation of the town and people sought enjoyment by drinking vodka and having a lot of sex. Corruption was the norm of life and every public official including the mayor, his staff, the cops and even the priest were all cut from the same cloth. There were only a few characters in the film but very soon, they seemed like your friends and, as the audience, you became very involved with this unfortunate family.

Leviathan is Hebrew for Sea Monster as depicted in Tanakh and The Book of Job from the Old Testament. The book addressed the theme of God's justice in the face of human suffering, or in other words, asked a very simple question: why do the righteous suffer? In modern Hebrew, Leviathan means "whale," which explains the setting of this Russian coastal town where the sea and everything washed ashore have a deeper, darker meaning. In the Middle Ages, Leviathan was also described as the demon of envy and listed as one of the Four Crown Princes of Hell.

So the poetry continued to infiltrate the entire film which was really an enactment of The Book of Job in its contemporary form. The protagonist in the movie, Kolya was a good, hard-working, ordinary man wanting to lead a normal happy life with his second wife and his teenage son from a previous marriage. But Kolya himself was full of conflicts - he hated cops, but one of his best friends was a traffic policeman; he tried to fight a corrupt mayor by bringing in his lawyer friend from Moscow who blackmailed the mayor and also eventually betrayed his friend in a personal way. Kolya's troubles went from bad to worse until the sea monster eventually engulfed him and his entire family.

Apart from the first-rate performance by a group of unknown (to us) Russian actors, the music written by Philip Glass and cinematography by Mikhail Krichman were menacing, captivating and beautiful at the same time. Definitely two thumbs up for this outstanding foreign movie!

A Great Crime Drama In A Most Violent Year

In the new movie A Most Violent Year, you see the work of the three most-Oscar-snubbed artists in 2015 - director J.C. Chandor, lead actor Oscar Isaac and supporting actor David Oyelowo (snubbed for his leading role as Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma).

By now, I've seen all three feature films by J.C. Chandor - the first two were Margin Call and All Is Lost. All three were brilliant in their own ways and with A Most Violent Year, Chandor has once again established himself as one of the most versatile and potent directors of all times. If Hollywood breeds more of such fine directors and writers, its potential would be limitless!

There's very little violence in the movie with "Violent" as its title. Even though there were illegal activities throughout the film and intimidating scenes with guns, it's the innuendos and the mood around this crime drama that were captivating. The movie juxtaposed evil versus good; ruthlessness versus a law-abiding conscience; bold ambitions versus cowardice and fear. It's the story of an ambitious immigrant from Colombia who's trying to achieve the American dream while protecting his business and family.

The Juilliard-trained Oscar Isaac is, in my opinion, one of the finest young actors of our times. I never understood why the Oscars overlooked him for his role in Inside Llewyn Davis last year. Now, yet again, his excellent performance as Abel Morales in this most recent film was snubbed one more time. As much as he could convincingly portray a nerdy musician in the Cohen brothers' film, Isaac gave a tour de force performance as the ambitious, but morally stubborn businessman in this flick. It's hard not to think of the young Al Pacino when you saw Isaac's doleful eyes and camel-brown coat in this movie. Physically, Isaac is not much taller than Pacino at 5 feet 81/2 inches; but he commanded a huge presence in the film and, in spite of the numerous comparisons by film critics to Pacino's role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather II, I think Isaac carries his own weight and is a much less exaggerating actor than Pacino.

Isaac got this role because co-star Jessica Chastain, who went to Juilliard with him, recommended that he be cast as Morales after Javier Bardem has backed out. Isaac's own Hispanic roots (born to a Guatemalan mother and a Cuban father) made him the perfect fit as the Colombian immigrant Morales in the movie. It also gave him an opportunity to speak in his native Spanish tongue during parts of the film.

I love the way the movie was shot in a tinted yellow kind of lighting that gave New York City its 1981 look. It's the depth of winter in the middle of the most dangerous year according to NYC crime statistics. Most of the landscape was industrial; the Manhattan skyline was beautiful, nevertheless, reflecting the never-ending American dream.  Kudos also went to cinematographer Bradford Young who was also responsible for another wonderful movie Selma.

I haven't said much about Jessica Chastain's performance not because she wasn't impressive as the Lady-Macbeth-like character in the film, but because after seeing her in The Help, everything became possible for her in our eyes. Apart from her vintage Armani outfits in the drama, it's her extraordinarily long, sharp manicured nails that became her trademark in the entire film. I think any other fine actress could have possibly played her role equally well, but the scene stealer was definitely Oscar Isaac throughout the entire movie.

There's nothing to dislike about this crime drama. There are no cliches and not enough blood to be categorized as a violent movie. But what's not said was as important as what's being said in the film - this was what kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire two hours of the movie!

The Horror of Losing One's Memory

There's a line in the movie Still Alice that keeps referring to "the Art of Losing." In reality, after seeing the movie, there's nothing artistic or aesthetically pleasing about losing one's memory - there are only horror and extreme vulnerability!

Still Alice is a terrific movie on the trauma of the early onset of Alzheimer's Disease faced by a 50-year-old female linguistic professor Alice Howland (played by the 55-year-old Julianne Moore) and her immediate family members. Unlike other movies, such as Away From Her (back in 2006 starring Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent), exploring the disease, this is about a much younger victim with an accomplished career and a happy family. So the focus of the film was very much on the 'early onset.'

What I like about the movie is the positive message it sent to the victims and their families. Everybody is in it together and trying to cope with it. There are characters in the film who are more selfish than the others. And the seeming theme of Shakespeare pervades in this drama as well - what you see may not be what you get!

I also particularly like the constant butterfly analogy - there are butterfly motifs everywhere from decorations to Alice's necklace once she's been diagnosed with the condition. Alice herself said something to this effect in the movie, "Butterflies don't live very long; but they are beautiful when they are alive and they've lived a very full and good life."

Apart from Julianne Moore who, by now, will probably be a sure win in the Best Actress category at the Oscars, Kristen Stewart also gave a very strong performance as Alice's youngest daughter Lydia who didn't go to college. I personally think that although Moore was excellent in this film, she should have been nominated for her role in David Cronenberg's Maps To The Stars instead. According to the novel's author Lisa Genova, before Julianne Moore was cast, the part was offered to Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Diane Lane and Nicole Kidman who all turned down the opportunity. So all the more credit goes to Moore for taking on this project and giving her very best to win her the accolades of her lifetime (this is her fifth nomination at the Oscars and she has never won)!

I also understand that co-director Richard Glatzer suffers from ALS and cannot speak. Not only did he co-write the screenplay, but he also directed the film using a text-to-speech app on an iPad.

Still Alice is a touching, realistic movie. It is also very scary because this could happen to any of us boomers and if it happened, we should really take the film's positive ending as an encouragement!

American Sniper Not Worthy Of Six Oscar Nominations

Bradley Cooper's American Sniper was disappointing! After all that hype and box-office-breaking records, it is, at best, an entertaining war movie. But does it deserve six Oscar nominations? Absolutely not.

You've got to admire Bradley Cooper's focus nowadays. Since he's become famous and wealthy, he has been using his own money and energy to try to make movies and Broadway shows on subjects that are close and dear to him. For instance, in 2011, he produced the film Limitless in which he played an author suffering from writer's block, living in New York, and then accidentally coming across a miracle drug called NZT-48 which helped bring his creative mojo back. The film was not a box-office success, but it was nevertheless very unique and creative.

Ever since he was a child, Cooper has been fascinated with The Elephant Man John Merrick. So, it's now his dream come true when Cooper is currently playing the lead in The Elephant Man on Broadway to great critical acclaim. He was the executive producer for Silver Linings Playbook in 2012 and for American Hustle in 2013 - two movies that need little introduction because he was the male lead in both of them and garnered him Oscar nominations for Best Actor.

And now in 2015, his American Sniper was released and earned him a third consecutive Oscar nomination for Best Actor. The other five nominations for this film are Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. I understand that David O. Russell (director of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) originally considered directing the movie at one point, but a deal with Warner Brothers didn't work out. Then Steven Spielberg was interested in the project but he subsequently moved on as well. Eventually, Clint Eastwood became the director as well as one of the producers of the film.

When Cooper initially bought rights to the movie, he intended to only produce it with Chris Pratt starring, but he later changed his mind and decided to take up the role himself. In fact, he bulked up 40-plus pounds to look like the real sniper Chris Kyle and worked with a vocal coach twice a day to talk with a heavy Texan accent like Kyle. Having seen some footage of Kyle, I personally think that Chris Pratt would have been a better choice because he looks like a twin brother of Kyle's.

Apparently Cooper built up his physique just by Olympic lifting and went from 185 pounds to 225 pounds for this role to look huge like Kyle and according to IMDb, he even sported a gut for the film. All the more respect goes to Cooper for demonstrating that he's not just a pretty face and the sexiest man alive according to People Magazine. But in spite of all these efforts, I think his performance in this film was less impressive than his acting in Silver Linings Playbook  and American Hustle. If those two previous roles didn't earn him an Oscar, I doubt very much whether this one would.

But I'm not an American and, therefore, cannot understand the patriotism and fascination with a Navy SEAL who is known as The Legend for achieving 160 kills in the Iraq war over four tours. To me, this is just another war movie that depicts the inhumane decisions soldiers in combat have to make to protect themselves and their comrades. The battle scenes were tense but I can count so many other war movies such as Black Hawk Down and Zero Dark Thirty which are 10 times better than American Sniper.

Some may argue that Chris Kyle's Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the film was provocative and sad. Yet, not even this subject was dealt with profoundly enough in this film when compared to the very successful TV drama Homeland.

What really bugs me about this film is the lack of authenticity when it comes to attention to detail. By now, you might have already heard about the big hoopla around the fake baby doll from the social media. I understand that when a production assistant approached director Clint Eastwood about real baby #1 being sick, and then real baby #2 being a no-show, Eastwood immediately settled with a doll faking the baby of Kyle and wife Taya (played by Sienna Miller) in the film. Now, Eastwood might have bragged about how Morocco looked like Iraq in the movie and how the battle scene in the sandstorm was executed to great precision. But a fake baby? How insulting to us the audience!!

I'm not sure whether Kyle's memoir (from which the screenplay was adapted) actually mentioned The Legend sniper talking to his wife while in full action on the battleground. But, for more than once, Kyle was communicating with Taya via something that looked like an Iridium satellite phone while others were firing away and he was supposed to watch the enemy so that he could protect his fellow marines. Now how credible was that?

I'm not an expert in sound editing in movies, so if this film won an Oscar for Film Editing, Sound Editing or Sound Mixing, I might not have an objection. But I would be very unpleasantly surprised if it won a Best Picture Award or a Best Actor Award even though I like Bradley Cooper and agree that he's come a long way from being a reformed alcoholic and a hotel bell boy in his youth!

Hitchcockian Flick By Canada's Golden Boy

Whether you like Xavier Dolan's 2013 movie, Tom At The Farm (Tom a la ferme), or not, you'll be impressed by the tension and discomfort it created on screen. This is the fourth movie by the 25-year-old wunderkind from Quebec, Canada, who has just won the Jury Prize at last month's Cannes Festival for his latest film, Mommy (not yet available for public screening in Canada).

This was my first movie experience with Dolan as a director although at this young age, he's already had four others with critical acclaim - I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats, Lawrence Anyways and Mommy mentioned above. On top of his directing talent, he is also an experienced writer, editor, producer and costume designer. It's a very dark movie about a gay guy Tom (played by Dolan himself) from Montreal visiting his dead lover's family for the first time in rural Quebec. His visit became a discovery of surprise, horror and manipulation. Dolan also wrote the screenplay by adapting a play by Michel Marc Bouchard.

There's definitely a Hitchcockian supspense throughout the film created by Dolan's masterful delay of our visual image of the characters. So we saw the backs of the characters or their hands when they first appeared on screen. Dolan did not reveal the faces of his principal characters until their dialogue with Tom enabled us to imagine for a few seconds what they could have looked like physically.

The musical score by renowned composer Gabriel Yared, who made his film debut in 1980 with the score  for Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man For Himself, played an essential role in making this movie an ultimate thriller. Ironically, Jean-Luc Godard also shared the Jury Prize Award with Dolan at Cannes. As I was viewing the movie, I couldn't help but compared it to its previous genre as a play. The differentiating factors that made it such a creepy movie were definitely the music, the country-farm scenes, the stand-alone farm house in adverse weather, and the fresh blood from the cattle.

The cast was also superb, particularly Pierre-Yves Cardinal, who played Francis, the brother of Tom's deceased lover; and Lise Roy, who played the mother Agathe. It's also interesting that both Roy and Evelyne Brochu, who played Sara, also performed the same characters in the original play.

It's also obvious that Dolan is not a fan of America. From the bomber jacket worn by Francis to the music during the violent scenes, Dolan was telling us that all violence stemmed from our southern neighbour.

My favourite scene was the sexually-charged tango scene at the farm - it made you question the sexuality of Francis and who's really the manipulator here! I didn't like the film's ending at all. Many directors left the conclusion for the audience to figure out, but the final scene was strangely abrupt in this film.

I don't think Tom At The Farm is a masterpiece, but you might want to see it if you're curious about why Dolan is the current 'it' boy in Europe!