In Interstellar's three hour run time, Cooper and Brand blast through a wormhole in an attempt to save humanity from a blight plaguing Earth’s food supply and find an ultimate answer to these questions, and just like Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Nolan presents us with a coded call-to-action. For mankind to survive, the people must evolve.
The plot is fantastic and it’s no surprise that this is loosely based on a Marvel comic series of the same name. There is actual characterization at work here. Despite being animated, everyone is more three-dimensional than most recent films can boast.
Disclaimer: When I first began reviewing movies I promised that I would never review an animated film because I’m (not so) secretly a child at heart. I only broke that promise once, with The Secret World of Arriety because, c’mon. But now that I’m actually working with a team of (awesome) writers, I have no choice but to relax my stance and review whatever comes my way.
Drunk Monkeys is pleased to introduce the very first FACT or FICTION column. It would be a shame to not take advantage of how much the film department writers love to argue about movies, and the various ways in which each of us differ in opinion from the others. The FACT or FICTION column, which will be a semi-regular feature, will emphasize those facts.
Drunk Monkeys has accomplished a lot over the course of 2014. We survived another year, which is an accomplishment unto itself, but we’ve also grown as a literary site. We published poems, prose, and non-fiction that brought to us a wide range of voices and styles. I’m really proud of that.
Michael Keaton is making a comeback? I didn’t know he had ever left. I don’t really understand the concept of creative comebacks with actors and actresses. I do think there is such a thing as a public perception comeback, which is exactly what Michael Keaton is experiencing right now with Birdman. The movie will almost certainly score him an Oscar nomination, which would surprisingly be the first one of his career.
Michael Keaton is making a comeback? I didn’t know he had ever left. I don’t really understand the concept of creative comebacks with actors and actresses. I do think there is such a thing as a public perception comeback, which is exactly what Michael Keaton is experiencing right now withBirdman. The movie will almost certainly score him an Oscar nomination, which would surprisingly be the first one of his career. That’s good for Keaton, and his performance has been singled out for a significant amount of praise, in a movie that is drawing good notices from virtually everyone who has seen it.
Almost every punch is pulled to make anti-hero Ig into a misunderstood nice guy, and for a good 50% of the film, the premise is nearly abandoned entirely, in place of a substandard murder mystery.
At first, the movie gets as delightfully awkward and uncomfortable as an episode of Ricky Gervais' The Office, as Ebba and the kids struggle with seeing their husband and father in an entirely new and unflattering light. Other patrons of the ski resort unwittingly get dragged into the story themselves, forced to pick a side in this impromptu war of the sexes, as Ebba starts telling what happened to anyone who’ll listen, while Tomas steadfastly denies he ran at all. It’s very funny and stilted and WASP-y and awkward until you realize that what you’re seeing is a slow-motion destruction of an entire family.
You’d think a movie about a man literally becoming the Devil would be hard to screw up. But unfortunately, that’s what happens here. Daniel Radcliffe plays Ig, a man whose life is rapidly spiraling downward. He’s accused of raping and murdering his girlfriend a few months before the film begins. The entire town thinks he’s guilty but there’s no hard evidence, so for now, Ig is free to roam aimlessly around town, getting drunk nightly and sleeping with the local riff-raff, getting harassed by the cops, etc.