American Honey captures youthful fearlessness and spirit in a rare way, resulting in an outstanding road movie whose destination is nowhere in particular.
As if Tom Hardy still has something left to prove, he takes on what is most likely his most ambitious film role to date in Legend, from writer-director Brian Helgeland. In fact, the role is split into two characters, twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray, real-life gangsters who dominated the organized crime scene in London in the 1960s. Hardy has demonstrated his ability to shine in lead roles ranging from the eccentric and expressive Bronson to the understated and restrained Locke, while also maintaining a tendency to steal away the audience’s attention in ing roles in films like Inception and Lawless. Here, he has the opportunity to do both these things at once: as Reggie we have a leading man played with enough charm to make the character believably magnetic, while Ronnie is the scene stealer, eliciting laughs from his awkward manner and blunt, sometimes socially reckless honesty.
Gambling, and likely any other form of addiction, depends on either a heavy dose of delusion, the reckless hopefulness that despite the odds you’ll still come out on top, or a masochistic drive toward self-sabotage. Or else it’s a large helping of both. Mississippi Grind focuses on two individuals who share these characteristics in spades. There’s Gerry, as portrayed by Ben Mendelsohn, who we meet listening to an audiobook detailing all the various tells that poker players may exhibit. Presumably this is something he spent money on, and presumably it was not worth the money he paid for it, but Gerry is stuck in the addict’s cycle of being in enormous gambling debt, and trying to win back enough to pay his debts via more gambling. He meets Curtis, played by Ryan Reynolds, who keeps his cards closer to the vest, so to speak, projecting the life of a high roller with mysterious motivation—he says he likes to gamble out of pure enjoyment, but it’s clear there’s more to it than that.
There really isn’t anybody like Charlie Kaufman. The widely adored writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is finally back with his first film since 2008’s Synecdoche, New York, collaborating with stop-motion animation magician Duke Johnson, and also Kickstarter, to bring us this strange and beautiful delight called Anomalisa. As the title would suggest, it’s in a category all to itself. This should not be a surprise to people familiar with Kaufman’s previous work; he has one of the most unique writing voices in the world, and his films have attracted intense iration for their ability to translate his personal experience of the world into stories that resonate on an intellectually universal level.
Jason Bateman’s directorial debut, Bad Words, which premiered at TIFF two years ago, was a movie that kept its audience at arm’s length, featuring a difficult protagonist and an absurd premise. And yet, it was a film that, shocking and off-putting at first, grew on me. Now, upon viewing his sophomore directorial effort, The Family Fang, it’s beginning to look like this gradual onset of appreciation for the work is a defining quality of his filmmaking. That seems fitting: Bateman himself seems like something of a late bloomer, an actor who really found his form after twenty years in the business (granted, he started out very young), and has only recently ventured into feature film directing. Similarly, as a screen presence, Bateman’s is a persona that is moderately likeable at first, but it’s only after sitting and watching him for a while that it dawns on you just how singularly talented he is as an actor. His direction just might share this quality.
The polarizing nature of Johnny Depp may soon be getting a little less so, thanks to his mesmerizing performance in Black Mass, the new film depicting the story of infamous Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger. Indeed, the buzz surrounding this movie surrounded talk of a return to form for Depp, whose work for the better part of the past ten years has been scrutinized as indulgent, excessive, overly reliant on costuming, and generally worthy of scorn by many people. I wouldn’t count myself among the voices who lament Depp’s recent roles (I don’t think his performances have lost anything, but the movies themselves may not be as good as his early work—then again, I found Mortdecai hilarious, so you needn’t listen to anything I say), but as Bulger, he makes it virtually impossible to find much fault in his portrayal of the criminal-turned-FBI informant.
Sometimes in documentary, a story is so good on its own that it’s as if the film doesn’t have to do much except avoid getting in the way of its subject. A movie about someone as extraordinary as Malala Yousafzai enjoys this advantage: we’re so eager to see her story told on screen that this gratitude for the film’s existence alone is enough to make this film feel essential. Fortunately, He Named Me Malala goes above and beyond in its depiction of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate thanks to the skill of director Davis Guggenheim.
