179305881
10. Birdman
Despite Emmanuel Lubezki’s virtuoso cinematography, and a whole cast of actors working at full throttle (Oscar hopefuls Michael Keaton and Emma Stone lead an ace ensemble that also includes Naomi Watts and Edward Norton), “Birdman” paints filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu as a failed satirist, and a man too consumed by his own ego to make a work that’s thematically coherent or culturally astute. The movie’s chatty bells and whistles serve to mask what little it has to say.
9. Snowpiercer
Joon-ho Bong’s English-language debut came with a paved road of prestige, considering that the South Korean director had been hailed for such films as “Memories of Murder,” and actors like Tilda Swinton signed on for this post-apocalyptic epic. But the central metaphor of a train standing in for the world’s class system — it carries mankind’s only survivors, whose distance from the front determines their social standing — proves a rather thin conceit, and without it, one is left with little more than another “chosen one” actioner.
8. What If
No matter the chemistry between endearing stars Zoe Kazan and Daniel Radcliffe, this millennial take on the “When Harry Met Sally” formula, wherein the concept of a man and woman remaining friends despite attraction is tested, reminds viewers that no amount of hip one-liners can make up for true character connection. The last thing one should desire while watching a romcom is that the two lovebirds stop communicating altogether.
7. The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything
These two period pieces about two real-life geniuses (Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking, respectively), fail to honor their subjects’ legacies by sticking to a dry and transparent Oscar formula. Turing changed the course of World War II, and Hawking changed the way we understand physics, but such achievements are buried in milquetoast attributes that seem to exist merely to collect statuettes.
6. Maleficent
It’s hard to imagine one would get such toothless results from a film that casts Angelina Jolie, Hollywood’s most transfixing specimen, as Maleficent, Disney’s most delectable villain. Alas, amid a glut of needless CGI (Jolie is, after all, her own stunning special effect), this live-action origin story takes all the mystique away from its horned title character, and in its attempt to make a kindly feminist statement, effectively rends her of her power.
5. Begin Again
Suspension of disbelief on the levels of artistic merit and character interplay is a minor quibble when compared to the vexing hypocrisy of this music-industry send-up. “Once” director John Carney was a promising talent, but his Hollywood follow-up — about a singer (Keira Knightley) and the guerilla album she makes outdoors with a downtrodden producer (Mark Ruffalo) — constantly bucks its own moral of think-outside-the-box artistry by kowtowing to a cozy mainstream template. Download the soundtrack; skip the rest.
4. Magic in the Moonlight
People speak often about Woody Allen’s hit-and-miss trajectory — the natural rhythm for the prolific director who churns out at least one annual film. But whereas “To Rome with Love” was a minor detour following Allen’s beloved “Midnight in Paris,” “Magic in the Moonlight” is a cliff dive in the wake of the much-embraced “Blue Jasmine.” Starring Emma Stone as a medium that Colin Firth’s magician seeks to discredit, the clunky slog of a comedy is Allen phoning it in, and the implausible May-December romance that develops puts the wrong kind of spotlight on the director’s famed self-reflexivity.
3. Pompeii
It’s tempting just to sit back and surrender to Paul W.S. Anderson’s trashy reimagining of the title town’s undoing, but it would be easier if the film didn’t plod its way through the disasterpiece motions. Finding its inner “Titanic” and focusing on the gravity-free love between a tribe member (Kit Harrington) and a Pompeiian beauty (Emily Browning), the movie crawls its way to its inevitable finale, which, for a director of Anderson’s underrated action-choreography talents, is a disaster in and of itself.
2. Gimme Shelter
Ostensibly about the tribulations of underprivileged pregnant teens, “Gimme Shelter” ultimately shows its true colors as Bible-thumping pro-life propaganda, trumpeting the merits of a saintly woman’s (Ann Dowd) real-life shelter as opposed to humanizing the tortured expectant mom (Vanessa Hudgens) at its center. Hudgens’s character is presented as an offensive parody of the lower class, whose shrill characterization involves eating like a cow, walking like a rhinoceros and talking like a boorish crook. It chills the spine to say it, but MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” might be more valuable to the culture.
1. That Awkward Moment
Zac Efron headlined one of the year’s best comedies (“Neighbors”), but unfortunately, he also leads its worst movie in general, a highly demeaning bro-fest out to celebrate the male libido, while slyly pretending to be about taming the wild beast. Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan play three New York friends and roommates who — sob — are all struggling with the prospect of settling down. The film’s most telling image is that of a dildo exposed at a costume party, since a swinging phallic symbol could visually encapsulate the overall message. These three men are hardly deserving of the women they manage to win over, yet moviegoers are asked to bask in their graciousness for deigning to be monogamous. What’s most awkward is that this is one backwards-thinking movie, wherein men should be applauded — by viewers and their less-than female counterparts — for behaving like humans.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
179305881
179305711
