BIRDMAN

Ex-Batman actor Michael Keaton must have felt more than a touch of deja-vu in the title role of Alejandro G. Inarritu's brilliant dark comedy about an actor trying to redeem his career by staging a serious dramatic Broadway debut after his career as a movie comic-book hero has faded.  The movie filmed almost entirely in the St James Theater on West 44th Street starts as Riggan Thomson (Keaton) is about to begin previews of a play that he has adapted from a Raymond Carver novel, which he has both directed and also stars in. Having the camera follow the actors at close quarters as they rush around the theater gives the movie the illusion that the whole proceedings are just one big single take. It's an inspired idea and succeeds in keeping the adrenaline flowing at a rapid pace throughout the whole piece.  

Riggan's nerves are very raw as he has sunk everything into this production from his reputation to every single cent from the Bank, and he is racked with such self-doubt about the production being a success.  The play's cast include Lesley another film actor making her Broadway too, and Laura who is also doubling the role with also being Riggan's on/off lover too. The third member of this four-handed drama is such a hammy actor that when an accident (!) incapacitates him, Laura persuades Riggan to re-cast the part with Mike a well-known and popular stage actor who just happens to be her current boyfriend.

Mike is possibly the most talented actor of the play's cast which he is happy to remind Riggan at every single opportunity, but he is a bit of wild card who can behave erratically on and off the stage. He however isn't the only problem that Riggan has to face. There is Sam his teenage daughter just released from re-hab who he has misguidedly employed as his personal assistant. When she is not rebuking her father for ignoring modern phenomenon of social media try and boost his sagging career, she is having inappropriate sexual relations with Mike. Also girlfriend Laura announces she is pregnant just before the curtain rises too. 

The deeper the mess that Riggan seems to find himself too, he resorts to listening to the voice of his alter-ego and he has also convinced himself that he has this superpower to move inanimate objects by the power of thought alone. 

During the countdown to the opening night of the play there are manic scenes straight out of a comic farce. Such as when a near-naked Riggan is accidentally locked out of the theater's stage door midway through a preview and must stride through the packed crowds of Times Square in just his underpants to get back in. Then there is the encounter in the bar next to the theater when he has a contretemps with Tabitha the NY Times Theater Critic who tells him she has vowed to give him the worst review in history to ensure the play is a flop as she bitterly resents Hollywood celebrities invading Broadway which she considers is her holy grail.

However, convinced that Mike will yet again upstage him on the play's opening night and firmly believing that he is about to lose everything, Riggan finds some inner strength to add a totally unexpected twist that shocks us all and wins him rave reviews from the Times after all. 

Throughout this whole process Riggan is still completely obsessed with his past playing the infamous Birdman that brought him fame and success and has unquestionably shaped who he has become on so many levels.  In the end he accepts the inevitability and simply gives in and let's him take over completely.

This is one amazing joy ride of a movie that never lets up both delighting and confronting the audience for the entire 2 hours. Inarritu's has imbued this, his 5th feature, with his extraordinary impassioned imagination that as, is his raison d'etre, is evident in every minute detail of the movie.  The stunning cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki) is nothing less than breathtaking. and it's accompanied by constant bursts of jazz drumming from Antonio Sanchez.

Keaton's very raw and brilliant performance as Riggan is what really makes the movie soar.  He literally exposes himself in a role that could easily be conceived as based on his own life with a career that has hardly been in ascendant since his last Batman movie twenty years ago.  Here he shows what a remarkable and honest actor he really is as he totally captures every nuance of this fallen star who wants to rise and fly again.  I'd go so far as to suggest that this is a career best for Keaton,  a fact which will be borne out when the Acting Award season starts soon.

He however wasn't alone up there on the screen and was complemented in particular with two powerful performances from the remarkable Emma Stone as Sam, and the ever wonderful Edward Norton as Mike.  Nods also to Naomi Watts playing Lesley, Andrea Riseborough as Leslie, a very low key Zach Galifianakis as Riggan's manager, Amy Ryans as his ex wife, and also Lindsay Duncan as Tabitha.

I would hesitate to declare that this is director/co-writer Inarritu's best ever movie as the four memorable ones that proceed this (especially 'Amores Perros') are quite brilliant.  However it was good enough for me at least to consider the thought for more than a moment. He is nothing less than a cinematic genius who continually successful pushes the boundaries of our imagination and gives us something remarkably refreshing and unique that is always such a sheer joy to experience.

★★★★★★★★★★

ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW

The most interesting thing about this rather surreal and intensely weird black comedy is the fact that it was clandestinely filmed at a Disney Park without permission.  It would never have been granted anyway if writer/director Randy Moore had bothered to ask, as he so obviously hates Disney and everything it stands for.  According to Mr. Moore, Mickey Mouse actually has a very sinister agenda.

The story starts with Jim who’s just checked in to his hotel at the Theme Park to be unceremoniously fired by his boss over the phone. News he keeps from his overly anxious wife and his two small children, as it’s the start of their family vacation.  He does however behave badly with them being impatient and at times angry, and at the same time he develops an obsession with two young French girls he keeps coming across in the Park. His fantasies about the girls take the form of sinister hallucinations that make even the most innocuous rides like ‘It’s A Small World’ appear to him like a psychedelic trip.

Jim’s fixation with the girls, at the expense of making his family miserable, makes him appear more like a dirty old lecherous man, rather than one who is bitterly disappointed with the life he has been dealt. Moore's vision is that mega-corporations like Disney insure that the Jim's of the world really have no alternative than to go along with their squeaky-clean version of happiness that they peddle everywhere regardless of how they may really feel.

Despite the movie’s agenda it is however a rather thin story which has been stretched out way too long, although thankfully it does redeem itself in part at the end.  The actors do a fine job, but it’s the edgy black and white cinematography that Moore has twisted to present his warped view of Disney that is the real star here.  It is such good guerrilla filming that one of the main things you carry away from this film is that you cannot stop obsessing how on earth he and his team actually got away with shooting so much footage without being caught.

The movie premiered in Sundance and filmmakers rushed to see it and tripping over themselves to laud its virtues as everyone was convinced that it would never be legally allowed to be see the light of day. They were wrong as a silent Disney has sat by as it has it has played at Art-houses all over the US wowing audiences.

It is a very good audacious movie but I thought it never really fulfilled its potential, and it could/should have been a great one.  Still definitely worth a look especially if you share Mr Moore’s loathing of the Big Mouse and all his chums.

★★★★★★★
Available from Amazon DVD/VOD

LIFE OF PI

Academy Winner Director Ang Lee is a masterful storyteller from 'The Ice Storm' to 'Brokeback Mountain' he never fails to totally engage our imagination with the magnificent and moving films he make. This time out he has taken the award-winning global best-selling novel by Yann Martel and turned into a phenomenal visual delight.

The story begins in 1977 in Pondichery a small town in India settled by French Colonists  where Pi's family run a small zoo.  The young boy had been named Piscine after a famous French Swimming Pool but all his schoolmates mercilessly teased him by calling him 'pee' so he adopts Pi as his name after demonstrating to his class the mathematical constant of the same name.  It later seems the perfect name for a boy who refuses to accept no limitations.  As a highly inquisitive 14 year old he investigates different religions with such zeal that this young Hindu boy decides to be a Muslim and a Christian too.

The zoo went broke after the political situation in the country deteriorated and his father decides that they and the animals should set sail for a new life in Canada.  The ship they travel on sinks but Pi manages to escape in a lifeboat with just an zebra for company. They pick up a floating orangutan next day as well as a hyena, but they don't make naturally good companions and the hyena makes bloody work of the other two animals as Pi manages to struggle for safety.  That is far from the worse of his problems as all this time an adult Bengal tiger has been lurking under the covers of the boat and he soon appears to  stake his claim as the master of that small craft.

For the next 227 days the teenage boy and the tiger named Richard Parker (after the Hunter who captured him) are reluctant travelling companions. Pi strings together a makeshift raft that he attaches to the lifeboat as safe haven for himself whilst the hungry and petrified tiger prowls the boat.  With the aid of the lifeboat's rations and supplies an ingenious Pi learns to survive most of the elements but it his calm lateral thinking that helps him most as he thinks through a risky plan to 'tame' Richard Parker so that they can both survive together.

The most significant part is that there is no attempt by Lee to sentimentalize the tiger at all, and the  relationship between it and the boy never ever ceases to be anything other than an unnatural fragile peace that may break at any time.   Even though we may know the truth is that Richard Parker is the creation of some amazing backroom CGI whizz kids, trust me he, and the danger he posed, looked scarily real every single second.  Lee and his cinematographer Claudio Miranda in fact deserve very high praise indeed for ensuring that the technological wizardry they used to tell their tale  really enlivened and truly enhanced it without just being the whole focus of the movie as it probably would have done in a less safe pair of hands.  And for once, 3D seemed a perfect fit for the telling of this magical tale rather than just another add-on marketing tool.

Lee has framed the story of the journey at the beginning and at the end with Pi, now a grown man and settled in Canada, relating it all to an inquisitive English writer. He warns that this is a story which he guarantees will help him find God. When he finishes the narrative, Pi then relates another very short but totally different version of him being castaway that he had offered the sceptical Inspectors investigating the Shipwreck.  In the end they chose the first version because as Pi said, that is how it goes with God.

Aside from the part that Pi's faith was major factor in his survival which doesn't sit completely easy with me on a personal level, it is undoubtedly a fantastical achievement that one wishes was really true.  The young unknown actor who played Pi was wonderfully convincing (just like Richard Parker) but credit where it is due, and it is to the genius of Mr Lee who made this miraculous fantasy the most perfect delight and such a sheer joy to be drawn into.

★★★★★★★★★