Movie Review: Inside Llewyn Davis

Synopsis: Singer-songwriter Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) bums around 1961 Greenwich Village, toiling in the folk music scene and couch surfing with anyone who will have him. Davis is a talented musician but not truly a great one and after the death of his singing partner, he drifts through life believing that he is better than his circumstances but unwilling or unable to change them. He travels from New York to Chicago and back and has interactions with a number of more successful, "together" friends, usually while transporting a cat, and whether or not his experiences leave him a changed man or not is left to the discretion of the viewer.

What I Liked: One of the things I love most about the Coen Brothers is their undeniable style that oozes through every film they make. You never watch a Coen Brothers movie without coming out knowing that you just watched a Coen Brothers movie. But at the same time, they never beat you over the head with their Coen-ness. Each of their movies centers on a drastically different subject or subject matter (though this one shares some obvious connections to O Brother Where Art Thou?) but there's this sense of familiarity that goes hand in hand with everything they do. That, I think, is why they can take chances and piece their movies together in strange ways and still expect the audience to buy in, because there's an existing comfortability that comes along with each project.

Inside Llewyn Davis is sort of the quintessential Coen Brothers movie. They've chosen a interesting but perhaps not all that accessible character and then they throw the audience right into a week in his life with very little build up but we immediately buy in because it all seems familiar (assuming you've had some experience with previous Coen works). This lets them really put you in Davis's shoes and helps to make him a much more likable character than he really has any business being. He's a melancholy, grumpy bum in many ways but the movie lets you (or perhaps forces you) to see the world through his eyes and it works beautifully.

Isaac is a tremendous medium for the Coen's particular brand of darkly comedic art. Davis is at the same time witty, sulky, and subtly charismatic and Isaac hits each mark perfectly. It doesn't hurt that he is an outstanding musician and every time he picks up his guitar is a glorious trip into the heart of 60s folk. Seriously, this is absolutely perfect casting. And the supporting players, featuring the typically strong batch of great actors in small roles we've come to expect from the Coens, take turns setting Isaac up to shine. Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, F. Murray Abraham, and John Goodman, among others, all have some glorious moments and all serve to further Davis' progression through his own personal Odyssey. Inside Llewyn Davis is also near-perfect from a technical standpoint and the cinematography, while a little understated, is superb.

What I Didn't Like: Um, that it ended?

In Conclusion: I've been looking forward to this one and building it up in my mind for a year now and somehow it still managed to exceed my expectations. Inside Llewyn Davis is smart, it has a strong emotional core, and like most Coen movies, it is darkly hilarious in just the right ways. It is a brilliant, heart-achingly genuine piece of filmmaking. This is one of the very best movies of the year for me and I've had the soundtrack playing on repeat for three days now. If I had had the opportunity to see it before I wrote my Top 10 list and Top Performances list, the movie would have come out third or fourth and Isaac's work would have been top five. Love, love, love it.

Grade: A+ (Rated R for language and some sexual references)

http://youtu.be/eXMuR-Nsylg

Movie Review: The Great Gatsby

At the height of the Roaring Twenties, young Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) takes up residence in a shack in one of New York state's wealthiest areas. Nick knows only two people in the area, his flighty cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and her brutish husband Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). Through this association, he becomes aware of the legendary parties that take place next door in the estate of the mysterious Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio). When Nick is invited to one of these parties, he becomes acquainted with Gatsby and finds himself swept up in a lifestyle more lavish than he could have ever imagined. But Gatsby has an agenda and after setting up a meeting between his new friend and Daisy, he finds himself caught in the middle of a tangled in a deadly web that may destroy everything around him.

I have been struggling with how to review The Great Gatsby since I saw it on opening night and I have finally come to the final conclusions:

1.) This novel is one of my very favorite literary works and in some regards this film brought a bit of it to life; 2.) Baz Luhrmann does not make films for me and as such, I was predisposed to disliking his vision for The Great Gatsby; 3.) There are parts of this film that I actually really liked but the more I think about it, the more I have come to the conclusion that they are all taken directly from the source material and therefore have less to do with the actual film itself than my aforementioned love for the novel; 4.) I don't think this movie is very good; 5.) I get why other people do think it is very good.

In the interest of fairness, let me start with the positives. Luhrmann put together an impressive cast filled with a number of people I really like (and Tobey Maguire too!) and while I don't think any of them give an awards-caliber performance, most of them are pretty solid, DiCaprio in particular. I very much enjoyed the use anachronistic music in The Great Gatsby and I don't always feel that way about a Luhrmann film. And as mentioned above, there are a few scenes in this film that are taken almost directly from the page and the translation is such that it reminded me just how much I really do love F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing. 

Beyond these "pros", however, I found a lot of faults within The Great Gatsby. For one thing, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the "spectacle" of the film and this caught me completely off guard. I do not particularly care for Moulin Rouge or Romeo + Juliet but I cannot deny the visual beauty of those films. I was sorely disappointed on that front here. I found the set design to be uninspiring, the costume and makeup to be only adequate, and the actual look of the film to be downright ugly. I was not swept away into the Roaring Twenties the way I needed to be to enjoy this film. I hated the hazy, out of focus way in which many of the scenes were shot and I'm not sure if this was purposeful or if this was the result of seeing a 3D movie in 2D but regardless, it was unappealing. And while the first half of the film at least has a solid energy to it, the back half is quite honestly boring (and again, I say this as someone who has a great affinity for this story). All of the grandiose, classic Luhrmann style is contained in the first hour while the second and third act are a slough to get through. I can't believe that I'm saying a Luhrmann film was too stoic and not nearly as overwhelmingly flamboyant as it needs to be but...well, that's the shocking truth.

These complaints would probably be enough to turn me off from this film but Luhrmann's translation of the novel also leaves something to be desired. He missed badly on Daisy, turning into a truly sympathetic character instead of showing her as the manipulative shrew she is in the book. Moreover, far too much about Jay Gatsby himself is given up or hinted at too strongly so early in the film that the final reveal of who he really is falls flat. The impact and the tragedy of his reality is not nearly as crushing as it should be. The mystery of Gatsby is what makes the novel so great and when you strip that away, the narrative suffers greatly. As such, I can only say that while the novel should be considered required reading for literally EVERYONE, this film version of The Great Gatsby holds little value for me. Grade: C (Rated PG-13 for some language, sexuality, and dramatic themes)