THE WALK

GRADE: A
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, Charlotte LeBon, James Badge Dale
Screenplay by Robert Zemeckis & Christopher Browne 
Based on the book "To Reach the Clouds" by Phillipe Petit
Rated PG ( Intensity, brief nudity, brief rug references)

Reviewed by Paul & Patrick Gibbs

No matter how good the home viewing experience gets, there are some things Netflix will never be able to offer. Even a 60" TV screen can't put you on a wire between strung between the towers of the famed World Trade Center and make you feel as if you're actually there, stepping out into the void. But 3D IMAX can do that, if you have a master like Academy Award winning director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, Cast Away) at the helm.

The Walk tells the story of Phillipe Petit, a French wirewalker/performance artist who pulled off the legendary feat in 1974, the most important year in world history (we were born in 1974).  After Petit's story was memorably told by the acclaimed and Oscar-winning documentary Man On Wire, many were left wondering why there needed to be a narrative film. The answer is to give us the sensory experience of being there on the wire with Phillipe. Director Zemeckis has long been renowned for his nearly unparalleled skill with visual effects sequences, and as the late Roger Ebert observed, Zemeckis' trademark is that he uses the effects in the service of the story, never the other way around. Here he has used it to give us a one of a kind cinematic experience. What's more surprising is that the experience is surprisingly emotional.

Phillipe is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in an energetic performance sure to be loved in some circles and hated in others. It's always inherently challenging to accept any American actor affecting a French accent, and doubly so when we we're very used to hearing that actor speak without it. While Gordon-Levitt's accent may not be perfect, the problems many viewers will likely have with it are more due to who is doing the accent than the quality of the accent itself. As for his personality, imagine Robert Clary from Hogan's Heroes playing Ferris Bueller. Phillpe is cheerful, passionate intense, cocky in a way which is alternately endearing and annoying, and narrates the film directly to the camera (in wraparound sequences in which he stands in the torch of the Statue of Liberty). Phillipe's physicality is of extreme importance, and it's undeniable Gordon-Levitt nails this aspect of the performance to sheer perfection.

The story begins with Phillipe in France as a young performer, hatching his plan to walk between the twin towers. Phillipe meets a young woman named Annie Allix (Charlotte LeBon), a fellow artist who becomes the first of his accomplices, and soon adds two more accomplices, Jean-Louis (Benedict Samuel) and Jean-Francois/Jeff (Cesar Domboy). Phillipe also hones his skills as a wire walker under the tutelage of Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), leader of a legendary family of wire walkers. This opening section of the film is played with a great deal of whimsy, trying to be as cute (and occasionally surreal) as possible. Again, this will get mixed reactions from the audience. Some will likely find it enchanting, others insufferable. We were squarely in the middle. It can be a bit much, but mostly it works.

Act II is where the film really starts to take off, with Phillipe making it to New York and recruiting an American accomplice (James Badge Dale, perhaps Hollywood's best ensemble player and current most underrated actor). Here The Walk becomes a heist film without the stealing, and the closer Phillipe and company get to "The Coup", the more Zemeckis dials up the suspense, getting to almost Hitchcockian levels on the day of the walk itself. Finally, there's the walk, which is everything you could want it to be. Dazzling, terrifying, beautiful and funny, it's among the most impressive sequences Zemeckis has directed, which is saying a great deal. Adding the 3D to the superb effects and Dariusz Wolski's top-notch cinematography is likely to give some viewers vertigo, and will leave almost everyone gripping their seats tightly (be sure to get control of the arm rests the second you sit down). It's a phenomenal set piece, and Zemeckis wisely chooses not to give us too many reinvent the wheel money shots. He wants us to experience the walk, not to marvel at his technique.

The supporting cast is strong, with Badge Dale and especially Domboy as the standouts. Domboy's Jeff (who has a paralyzing fear of heights) is the most likable character in the film, and he acts as the audience's window, providing somebody we can relate to. He thinks all of this is cool, but also terrifying.

The Walk isn't an especially deep film, but as a tribute to following your dreams and to the twin towers themselves, it's surprisingly emotional. It's not a perfect film, but it's an awfully good one, and a truly memorable experience.

The Walk is rated PG for intensity, brief (and pretty mild) drug references, and a flash of nudity so innocuous you'd have to be a world class prude to get uptight about it.

THE INTERN

GRADE: B-

Starring Robert DeNiro, Anne Hathaway

Written and Directed by Nancy Meyers

Rated PG-13 (language, vulgarity)  

Reviewed by Paul Gibbs

There are times when strong and charismatic performances can carry a movie past a formulaic and cliched script. There are also times when a lightweight film is just pleasantly enjoyable enough to allow the viewer's more critical tendencies to relax a little and just enjoy it for what it is. Fortunately, The Intern falls into both of these categories. As you would expect from writer/director Nancy Meyers, it's so formulaic it seems to be slavishly following a recipe, but the star turns fro Anne Hathaway and especially Robert DeNiro are so likable they could make a much weaker film pleasant enough to watch, and the film's gentle sense of humor is endearing.

DeNiro stars as Ben Whittaker, a 70-year old widower and retiree who is getting bored and stagnant, whiling away his days doing yoga and fending off the advances of Linda Lavin. Because this is the kind of movie where it matters even less than usual if something like this would happen in real life, Ben finds an ad for an internet clothing company experimenting with a "Senior Internship Program" wherein people his age act as interns because isn't that adorably quirky? Ben applies, and quickly becomes the personal internal to company founder Jules Ostin (Hathaway). The name "Jules Ostin" should tell you right away what a stock character Hathaway is playing: the brilliant but abrasive and yet endearingly quirky and deep down insecure and vulnerable yet driven and successful hip young fashion genius who is trying to juggle work and a complicated personal life. However, this is not a full-on romantic comedy, so Jules' is not looking for love. She's already married to a great guy named Matt (Anders Holm) who gave up a promising career in marketing to be a stay at home Dad to their precocious Hollywood daughter who talks like a fairly well-educated 25 year old. While at first Ben's simple, unassuming honesty and nice guyness is somehow off putting to Jules, they quickly bond and develop something of a father-daughter relationship, discovering that the generations can learn from each other and work together to give an audience warm fuzzies.

On paper, it's harder not to get overtly sarcastic and make The Intern sound flat out bad, because they charisma and chemistry of the stars can't be conveyed on paper. Of course this doesn't begin to resemble the powerhouse brilliance of DeNro's early career, but the great actor fully commits to the role, giving Ben a depth and warmth that make the character impossible not to love. Hathaway also adds considerable charm to the proceedings, and while the two do not seem to be an obvious pairing of Hollywood talents, the chemistry is undeniable, and watching these two play light and gentle comedy off of each other makes The Intern a nice way to spend a couple of hours at the movies, even if it should have been closer to an hour and 40 minutes. A little judicious trimming would have improved the film greatly, and they could have started with eliminating the fairly pointless subplot concerning Ben's romance with the company masseuse (Rene Russo), which seems to only be there to keep us from thinking Ben's interest in Jules is romantic. This turns out to be unnecessary: as common as May/December romances are in film, Ben simply comes across as too decent and honorable a guy to pursue a woman who could be his daughter.

On the whole, The Intern isn't going to win any Oscars or be remembered as a career highlight, but it's a pleasant evening of film going that reminds us how much a true movie star can add to a film. It's a date movie, or the kind of movie you go see with your Mom. And as unpopular as that is with the jaded, post modernist internet movie buff crowd of today, that's a perfectly valid flavor of popcorn entertainment, and those who enjoy that type of film will have a good time. 

EVEREST

GRADE: B-

Starring Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Emily Watson, John Hawkes

Screenplay by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy

Directed by Baltasar Kormakur

Rated PG - 13 (violence, profanity)

Reviewed by Paul and Patrick Gibbs

As an IMAX 3D experience, director Baltasar Kormakur's Everest more than delivers. Spectacular location's and Salvatore Totino's superb cinematography put the viewers inside the film, making you feel as if you're actually climbing to the summit of the world's largest mountain. But the storytelling is sometimes a bit muddled, and the ending may leave you wondering why you needed to take the journey in the first place.

Relating the story of the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, the film follows two groups of climbers. The first is lead Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), the charismatic and eminently dependable head of Adventure Consulting, a commercial group which guides climbers to the top of Everest. The second group is Mountain Madness, lead by Scott Fisher (Jake Gyllenhall). Hall's group is accompanied by celebrated journalist Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly), and of course the the groups are comprised of a disparate group of climbers with just enough personality to help us tell them apart without actually really getting to know them as people, such as Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), a mail carrier who is on his second attempt at Everest, and Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), an amiable but clueless Texan. The overabundance of climbers trying to make it to the top at the same time leads to a traffic jam just as a potentially deadly storm is hitting.

The cast turns out to a be a major strength of the film, both because they are top quality actors who disappear into the film with realistic and low key performances, and because the sort of "spot the star" quality is a major help in keeping track of who's who. But between the sheer number of characters, the heavy coats and the heavy beards, it's still quite a challenge at times, and director Kormakur doesn't often pull off helping us understand the geography of which part of the mountain is which and who is where, though he succeeds admirably at making the environment palpably real and building the suspense. Perhaps the biggest difficult with the film lies in the fact that it's nearly impossible to make a truly satisfying film out of this particular true-life incident. It's not accidental that it's known as the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, not the Miracle on Everest. While the facts of the story are admittedly public knowledge and easily available through a quick search of Wikipedia, it occurred almost 20 years ago and is hardly fresh in the public consciousness. Everything about the film leaves the audience expecting a thrilling tale of survival and determination triumphing against the odds, but that's not what we get. And of course it shouldn't be. But with the heavy nature of the facts, combined with a lack of real insight into what caused the disaster, it's hard not to leave the film wondering what exactly you've gotten from the experience. 

All in all, Everest is a spectacular and often engrossing film helped along by an excellent cast, but it's far more distinguished as a visual and technical achievement than as a piece of storytelling.

BLACK MASS

GRADE: A
Starring Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon
Screenplay by Mark Allouk and Jez Butterworth
Based on the book by Dick Lehr and Gerald O'Neill
Directed by Scott Copper
Rated R (brutal violence, language throguhout, some sexual reference and brief drug use)
Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs.

To say that Black Mass features Johnny Depp's most compelling performance in years is a little like saying "this is Shelley Winters at her absolute sexiest." In truth, Depp (whose worked I've enjoyed off and on since the '80's) hasn't given a performance that didn't earn my utter contempt since Public Enemies, with the possiblet exception of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, simply because he had an excuse for playing that character as a half baked Jack Sparrow, as opposed to The Lone Ranger or Into The Woods, where he played Tonto and the Big Bad Wolf as a half baked Jack Sparrow. I submit that with the exception of Transcendence and The Tourist, in which he gave literally no sign of having ever acted in front of a camera in his life, Depp has just been recycling the beloved pirate to such a ridiculous extent for so long that he's become a professional Johnny Depp impersonator, and not even a particularly good one.

But with his mesmerizing and and at times terrifying portrayal of real life crime lord James "Whitey" Bulger, who ranked below only Osama Bin Laden on the F.B.I.'s most wanted list for most of the last decade, Johnny may not have the luck of the Irish at the box office, but he has managed to restore his credibility with even his most vehement detractors (and I count myself among them.). This isn't just the best performance he has given since Finding Neverland, it's a major career highlight, and it raises him to a whole new level as an actor. However, as the Hollywood press justifiably praises Johnny, they need to remember to give some of the credit to director Scott Cooper, who not only had the audacity to actually direct the self indulgent super star, but knew exactly how to use one of the actor's major weak points to his favor, namely his inability to invite us in to experience the movie from his point of view, as a protagonist generally needs to do. Whitey Bulger is not the protagonist of this story: he is an enigmatic figure that looms over the events of the film and every character in it, but is never meant to be psychologically or emotionally reachable. We aren't supposed to get what Bulger is thinking and feeling, and that was a brilliant choice executed with great sublety by both Depp and Cooper. Getting Depp to not only command the screen but do it without ever pulling focus is a masterful achievenent, and the only logical explanation is a perfectly communicated shared vision and mutual respect.

The story of Bulger's criminal career and his alliance with the Fedreal Bureau of Investigation, which allowed him to effectively allowed him to become a comic book supervillain while remaining not only untouched by law enforcement but even assisted by it in exchange for what turned out to be very little intel of value, is told from the point of view of those who were manipulated by him, covered for him or even carried out his most heinous orders. The narrative structure, which begins with thug Kevin Weeks (Jesse Plemmons) giving his testimony and continues as multiple members of Bulger's inner circle spilled everything in order plea bargain, is part Citizen Kane and part The Usual Suspects.

The closest thing to a true protagonist John

Callahan (Edgerton), the F.B.I. agent and childhood friend of both James Bulger and his younger brother Billy (Cumberbatch) who set up the alliance, using it to gain fame and power as the man who took down the Italian Mafia while simultaneously protecting Bulger from investigation and prosecution. Billy Bulger has become a rising star in city government, and tries to maintain a balance between being an outstanding public servant and ignoring the fact that his big brother Jimmy is becoming an outstanding public enemy. The younger Bulger's constant effort to remain blissfully ignorant is nor an easy feat, and obviously eventually proved impossible.

The cast is excellent all around, with Cumberbatch completing shedding his Sherlock shell, Kevin Bacon giving the kind of powerful yet understated and unsung Captain of the supporing ensemble performance that only he can give (including sustaining a perfect South Boston accent that is even more impressive than his German in the opening of X-Men: First Class.). No other actor has made such a memorable and distinguished career out of being the thankless glue that holds things together when he could be opting to play leads in lesser films, and that is why this guy has justifiably inspired his own parlor game sensation. As Karl Malone once said of Michael Jordan, "What the man haven't do?"

But the absolute standout is Edgerton, perhaps even surpassing Depp. One of Hollywood's best and brightest up and coming stars, Edgerton remains playing second string most of the time because he is such a dedicated "assistant storyteller," to reference a famous Harrison Ford quote, that he doesn't have time to try to be the center of attention. While it's a shame that he has yet to recieve the recognition he deserves, part of me hopes he never fully does, lest he go the way of Kevin Spacey and become to big a star to allowed to play the kind of performance that makes you forget you're watching an actor and not the actual character in the flesh. Edgerton is ably supported by David Harbour, who is the same type of actor, and the pairing of the two is a triumph for truth in acting.

This is most definitely for the Godfather crowd, and you need to be willing to withstand brutal (though never gratuitous) violence, the dropping of enough F-bombs to level more cities than any MARVEL or DC superhero, and frequent usage of what is largely ignored for it's status as the only "you can't say that" epithet that has consistently beaten out said F-word I'm terms of being allowed only in R-Rated films (it rhymes with "sockplucker."). It's certainly no Wolf of Wall Street, but it's not for the squeamish.

If the movie has a major flaw, it's in its pacing, but a true life crime story simply can't have the tightness of a made up thriller like The Departed. But what is does have is a haunting, melancholy truth that is genuinely haunting. You may not have known who Jimmy Bulger was before seeing this film, but if you do see it, you will never forget him. And you're not likely to look at Johnny Depp exactly the same way for a while. While Bulger remains an enigma, at a distance from everyone, we do see glimmers of a human being in there, and even a caring son, brother and father, and that is what makes this figure truly disturbing.