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American Sniper (R) Overrated. Bradley Cooper stars in Clint Eastwood’s biography of Chris Kyle, a sniper who recorded 160 confirmed kills in four tours in Iraq. Cooper is magnificent playing Chris when he gets home and tries to come to terms with his war experience, and everything the movie does to treat PTSD feels honest and true. The same can’t be said for the rest of the movie, which ignores both the context of the Iraq war and the false claims that Kyle made in his autobiography. Instead of addressing these, Eastwood and screenwriter include a lot of low-grade soap opera between Chris and his wife (Sienna Miller). This could have been a great war movie, but it’s undermined by the egregiousness of its omissions. Also with Luke Grimes, Jake McDorman, Kyle Gallner, Keir O’Donnell, and Navid Negahban.
Big Hero 6 (PG) Disney’s beguiling latest animated film is about a 13-year-old genius inventor (voiced by Ryan Potter) who uses a giant, inflatable, healthcare-providing robot (voiced by Scott Adsit) to find out who’s responsible for the death of his older brother (voiced by Daniel Henney). The animators have great fun with the fat, huggable, slow-moving robot and the setting, a city that’s a mash-up of San Francisco and Tokyo. The movie isn’t as deep as it would like to be, but it’s good fun. Additional voices by Jamie Chung, T.J. Miller, Genesis Rodriguez, Damon Wayans Jr., Alan Tudyk, Katie Lowes, James Cromwell, and Maya Rudolph.
Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (R) A hell of a ride. Michael Keaton stars in this theatrical satire as a washed-up Hollywood action star who risks the last of his fortune to mount a Broadway play that will get him taken seriously as an actor. This is easily the best work by director/co-writer Alejandro González Iñárritu, who finally gets in touch with his sense of humor and stops trying to tell us about the state of the world in favor of telling us a story about a somewhat deluded showbiz guy. The long takes and cleverly disguised cuts create a hurtling sense of momentum that replicates its main character’s disintegrating sense of self. It also keeps the actors on their toes, with Keaton, Edward Norton (as a Method diva of a fellow actor), and Emma Stone (as the hero’s drug-addicted daughter) all delivering career-best performances. The movie’s ideas are undercooked, but at least González Iñárritu has discovered a sense of joy to go with his technical gifts. Also with Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Shamos, and Amy Ryan.
Black Sea (R) Some conscientious direction and terrific performances can’t turn this submarine thriller into a good movie, I’m afraid. Jude Law stars as a Scottish sub captain who takes an under-the-table job salvaging Nazi gold from off the coast of Russia. Director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) tries to generate some suspense from the tension between the English-speaking and Russian-speaking crew members, and both Law and Ben Mendelsohn (as a mutinous Australian diver) do good work. Still, none of it can keep an air of boredom from seeping into this rote exercise. Also with Scoot McNairy, Tobias Menzies, Grigory Dobrygin, Konstantin Khabensky, Jodie Whittaker, and David Threlfall.
Black or White (PG-13) An unsubtle title for an unsubtle movie. Kevin Costner stars as a widowed grandfather who’s drawn into a custody battle over his mixed-race granddaughter (Jillian Estell) with the girl’s grandmother (Octavia Spencer). These are delicate issues that the movie is dealing with, and writer-director Mike Binder (The Upside of Anger) bungles every single one of them, as various characters spell out each other’s shortcomings with unfailing accuracy — he drinks too much, she has too much faith in her no-account son (André Holland) — while maintaining blind spots on their own. The little girl is one of those precocious movie kids, too. The film fails every time it tries to be serious and every time it tries to be funny. Other than that, it’s a great success. Also with Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Ehle, Bill Burr, Mpho Koaho, Paula Newsome, and Gillian Jacobs.
The Boy Next Door (R) If you cheat on your cheating husband with a hot 20-year-old high-school student, you deserve to be violently murdered. This is the message of this shoddily made and sexually retrograde thriller starring Jennifer Lopez as a woman who has a disastrous affair with the kid living next door (Ryan Guzman). The boy turns into a monster as soon as they have sex, which takes all the suspense right out of this exercise. There’s an outrageous gaffe early on, when he presents her with a “first edition” of The Iliad. Given that Homer wrote it in the 8th century B.C., the book is in remarkably good shape. Also with John Corbett, Bailey Chase, Hill Harper, and Kristin Chenoweth.
Boyhood (R) Richard Linklater’s most radical experiment yet stars Ellar Coltrane as a boy who experiences life between ages 6 and 18. The director filmed the same group of actors for a few days each year over the course of 12 years to tell his story, and the passage of time proves to be a dazzling special effect. Instead of focusing on the usual tropes of coming-of-age films, Linklater finds resonance in the boy’s smaller moments. The performances by Coltrane, Ethan Hawke, and Patricia Arquette (as the boy’s parents) are remarkably consistent over time. Despite its small scale and clearly marked time periods, this movie still manages to feel epic and infinite. The movie was filmed throughout Texas, so watch for familiar locations. Also with Marco Perella, Lorelei Linklater, Zoe Graham, Brad Hawkins, Jenni Tooley, and Steven Prince.
Cake (R) Jennifer Aniston is very good in this movie that is not. She plays a former L.A. lawyer who has been left facially scarred with limited mobility after an unspecified accident. She’s also a massive pain in the ass who scams pain pills off doctors and heaps abuse on people around her. Aniston tamps down her likability and refuses to play for sympathy, and her restraint lends power to her few dramatic outbursts. However, the movie treats the accident as a point of suspense when any idiot can guess what happened to the heroine, and the movie nose-dives disastrously every time a fellow patient’s ghost (Anna Kendrick) appears. This movie does remind us that Aniston can actually act; I wish she’d do it more often, and in better movies than this one. Also with Sam Worthington, Adriana Barraza, Mamie Gummer, Chris Messina, Lucy Punch, Britt Robertson, Felicity Huffman, and William H. Macy.
Foxcatcher (R) Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball) turns the bizarre 1989 murder of Olympic champion wrestler Dave Schultz by billionaire John du Pont into this starchy critique of American masculinity. Startlingly transformed by gray hair and discolored teeth, Steve Carell plays du Pont while Channing Tatum plays Dave’s brother Mark Schultz, who’s the first to get roped in by the rich man with a shiny, state-of-the-art gym on his estate. Riffing on his pet theme of male inarticulateness, Miller makes this movie spin on the dynamic between John, driven by homosexual urges he can’t acknowledge, and Mark, who dimly recognizes how he’s being used. The movie evokes a poisonous brew of machismo, patriotism, and worship of material success that feels particularly American. Also with Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Anthony Michael Hall, Guy Boyd, Brett Rice, and Vanessa Redgrave.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (PG-13) Not bad, necessarily, but all it made me feel was, “Oof, that’s over.” The last chapter involves the slaying of the dragon, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) going insane with greed, and Bilbo (Martin Freeman) trying to avert an all-out slaughter over the dragon’s treasure hoard. This is the most action-packed of the installments, and the fight sequences are performed ably by the actors here. Still, none of the characters’ relationships rings true, and the villains remain one-dimensional. J.R.R. Tolkien’s book gained focus from being brief, but Peter Jackson has blown this up into a 474-minute saga because that’s all he knows how to do now. Also with Ian McKellen, Evangeline Lilly, Aidan Turner, Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Stephen Fry, Manu Bennett, Billy Connolly, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, and Ian Holm.
