'Doctor Strange': In which--SPOILER-- I actually liked a comic book movie.

In Doctor Strange, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Dr. Stephen Strange, an arrogant neurosurgeon who cares more about money and prestige than the hippocratic oath. When we first meet Dr. Strange, he’s in the operating room showcasing his knowledge of music trivia while he cavalierly cuts into a patient. Strange’s arrogance stems from the fact that he’s the best of his kind, and thus, he’s earned the right to be a prick. Later, we see him skillfully remove a bullet from the skull of another patient, and it’s a genuinely breathless moment, yet there’s no humanity behind Strange’s almost miraculous skill as a healer. But Strange’s arrogance gets the better of him when he’s severely injured in a car accident (from reckless driving) that threatens to permanently end his career as a surgeon. Then he goes on a quest for healing, to Nepal, where he meets a group of mystics that believe in the power of the mind to overcome the limits of the body. 

Even though Doctor Strange doesn’t break any new ground as a comic book movie, it does succeed in refreshing the old beats we’ve come to expect from them. What are some of the worst things about comic book movies? A tendency toward expositional dialogue, and consequently a lack of visual storytelling; an indulgent, mindless approach to violence and conflict; a debilitating reliance on heavy-handed themes about good and evil, which have been recycled until they’ve worn thin; and a need to raise the stakes as high as they can be raised (the world will end if “X” doesn’t save it), until the stakes no longer matter. Doctor Strange minimizes most of these flaws, and at times even subverts them. 

The film’s sense of humor goes a long way toward this, even if some of the jokes feel a bit lame. Example of a lame joke: When Mordo (one of the mystics, played with charisma by Chiwetel Ejiofor) hands Dr. Strange a card with the word “shamballa” written on it, and explains to a befuddled Strange that it’s the Wifi password. “We’re not savages,” he quips, with a silly grin on his face. But there are other moments of levity that are charming, that truly do lighten the mood. There’s a magical cape, for instance, that takes on a personality of its own, like something out of Harry Potter; or the banter between Strange and Benedict Wong’s character, the taciturn guardian of the library, who never smiles. For a film that focuses so much on big questions about existence and reality, Dr. Strange seldom feels heavy-handed.

Indeed, Doctor Strange actually evokes a sense of wonder about the world and the universe (and the multiverse), a feat I’d long given up hoping for in comic book movies. Strange often clumsily answers its questions with handy bumper-sticker-adages like, “Death is what gives life meaning,” but the fact that it ponders such questions, and the fact that director Scott Derrickson has the restraint to let even some of those questions linger (handy bromides aside), says a lot about his maturity as a filmmaker. Doctor Strange, with all its depictions of matter being bent and manipulated by mental energy and time being looped, recalls Christopher Nolan’s films Inception and Interstellar, but unlike Nolan, Scott Derrickson is content to marvel at the mysteries, where Nolan delights in creating puzzles we can’t solve. 

Derrickson, who co-scripted with Jon Spaiht and C. Robert Cargill (his collaborator on the Sinister films), has always demonstrated a strong interest in the supernatural and in the workings of the metaphysical. His first feature was 2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a combination horror movie-courtroom drama that was part The Exorcist and part Inherit the Wind. Emily Rose is an effective horror movie, even if it masquerades (barely) as propaganda for the Catholic Church. (Laura Linney must defend a priest accused of neglecting an alleged possessed girl, and she bases her closing arguments on the possibility of a supernatural realm: belief in things not seen.) And yet, even Emily Rose at times betrayed a certain lucid thinking (except when it was being sensationalistic). But Derrickson was a little more obvious about his religion then; a decade later, he’s perhaps less sure of himself, or perhaps his own views have simply gotten mixed into a much bigger Marvel-sized soup of beliefs.

We get the feeling that Doctor Strange is promulgating some kind of religious dogma, but its views on all things metaphysical feel more elemental: “Humanity longs for the eternal,” and “time is an insult” says the film’s chief villain, Kaecilius, played by Mads Mikkelsen (the eye-patch-wearing heavy in Casino Royale); Tilda Swinton, playing a powerful mystic referred to as the “Ancient One,” talks of “harnessing energy” and “making magic,” and Doctor Strange goes on a quest for physical healing using metaphysical means. That Doctor Strange is a brilliant neurosurgeon who must unlearn all his reliance on the laws of nature, in order to cultivate mystical powers, is a fairly obvious lesson. It's all sort of lingering in the air, incoherently, and thus the film falls somewhere in the middle, emphasizing a “both-and” approach to the ideas of rationality and belief. Doctor Strange embraces pluralism, perhaps without trying to, and feels far less preachy than even something like Superman, which champions ideas about patriotism and capitalism—not to mention the idea of the ubermensch—far more dogmatically. 

Derrickson also has a feel for actors: Whenever possible, he lets them build the tension in a scene—not special effects, nor clunky expositional dialogue. Benedict Cumberbatch, who has such a commanding presence, has chemistry with Rachel McAdams, playing his colleague, Christine Palmer, who’s in love with him. But when she’s had enough of his self-centeredness, Christine threatens to end the relationship, and Strange retorts with something to the effect of, “you weren’t worth my time anyway.” It’s a jaw-dropping moment, one that elicited jeers from the audience, but McAdams gets a triumphant moment out of it: She walks away having rejected even his callousness, and isn’t about to be defined by what some arrogant jerk says about her. In later scenes, McAdams isn’t reduced to being the drag stock female character. (Although her role does diminish.) She’s forced at one point in the movie to save Strange from the brink of death, even while his soul—having temporarily left its body—battles with the soul of Kaecilius. 

The fight scenes smack of familiarity, just like in every comic book movie, but Doctor Strange overcomes most of them too. (For one thing, they aren't as drawn out, and Doctor clocks in at under two hours because of it. Bless you, Scott Derrickson.) And the big showdown, which pits Strange against some super-evil-dark-force-spirit-thing, has a lovely, funny kick to it: Strange wins by using the concept of “looping,” repeating the same sequence indefinitely, until he irritates the thing into submission. (It's just like in Groundhog Day.) Perhaps this scene serves as a bigger comment on the mindless repetition that comic book movies foist on us, exhausting viewers into submission. It's amazing how grateful we can be when one of these movies actually surprises us.

Julia Roberts as Grim Reaper

As depressing as it is to see an actress like the ebullient Julia Roberts transformed into a droopy-faced, grief-stricken shell, her new movie, Secret in Their Eyes is pretty entertaining. In fact, she's sort of the female equivalent to one of those characters played by Liam Neeson of late (in films such as Taken and Non-Stop). Roberts plays a Los Angeles detective whose daughter is murdered. By a cruel coincidence, Roberts and her partner, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) are the detectives called to investigate the crime scene, never suspecting the identity of the victim. The film jumps back and forth between 2002, during the immediate investigation of the murder, and the present day, after the case has gone cold.

Secret in Their Eyes isn’t by any means a perfect thriller. And it’s hard to say if anything you’ll see in this grim procedural drama will differ much from any number of investigation-themed television dramas like Criminal Minds. But the yarn it unspools is compelling enough, and the film is bolstered by the performances of its three leads, especially Nicole Kidman as the district attorney who’s caught between her obligation to follow the law and her devotion to her friend and colleague.

Secret in Their Eyes is in essence a revenge fantasy. As a culture, we've been primed for this kind of movie based on our incessant consumption of true crime TV. We're constantly fascinated by stories of murder and the devastation wrought on the victims' family members. We yearn for justice, yet we know that not even execution of the killer will bring back the dead. Revenge fantasies are deceptive, because they're a heightened version of a longing that cannot be fulfilled. Writer-director Billy Ray understands the double-edged nature of revenge, but he's also happy to milk the fantasy all the way to the bank.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this movie is the role of the September 11th attacks in halting the investigation. The prime suspect in the case is a valued informant, who’s been feeding info to counter-terrorism detectives about a local mosque, a hub for suspected terrorists. The film tries to delve into a surprisingly complex moral problem: Is it morally right to keep a killer on the streets if doing so can prevent more deaths? (I'm not sure the movie satisfactorily answered this question; but it gets points for asking.)

Billy Ray favors convenient plotting, so every scene is primed for maximum plot juice, like an overripe orange. Ray likes his pulp extra-pulpy, and so we get such dramatic wallops as Julia Roberts sobbing over the dead body of her daughter, inside a dumpster; or the ongoing plot complication of a conflicted crush between Ejiofor and Kidman, who’s married; or scenes of Roberts, now hardened by her grief, contemplating a little vigilante justice. “My daughter was the thing that made me me.” This logic is unhealthy, and what’s more, I think it is a truthful observation about too many parents. Of course, the loss of a child is a tragedy that probably no one can recover from fully, but the idea that your kids define you is troubling nonetheless.

Nicole Kidman stands out in her controlled, commanding performance as the D.A. In a scene in which she chides her colleague (Ejiofor) for badgering a suspect despite having no sufficient evidence against him, she goads the suspect into angrily striking out at her. It’s a masterful bit of manipulation, and a reminder of Nicole Kidman’s particular brand of deceptive power. She’s seductive and the smartest person in the room. (But it's also decidedly sexist, because she insults his manhood, hoping it will anger him. When it does, he whips out his member in an act of pure brutishness. Earlier, though, Kidman congratulates Ejiofor on his gender sensitivity.)

Julia Roberts is very good—she has always had an earthy quality that’s made her someone you can root for under any circumstances—but this character feels like a downer in light of her repertoire. It would be like seeing Cary Grant play the creepy pedophile Humbert Humbert in Lolita. We love Cary Grant for being Cary Grant, and we love Julia Roberts for being Julia Roberts. There’s a little bit of that Julia Roberts here, but not much. And even though it feels wrong-headed to criticize an actress for doing something different, especially if she's proficient at it, I always wonder about the motivations of taking on such a role. Are we as a culture so dead to the Julia Roberts of Pretty Woman and Erin Brockovich (a great performance)? Will we turn Julia Roberts into an angry sociopath as we have done Liam Neeson, who went from saving thousands of Jews during the Holocaust to becoming a taciturn, rich man's Rambo?

But all of these quibbles don't undercut the fact that I had a good time at this movie. Secret in Their Eyes has surprising moments of humor and some well-staged moments of suspense, even if it’s an essentially dumb and emotionally manipulative experience. But the dumpster scene gave me chills; but I also felt irritated by it. Which kind of cinematic manipulation is acceptable, and which crosses a line? I’m not sure myself.

With Dean Norris (who’s funny as Ejiofor’s scrappy counterpart), Michael Kelly, Alfred Molina, Zoe Graham.

Ridley Scott’s pop space adventure “The Martian” has the heart that all of his previous films were missing.

As much as I love Alien, I’m not much of a Ridley Scott devotee. Blade Runner has put me to sleep at least twice, and many of Scott’s other films are cold and clinical, which Alien kind of is too (only somehow, with Alien, it works). That’s why I was so pleasantly surprised by The Martian, Scott’s follow-up to his enormously self-plagiarizing Prometheus (2012). With The Martian, Ridley Scott seems to have stepped into an invigorating ray of sunshine that’s loosened him up as a director. This movie is a crowd-pleasing space epic in the best sense, with an irresistible performance by Matt Damon, our current cinematic Everyman.

The Martian is essentially science porn: it’s a movie about a stranded astronaut named Mark Watney who must rely on his scientific training—he’s a botanist—to survive on Mars for four years while he awaits a rescue mission. We watch countless scenes of Mark using his mad science skills to preserve his life and communicate with the outside world. In one of these process scenes, Mark builds a garden—using the exceptionally dry-looking red dust of his current planet—inside his headquarters, and then does some other scienc-y things to create and sustain a crop of potatoes.

Normally, this kind of movie bores me to tears. But Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard deftly weave together two exciting, suspenseful narratives: one of the lone astronaut, the other of the NASA scientists and PR people back on Earth, who initially believe Mark is dead, but who soon discover photographer evidence to the contrary. Their rush to build a payload of supplies—to send to Mark so he can subsist while the rescue team comes—is yet another opportunity to show us the brilliance of science and the processes of scientists. This movie is essentially a plug for the scientific method and the apparently boundless possibilities of science.

There have been several pro-NASA movies of late, and several noteworthy space thrillers too. This year, the uneven comedy-drama Aloha (from director Cameron Crowe) lamented the death of NASA and used that historical moment to craft a darker narrative about space exploration falling into the hands of greedy private enterprisers. Last year, there was Christopher Nolan’s high-minded space opera Interstellar (also featuring Matt Damon), which was a humorless and fatty cinematic experience that tried to out-Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Before that we had Alfonso Cuarón’s magnificent but stressful (and overly sentimental) Gravity. Between the three of them, The Martian achieves the most balance: it’s emotionally affecting without resorting to cheap dramatic tricks, and its obvious admiration for NASA and science as a methodology does not inhibit our enjoyment of the film. It also takes itself less seriously without sacrificing the sense of galactic and human awe it evokes.

Matt Damon, of course, is the heart and soul of The Martian. When he faces the reality of his situation and the likelihood of his death, he takes a sober breath and simply utters, “So, yeah…Yeah,” and with those simple words, and with Damon's look of utter acceptance-cum-vulnerability, we experience the weight of mortality. There are few actors working right now more capable of winning us over than Matt Damon, and Ridley Scott understands this. He lets Damon do the work of pulling us into the film’s emotional journey, and it’s this which anchors The Martian to firm ground, narratively speaking. Even when the film begins to grow a little wearisome (I would have liked it to be 20 minutes shorter), we’re still ultimately with this movie and willing to be taken for its ride.

Scott has also assembled a fine supporting cast, most of them playing astronauts or scientists: Jessica Chastain, giving a surprisingly warm performance (for her) as the captain of the Mars mission that inadvertently abandoned Mark; Jeff Daniels as the head of NASA, managing to be glib, tactical, and likable all at once; Kristen Wiig as NASA’s public relations analyst, proving once again that Kristen Wiig is a tremendously engaging performer capable of both comedy and drama: she has some lovely, funny little moments, and conveys exasperation quite effectively; Michael Peña as the pilot of the spaceship Hermes: he exudes the charm of a good-natured ex-military pilot; Chiwetel Ejiofor (best known for his performance in 12 Years a Slave) as Vincent Kapoor, one of the NASA heads trying to manage both an impossible rescue mission and a public relations nightmare.

The film looks gorgeous, I should add. Mars never looked so beautiful in all its orange-red dusty glory, although the movie doesn’t focus as much on the sheer grandeur of space as it might have. It’s far more interested with practical things, but in a way that keeps us hooked to the screen (mostly). And even though I can appreciate arty space movies like 2001 and Alien, there’s something befitting the more practical, humanistic touch with which Ridley Scott imbues The Martian. This is a populist space movie, an almost sap-headed love letter to the idea of can-do spirit and human achievement. But Scott is a competent director, so The Martian successfully walks the lines of sentimentality and histrionics. It’s immensely satisfying entertainment.

With Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Donald Glover, Benedict Wong, Mackenzie Davis, Naomi Scott, Nick Mohammed, Eddy Ko, and Chen Shu. Music by Harry Gregson-Williams. Cinematography by Dariusz Wolski.

Children of Men

Children of Men (2006), directed by Alfonso Cuarón and based on the novel by P.D. James, is a murky slog through the wastelands of dystopian future England, which, in the year 2027, is the only country that hasn't completely collapsed due to war and disease. The planet is also enduring a new kind of crisis: infertility. No babies have been born for nearly twenty years, so when a radical group of activists finds a pregnant Fuji woman named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey), her safe transport to a humanist group--where her baby won't be exploited as some kind of marvelous new savior--becomes of vital importance. Enter Clive Owen, a British government worker who has ties with the radical group's leader, Julian (played by Julianne Moore). He's enlisted to give them some help in getting papers for Kee so that she can get where she needs to go. Of course, there are complications.

This is a movie full of dreary--and mostly unoriginal--predictions about the future. Cuarón lets loose with the mayhem, and uses impressive camera-work to exhibit the constant chaos of bombs going off, guns firing, bodies broken by glass and bullets and crumbling buildings, towns destroyed, and thick clouds of fog and smoke obscuring the vision of the protagonists. It's a world that becomes increasingly unwatchable as the movie winds on.

Dystopian fiction isn't exactly a new thing, but it's certainly experienced a new wave of enthusiasm in the last ten years or so. The British experienced a parallel kind of anxiety about their security at the turn of the twentieth century, which gave us Dracula, The Time Machine, and lots of other literature about the deterioration--social, moral, and biological--of society. H.G. Wells imagined England in somewhat more banal, yet far more accurate, terms in Tono-Bungay (1909), which chronicled the disruptions in the English social structure and the rise of urban civilizations. People were afraid of all the changes that were happening, which of course preceded the very big and grim change affected by World War I.

It's the same recipe bubbling up now in 2014. We live in a world of uncertainties, and the grim futuristic novels and books are glutting the market to exploit/ameliorate/fuel that anxiety. Children of Men is simply a more artful and adult version of the same thing young people love about The Hunger Games: this is a world where man's brutality has been unleashed in an uninhibited and obvious fashion, and this kind of sheer inhumanity has always grabbed people's attention. Perhaps people respond to these kinds of movies because they want confirmation that we're not so brutal here and now. Things may be bad, but they aren't that bad at least. But the people in Children of Men have the news on 24/7, which isn't much different from people now who always have the television tuned to Fox News or CNN, which are more Orwellian than people want to believe. They're the ones who feed the dystopian imaginations, and give credence to movies like Children of Men.

I found it too depressing and chaotic to care about Children of Men, and what's more, frustrating, much like Caurón's Gravity frustrated me. Here there were little things--the jarring sound of someone pounding on a door and Clive Owen taking forever to open it; that stupid little yippy dog sniffing the blanket covering the baby, whose identity Kee is trying to keep secret; the way the characters plod through bomb-riddled streets and stairways and are constantly impeded by some irritating obstruction. I suppose this is Caurón's attempt to be realistic, but it pulled me out of the movie and built up a kind of resistance in me. After a while, all patience was gone.

Clive Owen is a likable actor, and his presence bolsters Children of Men considerably. But he--like everyone in this movie--is a function of the plot, not a real character. We care about his safety mainly because he's Clive Owen. You can imagine that the author of the novel, P.D. James, had the idea about the infertility first." Suppose women just stopped being able to give birth?" Obviously, what once mattered to society would no longer matter. But the problem with these kinds of conceits is that by definition they make characters incidental and subordinate to the story. Everything must flow from that little nucleus of an idea about infertility, and while it's an interesting idea, it's very Twilight Zone-y, except Children of Men is bigger and glossier and gritter than The Twilight Zone.

Michael Caine has a small part as an aging hippy with John Lennon's hair--if Lennon had lived long enough to turn grey--and glasses. He tries very obviously to be a quirky old man, and his comic relief never really works. It always seems forced and naively at odds with the rest of the movie's grim march toward a kind of shriveled, bleak self-importance. With five writers, you'd expect something better from Children of Men. Or maybe that was the trouble. Along with the director, the script was pounded out by Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby. With Chiwetel Ejiofor, Pam Ferris, and Danny Huston.

12 Years A Slave

12 Years A Slave is the most intense movie about slavery that I've ever seen. It's based on the experience of Solomon Northup (played with real power and restraint by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man living in Saratoga, New York with his wife and two children. Northrup is kidnapped and sent to Georgia where he serves multiple masters, ranging from passively kind but cowardly (Benedict Cumberbatch) to downright sadomasochistic (Michael Fassbender).

This film adaptation of Northup's experiences really puts his plight into perspective. You might say he'd been living an easy life up until his captivity, but seeing how the plantations work off the sweat and soul-crushing of other black people transforms him. And then there's the sheer ugly moral ambiguity of being a slave: do you run and abandon your fellow slaves? Do you put the ones who've been subjected to particular cruelty and torture out of their misery? Can you ever trust any white people, ever again? I found myself wanting Django to appear and slaughter all the slave owners, and as slowly and painfully as they had tortured their slaves.

But there's a problem for me with 12 Years a Slave: it's a harrowing, torturous movie, full of lashings and abuses that feel too real to watch. Obviously--they really did happen, and they really were horrifying. Sometimes the camera stops and lingers, forcing us to watch the lashings over and over, or poor Solomon being hanged, but low enough to the ground that he can just barely touch the muddy earth with his feet and keep his neck from breaking. It's like we're marinating in the awfulness of slavery. Is this punishment? Is this "good for us?" Is this real cinema, transcending the superficial limits of entertainment and instead treating us to some kind of moral cleansing? I'm not sure.

Thankfully, the performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor keeps the movie from turning into a total exercise in despair. As the years drag on, Solomon somehow manages to keep his wits about him, and he uses his intellect to stave off some of the abuse that others around him incur. (There is one scene where he beats the shit out of some trashy overseer, played by Paul Dano, and you don't want him to stop. You want him to beat the man into the ground and then start on the next person he sees with the same indignant ferocity.)

But it does mean that 12 Years a Slave often leaves the realm of 'entertainment' for the realm of 'message movie.' This is director Steve McQueen's attempt to demonstrate for us the horrors of slavery. And it is in turn horrific. Is it appropriately horrific? I suppose it is, in the way Schindler's List is appropriately horrific. It's not something I ever need to see again, but I'd refer anyone who wants to have some kind of visceral experience of slavery and how evil it is to this movie. This is a good companion (or should I say contrast?) to Gone With the Wind, with its decidedly rosier appreciation of the South pre- and post-Civil War.

And yes, I cried when he was reunited with his family. It was, again, very intense. Not for the easily disturbed.

With Lupita Nyong'o, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt (who co-produced), Adepero Oduye, Paul Giamatti, Garret Dillahunt, Scoot McNairy, Alfre Woodard, and Chris Chalk. Beautiful cinematography by Sean Bobbitt, although the subject matter makes it hard to admire his occasional shots of the loveliness of moss hanging from trees on the banks of lazy Southern rivers. The very landscape feels tainted. Screenplay by John Ridley. ★★½