Irrational Man

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Woody Allen/Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey, Ethan Phillips and Jamie Blackley

A philosophy professor; newly arrived on campus, is having an existential crisis, which is compounded by writer's block. He has no wife, no family and has an unkempt, defeated look about him. A flask is never out of arm's reach and his need for it is almost reflexive. His arrival on campus creates something of a stir as students and faculty alike speculate about his past and his reasons for accepting a position at their school.
Other professors find he has little taste for the faculty's company and only a little more for his students, who he mostly regards as disappointments. A romance with a female chemistry professor, whose marriage is less than stable, begins desultorily and worse still, impotence makes an embarrassing incursion into his love-life. Uninspired and vaguely unhappy, the professor's life changes in dramatic fashion when he strikes up a friendship with a young, beautiful student who in time falls in love with him. The professor resists; aware of her serious relationship with a fellow student. Feeling threatened by the young student, the chemistry professor questions him constantly about his relationship with whom she regards as her competition and fails to be convinced the relationship is purely platonic.
Though the the professor resists the student declaration of love, he finds her charm, intelligence and beauty help abrade his objections to being with her.

During a lunch at a diner, the student and the professor overhear a conversation in an adjacent booth. The patrons talk about a mother who has been denied custody of her children and how her unjust situation is in part the fault of an unconscionable judge, who has consigned her to emotional and psychological torments. Hearing about the woman's sad story, the professor is galvanized into action. Fueled partly by existential philosophy and indirectly by Camus' The Stranger, the professor hatches a plot to murder the judge. Feeling the act to be a moral absolute, the professor's proactive agenda turns theory into action as he sets about plotting the murder.

The story is Woody Allen's new film Irrational Man and the characters are beautifully played by Joaquin Phoenix as the existentially-challenged professor named Abe, Parker Posey as the unfulfilled chemistry professor Rita, who is intent on running away with Abe and Emma Stone, who plays Jill; the student whose love for Abe ultimately assumes tragic proportions.

Murder plots are nothing new to Woody's films. The narrative device can be found in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan Murder Mystery and Match Point but though the murders in said films are mostly motivated by passion, Abe's is inspired by more abstract, philosophical concerns.

It isn't clear from the trailer if Woody's new film is comedy or drama or both but it seems clear that Irrational Man is serious business, though it hardly feels that way for most of the film. The film's tone is hardly comic, but is so devoid of gravitas I wondered if Woody were putting us on.

However one feels about a plot that stretches plausibility like chewing gum, Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Parker Posey bring their best to their respective roles and make a story more compelling than it has a right to be.

Abe's murder weapon of choice is cyanide. To secure the lethal chemical, he steals Rita's key to her chemical storage closet and when no one is around, he sneaks in and locates it on her shelf. It seems ludicrously convenient that Rita happens to be a chemistry teacher. While he is busy measuring out the cyanide, a student enters the office. Abe manages to explain his business in the closet, which satisfies the student's curiosity, though it may hardly satisfy the audience's. It was certainly eye-rolling to me. A philosophy professor helping himself to chemicals doesn't seem spectacularly peculiar to the student?

Abe's decision to kill the judge becomes a galvanizing agent in his life. He finds his impotence cured and a renewed interest in living life fully though it becomes complicated when he relents to Jill's amorous entreaties.

With careful planning, Abe is able to carry out the act but and days later, after hearing of the judges death, he also learns Rita has been floating a rumor (in jest) that he may be the killer. Jill and Abe speculate on the killer's identity and motives and in time, she begins to also suspect he may be the killer. An alibi he gives Jill fails to convince her and before long, he admits to the crime. Jill is repulsed by his act and threatens to turn him into the police after another man is charged with the crime. Abe begs Jill to refrain from turning him in, hoping the police will clear the innocent man of the crime. She reluctantly agrees. What occurs after is hardly surprising, given Abe's reluctance to go to jail and his philosophical justifications for the murder. During the film's climactic moment, a prize Abe had won for Jill earlier in the film at an amusement park takes on a larger, almost absurd significance.

Given Woody Allen's 21st Century output, I didn't expect much from his new film. His films now tend to miss more than hit but Irrational Man does both. The performances manage to (mostly) rescue the story from its unconvincing premise. It is all worth a gander but it won't encourage a second viewing. Everything about it seems lifeless, as if Woody's heart were on a sabbatical.

Maybe his next film will have the power of Blue Jasmine; a film that proved he can still summon the magic when inspired. Here it eluded him. Try again, Woody.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu/Starring: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan and Lindsay Duncan

I've always found director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's films so serious as to be suffocating. Even so, his talent has always been very conspicuous. In Birdman, we finally see some of the dark humor that has been sadly absent from films like 21 Grams and Babel.

Inarritu's film is dark, funny, surreal and it features extraordinary performances--particularly Michael Keaton's. To put it bluntly; it's a helluva film. It's also one of the year's best.

Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a one-time successful Hollywood actor whose career is now on the skids. He is famous for a series of Hollywood blockbusters in which he played a superhero named Birdman; a role that haunts him in many ways and that weighs on his career.

He has adapted a Raymond Carver story called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love for the Broadway stage and has strained his finances in the process. Riggan's career rides on the play's success, which burdens the production with a do-or-die imperative.

The production is fraught with obstacles, mishaps, actor's frail egos and in some cases, selfish arrogance. Unhappy with a male cast member, Riggan arranges for a stage light to fall on the actor's head, which provides a pretext for replacing him. His lawyer Jake (a terrific Zach Galifianakis), finds a talented but very difficult actor named Mike Shiner (superbly played by Edward Norton), whose prima donna behavior isn't relegated to the stage. Complicating Riggen's production is Shiner's stormy relationship with another cast member named Lesley (Naomi Watts).

Attached to the production is Riggan's daughter Sam (an awesome Emma Stone), who acts as his assistant. Sam's relationship with her father comes with a deep-seated animosity relating to his absenteeism during her formative years.

It doesn't take but a minute for Shiner to hit on Sam after meeting her, which disgusts her at first but his rogue-like appeal overcomes her later; a development that irks her father acutely.

Riggan has relationship issues of his own. He is divorced from Sam's mother and is carrying on a relationship with the other woman in the cast named Laura (Andrea Riseborough), whose disclosure to Riggan about being pregnant doesn't elicit a response that might please her.

As egos clash and romance ebbs and flows, Riggan tears his hair out over the pre-opening performance, which allows little time for Shiner to warm to his role. Compounding his stress is Shiner's contempt for Riggan's success in Hollywood. Shiner isn't beyond belittling what he sees as Riggan's meager acting talent and his hubristic attempt to restore artistic credibility by acting onstage.

Lying in wait like an angry predator is the formidable New York theater critic Tabitha (an intimidating Lindsay Duncan), whose reviews can make or break any stage production.

The film's eccentricities are many. Riggan's Birdman alter-ego offers whispery advice and is hardly his better angel. Always urging him to discard his artistic ambitions, he becomes another nemesis he must overcome. Riggan also imagines he possesses Birdman's telekinetic abilities; which he uses capriciously and sometimes violently.

Inarritu uses many tracking shots when the characters navigate the tunnel-like corridors of the theater. This gives the film a constrictive, claustrophobic feeling, as if the characters are held captive by a theater world that allows no escape. Aside from a few scenes, most of the film takes place inside the theater or on its rooftop, where the towering, Manhattan office buildings seem to keep the theater penned in.

The barriers between performance and real life are effectively dissolved, which denies the audience its reality moorings. Actors often sound as if they are reciting a soliloquy rather than speaking conversationally.

The performances are uniformly stellar. I've heard many moviegoers ask about Keaton's whereabouts the past decade; his long absence from the screen has been strange. Here he gives the performance of his career and though I hate to call it a comeback, it very much feels like one. It also is eerily similar to his onscreen character's. It's easy to see why Keaton would accept the role; he too has a Birdman in his past with his Batman character. One wonders if Riggan is his real-life reach for credibility and career restoration. If so, it will most certainly revive his career.

Emma Stone's career is still ascending and her performance is one of the most striking in the film. Sam is a skein of resentment, anger, conflicted love/hate feelings for her father, sexual longing, and substance abuse. Emma Stone's big, beautiful eyes can convey both hurt and anger and innocence and vulnerability so powerfully. They are used to devastating effect in Inarritu's close-ups.

The opening night performance concludes with a horrific act, which leads to Tabitha's improbable critique and Riggan's darkly amusing hospitalization. The ending is delightfully ambiguous and maybe appropriate; how else could Inarritu possibly conclude a film both so bizarre and yet so grounded in real emotion?
Birdman is magical realism and comic lunacy spiked with a bitterness that underlies the entire film. It is an odd, wonderful, experience that elicits an assortment of emotional reactions; elation, sad reflection, and maybe the most potent response: wonder. I've seen very few films this year that invite repeat viewings; Birdman belongs in that rare and rarefied company.

Magic in the Moonlight

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Woody Allen/Starring: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Marcia Gay Harden, Jackie Weaver, Eileen Atkins and Simon McBurney

A world famous magician with the stage name Wing Ling Soo also uses the persona of a Chinese mystic in his act. Offstage, he is an arrogant, peevish British man named Stanley (Colin Firth) who disdains anything and everything metaphysical. His friend, a fellow magician Howard Burken (Simon McBurney), has made the acquaintance of an American woman who claims to be a medium with psychic powers. While Stanley scoffs at the notion of a spirit world, he agrees to meet the woman and sit in on a seance. Howard claims the woman has abilities he can't readily dismiss though his career as a magician has inured him to every kind of spiritualist's trick.

Of course Stanley scoffs at the medium's professed powers; asserting his superiority as a debunker of spiritualists. When he meets the medium/psychic; an attractive, young woman named Sophie Baker (a lovely Emma Stone), he is treated to feats of her psychic powers. She is able to almost guess his vocation though he insists he is in the import/export business. An American woman named Grace (Jackie Weaver) and her son Brice (Hamish Linklater) play hostess and host to Stanley, Sophie and her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) in their vacation home in the south of France.

Before the seance, Stanley and Sophie cross swords over the supposed phoniness of the supernatural and the spirit world. He is determined to prove that Sophie is a charlatan, even it means alienating her and all who are gathered. The mutual attraction between magician and medium is undeniable, which is complicated by Stanley's engagement to another woman and Brice's feeble courtship of Sophie.

When the seance commences, Stanley sits apart from the proceedings, watching for anything fraudulent. When a candle begins to float, Howard excitedly claims he is unable to account for the phenomenon or the attendant thumping sounds. Days after the seance, Stanley begins to believe her abilities are genuine, which has a profound effect on him and his disagreeable personality. The possibility of a spirit world; a world even skeptics wish was real, impacts Stanley's emotional life. His demeanor changes, leaving him more optimistic about life. He also falls in love with Sophie.

While one watches Stanley fall hopelessly under Sophie's spell, one wonders if Woody's rational mind has accepted the possibility of the metaphysical. Later in the film, when Stanley's aunt lies in a hospital bed, on the verge of death, his vigorous prayers in the chapel are a startling contrast to his once unassailable bastion of reason. He abruptly stops praying, realizing that what he is doing is absurd, which leads to his suspicion of Sophie's alleged powers.

The issue of reason confronting the supernatural world should be fertile ground for a compelling drama/comedy but somehow the story and action can't reach escape velocity, leaving us with an occasionally charming romance but nothing more. It's not that Colin Firth and Emma Stone can't sell their characters. Their exceptional acting skills are more than a match for Woody's story. What went wrong? One wonders if Woody hurried the production without fully exploring the philosophical issues at play. Some scenes seem partially lifted from his earlier films, particularly one where Stanley and Sophie happen upon an observatory Stanley has known from the past. It recalls the scene in Manhattan, where Woody and Diane Keaton seek refuge in a planetarium. It's glaringly obvious how and why the observatory fits into the film's theme. Much less obvious is Stanley's reaction to the star and moon-filled sky after the observatory ceiling is opened. It's Sophie who gazes in wonder while Stanley sees the beautiful spectacle more matter-of-factly.

Cinematographer Darius Khondji brings some vivid color to the Provencal landscape as well as Emma Stone's lustrous, blue eyes and her hair's coppery allure. At times her face is bathed beautifully in lambent light. We can see why Stanley would fall prey to Sophie's passive charms.

The dialogue, as one might expect of Woody, is smart and occasionally witty but it gets a little clunky at times when some scenes play a little long.

My immediate assessment wasn't that of some critics who have savaged the film. Maybe I was expecting very little after reading the review in the New York Times, but after the tight, beautifully acted Blue Jasmine, it seems like a letdown. It's probably unfair to dismiss his film so, given the fact that Woody fans hold him to a higher standard. It may also be unfair to expect a Crimes and Misdemeanors from him with every new release.
Magic in the Moonlight isn't a failure but it's far from an artistic success. Save for some magical moments between Firth and Stone, it leaves one shrugging one's shoulders. Maybe the film would have worked better as a farce? Maybe not, but it might have been more fun than what unfolded onscreen. Or maybe not.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Director: Marc Webb, Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti

I won't bother with a spoiler alert because what could I possible spoil in summarizing a story one could easily discern from the preview. I also won't be verbose (I'll try not to be anyway) because it just plain bored me--my typical reaction to Marvel Comic adaptations.

Peter Parker's problems from the first Spider-Man continue though I couldn't remember what they were exactly and I couldn't tell if I were recalling the Tobey Maguire Spidey movies or the rebooted franchise. Does it all matter? Peter's girlfriend, cash-flow, and Aunt May troubles are the same though the villains are slightly different; this time an electrically-charged bad guy named Electro (Jamie Foxx) threatens the city, Spiderman and the power-grid.

The story involves many things at Oscorp; one CEO dies, the next assumes control, while the company develops or hopes to develop serums and high-tech gadgetry; which all threaten to fall into the wrong hands. All the villains seen in the movie are all connected to Oscorp. If you're like me, you grow sick of hearing the word Oscorp.

Electro is born, develops a destructive contempt for Spider-Man, fights him and blah ad infinitum. In Marvel adaptations, suspense is never really created because we know the hero is indestructible, which leaves him intact for sequels. The villians never really develop an edgy menace because they never have any agenda other than a single-minded hatred for the hero.

And what a weepy hero he is! Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man tears so often I thought the movie was financed by the Oxygen network. I realize he was trying to breath vulnerability into the hero to make him more empathetic but it became a bit much. Even Gwen Stacy didn't deluge us with the water-works. Maybe the radioactive spider should have bitten her instead of Peter Parker.

Aside from one significant twist at the end, nothing in the story is left to the unanticipated or unheralded. One knows where the story and characters are all headed and of course the movie lays the groudwork for the next film. The first Spider-Man series began auspiciously then gassed out quickly. The current franchise has gassed out quickly but the movie studio must sell merchandise and Taco-Bell must sell Spider-Man mugs and there must be a movie tie-in to the U.S. Postal Service and everything else, which leaves solid storytelling and thrills sadly beside the point.