My name is Kyle, and I'm just your average aspiring journalist who loves film and pop culture. Like, a lot. Seriously, it's unhealthy. This blog is the only thing that can make me well again.
The Marvel cinematic universe is in a tricky spot. How can the comic book giant leverage its impressive cast of characters and continue to tell interesting stories without leading to franchise fatigue? It’s safe to say that Marvel’s A-Team has pretty much had its run of origin stories and sequels. But last year’s excellent Guardians of the Galaxy proved that even the lesser-known Marvel brands could hold their own, both as standalone films and as part of the extended Marvel universe.
Even by B-team standards, Ant Man would not be on the top of most fans’ lists. And yet, on both a visual and conceptual level, there are tons of things you could do with a hero that can not only communicate with ants, but can also turn himself into the size of one. While the idea is immensely silly, Peyton Reed’s Ant Man thankfully takes this concept and runs with it. It’s pretty much a total blast.
The always charming Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang, a master thief just released from a prison sentence for stealing millions of dollars from a greedy corporation. His post-prison goal is to fly the straight-and-narrow, to be there for his young daughter despite his ex-wife’s reservations. But his longtime friend/bad influence Luis (a scene-stealing Michael Pena) keeps trying to pull him back into the burglar lifestyle.
Meanwhile, former SHIELD scientist and eccentric millionaire Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is in a bit of a pickle. His protégé Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has kicked him out of his own company after discovering his scientific secret to shrinking a living human. For years, Pym denied that he was the original Ant Man, wanting to keep his secret from falling into the wrong hands. But Cross discovers his secret, turning Pym’s estranged daughter Hope (Evangeline Lily) against him while plotting to build an army of super-strong shrinking humans and sell them to the highest bidder. Of course, that bidder happens to be the menacing HYDRA Corporation, bent on ruling the world. It isn’t long before Pym enlists Lang to become the Ant Man, and do what he does best: steal something important from an evil corporation. Except this time, Lang is doing it to save the world.
What makes Ant Man a success is its tone. This is perhaps Marvel’s funniest film to date, and that’s mostly because Reed and his team of co-writers (including the very funny Edgar Wright and Adam McKay), never take themselves too seriously. The film’s best moments are when the camera allows us to see the dichotomy between the scope of Scott Lang’s diminutive perspective and the world around him. In reality, two ant-sized duelers in silly looking suits isn’t all that epic. This contrast gets a ton of well-earned laughs, particularly during the film’s climax.
Ant Man is a fun addition to the Marvel universe despite its predictable story.
The film is also bolstered by strong performances. Rudd strikes the perfect balance between a father in search of redemption and an undeniable goofball. He’s the beating heart of the film, but Pena steals his handful of scenes with his over-the-top but memorable performance as Lang’s longtime partner-in-crime. And Michael Douglas proves that he is incapable of phoning in a performance; he manages to be funny but also tender, as his quest to reconnect with his daughter mirrors Lang’s. The two men see much in each other, which allows the actors to play off of those connections expertly.
I’m glad these elements of the film are so strong, because the simplistic plot is pretty tired. While it’s fun to see Marvel’s version of a heist film, I could have done without the training montage and some of the more telegraphed character moments. The middle section of the film suffers from some serious pacing issues, something that could have been avoided by rejecting some of the more obvious clichés. Marvel films have often struggled to provide truly compelling villains, but even by those standards, Darren Cross/Yellow jacket is weak. Essentially, he’s doing bad guy stuff because he is greedy and has daddy issues. Are those really the only two motivations our antagonists are allowed to have anymore?
Like other Marvel films before it, Ant Man features plenty of nods to the company’s larger film universe. While I’ve become increasingly annoyed by the shoehorning necessary to connect all of these movies, I really didn’t mind it here. Perhaps because the conflict is smaller scale, I was glad to see that there are still epic things brewing. An Avenger cameo feels a bit forced, but it also results in the movie’s best fight scene, so I’m willing to let it slide. The major exception is the ending, which is too abrupt and painfully obvious in its attempts to set up future films.
Some might consider the smaller scale and lighter tone of Ant Man a negative, but I think it’s refreshing to see Marvel so willing to play around with its characters. This sometimes feels more like a parody of a superhero movie, particularly because the concept is so strange to begin with. But the movie still delivers the action beats audiences hope for; there just aren’t any crumbling buildings or alien invasions this time around.
Ant Man is breezy, flashy and fun, but it also has an infectious sense of humor and genuine heart. It’s full of clichés and nonsensical silliness, but its expert tone, spectacular visual effects and great performances make it a unique and fresh addition to the Marvel canon.
Growing up is hard. This isn’t a blanket statement but a universal human condition. The mind of a child on the cusp of adulthood is one fraught with conflicting emotions, changing social situations and tons of what could charitably be called drama. It’s a tough time of life to wrap your head around, and an even tougher one to portray on film. Leave it to Pixar, the animation geniuses behind the likes of Toy Story and Up to take such a daring subject and spin it into gold.
To call Pixar’s 15th animated feature, Inside Out, ambitious is an understatement. We’re introduced to 11-year-old Riley, who moves with her parents from her beloved Minnesota home to the unfamiliar city of San Francisco. Riley’s emotions help control her mood and general outlook on life from a control center inside her brain. But even they’re thrown for a loop by the massive changes in Riley’s life the move brings. Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), the level-headed leader of the group, attempts to assuage the situation with her always perky demeanor. She often butts heads with Sadness (Phyllis Smith), who is, naturally, kind of bummed out by the whole situation. Anger (Lewis Black) is ready to fly off the handle at any minute. Fear (Bill Hader) sees the worst in the situation and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) is honestly kind of apathetic about it all.
The group is charged with helping create and catalogue not only Riley’s emotions, but her memories. Whoever controls the main console controls the girl’s emotions. But there are some memories, called core memories, that are considered precious, the emotionally charged memories that make her who she is. When these memories are jeopardized, Riley is at risk of losing her true sense of self, and it’s up to her emotions to work together to ensure that doesn’t happen. But can they work together efficiently when their individual personalities are so different, and when the girl they call home is changing so quickly right in front of them?
Yes, the concept is ambitious. But what makes Inside Out such a winner is that the high-minded ideas never overwhelm the clarity and purity of the story. Pixar has mastered this balance over the years, taking a concept such as post-apocalyptic utopia and turning it into Wall-E, one of the studio’s simplest and most emotionally resonant films. This film is much smaller in scope, and yet feels every bit as important. To a young girl whose life appears to be falling apart before her eyes, what could be more important than the way she feels?
Inside Out deserves mention alongside Pixar’s many classics.
The film gets a lot of mileage out of playing off of the reactions and situations of the five emotions. Despite the fact that each one is playing a type by his/her very nature, writer-directors Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen have done a brilliant job allowing them depth and complexity outside of their pre-determined roles. Allowing the emotions to be fleshed out spares us from a ton of potential clichés.
Inside Out is a visual wonder, even beside the prolific company of Pixar’s previous efforts. Not only are the emotions’ designs incredible, the world they inhabit is so endlessly creative. There are a ton of small visual touches, even in seemingly minor scenes, that do so much to sell this very strange world inside Riley’s head. It’s tough to grasp them all in one viewing, but I think that was the intention. For example, I didn’t catch on until late in the film that the newspaper Anger reads every day contains headlines describing the events that took place in Riley’s life the previous day. How he got the paper, we’ll never know.
This is also Pixar’s most surreal and, I venture to say, scariest film yet. Dealing with concepts such as dreams, imagination, abstract thought and the subconscious, the film could have easily felt overstuffed or drowned out by its own ambition. There’s some seriously weird, chaotic stuff in this movie (one of my favorites is a film production studio that is in charge of writing and producing Riley’s dreams), but the mind of an 11-year-old kid is a weird, chaotic place. Everything is so clearly defined, so expertly laid out within the larger world and story that no strange concept or visual element ever detracts from the purity of the ultimately very simple story the film is trying to tell.
And that is what I think stands out the most to me about Inside Out. The whole movie just feels so effortless. I’m baffled that such a high-minded concept could turn out so well. The storytellers at Pixar have a true gift for taking the most complex themes and boiling them down into the simplest of stories. You don’t have to understand REM sleep or any other myriad complex terminologies the film employs to enjoy it. Like the best animated films, it appears to be made for everyone. Kids will like it, but their parents might come back on date night to see it again.
Inside Out is an absolute marvel, and a stunning return to form for a studio that some feel has lost its way in recent years. It deserves mention alongside the very best of Pixar’s envious output. I couldn’t keep my eyes dry the last 20 minutes of it. Not because it’s sad (although it is), but because it’s also happy, scary, hopeful, thrilling and ultimately life-affirming all at once. Leave it to a film about the glorious complexity of human emotions to make us feel so many.
As a child, I loved playing with dinosaurs. I even liked to pretend I was one. I imagine the same has been true for many other kids throughout history. “People aren’t impressed by dinosaurs anymore,” a character says near the beginning of Jurassic World, and I suppose in one sense, that’s true. It takes much more to wow an audience than it did in 1993, when Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking Jurassic Park brought an entire generation’s childhood playtime to startlingly realistic life. Today, audiences feel like they’ve seen it all, and it’s harder to get swept up in the grandeur when a dinosaur is, well, just another dinosaur.
That’s one of the challenges facing Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) at the beginning of Jurassic World, a direct sequel to Spielberg’s iconic original. The dino theme park she has been tasked to run off the exotic island of Isla Nubar just isn’t bringing in the customers like it used to. Guests want something new, exciting, “with more teeth,” park owner Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) tells her. But there aren’t many more “regular” genetically modified dinosaurs left—the only option to increase profits is to create a new hybrid, one so magnificent and scary it will surely thrill audiences like never before. The project is so secret, neither Claire nor Masrani know what it’s made out of, but they do know its name: Indominus Rex.
On the very day her nephews (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson) come to visit her at the park, the unthinkable happens: Indominus Rex escapes from his massive pen . Now this intelligent, cunning, powerful killing machine is on the loose, making its way toward the gates of a certain park which happens to contain 20,000 people.
Claire frantically enlists the help of rugged ex-military dinosaur trainer Owen (Chris Pratt), with whom she shares a complicated past (what other kind of past is there?). Together they lead the hunt against this new monstrosity, hoping to save Claire’s nephews as well as the rest of the park from a repeat of the tragic incidents that occurred at the original Jurassic Park.
Jurassic World is grand, thrilling and a ton of fun.
Essentially ignoring the other Jurassic Sequels, The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, the film is mercifully light on complicated mythology and backstory. That’s very good news, because it allows the plot to quickly get to what we came to see: spectacular dinos doing spectacular things. This is a movie that makes more than good on its promises. The first part of the story does a great job of allowing us to see the massive theme park through the eyes of a child. There are lots of eye-catching sights, including a massive Shamu-style show that features a gargantuan aquatic dinosaur and a petting zoo that allows children to ride a Triceratops.
What makes the movie so successful is that it goes far beyond giving us eye candy to look at. Every small visual detail, every cool creature or idea, is brought back later once the action hits. There are no teases, no visual tricks designed just to look cool. Most things given screen time are there for a reason. It helps that the creature design is beyond incredible. Yes, this film uses more CGI than the original, and it occasionally shows, but production designer Ed Verreaux and a massive visual effects team have done a bang-up job recreating not only the spectacle but the warmth and real-world weight and feel of the creatures from the original. That’s no small feat.
I’ve emphasized the visual effects over the characters here, and there’s a reason for that. This is one major area where this sequel can’t hold a candle to the original. Claire never evolves much beyond your typical overworked shrew, and Owen is basically just Chris Pratt being Chris Pratt; there’s no real meat to his character. Admittedly, this franchise hasn’t been known for its complex character development, but I still don’t think the personalities here are as memorable as the ones in the original, though they are an improvement from some of the downright irritating characters from the last two films (Ian Malcom’s daughter in The Lost World, anyone?). The acting is serviceable and not much more. Thankfully, the main characters get some great banter, and even a few memorable side characters get some big laughs.
But, as the film races toward its thrilling climax, delivering memorable set-piece upon memorable set-piece, I found my complaints evaporate. This film really delivers on the childlike sense of wonder and awe that Jurassic Park evoked, and, despite the frequent callbacks to the original, it does so in a way that still feels entirely its own. It’s a tricky balance, and not one I suspected could be pulled off here. Man, am I glad I was wrong. The film’s last few minutes stretch its plausibility to the breaking point, reminding us just whole silly the whole thing is, but it also does something insanely cool, something I’ve always wanted to see from a Jurassic movie.
By the end of the film, I was that little kid playing with plastic dinosaurs once again. All of the implausible, completely badass scenarios my 5-year-old brain could dream up wouldn’t hold a candle to the kind of stuff on display here. Jurassic World is not deep. It’s not groundbreaking. It is, however, a ton of fun, and quite the spectacle to boot. My inner-child is thrilled to say that it’s a more than worthy follow up to one of the coolest movies ever made.
If you threw the entire cast of The Expendables into a blender, you’d probably only get enough testosterone to last the first 20 minutes of Mad Max: Fury Road. That counts as a very high compliment, because Fury Road is an eye-popping, exhilarating thrill ride from start to finish, a movie that puts all other summer action spectacles to shame and reminds us how good action films used to be.
George Miller returns to direct this reboot of the original Mad Max trilogy, with Tom Hardy replacing Mel Gibson in the iconic role of Max, who wanders a desert wasteland torn apart by conflict resulting from a lack of resources, particularly fuel. In Fury Road, Max is haunted by the events of the previous films; all the people he couldn’t save, including his wife and child, create tortured visions. At the beginning of the film, Max is captured by marauding bandits and taken to a city run by the nefarious Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Wearing a hellish breathing mask that gives him the visage of a deranged skeleton, Joe doles out his underground spring of water to his parched subjects, keeping them reliant upon him and squarely under his foot.
Max is put under the watchful eye of one of Joe’s War Boys, Nux (Nicholas Hoult). But he’s soon taken along on a ride to rein in Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), one of Joe’s most trusted advisors and war leaders who has gone rogue, stealing Joe’s sex slaves in order to save them and take them to the “Green Place,” a supposed safe haven. It isn’t long before Max teams up with Furiosa to save the girls and escape Joe’s clutches.
The plot quickly takes a backseat to the action, which is some of the best ever put on screen. In an age of green screens and an overuse of “photorealistic” CGI, there’s something to be said about how real everything feels here. Every action sequence has weight, because we know those are real cars flipping and exploding, real people flying through the air and under giant trucks. In fact, several sequences seem downright dangerous; when you begin to fear for the actual lives of the actors, you know the movie you’re watching is pushing the limits. As with previous Mad Max films, the vehicles are marvelous creations; Furiosa’s War Rig is one of the coolest damn things I’ve ever seen.
Fury Road has some of the most thrilling action ever put on screen.
The action also benefits greatly from Miller and cinematographer John Seale’s decision to actually let us see it. The fight and chase sequences are so balletic and operatic, it would be a shame to cloud them in a haze of shaky-cam. Fury Road blessedly never falls into this trap. As chaotic and busy as some scenes get, the action is always clear.
The film avoids another trope of the modern blockbuster: a convoluted story. There’s no research required going into this one: even someone unfamiliar with the original films need only read a quick summary online to understand a couple of scenes. The story hums and character motivations are always clear. It’s simple but not simplistic.
What really sets Fury Road apart for me, however, is the authentic world it manages to create. Within minutes, we’re in Max’s deranged desert dystopia, where everyone is trying to kill you and everything is just a little off. This is a delightfully strange flick, some might say batshit insane; it’s every bit as weird and wonderful as its predecessors, perhaps even more so (a guitar that shoots fire makes multiple appearances, but it’s far from the strangest thing here). In other words, it feels like an actual Mad Max movie, and that’s probably due to Miller’s clear, guiding hand along with co-writers Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris. The mood is further driven in by Junkie XL’s wonderful score and Seale’s gorgeous cinematography.
It would be dishonest to call Fury Road deep; it is essentially a two-hour chase movie, after all. But the strange sights and explosions never get in the way of the characters. Max is an everyman, essentially a blank slate, and always has been. The far more interesting character is Furiosa, played with ferocious intensity by Theron in yet another career-defining role. It’s a tremendously physical role, but one that also requires a great deal of emotional vulnerability, and Theron plays it startlingly straight, with nary a hint of overacting in sight. It’s great to see a badass female action hero completely own a movie when she isn’t even the title character. I also loved Hoult’s character Nux, who probably gets the film’s most defined arc.
Fury Road is gritty, grimy, gory and absolutely great. The clarity of artistic vision, the melding of auteur weirdness and satisfying summer thrills, is breathtaking. I had a huge grin on my face the whole time, satisfied over the fact that a movie this odd and ambitious could even get made. It’s a true game-changer in the world of action movies, and everything you could want from a Mad Max movie. Actually, it’s everything you could want from a movie period.
Avengers: Age of Ultron is one exhausting movie. I mean that as both a compliment and critique. This lengthy, ambitious, epic sequel to one of the most popular movies of all time exemplifies both the triumphant and the tiring aspects of Marvel’s seemingly endless cavalcade of comic-based films.
There’s a lot to like about Ultron. The early scenes give us everything we loved about the first film. Witty banter between bouts of action, alongside the quieter character moments that help flesh out the individual faces in this ever-growing band of heroes. There’s a particularly great scene where the heroes, including Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) attempt to lift Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) magic hammer. It reminds us that the Avengers’ world is one filled not only with epic battles and constant danger, but also small, intimate conversations and typically silly games of male one-upmanship.
But the casual camaraderie doesn’t last long. A program that Tony Stark created to help protect the world quickly turns against the team, vowing to rid the world of the Avengers. The menacing Ultron (played/voiced with typical excellence by James Spader) is a truly modern villain; a program that can be anywhere, and do anything to get what he wants. His very existence is a potent commentary on the modern paranoia of cyberterrorism and identity theft. It’s an intangible threat that returning writer/director Joss Whedon has horrifyingly anthropomorphized.
That darker, morally neutral tone is one that is adapted throughout the film. The bright, vibrant colors of the first Avengers film have all but been abandoned, reflecting the heroes’ shattered psyche. The greatest thing this sequel brings to the table is that it further hammers home the first film’s suggestion that the greatest threat to the Avengers may lie within. The interpersonal conflicts within the group are heightened by the introduction of two great new characters, the Maximoff twins (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen). Pietro, also known as Quicksilver, has super-fast speed, and Wanda, aka Scarlet Witch, can manipulate energy as well as minds. With complex motivations of their own, the twins are reluctantly recruited by Ultron to help him in his quest to eliminate the Avengers.
Scarlet Witch, in particular, is a phenomenal character, and she plays a major part in the film’s greatest sequence, perhaps my favorite in any Marvel movie ever. As she manages to manipulate the minds of many of the Avengers, she plants horrifying hallucinations in their minds. This sequence is not only visually stunning, it helps reveal the psychological torment our heroes are forced to live with. This culminates in a spectacular Avenger-on-Avenger battle that I wouldn’t dare spoil here.
Age of Ultron is a timely and relevant superhero blockbuster. It’s also a bit of a slog.
Alas, the nearly 2 ½ hour film does not sustain the momentum of its brilliant early scenes. The film is epic, but perhaps a bit too overstuffed. What starts as a pretty clear and compelling conflict devolves into near-incomprehensibility as Whedon struggles to balance the desire to tell a gripping, contained story while still feeding the Marvel behemoth with plot threads and conversations designed to set up the next film. The most egregious example is Thor’s quest to track down a set of potentially universe-destroying Infinity Stones. It does nothing to further the main plot and is also super boring. This is my biggest issue with these films; while these kinds of scenes are great for universe building, I sometimes feel like I’m watching a teaser for the next Avengers movie rather than being allowed to enjoy the one I’m supposed to be watching now.
This is also an issue when it comes to side-characters. I like that each major Avenger gets his/her chance to shine, particularly a side-story involving a sort-of romance between Dr. Banner and Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow (the always brilliant Scarlett Johansson). But why did Whedon feel the need to parade out the supporting characters from the heroes’ individual franchises for quick, pointless cameos? Oh look, there’s War Machine and the Falcon and Nick Fury and Dr. Selvig and…the list goes on. Unfortunately, the film has too much going on to give these characters anything to do, leaving them to feel like fancy window dressing.
Marvel’s other major issue is also in full swing here. I can’t quite put my finger on what makes Ultron an uninteresting villain. He’s got a wickedly cool design, and James Spader can do no wrong. I guess I’m just a bit tired of a villain wanting to destroy the world because he doesn’t like humans. The film tries to give him some more complex motivations related to his daddy issues associated with his creator. But he still ultimately devolves into a generic world-destroyer. His rushed motivations and lack of witty one-liners make him a bit of a waste, especially compared to Loki, arguably the greatest Marvel villain ever.
The film’s action-packed climax is quite the stunner, even if an army of aliens is simply replaced with an army of robots. It’s one of those grand, effects-heavy spectacles that will leave you asking, “how did they do that?” In fact, the action throughout truly delivers; it’s well-shot and epic in scale, even as it overuses slow-motion effects.
The film doesn’t end so much as wheeze and sputter its way to a credits screen. Compared to the rest of the film, the last 10 minutes are almost shockingly sloppy. I know the film has a whole new series of movies to set up, but so did the first Avengers, and that film did an infinitely better job of teasing its sequel while still giving audiences a satisfying capper to the movie they were just watching.
Age of Ultron is a solid action film with some spectacular moments, but it really shows the limits of Marvel’s cinematic universe. In thinking primarily about the whole, the individual parts tend to suffer. I want to watch a really good Avengers film, on its own. As the Marvel universe continues to groan under the weight of its own massive ambition, I fear the franchise’s best days are in its past. I hope I’m wrong.
In May, I will be attending my fifth U2 concert. It was the first band I ever saw perform live, and I was immediately drawn to its catchy rhythms, soulful lyrics and impeccable musical craftsmanship. Since then, my appreciation for the boys from Dublin has only deepened. Bono’s deeply emotional vocals. The Edge’s searing guitar playing. Larry Mullen’s peerless drumming. Adam Clayton’s rockin’ basslines. Together, they have created a remarkable musical legacy that has lasted 35 years and is still going strong. The band refused to die, completely reinventing itself several times in order to stay relevant but never giving into the crasser commercial tendencies of the various musical eras it has found itself passing through. U2 is also, to my mind, the quintessential Christian band. The members have never been particularly shy about their Irish Catholic faith, but what’s even more brilliant is that they’ve managed to convey that devotion without alienating secular folks who enjoy good music. But, for the faithful, their songs contain some of the most powerful spiritual lyrics in all of rock.
But, do all of their records hold up today? And, with several classic albums to their name, which one is truly U2’s greatest? I took a journey through the band’s 12 studio albums and came up with my answer. Here are U2’s albums, ranked from worst to best (I’ve also included a video with each album highlighting one of its best songs).
*Note: While the album Rattle and Hum contains some excellent original studio songs, it is primarily a live record, and thus I chose to exclude it from this list. You should totally listen to it, though.
12. ZOOROPA (1993)
After the brilliant and stylish reinvention that was Achtung Baby, U2 had a bit of trouble holding onto its identity and fan base for the remainder of the 1990s. Albums like Zooropa are why. Essentially a direct continuation of the style of Achtung Baby, this mess of an album did nothing as well as that far superior work. But, like anything the group has produced, there is some stuff worth mentioning here. The title track is a sleepy, moody piece, but the lyrics put listeners in the mindset of the frustration of the singer, living in overstimulated excess and feeling more lost and confused than ever. “And I have no compass/And I have no map/And I have no religion/And I don’t know what’s what.” The song cleverly repeats advertising lines from popular commercials. “Numb,” one of the album’s more recognizable tracks, is pretty bad, completely wasting a rare Edge vocal by making him sound like a robot. This may have been intentional, but it doesn’t make it good. “Lemon” is also awful, with the most grating, screeching Bono vocals ever. “Stay” is far and away the best song on the album, but its excellence only further reveals the inconsistency of the rest. I suppose I have to admire the bold experimentalism of a track like “Daddy,” but I don’t have to enjoy it. “The First Time,” a great song about losing faith and finding it, is an album highlight. I don’t quite know how to explain “The Wanderer,” except that it’s sung by Johnny Cash. If that sounds like an odd choice for what is billed as an alternative album, that’s because it is. I absolutely love the song, mostly because Johnny Cash can do no wrong, but it deserves to be on a much better album than this bad but ultimately intriguing record.
11. OCTOBER (1981)
Let me get this out of the way right up front: “Gloria” is an incredible track, a powerful, worshipful anthem. I love Bono’s lyric, “Lord, if I have anything at all/I give it to you.” It also has one of my favorite Edge guitar intros. Alas, a good track does not make a good album, and U2’s follow-up to its stunning debut album Boy is pretty much more of the same. There’s no discernable identity here to set it apart. For a band that has made a career off of taking risks, there’s little else here to court controversy or even much interest, despite the fact that this remains one of the band’s most overtly Christian albums. A song like “Rejoice” comes off like a worship song: “I can’t change the world/But I can change the world in me/Rejoice, rejoice.” The song “October” is a welcome surprise, a beautiful piano ballad, but it’s over after two minutes and kind of feels like half a song. October is light years away from a bad album, but it is, on the whole, a bit disappointing. Thankfully, that word wouldn’t come anywhere near the band again for a long time to come.
10. POP (1997)
If I were to judge Pop based upon its first half, I would absolutely despise it. U2’s last gasp of its 90’s experimentalism, it’s hokey and dated in all the wrong ways. Imagine my surprise, then, that it contains two of the most spiritually potent songs the band ever wrote. The album opens with its supposed anchor track, “Discotheque,” which may be the worst U2 song ever. It’s what I imagine a headache might sound like if it were put to music. To think that the boys thought their fans wanted them to turn into a crappy club group is almost insulting. The horrendous music video makes me think that maybe they were kind of making fun of their new identity. They were certainly having fun, but surely no one else was. The band mixes up vulgarity and religious imagery in songs like “Mofo,” which is further insulting given the fact that they’re normally so tactful and judicious about their spiritual over and undertones. Like most dance music, the songs here are unnecessarily long. The shortest clocks in at around 4.5 minutes. The band’s spiritual disillusionment continues on “If God Will Send His Angels.” Bono sings, “Jesus never let me down/Jesus used to show me the score/Then they put Jesus in show business/Now it’s hard to get in the door.” That’s a pretty great lyric. “Staring at the Sun” is one of the most maligned U2 songs ever, and it’s easy to see why. The sound and the lyrics are both incredibly cheesy. “Miami” is just painful, and “The Playboy Mansion” sounds like a cheesy porno song (again, probably the point, but the parody is lost on me if the song doesn’t sound good).
Then we get to the end. “Please” addresses the conflict in Northern Ireland occurring at that time. It’s a powerful call to move past prayer into action in order to stop the violence. “Please, please, please/Get up off your knees,” Bono sings. The final track, “Wake Up Dead Man,” is a pleading with God to do something about human suffering, to help make sense of all the chaos the singer sees around him. “If there’s an order in all this disorder/Is it like a tape recorder?/Can we rewind it just once more?” It’s a surprisingly potent and powerful end to an album that hardly deserves it. Pop is not good, and yet, I don’t think any serious U2 fan can ignore it, either.
9. SONGS OF INNOCENCE (2014)
This album has the unenviable position of being the newest U2 album, so I will admit it’s hard for me to get a feel for it. The band’s most personal album, it chronicles their rise, from the influence of The Ramones to early traveling experiences and struggles with faith and death. It’s heavy stuff, and Songs of Innocence is a fairly heavy album, featuring some of the group’s most profound lyrics. “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) is a great opening track, describing the band’s revelation at hearing The Ramones for the first time. It’s got a great beat and shows off the group’s underrated vocal harmonies. Bono’s voice has a remarkable softness here that I really appreciate. The epic, full sound of “Every Breaking Wave” really complements the song’s searching lyrics. The background noise in “California” sounds like the ocean, which is a nice touch, and the song also has my favorite Edge guitar solo on the album. “Song for Someone” is about Bono’s first love Ali, his eventual wife. “Iris” is about Bono’s mother, who died when he was a teenager. It’s a highlight—sad and devastating, but also hopeful. “Volcano” is a break back to the band’s gritty, edgy sound, moving from grief and remorse to rage. The singer, having lost what he loves, is determined to wrap up the rest of his identity in rock n’ roll. “Raised by Wolves” is a reflection on the fact that “my teenage life was largely dominated by memories of violence,” Bono told The Observer. It’s a bitter, powerful track, anchored by a passionate cry, “I don’t believe anymore.” “Cedarwood Road” is a great, grungy mix of electric and acoustic sounds. “Sleep Like a Baby” is a haunting track about attempting to come to terms with child abuse in the Catholic Church. “The church is where the war is/When no one can feel no one else’s pain.” The Edge’s seething guitar back Bono’s subdued vocals effectively. “This is Where You Can Reach Me Now” uses the band’s chant-like chorus to good effect. “The Troubles” is backed by guest Lykke Li’s haunting refrain, “Somebody stepped inside your soul.”
I like every song here, but I don’t quite love any yet. While I appreciate the deeply personal lyrics, I don’t feel the tunes themselves are particularly memorable. Again, that may change with time, but for now, the album is going to stay in solid “good, not great” territory for me.
8. NO LINE ON THE HORIZON (2009)
Arguably U2’s most overtly “Christian” album, No Line on the Horizon has, strangely, the opposite problem from Songs of Innocence. Most of the songs (with a few notable exceptions) sound spectacular, and there’s tons of variety here. But the lyrics occasionally cross the line from cheesy to straight-up stupid. They’re even, on occasion, distractingly bad, and yet other times the band’s songwriting is so brilliant that I can’t decide of a lyric is idiotic or genius.
The title track features interesting tonal dissonance and some expressive bass work by Adam Clayton, but Bono’s voice is too screechy and strained for my liking. Things take a dramatic upswing when “Magnificent” starts. Fans have healthy debates over many U2 songs, pondering whether they’re about God, something else, or both. There is no controversy here; it’s a straight-up worship song, and it’s beyond spectacular. Bono explores the wonders of God’s majesty in a transcendent odyssey that ranks as one of the band’s very best. “I was born to sing for you,” Bono croons, and sing he does. It’s backed by one of my favorite Edge guitar riffs and one of the profound lyrics in U2 history. “Only love can leave such a mark/But only love can heal such a scar.” I could write an entire blog post about this song, but I’ll spare you.
The rest of the album struggles to maintain that intensity, but it’s still quite good. “Moment of Surrender” is a beautiful ballad; a bittersweet reflection on how loneliness can find us even in a crowd. It effectively brings us back to the dreamscape U2 frequently haunts. It also shows off the band’s continued creative experimentation with both electronic sounds and orchestral accompaniment, something that really stands out on the album on a whole. I don’t like “Unknown Caller” at all—the members sort of half-sing, half-shout in unison, and it’s not very effective. I really like “Stand Up Comedy;” it has great rhymes and either one of the best or one of the worst lyrics ever: “Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady.” Even if it is terrible, I think I still love it. “Get on Your Boots” is probably a bit deeper than it first appears, but is still fairly nonsensical and silly. Still, it’s a nice aggressive track to help break up a reflective album. “Fez” is the most experimental track, but features more of the full-band chanting that I don’t really dig.
The last section of the record really knocks it out of the park. “White as Snow” is told from the perspective of a soldier dying in the Afghan snow and his last words. He wonders if God could wipe his sins clean and forgive him. “Once I knew there was a love divine/Then came a time I thought it knew me not/Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not/Only the lamb as white as snow.” Taking on the motif of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” it’s a haunting and beautiful track—the band members’ voices take on a ghostly quality. This highly underrated song is one of U2’s very best. “Breathe” finds Bono singing in impressionistic verse inspired by a Cormac McCarthy book he was reading at the time, which means we get some really stupid lines, but I do like the lyric “I’m running down the road like loose electricity.” The closing track “Cedars of Lebanon” is absolutely, dead-stop amazing. Told from the perspective of a war correspondent, it’s one of the band’s most original and cynical songs. Bono “speaks” the lyrics, barely above a whisper, as if he’s letting us in on a secret. “This shitty worlds sometimes produces a rose/The scent of it lingers, but then it just goes.” Far from the worshipful praise the album opens with, the song exemplifies just how much variety U2 can manage to shove onto one CD; some of it is amazing, some of it head-scratching, but all of it is worth listening to.
7. BOY (1980)
The fact that U2’s stunning debut album doesn’t end up higher on the list is not a knock against it, but rather reveals just how stunning the band’s career has been. Still, as far as debut albums go, Boy is pretty high up there. It opens with the song that started it all, “I Will Follow.” The song perfectly captures the group’s incredible ability to ebb and flow from relentless rhythm to more introspective, ethereal flights of fancy, even on a single track. There’s a raw, unpolished edge here; something the group would be accused of abandoning later in its career. “An Cat Dubh” reveals a penchant for the hypnotic. With songs like “Into the Heart,” U2 showed it wasn’t afraid to dabble in experimental instrumentation. “Out of Control” is one song that helped to establish the group’s classic “sound,” and is a personal favorite of mine. Larry Mullen’s drumming is highlighted particularly well on “A Day Without Me,” and The Electric Co.” is also an album highlight. The songs of Boy flow into one another, creating a remarkably cohesive “album” sound. Oddities like “The Ocean” do little to drag it down. Its only flaw may be that some of the songs start to sound similar after a while, but their sum total creates a powerful mood that can’t be denied.
6. ALL THAT YOU CAN’T LEAVE BEHIND (2000)
After U2’s mixed 90’s experimentalism, All That You Can’t Leave Behind was a very welcome return to the things that made the band great in the first place. Marking the group’s second major reinvention, it features the clear bass lines, killer guitar riffs, clean rhythms and soft-but-powerful Bono crooning that put it on the map. And yet, this is not an album content with living in the past.
When L.A.-based radio station 100.3 The Sound asked its listeners to pick their favorite U2 songs, “Beautiful Day” came out on top. It’s easy to see why. Celebrating the beauty of living God’s creation, it’s an epic song with lyrics that literally travel around the world. The result is nothing short of transcendent. “Stuck in a Moment” is an exhortation to live a decent life; to enjoy the moments, big and small, that define it. It also celebrates the ways in which we touch each other. It’s stirring stuff, and shows off how great the band members are at vocal harmonies. It also reveals Bono’s reinvented voice; while he may not be able to reach the insanely powerful highs as he used to, he proves here that a soft whisper or subtle intonation can be just as powerful. “Walk On,” dedicated to Burmese activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is a true powerhouse track, an encouragement to persevere in the face of hardship. If you focus on “all that you can’t leave behind,” then you can “walk on” from this world unburdened by all the things that you can’t take with you anyway. I’ll admit to tearing up listening to “Kite” most times I hear it. It’s about “saying goodbye to someone you don’t want to say goodbye to,” Bono said during the 2001 tour. In this case, it was his father. It’s also about the large shadow that someone can cast upon our lives. But there’s also a hope of reunion. “I know that this is not goodbye,” Bono sings. The Edge called “Peace on Earth” the band’s bitterest song ever, but I sense a great hope that things can be better someday underneath the pain. It’s a sad, achingly beautiful track, one that affirms the immense power and importance of the individual life. I see “When I Look at the World” as a conversation with God. Bono asks what we see when we look at the world. Do we give into despair or hold out for hope? One day, might we be able to see the world not though man’s eyes, but as God sees it—clear and unblemished? “I can’t wait any longer/To see what you see/When I look at the world.”
Ending song “Grace” is both beautiful and important. It’s one of the clearest and most expressive reflections on God’s grace ever written. Grace is personified as “the name for a girl” but also “a thought that changed the world.” She’s got “the time to talk” and “travels outside of karma,” or man’s ways of thinking. And, ultimately, she heals us. “What left a mark/no longer stings/Because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.” Silly, self-indulgent tracks like “Elevation,” “Wild Honey” and “New York” do little to drag down this wonderful, intimate, resplendent album.
5. THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE (1984)
In case the album War wasn’t enough of an indication, The Unforgettable Fire proved that U2 was here to kick ass. And boy, did they ever. This thrilling album rocks hard. If War was grounded in gritty reality, Fire often floats toward the ethereal. This is made clear in the first track “A Sort of Homecoming.” “And the earth moves beneath your own dream landscape,” Bono sings. “Pride (In the Name of Love)” may be my single favorite U2 song. The lyrics highlight the difference “one man” can make “in the name of love,” showing that an act of love can change the world. The lyrics discuss Martin Luther King Jr. before moving onto Jesus Christ himself. It’s a powerful anthem that’s beyond inspiring. In songs like “Wire,” we sense Bono’s voice quaking with so much passion that it seems like it might give out completely, but it doesn’t His vocal control is unmatched, and I think his voice was never as powerful as it was here. “Bad” proves this further. The song is so good it almost defies comprehension and certainly categorization. It’s a yearning for spiritual transcendence, to “leave this heart of clay” and reach a place where “I’m Wide Awake/I’m not sleeping.” Bono’s rebellious scream is complemented perfectly by The Edge’s guitar, which sings out like a bell. “Elvis Presley and America” is a challenging track—it may be nonsensical or profound. Either way, it shows that the group was not interested in being “commercial” artists in the musical sense. Closing track “MLK” comes off like a haunting lullaby, soothing but with a sense of unease to it as well.
There are a few odd tracks here (“4th of July” is just an extended bass solo), but The Unforgettable Fire more than lives up to its title. It’s searingly memorable, and proof that U2 still had a lot of surprises up its sleeve.
4. ACHTUNG BABY (1991)
I’m not sure the world was quite ready for Achtung Baby when it released in 1991. Marking the band’s first major reinvention, this is a wild, insane, brilliant album, with a staggering amount of variety that leaves it feeling remarkably fresh and exciting even today. When making the album, U2 expressed interest in getting as far away from the sound of Joshua Tree as possible, and they succeeded without sacrificing everything that makes them so great.
“Zoo TV” reveals a more minimalist U2, but also a more stylish one. The grungy introduction indicates that there’s a very different band in town. Bono’s distorted vocals offer a different kind of mesmerizing from what the world had heard before. “Even Better Than the Real Thing” confirms a startling fact—U2 can be really sexy. This is probably one of the more sensual rock albums ever made, if in sound more than lyrics. “One” is easily one of their best, a bittersweet ode to the ways love can simultaneously build us up and break us down. The lyrics continue to show off the expert balance between the epic and the breathtakingly intimate. Sometimes, they can be one and the same. I used to hate “Until the End of the World,” but now I see it as one of U2’s more rewarding songs—not to mention it sounds amazing, with some of The Edge’s best guitar work ever. Its subtext is a conversation between Jesus and Judas, his eventual betrayer. The concept is potent and absolute genius. “Baby” goes on to showcase the album’s variety—every song here feels different and unique. The sensual longing that tracks throughout the album continues on the underrated “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses.” “The Fly” is a clever critique of the group’s own superstardom. It features a man having a conversation with himself (or perhaps with the devil). The lyrics feature multiple conversations singing in unison. “Mysterious Ways” is the album’s high point, proving that “fun” U2 can be every bit as awesome as “profound” U2. “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World” shows the band’s penchant for bizarre wordplay. It features the immortal lyric “A woman needs a man/Like a fish needs a bicycle,” definitely one of the group’s funniest lines. “Ultraviolet” is a beautiful song about the redeeming power of love. Bono could be singing to a woman here, but more likely, he is singing to God. “Your love was a lightbulb hanging over my bed.” “Acrobat” seems to be a song decrying relativism and hypocrisy. “I’d join the movement, if there was one I could believe in.” “Love is Blindness” adds an ominous organ. Eerie and haunting, the album ends on a somber note, eschewing the group’s previous practice of ending on a more hopeful tone. The Edge’s wailing guitar acts as a pointed question mark.
Achtung Baby is one of the more complex U2 albums, both lyrically and musically. It has inspired many conversations over the years over whether its songs are more religious or sensual in nature. I wonder why they can’t be both. Oftentimes, our relationship with God can only be personified in earthly love, something we tend to be more familiar with. And the Bible itself contains all that “bride” language when talking about the church. If you see the album as a shallower celebration of excess, that’s fine. But I think there’s something much deeper, and more unforgettable here for those who are really looking.
3. HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB (2004)
I’m always a bit baffled when I hear people criticize U2’s post-millennial output as being too commercial or too artistically safe or just, all in all, not very good. Clearly those people did not really take How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb seriously. The album is a soul-stirring masterwork, filled with the kind of music that makes you want to be a better person. It’s also a true guitar album, and the result is an exquisite mix of the band’s older and newer styles, as well as lyrics that rank with its very best.
Vertigo is as dizzying and thrilling of an opening song as that on any U2 album. It has all the complex rhythms and powerful guitar work we’ve come to expect, as well as some great lyrics that are very much left open to interpretation. Rather than make a club song, this song actually takes place in a club, or so we’re led to believe. I think it could be a metaphor for purgatory. It’s a very cool song. Backed by a killer guitar riff, “Miracle Drug” is an excellent track about the strength of love that sets the inspirational tone for the album. It was apparently inspired by the Irish author Christopher Nolan, a man paralyzed with cerebral palsy who was given a drug that allowed him to move his neck. He eventually learned to type using his head, and ended up being quite the poet. It has some incredible lines about the desire to be inside the mind of someone you love to “see your thoughts take shape and walk right out.” “Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own,” dedicated to Bono’s father, is a passionate call for reconciliation. It reflects on the power of love despite the power our loved ones often have to hurt us as well. Bono’s voice is more sensitive and passionate than it’s ever been, and the result is deeply emotional. “Love and Peace or Else” shows that despite the sensitive tracks, the band is still very much interested in rocking. I don’t think any U2 album is complete without an anti-war song, and this one is fantastic. It’s got a nice build-up and a really gritty sound. “City of Blinding Lights” is an all-around great song—the stadium anthem the group so desperately needed at this point in its career. Thanks especially to some beautiful piano work, it’s definitely a song to lift your lighter to. The Edge’s guitar work at the start of “All Because of You” makes me happy, but so to the lyrics, which seem to suggest that God is the one who can restore us when we fall. “I’m not broke but you can see the cracks/You can make me perfect again.” “A man and a Woman” is a heartfelt ode to romantic fidelity, with the great lyric “I could never take a chance/At losing love to find romance/In the mysterious distance/Between a man and a woman.” I also love the acoustic guitar work, and there’s a vulnerability to Bono’s lyrics that is truly mesmerizing.
“Crumbs From Your Table” features another great Edge introductory riff, and Larry Mullen’s drumming is particularly outstanding here. It’s a critique of first-world nations offering “the crumbs from your table” when giving relief aid to nations in need. That message is backed by the powerful line “Where you live should not decide/Whether you live or whether you die.” “One Step Closer” is a gorgeous, subtle song about holding on to hope in the midst of chaos. It’s also about coming to terms with the fact that we can’t know everything. “Original of the Species” was apparently written to The Edge’s daughter, but it’s more generally an encouragement to young people to be themselves in a culture that praises conformity. It’s also got some great string accompaniment. “Yahweh” is, obviously, about God. It’s a moving and emotional prayer as the singer asks God to guide his direction: “Take this soul, and make it sing.” The lyric “This love is like a drop in the ocean” is a picture of how deep and how wide God’s love is for us. Even the so-called bonus track, “Fast Cars,” kicks ass here. It’s a pure adrenaline shot, relentlessly paced and bolstered by a cool Middle Eastern sound. The wordplay here is top-notch, but so fast it’s hard to catch it all in one listen. It’s about holding onto what matters in the midst of our information-overloaded culture. It’s a pure blast, one of U2’s most underrated songs for sure.
Atomic Bomb is one of those albums you keep thinking has given you its best, until the next song starts. Every song here hits, either in its creative instrumentation or its insanely brilliant lyrics. There is not one second of this stellar album that fails to knock it out of the park. I could go on about it all day, but when I think of the definition of a “great” album, some of these songs start playing in my head.
2. WAR (1983)
While we’re on the subject of what defines a “great” album, my working definition is one where no song feels inessential. I think you could maybe have an album with a few misses that could still be considered great, but it has been rare for me. Albums should, first and foremost, be a cohesive whole, one where each song builds off of the previous one and contributes something meaningful. It’s a hard thing to do, which is why it’s so mind-boggling that U2’s third studio album did this so perfectly. The album that rocketed the band into the stratosphere, this is as deep, fun, thrilling, heartbreaking and memorable as rock music gets.
What really strikes me about War is how much passion is put into every song. These are musicians that had something to say and knew exactly how to say it. Yes, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” is overplayed, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is amazing. U2’s passion for social justice comes shining through here, as the band decries the infamous massacre of Irish protestors by British soldiers. The lyrics are biting and convicting, the kind designed to jolt the listener out of apathy: “We eat and drink, while tomorrow they die.” But, as always, the lyrics move beyond criticism as they hope “to claim the victory Jesus won.” “Seconds” is a great early indication of how well the band members could sing together using vocal harmonies. “New Year’s Day” might be even more overplayed than “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” but it still remains a great track—it’s a showcase for how effortlessly they pair the achingly intimate with the grandly epic. It’s also gets to show off The Edge’s clean, searing guitar solo, one of my favorites. This album does a great job of letting us notice what an underrated bass player Adam Clayton is as well; his clear, expressive lines are the driving force behind the tunes here, but they never overpower any of the band’s other elements. His part on this song remains one of his best. “Like a Song” is a great introduction to how soulful Bono’s voice could get—we hear the breathless but powerful desperation in the cry “Is there nothing left?” “Drowning Man” is a haunting track that drops some scripture on us: Isaiah 40:31, specifically. “Rise up, rise up with wings like eagles/You run, you run/You run and not grow weary.” It’s an encouragement to hold on in the midst of a relentless tide: “Hold on, hold on tightly/Hold on, and don’t let go of my love.” It’s powerful stuff.
“The Refugee” easily makes my list of all-time great U2 songs; thrilling doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s electric. And that cowbell…oh man, it’s good stuff. The refugee in the song dreams of a better life in America: “Her mama say one day she’s gonna live in America.” “Two Hearts Beat As One” lays out U2’s repeated theme of reconciliation—of reaching out across divides and finding common ground, even amidst confusion and disagreement. “Red Light” has some amazing harmonies, featuring female background singers and even a trumpet solo. “Surrender” is a suitably epic climax—taking the musical themes introduced throughout the album and brilliantly smashing them together. The album’s powerful coda is “40,” a recitation of Psalm 40. It’s undeniably inspiring and powerful, but the true gut punch comes in the ending. The singer recognizes that repeating scripture isn’t enough to alleviate the pain he sees in the world. He knows he must move beyond it, but sometimes he is powerless. He wonders, “How long to sing this song?” The album leaves us pondering that question.
War is pretty much a perfect album. Every song has meaning, both musically and lyrically, and each one contributes to the sum total effect of the work. It’s powerful in ways the group hasn’t ever fully replicated, although they’ve certainly come close. Words can’t really do it justice, and so I’m going to stop trying.
1. THE JOSHUA TREE (1987)
When I think of the quintessential U2 album, I think of TheJoshua Tree. It represents everything good about the band and nothing bad. It also happens to be one of the best albums ever made. I can’t think of a single criticism to level against it. How many albums can you really say that about?
“Where the Streets Have No Name” may be the best opening to an album ever. The song builds for two minutes before Bono’s vocals slide into the track. The right word for the song is epic, far beyond anything U2 had attempted before. It’s a patented effort to convey every single emotion in a concentrated 5 ½ minutes. What turns a great song into a legendary one is the fact that it nearly succeeds. The song smoothly transitions into the intimate soul searching of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” which contains one of the most beautiful and pure lyrics in rock history. “You broke the bonds/And you loosed the chains/Carried the cross of my shame/Of my shame, you know I believe it/But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” Everything great about U2 is present in this song. “With or Without You” wraps up one of the most incredible three-song sets in the history of rock. After Bono’s high-pitched wails on The Unforgettable Fire, it’s nice to hear him exploring his lower register here, and he does so expertly. The singer here is tortured, singing about someone he can’t live with or without. It’s a song that can be interpreted in a million different ways, without anyone actually being wrong. That’s what great art can do; no matter the intention of the artist, their creation will impact everyone differently. I’ve read amazing Christian interpretations of the song, but you don’t have to read into any religious connotations to recognize its brilliance. In case you thought the band was going too soft, “Bullet the Blue Sky” brings back its guttural, gritty energy roaring back, featuring The Edge’s groaning, overwhelming guitar and Bono’s unique spoken dialogue. This immediately transitions into the soft acoustic sound of “Running to Stand Still.” It features a killer harmonica part, and makes clear the album’s themes of the tension between spiritual stagnation and the possibility of running after something greater.
“Red Hill Mining Town,” apparently about the U.K. miner’s strike of 1984, is also a beautiful reflection of a man “wound by fear, injured in doubt.” There is something broken in the man that needs fixing. He cries out, “I’m hanging on/You’re all that’s left to hold on to.” “In God’s Country” is another highlight, with one of my favorite lyrics. “I stand with the sons of Cain/Burned by the fire of love.” The indecisiveness of the narrator continues in “Trip Through Your Wires,” this time about a woman. Is the woman who “put me back together” an “angel or a devil?” She was kind but trapped him in her “wires.” “One Tree Hill” is apparently named after an island in New Zealand, but I think it’s a larger reflection on the fact that there is only one place we can truly call home, wherever it may be. However, that home can be hard to find for a restless spirit. “We run like a river runs to the see/ We run like a river to the sea.” “Exit” is told in a haunting whisper. Bono has said it’s about a religious man who becomes dangerous. He “wanted to believe in the hands of love,” but he ends up with a gun in his pocket. What he chooses to do with that gun is not explained, but it ends on the haunting lyric, “So hands that build/Can also pull down/The hands of love.” “Mothers of the Disappeared” is a haunting final track, a somber meditation on loss. “Midnight, our sons and daughters/were cut down and taken from us/Hear their heartbeat/We hear their heartbeat.” Like the album itself, the song is so beautiful it almost defies comprehension.
The Joshua Tree ends on a similar note of insecurity and longing as the beginning, but, along the way, we feel we’ve learned something indescribably beautiful and essential about ourselves. There is no person this album would not speak to on some level, even though it may speak to everyone differently at different points in their lives. This, above all else, is ultimately what makes The Joshua Tree the greatest U2 album. It’s essential listening for anyone with a heartbeat.
*All quotes and citations used in this post are from the excellent songfacts.com.*
Note: I watched the version available on Netflix for this analysis. Some purists call this 4 1/2 hour version, cut from the original six, a travesty. And yet, I’ve read other reviews that claim the full version contains mostly extraneous and extra-biblical material (some of it quite boring). I don’t know enough about the original to stake a claim, but the version I am discussing here is the edited one.
At the beginning of Jesus of Nazareth, the question “What is a Messiah?” is posed to King Herod. It’s a question most of us have asked at some point in our lives. The next logical question, when discussing Easter, is “Is Jesus one?” More directly, is he the one? It’s a question and discussion that has been going on in every artistic medium ever since the life and death of Christ. Certainly, film is no different. Few Easters go by without some new twist or interpretation on The Greatest Story Ever Told (itself the title of a film about Jesus). This year’s addition is the televised Killing Jesus.
There are so many films about the life of Christ, many of them quite good, that it would be difficult for any movie fan to pick a definitive favorite. Franco Zeffirelli’s passionate and deeply reverent Jesus of Nazareth, which first aired on television in 1977, is one of the most highly regarded. It’s iconic for several reasons, but how does it hold up to today’s viewing, both as an interpretation of the Gospels and as art?
To call Jesus of Nazareth ambitious would be an understatement. The scale and scope is mighty impressive, as is the caliber of actors Zeffirelli pulled together (more on that later). The film distinguishes itself from the start in Mary’s (Olivia Hussey) conversation with the angel Gabriel. We see her through the eyes of Anna, talking to, it appears, no one in particular. We do not hear anything Gabriel says, only Mary’s response. It’ a remarkably sparse and realistic approach, in a scene which is often telegraphed and comes off more than a bit cheesy in many adaptations.
Following Christ’s birth, the movie, like the Bible itself, quickly skips past Jesus’ childhood and onto his years of ministry. We are treated to one of the better John the Baptist sequences I’ve seen, as the prophet baptizes people from near and far before baptizing Jesus himself. It helps that John is played by the fantastic Michael York, whose piercing green eyes help each word of his ecstatic preaching hit home. But John’s character arc is underused, perhaps a fault of the edited version. We get one scene of his warning to Herod Antipas (Christopher Plummer) and then we hear from another character, almost offhand, that John has been killed. Even if edited, the decision to only leave the great Plummer in one quick scene, and to give John so much screen time before almost dropping him entirely, is a poor one.
Thankfully, the film moves quickly to Christ’s (Robert Powell) miracles and most complaints fall away. The movie highlights a few major miracles, rather than show them all. In part one, we get a harrowing scene of Christ casting out a demon from a boy, as well as the feeding of the 5,000. These scenes rely more on naturalistic acting than flashy special effects, and the results are beyond powerful. The introducing to Christ’s 12 apostles is also done in a very subtle and effective way. All of the actors playing the apostles are great, but in particular, James Farentino as Simon Peter, playing the cynical everyman who refuses to be drawn in by this preacher, yet finds himself following him anyway.
Jesus of Nazareth is a powerfully acted and beautifully shot account of Jesus’ life.
We are also introduced to one of the best performances in the film, the always incredible Anne Bancroft as Mary Magdalene. This is slam-dunk of a casting, like if, say, Julianne Moore played her in a more modern version. Her portrayal of Magdalene’s transformation, from skeptical prostitute to passionate Christ follower, is really something to behold.
Thankfully, part two of Jesus of Nazareth is even better, as all of the character build-up pays off. Here we see Christ’s demanding ministry grow, even as he struggles with the task he must ultimately accomplish. I love how Zeffirelli managed to convey how radical and dangerous Christ’s words were, and how they remain so today. It’s easy to convey Christ’s meekness and humility, but so many adaptations fail to show his ability to speak powerfully to a crowd and even get angry (not to mention royally piss off the Sanhedrin).
This is probably a good time to talk about Robert Powell, who, as Jesus, is too good to even describe. Yes, he is whitewashed, and his brighter hair and piercing blue eyes influenced a generation’s view of Christ’s physicality, for good or ill. But the performance itself…man, it’s good. In the scene where Christ heals a blind man by rubbing mud and spit into his eyes, Powell plays it almost surprised, as if Jesus was a bit taken aback at his own power. I like the idea that Jesus wasn’t always sure his miracles would actually work in a physical sense, but his faith in his Father God was strong enough to get the job done. There’s also the scene where Christ overturns the money changers in the temple, and the righteous anger Powell conveys is almost scary.
It’s nice to see the Sanhedrin portrayed sensitively here. Zeffirelli actually criticized Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ for demonizing the Jews that put Jesus to death, and I can see where he’s coming from. These guys don’t get off the hook at all, but there is much discussion as to whether they could really believe this man Jesus and what to do about him. That is partly thanks to the objections of Nicodeums (Laurence Olivier), who asks the council to consider whether Christ’s words may be true. Even Caiaphas (Anthony Quinn) and Zerah (a fantastic Ian Holm) seem to at least mull on it a little bit before deciding to try and put Christ to death. Judas (Ian McShane) is also not overly vilified, as we get to see the torment of his decision to betray Jesus. His conversations with Zerah are particularly strong.
This all converges on the most powerful scene in the film, the Last Supper. As Christ’s speaks he begins to visibly shake, as the reality of his words to his disciples sinks in. It’s a gripping scene, and there isn’t a hint of comfort in it. Nor should there be; telling someone you have to die is not a pleasant experience, I imagine, let alone telling a roomful of your best friends. If you can only see one Last Supper reenactment, this is the one.
We get some interesting omissions leading to Christ’s torture and eventual crucifixion. The Garden of Gethsemane seems like a bit of a missed opportunity; we miss out on the ear-cutting of the Roman guard, and the whole thing is over rather quickly. The Passion of the Christ’s Gethsemane sequence is much better. Rod Steiger was a great casting choice as Pontius Pilate, a man who sort of sympathizes with Jesus but is too busy to ultimately be bothered with true justice. Steiger gets that balance of annoyance and true attempt at understanding just right. His conversations with Jesus are riveting, but the script doesn’t give a full picture of his character in the way that The Passion did.
Michael York as John the Baptist is one of Jesus of Nazareth’s many casting triumphs.
Christ’s walk to the cross is, as always, undeniably powerful here, but what surprised me was how sparse it seemed. The walk seemed fairly short, and even when Christ is raised on the cross, he doesn’t seem to go up very far. It’s a bit off-putting at first, but I think this was closer to the way it actually happened than the overly dramatic, epic portrayals in many other films. One the cross, we don’t get any conversation with the thief, but we do get some powerful acting from Powell, Bancroft and Hussey as that ugly, beautiful moment comes and Christ calls out “It is accomplished!” before giving up his spirit. We don’t see the temple splitting, only a heavy rainfall, as if God himself is weeping.
Jesus’ resurrection and subsequent visit to his disciples is powerful stuff. How could it not be? We see most of it, as the gospel writers did, through the eyes of the women, particularly Mary Magdalene. The scene where she chews out the unbelieving apostles on disbelieving her sighting of the resurrected Christ is amazing.
A good Jesus movie will ultimately leave its audience reflecting on the power and potency of the gospel story and how it relates to their own lives. I think Jesus of Nazareth accomplishes this and then some, despite some flaws. This is a beautifully shot and brilliantly acted masterwork, even if you’re not seeing the full version. If you want a reminder of what the story of Easter is all about, this is as good a movie as any. It’s available now on Netflix instant.
It’s hard to believe that we’re halfway through this crazy decade we’re calling the 2010’s (Is that really what we’re calling it?) I started thinking about this when I noticed this list naming the top films of the decade so far as voted by film critics. The 25 movies, released between 2010 and 2014, offer a wide array, coming from around the world and from all types of genres. Then I started thinking about my favorite films of the decade so far, and somehow came up with a list. I say somehow because sticking to 10 is incredibly difficult, and any movie lover could include way more than that. But, I also like naming 10 because it forces me to pick out the very best of the best.
I’m calling this “my favorite” rather than “the best” because I readily acknowledge that there are many films I have yet to see. I hope to someday. But, in the meantime, here are the 10 movies that have stuck with me the longest from these past five years; they impressed me with their artistry, their innovation or simply the level with which they moved me. Here they are, in no particular order (because ranking them would be brutal).
INCEPTION
Director Christopher Nolan’s films often reveal a fascinating struggle between the head and the heart. His Spielberg-esque emotions take over in movies like Interstellar, while the cold intellectualism of The Prestige and Memento bring to mind Paul Thomas Anderson or even Stanley Kubrick. The only film Nolan has made that I believe balances these two tendencies perfectly is his masterpiece Inception.
Nolan’s thrilling look into the dreamscape is both uncommonly intelligent and grandly emotional, dealing with complex themes and ideas through the accessible lens of a kick-ass action movie. Not one second of this cinematic wonder comes off as less than completely engrossing. It probably helps that it’s a technical marvel on the level of Star Wars or Jurassic Park. Seeing the city of Paris folding in on itself is a wonder of the highest order. Nolan has a great eye for actors, and he wisely cast some of the best, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe and Marion Cotillard. The best action film of the decade so far easily earns its spot on this list. Oh, and did I mention that the ending is amazing? Because it is.
HER
I regrettably didn’t see Her before making my top films of 2013 list, but if I had, it would have been right at the top. I’ve never been much of a Spike Jonze fan; Being John Malkovich was a bit out there even for my tastes, and Where the Wild Things Are lost me completely. But this one is just exquisite. Jonze imagines a very near future where every human has their own personal operating system (like a cell phone that can feel emotions and talk to you). Joaquin Phoenix gives a mind-blowing performance as Theodore, a lonely man unlucky in love who ends up developing a romantic relationship with his O.S., Samantha (brought to exhilarating life by Scarlett Johansson’s voice). What could come off as creepy ends up as an entirely sweet meditation on how far we are willing to go to feel loved in the digital age, and how isolated we will always be without real human contact.
There’s a scene where Samantha hires a “sex surragote,” a real woman who is willing to have sex with Theodore in order to simulate the contact he can never have with Samantha. It’s one of the saddest, most emotionally wrenching scenes in recent memory, and I was constantly amazed at how vulnerable Her left me feeling. Ultimately, the film is a vital reminder that life lived apart from community is not really life at all. That’s a message everyone needs to hear, and this is a film everyone needs to see.
THE TREE OF LIFE
This movie caused a good bit of controversy when it released, and understandably so. Terrence Malick’s ambitious meditation on faith in the midst of tragedy is likely the densest, most obtuse American film released so far this decade. It’s also an absolute masterpiece, in the strictest filmmaking sense. Malick’s propensity for ponderous nature shots reaches its apex here, with many gorgeous images having seemingly little connection to the main story at hand. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain give career-best performances as a couple reeling from the death of their son. It all comes off as a bit ponderous initially, but that’s kind of the point. Malick is reaching for something much grander than we’re accustomed to seeing. Through almost purely images and sound, he depicts the way that God’s grace is buried within the fabric of the universe itself. Our most spiritual filmmaker is using this small, intimate story as a springboard for a conversation on the meaning of existence. No pressure, right?
This conversation reaches its apex during a sequence that depicts the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the present. It’s a breathtaking achievement, even if you’re not quite sure what it all is supposed to “mean.” The whole affair might have fallen apart if it weren’t for the pioneering work of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who has not made his final appearance on this list). His camerawork is transcendent, much like the film itself. It’s perhaps the closest movies get to allowing us to experience God through the moving image. For that alone, The Tree of Life has my enduring gratitude and admiration.
THE MASTER
On the other side, we have a very different, even opposing spiritual meditation from master filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. Is The Master as good as Anderson’s previous classic, There Will Be Blood? No, but few films are. No matter, this is still a masterpiece of the highest caliber. Anderson applies his impeccable craft to a relentlessly bleak look at how religious fanaticism can tear a life apart. That life belongs to Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix again), a sex-addicted, drifting WWII veteran who seemingly finds redemption at the hands of Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, never better), the leader of a philosophical movement known as “The Cause,” and his obsessive wife (Amy Adams, making her second appearance on this list beside Her). Freddie is a faithful follower until things start to unravel.
I wouldn’t want to say more, but, like all of Anderson’s other brilliant films, you’ll never see where this one is headed next. The Cause was supposedly based off of Scientology, and, if so, Anderson certainly has no love for it. The ending seems to suggest the unsettling but nonetheless true fact that some people are simply beyond redemption, following the latest fad philosophy as a dog chases its tail, searching for answers but never finding them. This is probably the second most obtuse American film released so far this decade after The Tree of Life, and rarely are films this emotionally challenging. It’s never icy, but Anderson is going for something so deep and so disturbing that it’s a bit hard to process it all. Give it time (and multiple viewings) and see if you can get it out of your head.
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
The Social Network may be my favorite David Fincher film. Given how much I love movies like Zodiac and Seven, that’s pretty high praise. But this potent satire of the ruthless business of modern technology earns it every step of the way. Fincher’s adaptation of The Accidental Billionaires looks at the founding of Facebook through the eyes of creators Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) as it charts their meteoric rise to fame and fortune, and the shattered lives they left in their wake. Zuckerberg doesn’t come off as particularly likable here (okay, he’s a jerk) but he does come off as human. How would you feel if the suave co-founder of Napster (an excellent Justin Timberlake) came up to you and told you that you were, in essence, a god? Might you start to believe him once you saw how much power social media actually holds over people?
The movie is a cynical, biting critique of the way tech gurus are our new “gods,” in a way. We look up to them as a higher form of being as we grovel in submission at their life-changing products. I’m not saying Zuckerberg is a terrible person specifically, but a warped environment like this is bound to produce a few (filthy rich) monsters. Beyond the movie’s relevant themes, I’m a sucker for great cinematography and music, and this has some of the best of both. Jeff Cronenweth’s camerawork makes the movie look so much better than it should, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s Oscar for Best Original Score was well-deserved. A pity the film lost to the more regal Oscar-bait The Kings Speech. In 10 years, this will be the one people are still talking about.
TAKE SHELTER
Jeff Nichols’ incredible indie is the best psychological thriller so far this decade. There’s something to be said about a movie that can really entrench the audience in a particular mood, and Take Shelter does a great job of making us feel the encroaching, all-encompassing dread that main character Curtis can’t seem to shake. His apocalyptic visions of a catastrophic storm are disturbing, but become even more so once we realize the film isn’t going to give us the easy answer as to whether he’s crazy or prophetic. Not until the insanely good twist ending, that is.
This is a vicious little gut punch of a movie, a rarity that entertains on every level without ever dumbing down its craft or its themes. It also blessedly features Michael Shannon in a lead role, showing off the underrated character actor for the brilliant performer he is. It also features Jessica Chastain as Curtis’ frazzled wife, during the year when she was literally in every movie and was somehow never less than stellar. If you’ve overlooked this one, now is a great time to rectify that. You will not be disappointed.
12 YEARS A SLAVE
12 Years a Slave is very obviously a “dignified” film, which usually means treacly Oscar bait. And, while Steve McQueen’s based-on-true-events tale of the life of Solomon Northup—a free black man sold into slavery in the American south—did win the Oscar for Best Picture, it’s far more complex, savage and beautiful than its prestigious pedigree would suggest. Anyone who is interested in the power of film to move us, to change our hearts and to make us strive to be better human beings would be foolish to dismiss the film on these claims.
McQueen’s masterpiece is a bold, uncompromising vision, and it’s brought to life by some of the most wonderful performances and music in recent film history. Chiwetel Ejiofor is towering as Northup, a man who maintains his almost violent hope in the midst of the worst circumstances imaginable. Michael Fassbender is great as the vicious slave owner Edwin Epps; he manages to make a monster believable, even human, a difficult task when it’s often easier to play a villainous stereotype. But it’s really Lupita Nyong’o, in an Oscar winning role as indomitable slave Patsey, who imbues the film with both its savage energy and its undeniable hope that humanity can strive to be better. From its nuanced performances to its impeccable filmmaking craft and powerful story, 12 Years is a hands-down classic. To ignore it is to sacrifice experiencing no less than a piece of film history.
THE ACT OF KILLING
While we’re discussing historical accounts of the depths of man’s savagery, here’s a film even more disturbing than 12 Years a Slave. There have been a handful of great documentaries released so far this decade (probably enough to deserve their own list), but the one that will likely stick with you the longest is The Act of Killing. Joshua Oppenheimer’s buzzworthy doc focuses its lens on some of the major leaders of the Indonesian “death squads,” which are said to have killed over 500,000 people from 1965-66. Oppenheimer asked the men to reenact some of their murders in the style of their favorite film genres, including a gangster film and a musical. If this idea sounds appalling, that’s kind of the point. The men, including Anwar Congo, who is said to have personally killed 1,000 people, are at first too happy to oblige.
The film dives into some kind of horrific nightmare, where the audience is watching fictional, stylized accounts but very much thinking about the monsters who committed the real acts. This bizarre artifice leads to a viewing experience like no other, exploring the nature of memory, history and legacy in a manner never done before. What’s shocking is how little remorse these men feel, and worse, how their actions remain unpunished. They seem more concerned with protecting their image than dealing with any sort of guilt or reparations. That is, until the film’s climax: a horrified Congo, finally coming to terms with the weight of his actions, begins to vomit profusely. It’s sure to go down as one of the most shocking and memorable scenes in movie history. This film is an absolute knockout, barreling with a moral force as powerful as a runaway freight train. It’s strange and disturbing, and likely not for everyone. But for anyone who wants to see just how far the documentary form can stretch its artistic and philosophical limits, The Act of Killing is required viewing.
BOYHOOD
A film like Boyhood is a truly rare gift, a staggering achievement on every conceivable level. From concept to editing, music and performances, Richard Linklater’s bittersweet ode to adolescence defies every single expectation and averts every cliché you might fear a movie like this would contain.
The concept of filming actors over a 12 year period is an intriguing idea, but it honestly sounds like it would be a mess of a movie. Thankfully, Boyhood rises far above the hullabaloo over how it was made to achieve that rare sort of concoction: a movie epic in scope but painfully intimate in its execution. It’s the film’s small moments that work best, mostly because the movie is nothing but small moments. It’s the seemingly insignificant everyday conversations, the quiet moments of desperation and of joy, which define our lives, and this movie displays that concept brilliantly. It’s hard not to get all teary and nostalgic when I see main character Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane) make his way through many of the same grand pop culture moments that defined my childhood. But the movie isn’t just for millennials. During its nearly three hour running time, I can’t imagine a single person who would find absolutely nothing to connect to here. What makes Mason and his family’s story so enduring is that it’s firmly rooted in time and place, yet completely universal in its experiences and implications. Because it’s a movie about life, in all its hideous beauty, it’s a movie for everyone. And, for my money, an instant classic.
BIRDMAN
I have written quite a lot about Birdman, so I don’t know how much more there is to say. I recently bought the film on Blu-Ray, and watching it again I was enraptured anew in every brilliant second of this insanely ambitious movie. What I said about Boyhood holds true here as well; there’s no greater thrill watching a movie that technically shouldn’t work at all completely blowing away your expectations and making movie history in the process. It’s rare to find a daring original vision in modern cinema, but I’m amazed how far director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and his amazing team of collaborators were willing to run with this patently odd concept.
There are too many strokes of brilliance here to write about, but here’s a couple. The genius of casting Michael Keaton in the role of an actor who once played a superhero attempting a career renaissance on Broadway cannot be overstated. If not for the film’s playful fantasy elements, I could hear the concept of this movie and imagine it to be some kind of documentary. It’s certainly filmed like one. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who won an Oscar for his work) films the movie as if it were one long take, with scenes and character interactions melding together into one complex rollercoaster of emotions. It’s an artificial technique that somehow manages to feel startlingly realistic. I’m still trying to figure out how they pulled that off.
Every acting choice here feels right, every shot framed for maximum impact, every line of dialogue hits with either its hilarity or its tragedy. The percussive soundtrack is one of the best ever. This is a movie that wears every conceivable hat and is amazing at everything it tries to do. There are no failures; nothing in this crazy grab-bag of cool rings false. It all adds up to one of the most thrilling and polished movies in a long, long time. I can’t wait to see what Inarritu and company do next, but this one will be tough to top.
I have no idea how to feel about Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Part of me thinks it’s terrible, another part thinks it’s actually really well done. I wouldn’t be surprised if most people who see this movie are similarly split.
Like Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks’ final film as director is interesting not because it’s a spoof of its source material, but because it’s actually a very faithful adaptation. Dracula (played by Leslie Nielsen), is living in a creepy Transylvanian castle when an unsuspecting Thomas Renfield (Peter MacNicol), who is visiting the castle to sign an English land deed over to the Count, is bitten and turned into his bug-eating slave. The duo travels across the ocean, where they settle into Dracula’s new estate. But the vampire has more sinister plans than relocation; he desires the young blood of Mina (Amy Yasbeck), but her father, Dr. Seward (Harvey Korman) enlists the help of Dr. Van Helsing (Brooks), who attempts to stop the bloodsucker by proving he’s a vampire and driving a stake through his heart before he turns Mina into his undead bride.
The worst thing about the film is, surprisingly, the acting. Brooks usually brings out the best in his actors even when his scripts let them down, but this one is overacted to death. It must be some cinematic sin to waste the great Leslie Nielsen, but his bumbling version of the iconic character only gets a couple of okay slapstick gags. The rest is him making perplexing facial expressions and laying on that Transylvanian accent a bit too thick. I know that Renfield is supposed to be an over-the-top character, but MacNicol’s overacting is distractingly bad.
Dracula: Dead and Loving It is a strange brew, but has some unique and surprising strengths and weaknesses within Brooks’ filmography.
Brooks himself also really overdoes it. The only actor I think made out good here is Korman, who, for once, is the most subtle one. I like that he gets to play a different character than in other Brooks’ films; his acting is still uproarious, but in a subtler and in some ways more effective way. He comes across closer to an actual human being rather than a caricature.
The movie’s tone is all over the place. It gets really dark and even gory, but Brooks is still trying to be lighthearted in terms of gags. The sometimes grim tone doesn’t always mix well with the traditional warmth of Brooks’ humor.
The movie also lacks consistent laughs, but the ones that are here are far more than minor chuckles. There are two scenes that are so insanely over-the-top that they left me rolling. One involves Renfield’s preferred diet of bugs and the other involves some of the practical aspects of staking a vampire that I’ve never properly considered (hint: it’s a pretty messy business).
But man, I have a tough time hating this film for one main reason: it is gorgeous. I mean, absolutely beautiful. The production design here is stunning. I’ve gotten used to the cheap-looking nature of many of Brooks’ films, but this is something completely different. Everything from the grimy, cobweb infested corridors of Dracula’s castle to the lush reds and golds of Mina’s bedroom pop with color. The movie also makes great use of fog, and some scenes use lighting and shadow so well, they border on Oscar-worthy. There’s also some really cool special effects, especially considering the movie is 20 years old, and a sequence involving some visual trickery near the end kind of blew my mind. Despite its famous source material, the film has a moody, eerie atmosphere all its own.
Dracula: Dead and Loving It is a mess, but it’s an entertaining one. It’s not a good movie, but it’s not a bad one either. In all honesty, I prefer it as a proper Dracula tale to, say, the original film from the 1930s, which is somehow even cheesier than this one. If nothing else, it nails the visual style and tone of Bram Stoker’s delightfully twisted world, even if its humor and performances are a letdown.
And with that, Mel Brooks Monday is officially over! I hope you’ve enjoyed looking back at the career of this very funny filmmaker. Thanks for all the laughter, Mel!
Was 2014 a great year for movies or what? There’s a few naysayers out there calling it a weak year for film, but I just don’t see it. Everything from big summer blockbusters to buzzworthy indies impressed, and I can think of very few movies I walked away from disappointed (keep in mind I try hard to avoid bad movies).
Critics often look for a movie “theme” to sum up a year, but art is unpredictable and can’t always be so easily categorized. This year, however, was easy: many films explored obsession; the way it drives us to greatness and, in some cases, the way it can ultimately destroy us. I saw many movies I liked this year, but kept a special eye out for the ones I loved. The ones that moved me the most, made me think the hardest or connected me most directly to this thing we call life are the ones that made their way here. Of course, it goes without saying that most of them are also entertaining. After all, isn’t that why we go to the movies in the first place?
10. THE LEGO MOVIE
Although it didn’t feature a Pixar masterwork (we’re getting two hopefully great ones in 2015!), this year was actually an exceptional one for animated features. From Studio Ghibli’s bittersweet swansongs The Wind Rises and The Tale of Princess Kaguya to the magnificent How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Disney’s effortlessly entertaining Big Hero 6, we didn’t want for high-quality animated spectacle. The best of the bunch, however, was, to my great surprise, The Lego Movie. Funny, endlessly creative and visually spectacular, this movie is just a complete joy, and the voice acting is through-the-roof amazing. Beyond that, it features a potent message on the power of creativity and thinking outside the box, and features one of the best endings of the year. Kids and adults alike looking for something a little different are sure to find something to love in this original delight.
9. FOXCATCHER
A sure sign of a great film is that it leaves you with complex emotions you can’t quite explain. That was true of Bennett Miller’s first two features, Capote and Moneyball, and it’s true again here, in what is perhaps the least inspirational sports movie ever made. Based on one of the strangest true stories of all time, I could never quite see where this disturbing film– which chronicles the bizarre relationship between billionaire John DuPont and Olympic wrestling brothers Mark and David Shultz– was headed next. Miller has always had a keen eye for actors, and Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo and Steve Carrell deliver some of the finest performances of the year. Carrell, in particular, is mesmerizing in a rare dramatic role; he commands an unexplainable but chilling presence every time he’s on screen. It’s a truly incredible thing to behold.
8. GONE GIRL
The year’s best thriller is also one of the best adaptations I’ve ever seen. Gillian Flynn did a bang up job bringing her twisty, unwieldy novel to the screen, cutting out the extraneous material and sharpening the book’s essence to a fine-toothed edge. The results paid off, because Gone Girl cuts deep. Ben Affleck gives perhaps his best performance as a down-to-earth writer with a few things to hide. And Rosamund Pike, who I really hope snags a Best Actress Oscar, gives an arresting performance as “Amazing Amy,” who, in both appearance and feminine wiles, reminds me very much of a Hitchcock bombshell blonde. And then, of course, there’s David Fincher, who is one of the best directors in the business and can seem to do no wrong. His stable set of cinematographers, composers and editors all turn in stellar work here, making this one of the best looking films of 2014. Those who haven’t read the book will find much to be shocked about here, and those who have will find themselves grinning sadistically over just how good this extremely messed up movie turned out to be.
7. SNOWPIERCER
It was a killer year for comic-based films, including an incredible hot streak for Marvel (the sci-fi extravaganza Guardians of the Galaxy just missed this list). But my favorite is the one that seems to have gotten the least attention. Snowpiercer easily earns a spot as one of my new all-time favorite action films. Korean director Joon-ho Bong makes his English language debut here, and the result is as bonkers as anyone familiar with Korean cinema might expect. Although the entire film takes place on a high-speed train endlessly circling an uninhabitable earth, the filmmakers never run out of creative visual ideas. Each train car has a unique theme, and, as the oppressed masses make their way to the one percenters up front, the film does a great job of alternating between action-packed rooms and more contemplative moments (one gorgeous train car is a giant greenhouse). And look at this cast: Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, John Hurt and Octavia Spencer. That list along should inspire you to check this one out, but the polished filmmaking, exhilarating action and potent political subtext are what pushed this far beyond other explosion-filled efforts I saw this year.
6. WHIPLASH
Make a movie about the physical and emotional turmoil of jazz drumming and you’ve got my attention. Turn it into a psychological horror film featuring world class acting and you’ve got one of the best movies of the year. Miles Teller gives one of the more physically grueling performances in recent memory as the ambitious and talented drummer Andrew Nieman, who comes under the tutelage of J.K. Simmons’ imposing conductor Terence Fletcher. This is one of the best films I’ve seen about modern musicians, perfectly portraying the drive many musicians have for greatness and how far they’re willing to take that feeling. In Nieman’s triumphs as well as his failures, we’re reminded of Fletcher’s words regarding Charlie Parker, widely regarded as the greatest musician of the 20th century. He was miserable, but he made some damn good music.
5. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
I readily admit I’ve never been much of a Wes Anderson fan, but that all changes here. This is the kind of movie I’ve always wished he would make. It’s smart, sophisticated and edgy, but still has that likeable laid-back charm that stamps all of Anderson’s efforts. This film does an incredible amount of genre flipping, from romantic comedy to coming-of-age tale to spy thriller to prison break drama, and it rocks at being all of them. Rarely is a movie that wears this many hats such a joy to watch. The plot is convoluted but never dull, the bright visuals are the best an Anderson film has ever achieved, and the central relationship between Ralph Finnes’ famed hotel concierge and his ward (played by newcomer Tony Revolori) is hilarious and heartfelt. This movie has a big, beating, infectious heart, and for once the Wes Anderson-isms actually help the story, rather than hurt it. Also, Jeff Goldblum is in this movie, and that’s something we can all get behind.
4. SELMA
It’s a rather shocking fact that we’ve never gotten a true movie about Martin Luther King, Jr. from a major studio until now. It was definitely worth the wait, although Selma isn’t “about” MLK in a traditional biopic sense. Chronicling the charge MLK led in gaining equal voting rights for American blacks in 1965, Ava DuVernay’s impeccably crafted film avoids all of the tropes I’d expect a film like this to fall into. It’s harrowing and inspirational not because it beats the audience into submission with its emotions, but because it trades so well in subtlety. Similar to Steven Spielberg’s excellent Lincoln, I love the way this movie focuses on the practical and political aspects of its subject: in this case, the MLK-led march from Selma to Birmingham, Alabama. How does one organize such an event and emphasize it for maximum publicity? These backstage dealings and intimate discussions are more interesting than any grand epic moments the film could have tried to force feed us. This is sobering, powerful stuff, as close to essential documentation as movies get, and it features one hell of a performance from David Oyelowo as Dr. King, who nails the troubled psyche of the famed civil rights leader as well as he does the moments of grand speeches. It’s the performance of the year.
3. CALVARY
Every year tends to feature one major movie that fell completely under the radar but I loved so much I can’t help but urge everyone to see. This year that movie was definitely Calvary. The highest compliment I can imagine paying a film is that it feels like a Flannery O’Connor story come to life. Like the best of that great writer’s work, Calvary features a startling mix of the sacred and the profane. Brendan Gleeson gives my personal favorite performance of the year as a troubled Catholic priest in a small Irish town. As Father James attempts to live a life of a higher calling, he is constantly distracted by a populace whose open debauchery and sinful living fly in the face of all the work he’s trying to do. Add in a suicidal daughter and a man threatening to kill him and you’ve got one troubled clergyman. What emerges from scene after scene of quiet desperation mixed with indescribable hope is one of the more potent meditations on faith in the midst of suffering I’ve ever seen. Gleeson maintains that balancing act between piety and insanity so perfectly it comes off like breathing. This is the kind of spiritually profound, challenging filmmaking Christians should be demanding more of, though the film’s raunchy language and bleak ending will turn away some. But Calvary’s grand spiritual themes combined with its lush Irish setting have me hoping this will at least be considered some kind of cult classic, if not an outright masterpiece in years to come.
2. BOYHOOD
There’s so much brilliance in Richard Linklater’s sprawling Texas-set portrait of adolescence that it’s hard to know where to begin. If you don’t know the background, Linklater filmed Boyhood over a 12-year period, as the actors grew up along with the central character. Ellar Coltrane gives a groundbreaking performance as he ages from age 5 to 18 along with his character Mason in the film. As I watched the film, I grew up with him. There have been few movies that have truly captured what it means to be an adolescent millennial in this country, and none anywhere near this ambitious. I especially love the little period details in the film; Harry Potter book launches, Halo gaming sessions and lengthy discussions about the Star Wars prequel trilogy were an integral part of my adolescent years as well. These moments also help to ground us in time; we can roughly tell in what year a certain scene was filmed when, say, Mason is playing a Game Boy SP.
The supporting performances are all pitch-perfect, especially Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason’s divorced parents and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei as Mason’s sister Samantha. But what stands out the most about Boyhood is the way it finds meaning in the small, sometimes mundane moments of life. It is truly these moments, Linklater argues, rather than life’s grand epiphanies, which define our existence. When the credits rolled, I felt I could keep watching Mason’s story forever, desiring to see him grow into a man and, eventually, old age. Boyhood is the closest art comes to approximating real life. There’s never been anything like it.
1. BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)
There’s probably no such thing as a perfect film, but I can’t think of one thing I’d change about Birdman. I’ve only seen it once, but I remember it vividly, one long scene played repeatedly in my mind. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s drama, set almost entirely in a Broadway theater and filmed as if recorded in one long shot, is the kind of bold cinematic artistry we so rarely get in contemporary cinema. I was thrilled by the boldness of the filmmaking, but I was even more entertained by the cast of characters Inarritu and company have drawn up. Filling a building with eccentric, egotistical theater types and watching them try to make great art together is a blast, and the performances really seal the deal. Michael Keaton, as Riggan Thompson, an actor who once played a superhero grasping at his last chance for artistic relevancy, delivers one of the most insane yet somehow nuanced performances I’ve seen in ages. Edward Norton, Naomi Watts and Zach Galifinakis deliver some of their best work ever, but the true revelation for me is Emma Stone as Riggan’s daughter, fresh out of drug rehab. She truly holds the emotional center of the film, and her existential tirades about all of the artifice she sees around her are both wickedly funny and heartbreakingly tragic.
I loved every second of this darkly funny insider tale, and I think it has some valuable things to say about humanity’s innate desire to be remembered for doing something great, even if the road to greatness is paved with heartache and shattered lives. Watching this film, I couldn’t help but think of another movie that so perfectly balanced an epic scale and innovative filmmaking with intimate portraits of memorable-yet-relatable lowlifes: Pulp Fiction, which I often reference as my all-time favorite film. The fact that I would mention Birdman in the same breath as Tarantino’s masterpiece confirms what a rare and special treat it is. It is, in my book, and instant classic, and likely my favorite film of the decade thus far.
