Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

** SPOILERS **

"Bruce Wayne meets Clark Kent! I love bringing people together!"

"Must there be a Superman?" asks Jim Lehrer, one of the many real life talking heads debating what's to be done about the presence of the Man of Steel on Earth. "Is it really surprising that the most powerful man in the world is a figure of controversy?" Controversy about Superman, his intentions, his actions, and how to stop him if he ever decides to "burn the whole place down" forms the crux of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, director Zack Snyder's grand operatic follow up to his controversial re-introduction of Superman, Man of Steel. Working from a robust, sly, bursting at the seams screenplay by Oscar winner Chris Terrio and David Goyer that ponders the history, fear and worship of gods and pulls key moments from Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" and Dan Jurgens' "The Death of Superman," Batman v Superman works overtime to fulfill its aggressive agenda: establishing the greater DC Comics cinematic universe as a muscular powder keg of hard choices, numerous threats at home and from worlds beyond, and burgeoning hope -- but only after our heroes get slugging each other out of their systems. We find the Batman v Superman universe is one simply unprepared and at heart terrified of the aliens, gods and monsters suddenly thrust upon them, but really, no more than we would be in real life. Just like the Batman, if something like Superman came to our real world, rather than embrace him as a savior, we'd probably also be looking for a fight.

Two years have passed since the destruction of Metropolis at the conclusion of Man of Steel. The city has been rebuilt and has publicly embraced Superman as a hero, a sentiment spearheaded by the Daily Planet, which just happens to have Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane (Amy Adams) and Superman himself, in his daily guise as Clark Kent (Henry Cavill), writing "puff pieces" about Superman. However, numerous people in Metropolis and around the world don't feel quite so cuddly about the Man of Steel. The primary voice of dissent is Senator Finch (Holly Hunter), a junior senator from Kentucky hell-bent on holding hearings on Superman and bringing him in front of their committee to account for his actions. Though Superman continues to perform heroic feats and rescues around the world, all of his acts come under fire, and then literally when Superman finally relents to appear at the Capitol in Washington, DC, only to be framed in a terrorist bombing that kills Finch and hundreds of innocents. Poor Superman. Not only is his reputation repeatedly called into question, but Terrio and Goyer's screenplay gives him no opportunity to publicly defend himself. This Superman isn't like Christopher Reeve's smiling, media friendly Man of Steel who gave a revealing interview to Lois that would bring the public onto his side. "Superman was never real. He's just a dream of a farmer from Kansas," Clark confides to Lois at his lowest point of self-pity. Trying to be an old fashioned do-gooder in a world that suspects his every action ("It's not 1938 anymore!"), Cavill's beleaguered Superman must resort to having to contort his handsome face into every frown and scowl he can muster.

Speaking of frowns and scowls, we learn that billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), who secretly spends his dark nights terrorizing Gotham City's criminals as the Batman, was in Metropolis on "The Day The World Met The Superman." Wayne had a ground's eye view of Superman and General Zod (Michael Shannon) wrecking Metropolis in their epic encounter, feeling an unfamiliar and disquieting utter helplessness as two alien gods demolished Wayne Tower and left a trail of death and destruction in their wake. Meanwhile, the DC Universe's other most famous billionaire, Lex Luthor (a malevolently unhinged Jesse Eisenberg), has his own machinations, involving an elaborate, unwieldy scheme to frame Superman for an international incident, a mysterious green meteorite, Kryptonite, that can kill Kryptonians, and files in his hard drive that both Bruce Wayne and the mysterious Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), the Amazon princess the world will soon come to know as Wonder Woman, want to abscond with. But first and foremost, the Batman, depicted in this latest cinematic incarnation as older, more world-wearily cynical, and more brutally violent than ever ("Twenty years in Gotham, Alfred. How many good guys are left? How many stayed that way?"), wants to pick a fight with Superman.

"That's how it starts. The fever. The rage. The feeling of powerlessness that turns good men cruel," warns Alfred (Jeremy Irons), Wayne's acid-tongued faithful butler. But Wayne, driven by mysterious dreams of a dark future where Superman rules the world and brings winged alien demon armies from the skies, is set upon his course to take down the Kryptonian, training like Rocky Balboa for a big fight he desperately wants to win. Clark Kent himself is just as interested in the Batman, the fearsome vigilante across the bay in Gotham City who now brands criminals with the mark of the bat. Their super fight, manipulated by Luthor, who kidnapped Superman's adoptive human mother Martha Kent (Diane Lane) and threatens to have her killed if Superman doesn't sanction the Batman, is indeed epic and entertaining. The fight precisely follows the comic book tropes that the Batman, clad in his bulky battle armor, would set numerous traps and use Superman's overconfidence in his powers against him, including doses of Kryptonite gas to weaken Superman so that Batman, the superior fighter, can deliver the smackdown. #WhoWillWin? asked the social media marketing for weeks. Well, this fight is purely for the comic book fans and not the layman who would naturally assume Superman would wipe the floor with Batman. One of the most clever bits of Terrio and Goyer's screenplay is what ends the fight, the name "Martha," acknowledging and playing into one of the weird coincidences that Superman and Batman share -- both their mothers are named Martha.

Once Superman and Batman have made their peace, Batman v Superman goes for broke, turning giddily, unapologetically comic book and never looking back. Luthor unleashes his worst creation, the "Kryptonian deformity" called Doomsday, a giant, unstoppable monster genetically engineered from General Zod's corpse and Luthor's own DNA. In the same way the presence of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises signaled to comic book fans in the know that Batman's back would be broken, Doomsday means only one, inevitable thing to Superman fans. But first, Superman and a rather outmatched Batman must team up to fight Doomsday, and they're joined by Wonder Woman, who utterly steals the show in a long awaited, sensational cinematic debut for the most famous female superhero in the world. The few moments of Wonder Woman thrusting herself into battle against Doomday, blocking his heat vision with her bracelets, hacking his limbs off with her sword, and unleashing her magic lasso are worth the price of admission and ensured an eager opening weekend audience for her upcoming solo feature film in 2017. The battle sees Superman rocket Doomsday into outer space, only to be nuked by the US Military (a moment also borrowed from "The Dark Knight Returns"), while Batman and Lois Lane scramble to recover a Kryptonite spear, Batman's coup de grace weapon intended for Superman before cooler heads prevailed. By the time Superman makes the ultimate sacrifice to stop Doomsday, we're spent, the dreams of millions of comic book fans fulfilled.

"I failed him in life. I won't fail him in death," mourns Wayne, who finally comes to see he was wrong about the alien he's hated for the last couple of years. Both Wayne and Diana Prince attend Superman's funeral in Smallville, Kansas (actually Clark Kent's funeral, who was mysteriously killed during the super fight with Doomsday in what no one sees as a hilarious coincidence -- Superman's official funeral is a public military burial in Washington, DC.)  Setting up next year's superhero team up, Justice League, Batman v Superman literally stops the show by unleashing the files Batman stole from Luthor, giving the audience glimpses of Jason Momoa as Aquaman, Ray Fisher as Cyborg (his father, the scientist Silas Stone is played by a cleverly cast Joe Morton), and Ezra Miller as The Flash. As Batman, Affleck creates an ideal, grim, weary Dark Knight, arguably even the best cinematic Batman ever, silencing the millions who took umbrage over his casting on social media. (Incidentally, Batman reassuring Martha Kent "I'm a friend of your son's" is the best line in the whole movie. "I figured," she retorts. "The cape.") Gadot is a stunning revelation as Wonder Woman, regal, beautiful, and ferocious in battle. Both now own their superhero roles. Even without Cavill's Superman, the upcoming Justice League movie is in good hands with Affleck and Gadot leading the charge. But who are we kidding? Superman will return, of course, as subtly teased in the final shot of Batman v Superman. There is and will be no world without a Superman. Maybe when the Man of Steel does return, the world will be a lot nicer to him. But for now, let Superman rest in peace. He's earned it. After all, as quoted in Man of Steel, a good death is its own reward.

Hail Caesar!

HAIL CAESAR!

** SPOILERS **

"Hooray for Old Hollywood!" trumpets Hail Caesar!, Joel and Ethan Coen's prodigious tribute to the golden age of Tinseltown circa the 1950s. Josh Brolin headlines a massive cast of some of today's biggest Hollywood names. As the head of Physical Production for the fictional Capitol Pictures, Brolin's all-consuming and thankless task is to oversee his studio's motley assemblage of eccentrics as they mount a prestige picture called "Hail Caesar!" involving the fall of Rome and the rise of Jesus Christ and Christianity. An early scene where Brolin holds court with a rabbi, a Catholic priest, a reverend, and an imam, is a high point, as they hilariously debate whether Jesus was God, the son of God, or none of the above. ("God is a bachelor," the rabbi argues, "And he's always angry.") Brolin himself is a deeply penitent man, making daily confessions to the chagrin of his patient priest. Brolin must have the patience of Job to deal with the wackos he deals with every day, as a recruiter for Lockheed Martin surmises when he offers Brolin a cushier, more lucrative position to run security for Lockheed and quit showbiz. But letting go of showbiz is easier said than done.

During production of "Hail Caesar!" its star, played by George Clooney, is mysteriously kidnapped and held for ransom. Clooney, largely oblivious and of the highly suggestible type, becomes a "guest" - a rather surprisingly willing one - of a cadre of screenwriters who turn out to be communists looking to blackmail the studio. Meanwhile, podunk horse opera matinee idol Alden Ehrenreich receives an offer to star in a prestige drama directed by effete auteur Ralph Fiennes and learns actually having to act in a "serious" picture is tougher than it looks. While all that is going on, Scarlett Johansson has a swim on as a starlet whom the studio needs to find a new husband for, to maintain her image. Meanwhile, Channing Tatum stars in his own musical as a sailor who laments going out to sea means seeing no dames for a long, long time -- because women and seamen don't mix, as we all know. Tons of other famous faces, like Jonah Hill, Tilda Swinton (playing twin gossip hounds), Frances McDormand (of course), Alison Pill, Clancy Brown, and even a very aged Christopher Lambert show up in minor roles, some just for a scene, as it seems the Coens speed dialed every contact on their iPhones and got them all day rates.

With a plot barely strung together like a slacking laundry clothesline, Hail Caesar! at times feels more like an elaborate movie star talent showcase: See how long Scarlett Johansson can hold her breath underwater as the Coens mount an underwater musical number that hasn't been done in a Hollywood movie in 50 years! Watch Ehrenreich perform clever trickery with his trusty lasso! Tatum steals the show with an acrobatic soft shoe tap dance routine that shows off just how talented Magic Mike really is. Through it all, Brolin bounces around from crisis to crisis, putting out fires with his hard-talking, square-jawed, tough guy routine, willing his studio back into some kind of normalcy. Hail Caesar! persuasively and enjoyably recreates Hollywood's golden age in all its starry hues. But what does it all mean? What's the point of Hail Caesar!? That there's no business like show business? Yes, guys, we know.

Pride + Prejudice + Zombies

PRIDE + PREJUDICE + ZOMBIES

** SPOILERS **

Were she able to witness it, Pride + Prejudice + Zombies may leave Jane Austen aghast, but then she'd probably be one of the undead anyway. In PPZ, writer-director Burr Steers, working from the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, who was working from a little known, obscure tome by Jane Austen, fuses Austen's timeless and beloved tale of class warfare and romance with healthy injections of zombie horror. It is, in the final account, a gnarly but delightful mishmash. As narrated by Mr. Bennet (Charles Dance, Tywin Lannister of Game of Thrones), a horrific zombie plague arrived on England's shores from the New World, plunging the country into a full-scale war with the ever-growing army of the undead. A Great Wall was erected to protect London, while a massive moat that can be crossed by only one bridge protects the rest of the island. The remaining section where the vast majority of the zombies lurk is a dead zone called the In-Between, a region rather routinely and perhaps ill-advisedly visited by the zombie-fighting five Bennet daughters: prized beauty and pick of the litter Jane (Bella Heathcoate), Lydia (Ellie Bamber), Mary (Millie Brady), Kitty (Suki Waterhouse), and rebellious Elizabeth (Lily James of Downton Abbey and Cinderella). 

The business of finding suitable husbands for the Bennet daughters and securing their futures if the elderly Mr. Bennet passes is made infinitely more complicated by the seemingly endless war with the zombies. While the obscenely wealthy and handsome Mr. Bingley (Douglas Booth) woos Jane, Elizabeth finds herself constantly at odds with her unwanted attraction to the gloomy, severe Colonel Darcy (Sam Riley), a raspy-voiced zombie killer of the highest order. Well, you know how the story of Pride and Prejudice goes. Its romantic twists and turns and misunderstandings are accounted for. As Elizabeth, the radiant James is a ferocious firebrand, heedlessly throwing herself into battle with the same gusto as when she rejects suitors for her hand in matrimony. Every zinging joke about how Jane is the most beautiful of the Bennet sisters but Elizabeth is a perfectly acceptable runner up and consolation prize lands with the impact of a boot stomping a zombie's bloody head into squishy syrup.

What PPZ brings to the table is a terrific dose of zombie-fighting horror. The class warfare of 19th century England receives a new twist; in a nation where nearly everyone must become proficient in fighting zombies, where you send your brood to be trained in zombie-killing denotes your status: the privileged upper class send their children to Japan, the lower classes to the shaolin monks of China. Darcy's haughty rank and ever-present samurai katana sword gives away his Japanese-honed status, while Elizabeth and her sisters proudly know kung fu and routinely strap blades to their garters when venturing into the In-Between, such as the glorious occasion of the elegant ball thrown by Mr. Bingley. Together, the five Bennet sisters are a formidable fighting force and PPZ giddily shows them off as they luridly slash and smash and decapitate zombies in slow motion. Elizabeth's fighting skills are routinely placed to the test; even the revered zombie killer Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Lena Headey) pays her bravery and abilities the highest compliment. 

Nearly everyone wants Elizabeth either married to them or dead. Along with Colonel Darcy, Elizabeth hilariously deflects the intentions of Darcy's insidious rival George Wickham (Jack Huston), who has a personal history with Darcy that now directly affects the safety and future of England. But PPZ is routinely stolen wholesale by Matt Smith as Parson Collins, a whirling dervish of pure comedy who livens up the proceedings every moment he's on the screen. We know that Darcy and Elizabeth must end up together in the end, but they themselves do not. James and Riley, each playing a version of Elizabeth and Darcy that has never existed before, are at their best sparring with each other both verbally and physically. When Darcy, whose methods of zombie detection include releasing carrion flies into the air because they can detect zombie bites, unleashes his flock to test whether Jane, who had fallen ill, had been bitten, Elizabeth snatches each fly out of thin air with her fingers in a feat that would make Mr. Miyagi snap his chopsticks in pure rage. This is topped by the inevitable fight between Elizabeth and Darcy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith-style, as they tear apart a room in Mr. Collins' home (his reactions to the damage done is priceless), Darcy snapping her bodice with his blade, while Elizabeth pummels him with fists and feet. The undercurrent of sex in their sparring is palpable, one of the advantages of adding an element of action to Pride and Prejudice that PPZ takes full advantage of. In PPZ, Elizabeth and Darcy are made for each other in a brand new way, and when Darcy admires Elizabeth for saving his life in the end, he now means it literally. 

Inevitably, the war with the zombies take center stage as it must. We learn England is nearly bankrupt by the war and the zombies can multiply faster than the living can possibly create more soldiers to fight them. ("It takes 9 months to make a baby and 16 years to train them to become a soldier. It takes one second to make a zombie.") The zombies of PPZ themselves are a novel version of the undead, able to run like the zombies of World War Z but also retaining intelligence, speech and personality. Only in Pride and Prejudice's England can zombies remain polite and dignified. PPZ's can be docile towards humans if fed only animal brains, but once they taste of human flesh, they become unrelentingly murderous towards human beings. When the duplicity of the evil George Wickham is revealed, the full scope of the zombie war and the peril England faces seem truly daunting and hopeless, but PPZ cannily manages to find its hope in the love between and collective marriages of Elizabeth to Darcy and Jane to Bingely. Pride + Prejudice + Zombies doesn't quite set up a happily ever after for the newly-married Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, but if they are indeed destined to meet their maker (not Austen), at least they'll do so fighting bravely alongside each other. That, in its way, is quite romantic indeed.

The Revenant

THE REVENANT

** SPOILERS **

Alejandro González Iñárritu's stunning and brutal The Revenant poses and answers the question audiences have pondered since Jack Dawson followed the bulk of the Titanic and sank deep into the North Atlantic: How much agony can Leonardo DiCaprio take? So much. SO. MUCH. In the American wilderness of 1823, a ravaged-looking DiCaprio stars as Hugh Glass, a navigator for a company of burly and desperate fur trappers lead by their loyal captain Domhnall Gleeson. After a savage attack by the local Native American tribe, who are hunting for their chief's daughter "stolen by two white men," Gleeson's company is decimated, the handful of survivors left to their own devices in the wilderness. Then, while scouting a safe passage through the woods, a grizzly bear kicks the ever-loving hell out of DiCaprio.

Leonardo DiCaprio vs. the grizzly bear is probably the most visceral and shocking movie encounter of 2015. Iñárritu puts us at ground-eye level with DiCaprio as the bear mauls him, rips his flesh, mounts him and pounds him into submission in one ghastly, unbroken shot. That DiCaprio manages to kill the bear with his Bowie knife is pretty astounding, though when they tumble off a cliff and the hundreds of pounds of dead bear land on top of him, one must ponder how DiCaprio possibly could have survived. Gleeson and company find DiCaprio, who is all but a corpse, and try to save him but trying to keep him alive and transport DiCaprio to safety across the hostile wilderness proves all but impossible. Taking the company forward, Gleeson leaves DiCaprio and his half-Indian son in the care of Tom Hardy, a scheming, opportunistic sleazebag (literally - the remaining hair on his once-scalped dome is riddled with fleas). Hardy soon becomes the bane of DiCaprio's existence when he decides to abandon DiCaprio, murders DiCaprio's son, and trundles off to fend for himself.

Instead of joining his son and his Native American wife in the sweet, warm, welcome embrace of death, DiCaprio is reborn as The Revenant. Willing his broken body onward, step by step, with a lot of sleeping in snowy caves to help himself recover, The Revenant forces himself on a harrowing, seemingly impossible journey to find and exact revenge on Hardy. Clad in the bear skin of his vanquished foe, The Revenant encounters more Native Americans, one of whom becomes a friend who tends to his festering wounds and shelters him in a makeshift teepee in a blizzard, and more rotten Europeans, like a cadre of scummy French fur trappers in possession of the Native American girl who was kidnapped. All the while, The Revenant is haunted by the spirit of his dead wife, reminding him of a parable about the sturdiness of a tree's trunk in comparison to its branches swaying in a storm and leading him to a giant teepee of skulls. What does it all mean? The Revenant doesn't say. Or maybe The Revenant doesn't know.

What we do know is: it's hard out there for The Revenant. In his quest to finally capture that perpetually elusive Best Actor Oscar, DiCaprio willingly and heroically endures every terrible hardship Iñárritu dreams up to put him through. Iñárritu must also be a big fan of Star Wars because he peppers The Revenant with a couple of canny homages: After riding a stolen horse off a cliff to escape the French fur trappers out to kill him, The Revenant, who miraculously survived the plummet, hacks open his dead horse, pulls out its organs, and climbs inside it to spend the night, just like Han Solo did to Luke Skywalker's Tauntaun on Hoth. The Revenant also receives a vision from his wife's Force Ghost; though after what he went through with that bear, the last thing The Revenant probably wants is to party with a bunch of Ewoks. Not to mention Domhnall Gleeson plays the villainous Commander Hux in The Force Awakens. 

After what feels like an eternity to The Revenant and the audience, The Revenant finally finds his way back to the wilderness fort where Gleeson is, only to learn that Hardy, who heard The Revenant was alive and coming for him, skeedaddled with all of Gleeson's cash. So with hardly a moment to rest his scabbed-over, weary body, off into the wilderness again goes The Revenant and Gleeson, for a fateful, bloody, knife-swinging, finger-slicing final encounter with Hardy where The Revenant learns that revenge is not the right thing to do**, which feels weird after everything he went though. It felt weird when James Bond learned that same lesson at the end of SPECTRE too.

Visually, The Revenant is truly spectacular. Shooting various parts of Canada and South America as a stand in for the early 19th century pre-developed United States, Iñárritu captures absolutely breathtaking imagery and some provocatively dreamy sequences, juxtaposed to the unrelenting, wanton brutality of nature and the ignoble acts committed by Native Americans and white men to each other. Iñárritu is also now Hollywood's foremost expert at getting his actors to do the most miserable things, like actually eat raw buffalo meat (when there are huge fires burning right next to them -- cook the meat, you savages) or getting Tom Hardy to dunk his head in a freezing river and play dead so Iñárritu can get the shot he needs. Where in America The Revenant takes place is a bit fuzzy. The Native American tribe is referred to as the Pawnee, so one can only conclude that The Revenant is set in Indiana and is a prequel to Parks and Recreation. Which must mean Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ron Swanson's great-great-great-great grandfather. If The Revenant actually survived the end of the movie, one hopes he gets to go to whatever early version of the Eagleton Mall exists and treats himself.

** DiCaprio looks right into the camera in the last shot of the movie. He should have said something like: "Don't do drugs" or "Stay in school." You know what else would have worked?

Alejandro González Iñárritu: Oh, you want an Oscar, do you? @LeoDiCaprio: Yes, I do. Iñárritu *rubs hands*: Well well well. - #TheRevenant

— John Orquiola (@BackoftheHead) January 23, 2016

Alejandro González Iñárritu: And you want an Oscar too? Grizzly Bear: Yes, I do. Iñárritu: Too bad. The Oscars are speciest. - #TheRevenant

— John Orquiola (@BackoftheHead) January 23, 2016

Missing from #TheRevenant: @LeoDiCaprio introducing himself as The Revenant. "Who are you?" "I'm The Revenant." "What does that mean?"

— John Orquiola (@BackoftheHead) January 23, 2016

Agora

AGORA

** SPOILERS **

In Agora, director Alejandro Amenabar's 2009 historical drama of religious tumult between Romans, Jews, and Christians, the city of Alexandria circa 391 A.D. just ain't big enough for the three of them. Amidst a hotbed of fanatical strife over whose god is the god who ought to be God, a luminous Rachel Weisz stars as Hypatia, a mathematician, scientist and philosopher who teaches at the Ptolemic School in the fabled Library of Alexandria. Hypatia, an equal opportunity instructor, counts among her students Roman nobles and slaves alike. Her three prized students are Orestes (a young Oscar Isaac), the future Roman Prefect of Alexandria, Synesius (Rupert Evans), a future Bishop of the aggressively growing Christian faith, and Davus (Max Minghella), Hypatia's deeply conflicted personal slave. Orestes and Davus both clearly love Hypatia, though she rather grossly rejects any attempt to woo her by offering up a rag stained with her menstrual blood. Still, Hypatia's "trying to prove the heliocentric model of the solar system (does the Earth revolve around the sun, how and why?)" is a milkshake that brings the boys to the yard. 

The yard in question is the "agora," the open meeting space in Alexandria which becomes a battleground of religious persecution. The growing and increasingly fanatical Christian population, led by Cyril (Sami Samir) and rabble roused by his number one fanatic Ammonius (Ashraf Barhom), declared holy war on the Romans and their polytheistic belief system, inciting a riot that drives the Romans to take refuge in the Library of Alexandria. When the Roman Emperor abandons Alexandria to the Christian hordes, they sack the Library. All the "pagan" symbols are destroyed and much of the accumulated wisdom of antiquity is lost. A decade passes and Alexandria continues to be a powderkeg. Though all the Romans have converted to Christianity, the Christians continue to consolidate their power and begin targeting the Jews in the city. The Christians and Jews take turns inciting and murdering each other; it's all Orestes, now Prefect and in way over his head, can do to maintain an uneasy peace.  Much like Springfield in The Simpsons, Alexandria can barely go one day without a riot. Inevitably, the Christians, looking for new enemies to target with righteous ire, turn their attention to women, deemed as inferior "as written in the Scriptures." Unfortunately, as Agora has it, there's only one woman in all of Alexandria (not a joke, Weisz is the only woman in the cast). Hypatia, who loves the science-y stuff and has absolutely no interest in religion of any sort, is condemned and branded a witch. Refusing the pleas of her former students still in love with her to convert, Hypatia's fate is sealed, though not before she successfully proves the Earth revolves around the sun. 

Agora takes a withering view of these early Christians, though historically speaking, this depiction isn't unfair. The conversion of people of "pagan" and "heathen" religions to Christianity often happened by violence. Even after converting all the Romans and marginalizing the Jews in Alexandria, the Christians of Agora continue to question the devotion of the converted. Indeed, Cyril, as head of his church, needs to do so in order to maintain the loyalty of his fanatical faithful. Agora boasts exceptional performances from Weisz, Isaac, Minghella, and Evans, as well as sumptuous sets and production design. Also, having Michael Lonsdale, who was once the villainous Hugo Drax in the James Bond adventure Moonraker, play the father of Weisz, who is married in real life to current 007 Daniel Craig, was a neat bit of casting. Agora unfolds in a manner where the characters (and the viewers) can't help but feel they're merely pawns to be sacrificed to a sad end. Amenabar plays God with his vivid cinematography, employing a favorite trick of macro-zooming out into space to regard the entire planet Earth with a "God's eye" view. Inevitability hangs over the brilliant but doomed Hypatia and the well-meaning people of Agora, like a Sword of Damocles poised to drop from the heavens, and does.

The Danish Girl

THE DANISH GIRL

** SPOILERS **

The Danish Girl, director Tom Hooper's painterly pseudo-biographical film based on the novel by the same name which is loosely based on the lives of Danish painters Lili Elbe/Einar Wegener and her/his wife Gerda Wegener, is an elegant tome about one of the first people to undergo male to female sex reassignment surgery. It might have been called Captain Denmark: The First Transgender if The Danish Girl were produced by Marvel Studios. Complex, textured, transcendent performances by Eddie Redmayne as Lili/Einar and Alicia Vikander as Gerda anchor The Danish Girl, which begins with them as a happily and heterosexually married couple in 1928 Copenhagen. He paints landscapes; the same landscape every time of the view of four trees from his boyhood home. She paints portraits. When her female model doesn't appear for a sitting one day, Gerda invites Einar to don women's clothes and pose for her, unwittingly unmasking the great secret Einar has been hiding all his life. 

In the opposite way of Tobias' desires on Arrested Development, there's a woman inside Eddie Redmayne yearning to be free, Lili Elbe, the person she truly identifies as "trapped" in the scrawny freckled form of Einar. Once he begins living life as the she she always felt she really is, tentatively and frightened at first, Lili finds she cannot go back to living the lie as Einar. Lili is also right to be frightened; every doctor or specialist she sees about her "condition" is met with accusations of perversion, mental illness, and men in white coats ready to lock him up in an asylum. Lili and Gerda are forced to flee Copehagen for Paris, where Gerda's career reaches new highs as her devotion to her husband, who has disappeared and been replaced with Lili, is severely tested. Life isn't any better for Lili in Paris; she spends most of her days hiding out in her home and the one time she ventures out, she's accosted and beaten by a couple of French tough guys in a gazebo. Gerda reaches out to art dealer Hans Axgil (Matthias Shoenaerts), Einar's childhood friend and the first boy Einar ever kissed during his earliest experiences of being Lili. Axgil's is a sympathetic friend, though the mutual attraction between Axgil and Gerda complicates Gerda's shaky, confusing marriage even further. Finally, Lili becomes one of the first-ever patients to undergo sex reassignment surgery, overseen by the kindly Professor Kurt Warnekros (Sebasitian Koch). Lili is free to finally live in the body she was always meant to have, albeit however briefly. 

The touching and daring performances by Redmayne and Vikander as they struggle to navigate the heartbreaking confusion of Lili's painful but liberating acceptance of her gender identity are elevated by The Danish Girl's breathtaking cinematography. Director of Photography Danny Cohen composes scene after scene of stunning imagery, shooting the actors against sumptuous sets and gorgeous production design. As a film about painters, the cinematography of The Danish Girl is a fine art museum-quality visual delight. Cohen's tantalizing shots are a welcome relief from the film's torpid pace and abstruse subject matter. There's literally one lighthearted jest in The Danish Girl, when Axgil tells Lili "There are few people I've ever liked, and you've been two of them," a clever bon mot which lands with a big laugh in a film sorely lacking in a release from its stifling solemnity. A moment when Redmayne stands nude in front of the mirror and hides his genitals between his legs hits so close to Silence of the Lambs that one wonders whether Einar Wegener would have been a serial killer and patient of Hannibal Lecter if The Danish Girl were set 70 years later.

Joy

JOY

** SPOILERS **

There was little joy in Joy's life until she invented a mop. In Joy, writer-director David O. Russell's parable inspired by the women who were empowered to become successful to escape their dreary lives, Jennifer Lawrence plays the title character, an Eastern Airlines customer service rep burdened by unfulfilled dreams she hardly remembers and an atrocious family sucking the life out of her. Her father (Robert De Niro) is an apologetic loser dating a cruel-tongued shrew with money (Isabella Rossellini), her mother (Virginia Madsen) is a shut in addicted to soap operas, her vindictive half-sister (Elizabeth Rohm) plots against her, and her supportive ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez) still lives in her basement. She does have two nice young kids. Joy is literally the mop cleaning up after her family's spilled lives. So one day, in a flash of genius, she invents a new and better self-cleaning mop, the Miracle Mop, and manages to get it on the burgeoning QVC network. Nothing is easy for Joy, and Joy puts Joy through the wringer, emotionally and in her business, always keeping Joy on the precipice of bankruptcy and failure.

Stylistically, Joy looks and feels like a muddled attempt at a Wes Anderson picture, with Joy's emotionally crippling family seeming like a blue collar, disagreeable Royal Tenenbaums. David O. Russell even shoots in a faux Wes Anderson-style, with fanciful voice overs and lots of mounted camera, straight-ahead shots of Joy and her rotten family. Business does pick up as Joy's business picks up, when Lawrence fully takes center stage (literally on QVC) and all but wills the Miracle Mop to be a million-seller on the network, thanks to the head of QVC played by a subdued, soft-spoken Bradley Cooper. Joy's screenplay puts Joy up a tree and throws rocks at her for two hours, until a too-pat solution finally saves Joy's business and rockets her to the incredible success she rightfully deserves.  Joy is agreeably the Jennifer Lawrence Show, as, at the ripe old age of 25, she is once again tasked with playing a mother aging up to 15 years older than she is. It takes all of her magnetic movie star abilities to hold the screen against the trials and tribulations the movie, which feels like a warmed over Erin Brockovich, pits against her. But boy oh boy, does Joy have a horrible family; it would have been nice to see Joy beat De Niro, Rossellini, Madsen, and Rohm over their heads with a Miracle Mop.