All week
“300: Rise of An Empire” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Sundance, Cinema Cafe) — Not a sequel, but a “sidequel” to the 2007 shirts-and-skins action epic, looking at another battle supposedly going on concurrently to the one in the first movie. Un-huh. But signifcantly, this is the first film screening in Point’s new Ultrascreen DLX that was recorded in the amazing Dolby Atmos. So it’ll seem like there are hot shirtless guys all around you!
“Omar” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:38, three and a half stars out of four.
Somebody tells a story in “Omar” about how monkeys are caught in Africa. The (probably apocryphal) story goes that trappers dig small holes in the ground with narrow openings, and drop nuts that the monkeys really like into the holes. The monkey reaches in, grabs the nut, but then can’t pull its paw back through the opening without dropping the nut. So there the monkey sits, unwilling to drop the nut, as the hunters arrive at their leisure.
I was going to write a “Twas the Night Before Christmas”-style introduction to this post in order to capture the excitement Madison film fans are feeling on the eve of the 2014 Wisconsin Film Festival schedule going live. But then I looked out at the snow coming down outside, and it just hit a little too close to home. Weather gods, seriously? It’s March.
The start of a new month means a lot more movies arriving onto Netflix Instant, including some indie gems and bonafide movie classics of the type you might find randomly appearing in an Oscar montage.
In the end, the Oscars that many anticipated to be one of the most unpredictable in memory, with three films neck and neck for Best Picture, turned out to be highly predictable.
If you were filling out your Oscar ballot, a few rules turned out to be ironclad. Give every technical award to “Gravity,” except for the theatrical ones like Costume and Production Design, which go to “The Great Gatsby.” “Frozen” gets everything it’s up for. “American Hustle” gets nothing. Give the frontrunners all the acting awards. And, for Best Picture, rely on Oscar voters fearing the logic that host Ellen DeGeneres offered up at the start of the show: “There are two possibilities. 1. ‘12 Years a Slave‘ wins Best Picture. 2. You’re all racists.”
Even though “Gravity” was my favorite movie of 2013, I was not at all disappointed that it lost Best Picture to “12 Years.” I’ve long given up on the idea that the Oscars honor the best picture of the year. More often, it’s the Best Picture That They Know They Ought to Honor. “Ought” sometimes means it’s such a massive box office hit that it can’t be ignored, or that it’s such an “important” film that it can’t be ignored.
The thing about “12 Years a Slave” is that it’s an “important” film that’s also a great work of art, and an Oscar win means that more people who sat on the fence about seeing it because of its powerful and disturbing subject matter will give it a chance. So that’s about the best you can hope for.
My favorite award of the night was Spike Jonze getting a Best Original (and how!) Screenplay win for “Her,” my second-favorite film of the year. My favorite moment of the night was Bill Murray going off-script to honor the late Harold Ramis. I didn’t see it coming, especially given that Murray and Ramis had been estranged for years (although the two did apparently reconcile), and it really moved me.
Other than that, I thought it was a good if overlong show. I really like DeGeneres as a host, because she’s so comfortable winging it in front of the camera and not relying on pre-scripted bits like a greener host does, like Seth MacFarlane. In fact, she probably should have done the entire show from the aisles, cutting up with celebs, serving them pizza, taking part in the World’s Most Expensive Selfie (which had just as many stars in, and was more dramatically involving than, “The Monuments Men.”)
There were the thuddingly bad moments, like Bette Midler’s straight-outta-1988 cheesy performance of “Wind Beneath My Wings” that stretched the “In Memoriam” segment even longer. Or John Travolta’s bizarre reading of “Idina Menzel” off the cue card. Or Goldie Hawn’s strangely perky way of saying the Best Picture winner’s title (“12 Years . . . a SLAVE!”)
But the speeches were mostly strong, including Lupita Nyong’o’s tearful statement that the joys in an actor’s life are often rooted in the pain of others. And while we may be approaching a saturation point for Matthew McConaughey, you have to love how he turned his speech into sort of a one-man show and worked in his own catch phrase. And I loved Cate Blanchett’s brassy challenge to make more films about interesting women (“The world is round, people!”)
That equality didn’t seem to extend to the ceremony’s shaky “theme” of “movie heroes,” which seemed to focus mostly on male action stars uneasily edited in with the usual clips from “Casablanca” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Maybe they’re doing “movie heroines” next year, ladies?
All week
“The Wind Rises” (Point) — Don’t miss legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki’s supposedly final film, the true-life story of a nearsighted man who becomes an influential plane designer.
“Non-Stop” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate, and Star Cinema. PG-13, 1:50, two and a half stars out of four.
Give Liam Neeson credit — he’s an action star who acts. In the “Taken” movies, “Unknown” and now “Non-Stop” (reteaming him with “Unknown” director Jaume Collet-Serra), Neeson manages to sell increasingly unbelievable premises with a world-weary gravitas and an edge of menace. In “Non-Stop,” he’s the captain, and even if we don’t know where we’re going and suspect the movie doesn’t either, we trust him to get us there.
“Wadjda” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. PG, 1:40, three stars out of four.
Wadjda wants a bike. She sees a beautiful bike strapped to the roof of a car, and it seems to be gliding in the air by her, just begging her to hop on board and ride. But bikes cost money. That is a problem for Wadjda, but not the biggest one.
The biggest one is that Wadjda is a 10-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive cars or vote.
“At Berkeley” screens at 1 p.m. Saturday at the UW-Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave. Not rated, 4:04, three and a half stars out of four. FREE!
That running time in the above description is not a misprint. Legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman’s “At Berkeley” clocks in at over four hours, which you’d think would make viewers eligible for some kind of college credit.
When film lovers made lists of the movies that they wanted to see on DVD but were been released, Steven Soderbergh’s “King of the Hill” was often near the top of the list. Only available on VHS since its release in 1993, Soderbergh’s affecting and lovely third film is finally out this week, and worth the wait, on an extras-packed DVD/Blu-ray combo package from the Criterion Collection.
Madison Movie 