Tom Cruise is back. In this big budget flick directed by Pixar favorite Brad Bird (Ratatouille and The Incredibles), Cruise sets out to restore his place in the pantheon of larger-than-life action heroes. Of course he does it with the help of a few costars because the team is the best part of a Mission: Impossible movie. The worst part about reviewing them is the colon any time you type the name.

                MI:4 (Hereafter referred to as Ghost Protocol), is just as globe-trotting as its predecessors and moves at a frenetic pace that doesn’t make one feel the over 2-hour length of the film. In the standard action flick where the hero ends up in random locations so often that you can’t be sure exactly where he or she is at that exact moment. Not so with Ghost Protocol. Michael Giacchino makes sure to announce the team’s arrival in each country with a score that emphasizes that country’s most stereotypical contributions to music. I’m glad they weren’t in China this time around or we may have heard Carl Douglas’ Kung Fu Fighting in the background.

                The movie begins with a mission to break Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) out of a Serbian prison. Quite quickly, Hunt and his team are set up for bombing the Kremlin and are on the run as they try to foil a criminal mastermind with a plan to nuke the world. It’s all great fun and the action set pieces are enough to warrant the price of admission. Whether in Russia, Dubai or India, Brad Bird makes sure his cast looks good, operates well and moves at such a fast pace that the audience can’t pick out the gaping plot holes. I certainly didn’t while I watched Cruise scale the Burj Khalifa like he was on a playground jungle gym or hit his head just a couple too many times to still get up and keep running after his target.

                One of the many inside jokes of the movie is that the fancy gadgets supplied to the team tend to malfunction, starting with the famous 5-second self-destruct sequence. I’d always wondered how James Bond and Ethan Hunt used their devices with effortless ease when my TV refuses to cooperate on such a regular basis. Probably because their malfunctions leave them hanging by one hand a mile above the Earth.

                The rest of the cast is superb with Jeremy Renner showing potential to take over the franchise as an “analyst” with a set of field skills to boot, Simon Pegg doing what he does best and Paula Patton entering the big leagues confidently. The one actor I would have demanded more from is Michael Nyqvist. His character’s motivations are a bit shaky to begin with and perhaps some of his scenes were cut but I didn’t feel the intensity I would have liked. Granted, I was comparing him to Philip Seymour Hoffman who was magnificently villainous in the previous Mission: Impossible outing.

                As fun as the ride was, I felt like it was exactly that – a careening roller coaster that was superbly fun but didn’t let me catch my breath as I hurtled along towards the ending. Entertaining as Ghost Protocol was, I prefer MI: III which combined the same kind of fun and danger with a smarter plot.

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Real Steel is about robot boxing. It’s not a premise that gets me extremely excited but I decided to watch anyway to pass the time. Perhaps because of my low expectations, I ended up being pleasantly surprised. The director has added a flavor to this seemingly cookie-cutter movie that increases its enjoyability. To begin with, this sci-fi romp spends most of its time following around its protagonist, Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman), in a battered up truck through cornfields and other rural areas. Not a sci-fi cityscape created on an animator’s desktop. In fact, besides these highly advanced robots and a couple of fancier touchscreens, people seem to be living in a world less advanced than ours today. Perhaps this is supposed to be more of an alternate reality than the future itself.

                Jackman’s Kenton is a mean and gruff alcoholic who was once a boxer but now acts as a manager for the robots who box in his place. In fact, human boxing has been outlawed. Right when he loses his last robot and everything looks lost, Kenton’s eleven year old son, Max, returns into his life picture. The story arc is quite obvious from here but its fun getting to where it will all inevitably lead. Jackman chooses to portray Kenton as a truly abrasive man. He is visibly mean to Max and very clearly only cares about his robots and how much money they can make him. His heart is clearly still in boxing so he does whatever he can to stay close to the game.

                During a junkyard run for abandoned robot parts, the pair stumble upon “Atom”, an older model robot who has the apparently rare ability to “mimic” his trainer’s movements. On a side note, the CGI behind these robots is well implemented. They look real enough to be giant metal monsters but their fast movements and punches have real weight behind them. Kudos to the animators. Along with “Atom” Kenton Sr. and Kenton Jr. start winning small matches and finally get a shot at the big league. Along the way, Max outfits the robot with more and more advanced features since every pre-teen kid in a movie is an expert electrical and mechanical engineer. Atom himself is designed well to  look appealing. Although he towers over both Jackman and the kid, he is almost cute compared to the monstrosities he fights in the ring.

                Evangeline Lilly is present as Charlie’s girlfriend Bailey. Her talents as demonstrated on Lost are wasted here. She is Charlie’s squeeze for the duration of the movie but we don’t get to see any of it develop – just told multiple times that they grew up together.

                By the end of the movie everyone will be cheering for Max and his dad to beat the big bad robot, Zeus, designed by a Japanese guy and run by a techy-looking Indian. There’s even a Russian lady spending her money on Zeus so that we have every ethnic baddy covered. Despite some of the more amateurish and cliche aspects of this movie, it develops well and delivers a knockout punch of mindless entertainment.

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Mel Gibson is something of a pariah in the film world these days. His antics off-screen have ostracized him in much the same way Tom Cruise was shunned until he arrived on the scene again by jumping out the window of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Gibson has tried to overcome his struggles through film as well as evidenced by The Beaver which I have yet to see – although I do plan to check out this strange film about a divorcee who becomes attached to a hand puppet of a beaver.  

                On to the movie at hand. Braveheart is an epic. Its posters tell you so, the name itself is awe-inspiring and the image of Gibson’s face swathed in blue warpaint is nothing short of heroic. This 1995 Gibson is the one I watched today (for the first time) and he carries this lengthy and impressive film on his capable shoulders. It was only when the credits rolled that I discovered he was also the director. Although three hours long, the movie never made me feel the time ticking by. I was not exhausted at the end of this movie but exhilarated.

                Gibson plays William Wallace – an actual historical figure with a legacy steeped in lore. He is said to have led the first Scottish War of Independence against Britain and this movie aims to show how he came to be on this path as well as where he stepped off. Braveheart doesn’t pretend to be historically accurate – it takes its main character and weaves a thrilling and grand story. For this reviewer, that was enough because the story on screen kept me spellbound. Wallace is a Scottish commoner whose father and brother are killed by the English when he is very young. He is taken in by his uncle (Brian Cox in a very small role). When he comes back all grown-up and Mel Gibson-like, Wallace is a warrior and a scholar – a master of many languages, one of them being that of the sword. He marries his childhood sweetheart in secret so as to avoid “prima nocte”, the practice of the resident noble sleeping with the new bride on her wedding night. When circumstances force him to attack an English soldier, Wallace becomes an outlaw and his wife is killed to lure him out.

                From this point, the movie becomes a military exercise with Wallace strategizing and using his much smaller forces to repel the English invaders. King Edward Longshanks (Patrick McGoohan) is out for Wallace’s blood and he uses his considerable cunning and ruthlessness to achieve this. He is most successful at this when he is playing to the greed of Scottish nobles, buying their allegiance with gold and land. McGoohan embodies a sinister villain, one that is cruel and easy to hate, yet intelligent enough not to be cartoonish.

The battle scenes are massive and bloody but the violence serves to demonstrate the barbaric nature of war (then and now) rather than to serve up a heaping of gore for its own sake. In fact, the clashing of armies depicted here were far more realistic and engaging than those in Troy, a film made many years later with similar shots of gigantic armies rushing headlong into battle. Braveheart is technically brilliant in its camerawork and scene composition but the locations lend themselves to this treatment. The sprawling lakes and craggy mountains of Scotland are lovingly photographed and adds an air of authenticity to the proceedings. Beyond being a pretty picture, Gibson populates his world with meaningful characters. Although initially caricatures (the not-so-bright strongman; the fiercely loyal right-hand man), they are given the time to become people you care for. Of course having one of my favorites, Brendan Gleeson, in the mix doesn’t hurt. Gleeson’s father in the movie, Campbell (James Cosmo), has the almost humorous role of being an old man who doesn’t die no matter how he is shot, maimed or otherwise attacked.

                The score of this movie is beautiful as composed by James Horner although you can hear strains of his previous (and future) work as is always the case with Horner. The haunting bagpipe theme played throughout is inspired though. Braveheart is a well-directed and well-acted movie with gorgeous set pieces and scenery. It is more than that however in that it tells a compelling story which can still resonate when watched seventeen years after its release. 

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     I've never been a baseball fan. When my Yankee or Red Sox fan friends go insane during the season, I usually roll my eyes and see if there's something else on to keep me occupied for the next three hours. Moneyball didn't make me love the game. It did however make me appreciate the people who work to bring their team to victory. Based on a book of the same name, this game is not really about the athletes (although in some ways it is). The movie focuses on the General Manager of the Oakland A's, Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and I wanted his team to win. Not because they played with a lot of heart but because they were assembled by Billy with the type of heart seen more often in the coach of a sports movie.

     The movie starts with a disheartening elimination round loss in the series. Beane is determined to do better the next year because as he says, "I hate losing even more than I want to win." As he sits in the room with the team scouts, he realizes that the traditional method of analyzing players' personal lives, facial features and the beauty of their swing just isn't going to work - especially with his meager budget. By chance, Beane meets up with Peter Brandt (Jonah Hill) who has some theories about using statistics to win games that everyone has been dismissing. With a lack of any other ideas and experiences in his past that make him distrust the scouting system, Brandt is hired and the Oakland A's start playing Moneyball.

     Jonah Hill's Peter Brandt is not his usual fast talking, profanity-spouting supporting character . Instead he dons a pair of glasses and becomes a Yale-educated numbers man who has genuine chemistry with Pitt. In fact, he plays the straight man to Pitt's Beane who will destroy the nearest piece of furniture if the slightest bit perturbed. An understated and noteworthy performance, Hill is definitely ready for more dramatic roles.

     The movie clearly belongs to Pitt who has at least five scenes driving his truck where the camera is observing him from the passenger seat. He manages to convey a number of things during these scenes where the book was probably more likely to delve into the mathematical details of the game-winning strategy. In fact, the closing shot of the movie is in the same style and finally zooms closer to Pitt's face, which was in shadow during most of the previous scenes. Beane's daughter is another central part of the proceedings. She has a few scenes with her dad but they are powerful. They show Beane's vulnerable side, the one that hides the bluster he puts on when wading through the world he knows - baseball. It shows the side of him that made him stay in Oakland, perhaps against his better instincts. The other supporting characters don't get much screen time. I'm not sure why Philip Seymour Hoffman is in this movie - his role is not a complex one and although he essays it well, there's nothing separating it from how it would have been played by another actor.

     Moneyball is a triumphant movie in that it celebrates the fight of the underdog - a cause we can all get behind. In today's world where NBA players are going on strike for not making more millions and investment bankers are crying outrage at being denied bonuses that can be fun. It's fun to cheer for the scrappy Oakland A's and their unorthodox method of pushing back. But in the end it's the heartfelt portrayal of Billy Beane that scores the game-winning home run for this movie.  

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     Margin Call describes itself as a movie about the 2008 financial meltdown but it is both less and more than that. We follow one day in the lives of employees at the lowest and highest echelons of a company that very obviously stands in for Lehman Brothers. The movie's director, J.C. Chandor, goes so far as to have the CEO of the company be named Tuld (sounds similar to Fuld - Lehman's CEO at the time). The reactions of these people to the events that unfold are a chronicle of what could have been the first lost battle in the war our economy is facing. It is also a look into the motivations and beliefs held by those at the upper end of the payscale.

     The movie begins with a mass firing as Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) tells some of the junior analysts Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) and Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) to look away and stay focused. Included in those being let go is Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) - the senior risk analyst and Peter's boss. Right before he leaves he hands Peter a thumbdrive and tells him to "be careful." As the day goes on, most of the office leaves but Peter stays back and uses the information he received to arrive at the conclusion that the majority of Lehman's MBS (mortgage-backed securities) are worthless.

     This information is passed up from Peter to his immediate superiors Will and Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), to their boss Jared (Simon Baker), to a more senior analyst Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore) and finally ends up in a board meeting with CEO Tuld (Jeremy Irons). He sits at the head of the table like a medieval king, demanding to be told what's going on as he chomps on his fine food. All the way up the chain, the superiors bear their ignorance as a mark of pride, wanting the underlings to explain all the fancy figures to them. Margin Call doesn't judge the actions of its characters. It merely presents them and allows the viewer to decide whether to feel pity or disgust. Admiration surely won't be one of the choices, no matter the fancy cars and suits.

     The movie's cinematography does a good job of capturing the ominous mood of the situation. The unnatural office lighting of the building where most of the movie takes place is perfect for highlighting the harsh decisions being made and the occasional foray into the darkness of the night outside doesn't provide any respite.

     There are a fair number of scenes that are propelled forward with dialogue, whether by Spacey's Sam or Bettany's Will. However, they don't feel talky - just a couple of workers ruminating on what their life has been about. One questioning it and the other pretending not to. Spacey is especially good as a tired man who knows what must be done to "stand with the company" but feels doubt gnaw on his mind as he gives a pep rally speech to his traders to sell the worthless stock.

     Margin Call doesn't require one to be familiar with the terminology and workings of the finance industry. Just the normal human emotions that course through everyone and influence their decisions. It is a morose movie with moments of biting humor that might not leave one entertained but definitely stimulated.

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     The Ides of March is directed by George Clooney. The screenplay, adapted from the play “Farragut North” is also co-written by him. The movie as whole, however, belongs to Ryan Gosling. Perhaps that’s why it begins with him walking onto an empty stage under a spotlight and ends the same way. It’s a testament to his acting that without a single word he shows off his youthful exuberance in the first scene and the weight of his education along the American political campaign trail by the last frame.

     This is not your typical political thriller. Hollywood usually finds it necessary to portray politics on a grand scale – epic, expansive and worthy of a world stage. The Ides of March is set in Ohio; one battle in the war of the Democratic primary elections. A key battle no doubt – the winner will have the momentum to continue on towards clinching the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.  It is in this highly charged landscape that Gosling’s character, Stephen Meyers, makes himself at home. He is highly sought after (“the best media mind in the country”) and is playing for Governor Morris’s (George Clooney) team. Clooney is magnetic when he is in front of a crowd. You will feel like voting for him each time he eloquently spouts an answer to a probing question.  

     Visually, the crisp camerawork portrays the air of perfection put on by political candidates. This movie isn’t about visual flourishes though. It focuses on the characters and their interactions. The characters are etched so well, by the script and by the performances, that even their unexpected actions seem completely natural in hindsight. Philip Seymour Hoffman in particular, does an excellent job as Philip Zara, Governor Morris’ experienced campaign manager. One of the few people in this movie who isn’t ridiculously attractive, he brings a powerful presence with him that sometimes outshines both Clooney and Gosling when they are in a scene together. He switches effortlessly between an eloquent and calculated response to a reporter’s question and his remark afterwards, “I’m gonna go take a shit.”

     The message delivered by Clooney is that the political process is ugly. By the end, you’re not sure who you’re rooting for or even if there is a protagonist left to cheer for. Everyone shows their ugly side – even the supposed “good guys.” Stephen Meyers has a nasty streak which will let him “do anything to win if he believes in the cause” and it manifests itself when he’s dealing with an intern’s mistake. The Ides of March doesn’t believe there’s a politician out there with a clean past. Everyone has some indiscretion in their past which can and usually will be used– as leverage against them or as a means to destroy them.  The movie takes a depressing view of the political process that doesn’t necessarily think it’s broken but definitely corrupt.

    The opposing candidate’s campaign manager, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), is even more world weary than Paul Zara. There is even a scene where he tells Meyers to leave the business of politics “while he still can.” It sounds like a cliché line about not being able to leave once you’re “in the club.” But delivered by Giamatti, every one of his words makes you feel years of disappointment and moral hazard behind it.  

     Clooney is always in best form when he’s at the helm of a serious movie. It seems like his absolute belief in the message he’s sending helps bring a wonderful product to the screen. Recently he made comments disparaging Democrats who criticize President Obama which establish his already well-known Democratic orientation. His thoughts on loyalty and Machiavellian tendencies show up more than once over the course of The Ides of March. Here’s a movie that presents a narrative with a resolution but leaves plenty of room to wrestle with the issues it raises. An intelligent and engaging movie, The Ides of March is sure to be a frontrunner candidate during the Oscar primaries. 

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