Girlhood

An experiment this year: because I'm hoping to be able to work out and get to an 11:20 screening of The Danish Girl, and because I can't pop the Veuve Clicquot until midnight, I'm doing my best-of sober. I know it sounds crazy, but let's reserve judgment. Oh, and this year the 2014 pictures that didn't get to town until 2015 aren't eligible for my top 10.

And before we get down to that order of business, let me share with you my new year's resolution, which is cinematically based. Some films I'm going to see more or less regardless of reviews, and some I'm going to skip barring universal critical enthusiasm. But inevitably, a lot of films end up on the fence over the course of the year--and precisely because I see so many films, most of those films fall on the "no" side. So my resolution is simply this: if a film is iffy, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt if it has a female writer and/or director, or if it has a female protagonist who doesn't wear spandex and fight supervillains. Because my daughter is a filmmaker, and women are still getting short shrift in Hollywood.
OK, remind me: what happened on the screen way back in . . .

• January? Well, nothing, according to my new rules, though this is when I got to see the squirmily excellent American Sniper and the sorta kinda disappointing Inherent Vice.
• As always, February is the cinematic dead of winter, though another excellent 2014 film came to town, Timbuktu.
• A March sing-out to The Last Five Years, a brave operatic experiment in depicting the life and death of love. Following late in the month was It Follows, the latest document in support of my contention that we are living in a golden age of horror films.
• The first 2015 film that absolutely blew my mind was White God, a sort of canine Spartacus. A very good film however it was made, and a stunning accomplishment when the logistical challenges are factored in. Special mention in April to Ex Machina, a good film but a film much more interesting than good. Huh! I'd forgotten how much I liked Clouds of Sils Maria; does that mean that it didn't grab me as tightly as I thought or simply that I'm in my 60s? Maybe it just means that baseball had started by this time.
• Haven't mentioned a documentary yet, have I? In May, Iris, about the stylish nonagenarian Iris Apfel. And then it was early summer so we got an adrenaline movie, but an excellent one, with a thrilling testosterone-estrogen cocktail, Mad Max: Fury Road.
• In June I was stunned by how much I loved two pictures I expected to like, both of which work largely via looking under the hood: Love & Mercy (the hood of Pet Sounds) and Inside Out (the hood of an adolescent). In between I saw the bizarre and affecting documentary The Wolfpack, about brothers sheltered by their immigrant father from the Lower East Side into adulthood. Dope was no Dear White People, but it worked a similar neighborhood well.
• Two in one day in July, very different and yet oddly related: the excruciating vampire documentary Amy, about the people who sucked Amy Winehouse dry, and the incontinently hilarious Trainwreck.
• In August the creepy Vertigo-esque Phoenix. And then, squirmy and wonderful, The Diary of a Teenage Girl.
• A thin September, the most notable film of which was the German (Austrian?) creeper Goodnight Mommy. By this time I was shifting into Mets postseason mode.
• And in October, I was pretty much all Mets all the time. Bridge of Spies drew my attention away the most effectively.
• The star of post-World Series November was the heroic journalism film Spotlight, though I still wish the Boston Globe had given its investigative team a more lively name so that this film could have had ditto.
• And finally, the month of Oscar (oh, dammit, I'm not gonna insert the little trademark bug--let the Academy come after me if they think they're bad enough!) hunger, except that I didn't really see much Oscar bait. The mostly unloved Chi-Raq is a mess, but a thrilling one. The Big Short is a cousin of Spotlight, and while it's not as excellent, it does have Margot Robbie in a bubble bath. And finally, a mystery about marriage, 45 Years.

So . . . ? Purely subjective, not necessarily the best, but my favorites:

10. Trainwreck
9. It Follows
8. Love & Mercy
7. The Diary of a Teenage Girl
6. Amy
5. Clouds of Sils Maria
4. Spotlight
3. White God
2. 45 Years
1. Inside Out

Happy new year!

Follow your arrow

Joy

Crit

A very strange, almost impressionistic, telegraphic narrative, complemented by the American-dream voiceover by Diane Ladd as the title character's endlessly optimistic grandmother. Somehow it works, even as it seems ever on the verge of falling apart. Credit to writer-director David O. Russell for that, if only in having the sense to bring back Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper again to play the two least-likely characters in a sort-of-true story of (spoiler alert) grueling trial capped by fabulous success.

Trailers

• Eddie the Eagle--Didn't care about this story when it was happening, don't care about it now.
• Whiskey Tango Foxtrot--If Tina Fey as a reporter in Afghanistan hadn't been enough to grab me, the prominence of one of my favorite songs of the year would have sealed the deal.

Let the . . . oh, you know

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Imax 3D

Post

Omigod! Darth Vader is . . . Luke's father! And . . . Leia's as well! And yes, that means . . .

Oh, wait, we already knew all that, didn't we? But I think I can be forgiven my confusion, given that episode VII is largely pieces cobbled together from episodes IV, V, and VI: you got a death star, you got a life-or-death-of-galaxies mission to destroy the death star, you got an intrepid young woman who needs rescuing less than her would-be rescuers do, you got a wisecracking pilot, you got a hero who needs to be convinced that he's a hero, you got a squeaky little droid that you want to punt into an asteroid belt (seriously, if you thought R2-D2 was the acme of artificial intelligence annoyance, you gotta meet this little soccer ball BB-8), you got a masked mouth-breathing villain, you got his creepy old even more villainous boss, you got familial complications Forcewise (one given away quickly, one reserved for VIII or IX), you got a quest for a retired Jedi (was I the only one praying that when that robed figure turned around, he'd be wearing Groucho glasses?). Oh, and right: you got three old geezers who eerily resemble swashbucklers from the first (aka "real") trilogy.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed the pic, and seeing and hearing it in huge 3D was a sensory delight, and I plan to follow Rey (Daisy Ridley, in a kickass chick performance that warms the heart of the father and grandfather of kickass chicks) and Finn (John Boyega, who, if you haven't seen him in Attack the Block, do) and Poe (Oscar Isaacs, or, as I thought of him throughout the film, that younger actor who looks a lot like Oscar Isaacs) in episodes VIII and IX as they battle Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, prettied up so much that I also didn't believe it was he; oh, but wait, he must have been killed when the death star exploded, right? Yeah, right; you haven't seen any of these films before, have you? Unless you actually see a light saber go through someone's heart and then see that victim fall a million miles into nothingness, that person has a contract to be in the next pic). I'm just hoping for some surprises.

Speaking of which, here's what I foresee: Rey spends a big chunk of VIII as Luke spent a big chunk of V, being tutored in the Force by the retired Jedi. Who, in this case, she finds out either at the end of VIII or in IX, is her father. I mean, come on, there aren't a lot of candidates for Force carriers, right? And she has already shown her untutored Force to be stronger than that of one she encounters who has only one Forceparent, so I'm thinking Luke and some Forceful woman merged somehow (not sex; please, don't make me think about Luke having sex), Rey and Mom were left in "safety" (don't these people ever go to the movies?), yadda yadda yadda.

Sisters

Post

Holy shit, I think I laughed my clit off. Is this just another dumbedy, but with women rather than the usual sexpects? Yeah, I suppose so; what's your point?

Trailers

• Star Trek Beyond--Best not to ask "beyond what," I suspect.
• Warcraft--Peaceloving orcs!
• Independence Day: Resurgence--Admit it: you think I'm making this up.
• Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice--What a clever idea! Superheroes squaring off against each other!
• Captain America: Civil War--What a clever idea! Superheroes squaring off against each other!
• The Jungle Book--Bigger jungle, bigger book.
• Dirty Grandpa--OK, this looks like another page in the dossier for De Niro career intervention, but it's the ONLY film of the nine I saw first-time trailers for that's not a sequel or a spinoff.
• Alice through the Looking Glass--Refused to see the first.
• 50 Shades of Black--Got more enjoyment (and hope for civilization) from the recognition of what this must be than from all the other trailers combined.

Smoke gets in your eyes

It's great to be old M4

Guess what?! Senior discount kicks in at 62 at IFC: 10 bucks instead of 14! And at Cinema Village I discovered that I've apparently been wasting money for two years: 8 bucks instead of 11 at 60! God, I love slouching toward senescence!

Hitchcock/Truffaut

VE

Wonderful nerdfest of a documentary about a book about two people talking. I need that book.

45 Years

IFC

An unconventional mystery/ghost story about unconventional infidelity, and I really don't want to say much more than that, except that it's a contender for my favorite film of the year. OK, I'll say one more thing: did it never occur to them when they chose the song for the first dance at their wedding reception that it's less a love song than it is a love-gone-all-to-hell song?

The Hateful Eight 70mm

VE

Worth twenty bucks? Absolutely: gorgeous Morricone score behind a gorgeous panoramic Colorado (standing in for Wyoming) screened in my favorite Manhattan theater, the palace in thirteenth-century Córdoba Moorish and Jewish décor that somehow survived the multiplexization of the rest of the building. Smart, funny Tarantino script, treated skillfully by members of his repertory company.

Great filmmaking, but I think maybe I'm getting too old for repetition of the n-word and physical abuse of a prisoner (never mind a woman) to work for me as running jokes. Now the running joke that did work for me--and, as it turned out, the one integral to the plot--was the need to kick in the front door and nail it shut again whenever anyone needs to enter Minnie's Haberdashery.

By the way, I expect intermission comes only in the 70mm Roadshow screenings, but if there's a break at about 1:50 (the fastest almost 2 hours imaginable, by the way) and you think, "There's hasn't been much violence yet," trust me: you won't feel cheated in the next hour.

TransFatty Lives

CV

Patrick O'Brien was just another maker of goofy trash films until he was diagnosed with ALS, whereupon he became a documentor of disease, determination, love, fatherhood, lost love, death, and life. An astonishing, queasymaking film that will never come to your town unless your town is Manhattan or Los Angeles, and judging from attendance at my screening and the one before it (total: 2), it's not going to be in either of those towns come Friday. Eminently worth renting.

Trailers

• Moonwalkers--Yeah, maybe: based on the myth that the moonlanding was a myth and that NASA tried to hire Kubrick to fake it. Do I need to say "a comedy"?
• Rolling Papers--Another story of newspaper intrepidity, this one a documentary about the Denver Post's symbiotic relationship with legalized recreational pot.
• The Boy--No, come on: no one is stupid enough to agree to be nanny for a ceramic doll modeled on an elderly couple's dead son.
• Anesthesia--Danger! Looks like another of those many-stories-connected-by-auteristic-pretense. Oh, but that's interesting: just noticed that the auteur in question is Tim Blake Nelson, in whom pretense would be a disappointing surprise for me.
• The Treasure--Yes, please: post-Ceaușescu comedy by Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective).
• Omhide poro poro (Only yesterday)--Part of IFC's Ghiblifest, wonderful, I'm sure, but I've gotten kinda Ghiblijaded.
• Yosemite--Even the trailer admits what's you'd been thinking: this is Stand by Me.

Darkroom

Carol

Crit

OK, confession: I'm not a consistently worshipful Todd Haynes fan. And I could toss out a few quibbles, but mostly I just loved the matter-of-factness of a 1952-53 lesbian love affair in the U.S. of A. Yes, of course, there are crappy repercussions--Cate Blanchett's title character is in critical danger of losing the daughter whom she cares about more than the film does--but mostly it's just a love story like any love story, except with much better-looking people (and if you can imagine such a thing, I mostly found Rooney Mara's face more riveting than Blanchett's).

OK, one quibble: for the most part the men in the film reminded me of when the Cro-Magnon sportswriter asked Martina Navratilova, "Are you still a lesbian" and she parried, "Are you still the alternative."

OK, one other quibble: I was thrilled to see the name of my second-favorite lesbian rocker in the opening credits, but most of what she did must have ended up on the cutting-room floor, because she shows up almost at the end for what must be < 2 minutes and for 3 lines. But having brought her up, let me take this opportunity to say that Sleater-Kinney's No Cities to Love is, by a wide margin, my favorite album of 2015. Click that link and download it, and thank me later.

But back to the film: good film. Good Christmas film.

Trailers

• Jane Got a Gun--Looks like it wants to estrogenize Tarantino.
• Miracles from Heaven--From the producer of Heaven Is for Real; people in the theater laughed.
• The Lady in the Van--Dame Maggie--this looks very much like one I'll see because of my New Year's resolution (stay tuned).
• Eye in the Sky--Does the presence of Helen Mirren satisfy the parameters of the NYR?

The truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry

The Big Short

Crit

I took copious notes during the film, and I'm prepared to explain in full detail precisely what a collateralized debt obligation and all its various permutations are.

No, come back! I'm just kidding! Even with explanations by Margot Robbie in a bubble bath and Selena Gómez in a sexy dress at a blackjack table alongside my very own Yale University Press author Richard Thaler, it's still a little unclear. Maybe if Robbie explained it again . . .

That's two terrific films now based on books by Michael Lewis; maybe I should read him sometime. I wonder whether he found the black humor in the meltdown that killed people and fortunes, or whether that's all down to screenwriter Charles Randolph and cowriter and director Adam McKay?

Trailers

• 2oolander--Looks excruciatingly unfunny.
• Everybody Wants Some--Linklater remakes Dazed but in the '80s? Does this seem like a good idea?
• The Nice Guys--It's Inherent Vice down to the color palette.
• The Boss--Looks unsalvageably bad, even by Melissa McCarthy.

Not war

Chi-Raq

Crit

A messy masterpiece from Spike Lee, with support from Aristophanes, as ambitious a joint as anything since Malcolm X and as powerful as any since 4 Little Girls. Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) persuades women of the South Side to unite against (sexual) union until the Spartan and Trojan [sic] gangs put away their guns. Sometimes too preachy, sometimes sidetracked in subplot, but at its best--the opening song, "Pray 4 My City" by Nick Cannon, who plays one of two title characters (the one not on the Illinois map); the long, impassioned sermon by Father Mike (John Cusack); every moment Dolmedes (Samuel L. Jackson) is on the screen--stunning, inspiring, thrilling.

Blue door

Brooklyn

Crit

So Saoirse Ronan is like the anti-Wood Harris (see my Creed blurb): I feel as if I've seen every film she's made. That not even remotely true, this being only the fourth. Maybe it's that she left such an indelible mark on Atonement, Hanna, and The Grand Budapest Hotel (a doubly indelible mark!) that she's more present in memory than on the screen.

With a lesser 21-year-old actor in damn near every scene, this might still be a charming slice of transatlantic Eisenhower era life; Ronan makes it more compelling than it has any right to be. Unfortunately, she can't do anything to keep it from being irksomely rushed at the end. I was reminded in the end credits that the screenplay is by Nick Hornby, who writes 80% excellent novels but can't seal the deal.

Trailers

• Demolition--This may be Jake Gyllenhaal's bid for the Damaged Guy Oscar®.
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2--I'll admit it: I enjoyed the first one. But was this necessary?
• Carol--Oh, yes.
• Anomalisa--Charlie Kaufman, stop action, I'm in.

Event horizon

Room

Crit

I'll cut right to the chase: if you were considering giving this a miss because although you were blown away by Emma Donoghue's novel, you don't think you can put yourself through that again, I advise you to see it: I don't think you can have as intense an experience the second time around in any medium, but the second encounter with the material remains powerful.

If you've not read the novel and are avoiding the film because you fear the intensity of the experience, then your life is so hermetically sealed that you in particular might profit from the experience of one or the other. In which case, I recommend the book: the film is very good, and the screenwriter kept faith completely with the source, perhaps in part because the screenwriter was Emma Donoghue, but having the story come from the perspective of five-year-old Jack is vital, and the printed page allows that perspective to be maintained more cleanly and consistently.

Tell mama

Home-in-time-for-the-Illini-game (well, on DVR) M3

Janis: Little Girl Blue

IFC

Little here that I needed to know that I didn't already know about Joplin, a decade my senior but forever 27. But I didn't come for the knowing, I came for the seeing and the hearing. I have only three regrets in life, and one is never having heard (and seen) her perform live.

Mustang

IFC

Five Turkish sisters shame their family by . . . swimming, fully clothed, with boys? Yep, that's right. Lockup and forced marriages ensue, and only the youngest is emotionally equipped to fight back actively. A depressing, invigorating slice of a life we're fortunate to have avoided.

In Jackson Heights

FF

This was briefly my (Airbnb) neighborhood a couple of times this year, but I had no idea that it's home to what is apparently the oldest NYC gay pride parade, started 20-odd years ago by a guy who's now a councilman. Or how vigorous the organized support for immigrants is. Or how steadfastly the small-business owners oppose the so-called business initiative organization whose primary initiative seems to be to make it easier for Gaps and Walmarts to find homes.

You can observe a lot just by watching, Yogi Berra probably didn't say, but that could be Frederick Wiseman's mantra: point the camera, edit wisely, and respect the audience.

Trailers

• 45 Years--Rampling, Courtenay, and Something Never Spoken Of.
• Every Thing Will Be Fine--I doubt that.
• River of Fundament--5½ Matthew Barney film that is doubtless genius, but I'll take it on faith.
• Son of Saul--Not saying I'll never see another Holocaust film, but the bar is high.

Standing eight count

Creed

Crit

So, I'm looking at Michael B. Jordan in a scene with Wood Harris, and I'm thinking, yeah, if you were going to tab one of these veterans of The Wire to have a huge career, it would have been Jordan, but still: Avon's not exactly chopped pit beef. Well, turns out Harris has been working pretty regularly, just in stuff I haven't seen. Literally: nothing until this. Would've seen him in Ant-Man had the reviews not convinced me I'd hate it; would have seen him in House or Justified had either series drawn me in enough to stay with it. But no. Good to see him here, if only briefly.

And the film? Do you have to ask? Cliché-drenched, surprise-free, and as satisfying (and nourishing) as a plate of mac & cheese. I hated loving it.

Trailers

• The Hateful Eight--Had Christmas w/ Q in 2012, and he's a leading contender this year.
• Central Intelligence--Looks pretty dumb, but damn, The Artist Formerly Known as The Rock is charming.
• Barbershop: The Next Cut--I'll probably just let it grow.

Ploughshares

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, part 2

Crit

Yes, I remember the final book of the trilogy resisting any but the most basic uplift at the end, and being pretty damned depressing as a result. The fourth film of the trilogy (filmmakers don't do math) is true to that spirit. War is hell, and guess what: postwar isn't necessarily peaches and cream.

Two takeaways: the mutts in the tunnels, the f/x stars of the film, which look like love children of orcs and aliens (you know the ones I mean); and a scene between MFW Julianne Moore and the late lamented Philip Seymour Hoffman that distracted me with a recollection of Magnolia.

Trailers

• Gods of Egypt--Wow, what a train wreck this looks like.
• Allegiant--Sequel to Divergent.
• How to Be Single--Seriously, Rebel Wilson is fourth billed? If this is any good, she'll be the reason.
• The 5th Wave--Hmm, trailers for two kickass girls in dystopic futures.

It takes a village

Spotlight

Crit

Damn, I love newspapers, admire then, need them, premourn their inevitable demise. I'm even proud to have spent a third of my working life in newspapers, even though I was always in sports and never did anything braver than deleting a coach's homophobic locker room joke from the executive sports editor's column. But I rubbed shoulders and, after hours, bent elbows with reporters who did more important stuff. (What, you didn't think I was going to write about newspapers without mentioning alcohol, did you?)

Mainly I love it when big (almost always American) newspapers expose the shit that sanctimony and hypocrisy and corruption sink their roots into. And I love movies about those investigations, especially ones that find romance in the drudgery that constitutes 99.9% of good investigative newspaper work.

I don't even need to name the picture that does this best, having reviewed it here with some regularity over the years, but this new one, notwithstanding its bleh title (seriously, in the '70s, when the Globe was putting together a team for special investigative projects, Spotlight was the most appealing name they could come up with?), is a worthy entry in the field.

Never mind the angrymaking reprise of the Boston Globe's investigation into systemic protection and recycling of predatory priests by the Archdiocese of Boston and the Catholic Church more broadly; maybe the most remarkable accomplishment here is conjuring a world where the church still had enough clout--with police, with judges, with politicians, with plutocrats--to stonewall its sins for so long. A church with that kind of power seems a joke now, and it's worth remembering that this story was breaking--against that still powerful resistance--less than 15 years ago.

But ask yourself this question, which writer-director Tom McCarthy, to his credit, does not press: had the Globe not pursued the story, would the church have made an effort to clean its house, or would it have continued reshuffling its pedophiles, monkey business as usual? And if the shit had not hit the fan so messily, would people be talking today about recent and ongoing changes in the character of the papacy, and of the church itself?

The story was pursued as newspapers used to pursue stories, and as all media outlets find it increasingly impossible to do in the era of the 24-hour news cycle: carefully, in depth, without haste, leaving no loose thread that the subjects might use to unravel the whole thing. And damned if it didn't make the world a better place.

Trailers

• Triple 9--Cops, robbers, and cops who are robbers.
• Snowden--The Oliver Stone treatment.

Fair game

Nie yin niang (The assassin)

Crit

Beautiful young woman learns to kick seriously lethal ass but struggles with the ethical implications therein and with the recognition that she has become a pawn in a larger game. But the movie makes only  half-million bucks in a month because it's in Mandarin and lacks exotic special effects.

To be fair, it's also narratively confusing, leaving much not only unsaid but even unhinted at, though to continue to be fair, the shifts in political loyalties, and the reasons for them, are clear enough, and are the nub. And it's gorgeous. Just don't go in expecting Katniss Everdeen.

Slave to the slaves

Suffragette

Crit

There is such a thing as having too much incontrovertible right on your side to make good art. This is an earnest film in favor of giving women the vote a century ago, and it's probably no coincidence that it comes along when one of the last former British colonies to elect a women to its highest office is finally giving consideration to doing so. So why did it feel so much like school?

Trailers

• Secret in Their Eyes--Oh, right: remake of an excellent Argentinean film, this time with a heavyweight who-needs-surnames cast, Julia, Nicole, and Chiwetel.
• Race--Stephan James is Jesse Owens bound for Berlin.
• Hello, My Name Is Doris--Sally Field trying desperately to be liked.

The heptapus

Spectre

Crit

Oh my god! They killed Bond! You bastards!

I may have used that joke for the previous movie, but hey, the classics never age. And equally surprising, and true, is that the femme du film (Léa Seydoux) gives Bond the brush--regretfully, but definitively . . . well, as definitive as such a thing can be in Bond's world.

A new Bond film is cinematic comfort food, and since I am currently being held hostage by the evil cartel Phlegmtre, I'm in the market for all the comfort I can get.

Elephants on tiptoe

Meadowland

Crit

Golly, that was a cheery post-Mets World Series loss pick-me-up.

Parents' worst nightmare, as elementary schoolteacher Sarah (Olivia Wilde) and NYC beat cop Phil (Luke Wilson)'s little boy goes missing from a gas station bathroom in a safe-as-houses-looking leafy New Jersey suburb. The rest of the excruciating, compelling film follows each in a separate, manifestly unshared, unsharable hell. Brutally magnificent, largely down to the leads, especially Wilde, and a wonderful secondary cast including Elisabeth Moss, Giovanni Ribisi, Juno Temple, and John Leguizamo. You'll want a drink after; it's High West Double Rye for me.

The banality of conformity

Good deeds punished double feature

Experimenter: The Stanley Milgrim Story

Crit

Peter Sarsgaard at his usual low-key best plays the title character, who, working at a New Haven university in the early '60s, made a surprising and self-evidently important discovery about people's tendency to bow to the instructions of perceived authority figures, only to be attacked for the alleged ethical violations of the experiment's (vital) deception and encouragement of subjects to inflict (illusory) torture on others.

A fascinating portrait, elevated from standard biopic fare via carefully crafted selective surrealism.

Bridge of Spies

Crit

Tom Hanks as a Cold War Schindler, gliding easily from business to gotta-do-more altruism, an insurance lawyer drafted to defend a Soviet spy who then goes all Mr. Smith Goes to Washington about the sacredness of the Constitution instead of giving the pro forma courtroom performance expected of him.

Cheese of the very finest Spielbergian sapor. Oh, and a wonderful performance by Mark Rylance as the Rooskie (via the north of England).

Trailer

• Victor Frankenstein--Meh.

Brilliant mistake

Steve Jobs

Crit

Golly! What I didn't understand going in was that this is a stunning experiment by director Danny Boyle in pacing, or rather the abandonment of pacing: no action film has ever moved more helter-skelter than this. Miraculously, it works, partly because Boyle is brilliant, partly because he's got the brilliant Aaron Sorkin writing his screenplay, partly because he has the brilliant Michael Fassbender bringing . . . well, not humanity, but something empathy producing, to the brilliant asshole title character, and partly because Fassbender/Jobs has the brilliant Kate Winslet/Joanna Hoffman constantly as his side, desperately trying to school him in how empathetic human beings actually behave.

With this and The Social Network to his credit, Sorkin needs only to write the screenplay for a Bill Gates biopic to be directed by, say, Quentin Tarantino to have nailed the 3 tech genii of our time.

Trailers

• Hail, Caesar--Oh, hell yeah!
• The Big Short--Uh, hell maybe?
• The Danish Girl--Oh, hell yeah!

Building and loan

99 Homes

Crit

Huh! Who could have foreseen that the satanic home-foreclosing Realtor® played by Michael Shannon would be named Chase Utley? Nah, just kidding.

Andrew Garfield plays the innocent in the postlapsarian, postbubble garden, and that he will be seduced by the serpent is a given; the only question is whether he will lose his soul irrevocably. I won't spoil that for you, but it is Andrew Garfield, don't forget.

Surprisingly flat, disappointingly simplistic.