Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

Making 'Magic': Emma Stone and Colin Firth in
Woody Allen's "Magic in the Moonlight."

The magic in Woody Allen’s “Magic in the Moonlight” is meant to be celestial, referring to the seemingly perfect way the stars line up and twinkle in the sky on a clear night. “You think that's menacing?” a character asks while contemplating the vast and mysteriously beautiful cosmos in one such composition. “I think it's pretty romantic.”

Actually, it may have more to do with how the main characters in this slight but charming romantic comedy—in which a famous, insufferably pompous illusionist from upper class Europe falls in love with a naive, dime store clairvoyant from Kalamazoo—manage to be so likable despite being, essentially, a pair of scoundrels.

The movie opens in Berlin in 1929, where Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth) is finishing up another performance as the eminent magician Wei Ling Soo, who stuns audiences with such gimmicks as sawing people in half and vanishing enormous pachyderms. Backstage, in between removing his Chinese regalia and barking criticisms at his subordinates, Stanley greets an old friend and fellow illusionist, the duplicitous Howard Burkin (Simon McBurney), who brings a challenge to debunk a young medium poised to use her mystic powers to swindle a rich widow.

The action shifts to the French Riviera, where a fetching, flamingly red-haired clairvoyant named Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) has set up shop at the posh home of an old matriarch desperate for various assurances about her dearly departed. Stanley arrives, incredulous and curmudgeonly, and immediately begins hurling contemptuous witticisms at Sophie in an effort to discredit her. “My visions are cloudy,” she says at one point. “Are they cumulous clouds or cirrus,” he quips.

But Sophie turns out to be a tough nut to crack, and part of the fun is that the more deep secrets she reveals by gazing into the great unknown with her big eyes, the more the perpetually cynical Stanley—clearly representing the erudite, faithless intellectual that Allen would usually play—begins to believe in all the spiritual hokum he’s been dismissing. Plus, he’s falling in love with her.

One of the pleasures of the film is the way Firth and Stone stir up an unlikely chemistry with a playful mixture of insults, mischief and scandal. It’s an implausible romance that recalls the mismatched leads in some of the venerable screwball comedies of Ernst Lubitsch (“Trouble in Paradise”) and Howard Hawks (“His Girl Friday”). Notable supporting performances include Eileen Atkins as Stanley’s lovable and unapologetically pretentious Aunt Vanessa; and Hamish Linklater as a warbling, ukulele-playing heir hopelessly smitten with Sophie.

Allen’s visuals and signature long takes are radiant. Especially sumptuous are lush scenes of the French countryside near dusk, with the setting sun imbuing everything with a warm, amber glow. Perhaps the best moment, however, takes place when Stanley and Sophie dash into an observatory during a thunderstorm, a scene that echoes Allen and Diane Keaton at the beginning of their romance in “Manhattan.”

And the soundtrack, a proverbial joy in any Allen film, is a gloriously mellifluous valentine to hot jazz greats of the era—the burgeoning Cole Porter and the inimitable Bix Beiderbecke in this case taking center stage. “Magic in the Moonlight” may not be in the upper class of Allen’s oeuvre, but it certainly is fun to watch and a considerable delight to listen to.

Deathgasm (2015)

Milo Cawthorne (left) and James Blake battle demons
in the gleefully gory horror/comedy "Deathgasm."

A group of young, misfit heavy metal enthusiasts form a rock band and after playing some mysterious pages of music passed on by a reclusive former idol with sinister connections to the other side, unwittingly summon evil, soul snatching demons from beyond in “Deathgasm,” a gleefully gory and frequently funny horror comedy out of New Zealand, written and directed by Jason Lei Howden, making his feature debut.

Before venturing out on his own, Howden worked as a visual effects artist on films like “The Hobbit,” directed by fellow New Zealander Peter Jackson. Watching “Deathgasm,” it’s easy to spot Jackson’s influence—the film has notes of the absurd, irreverent style of Jackson’s early, low-budget efforts like the screwball sci-fi cult hit “Bad Taste” (1987), and the zombie gross out fest “Dead Alive” (1992). It’s also a riotous, maniacally entertaining romp.

When his drug-addled mother is sent away to a mental hospital after a meth bender, teenage Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) is forced to live with his undesirable extended family, including a fanatically religious uncle who thinks all rock music is Satanic and a sociopathic cousin who’s a sadistic bully. One day at the local record store, Brodie meets a rebellious fellow metal head named Zakk (James Blake), and along with two more friends, they go from garage grunge band to saving the town from zombies.

Much of the enjoyment involves the inventive ways in which the heroes dispose of their undead adversaries. Some of the most menacing weapons—saw blades, power tools, automobile parts, and a piece of landscaping equipment used against a particular area of the male anatomy—lead to comically exaggerated death scenes and gruesomely disemboweled victims spewing fountains of blood.

Kimberley Crossman

Meanwhile, Howden’s exuberant visual technique—darting camera movements, bizarre camera angles, and delirious point of view shots (like a toothy perspective coming from inside the mouth of a demon as it lunges toward one of the heroes)—suggests Sam Raimi’s seminal horror comedy series, “The Evil Dead,” while generating just enough fun on its own.

It’s almost embarrassing to admit that some real themes emerge from the oozing, blood-soaked tableau, like the way Brodie uses heavy metal to mask deeper feelings of teen angst, such as his inability to communicate with adults and painfully shy way around girls. He’s stunned when Medina (Kimberley Crossman), a popular girl from school, turns out to be sensitive and willing to talk to him long enough that a disarming sweetness develops.

But Medina seems to have her own problems fitting in. Sometimes beauty, popularity and perfection can be just as suffocating as being an outcast music geek; and a girl just needs an outlet to vent her frustrations. That’s when joining a contact sport like rugby or field hockey comes in handy, but if those options aren’t available, wielding an axe blade against charging zombies and slicing them apart like pieces of cheese works too.

Brooklyn (2015)

New York State of Mind: Saoirse Ronan stars in "Brooklyn"

Exquisitely emotional, visually lyrical, and meticulously well-observed, “Brooklyn”—directed by John Crowley, written by Nick Hornby and adapted from the novel of the same name by Colm Toiben—is easily one of the best movies about leaving home to start a new life to come along in a while.

The film, set in 1951, follows the path of a young Irish woman, Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), from her roots in a small town in Southeast Ireland to the densely populated New York borough of the title, where opportunities exist—she has a room at a boarding house and a job waiting, courtesy of the kindly Irish priest, Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), who has sponsored her—that otherwise didn’t back home.

Across the ocean, fresh experiences, tentative friendships and eventually a sweet romance with a short, affable Italian man (Emory Cohen) develop, but not before Eilis, having left her mom and sister behind as well as the comfort of familiarity, deals with crushing spells of isolation in this strange, beautiful, crowded new world.

Intricately and ingeniously multilayered, “Brooklyn” is part love story, part coming of age chronicle and in many ways a subtle, stunningly well-realized essay about the sting of homesickness, a malaise the affects of which aren’t limited to the main character.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the best scene takes place when Eilis, helping to serve food to a group of elderly Irish immigrants during Christmas, stands by when one of them sings Casadh an Tsúgáin (The Twisting of the Rope), a traditional Irish lament that brings the old men to tears with sad reminders of being young, falling in love, and dreaming of home.

“These are the men who built the bridges, the tunnels, the highways,” Father Flood says. Although it focuses on one Irish girl moving to New York, since many others were doing the same thing in the 1950s, “Brooklyn” is also a remarkable cinematic document, a nostalgic glimpse of how America began.

Material this compelling is capable of overwhelming an indiscriminate director. But Crowley, who is also Irish, brings a firm grasp and personal vision to the proceedings with a style—long takes, loose framing, luminous lighting, stirring establishing shots—that gives the actors room to breathe while lending the film a distinctive sense of immediacy, honesty and warmth.

Saoirse Ronan and Emory Cohen in "Brooklyn"

When Crowley does use a close-up, “Brooklyn” soars because it’s usually the highly expressive Ronan—brilliantly conveying Eilis' combination of vulnerability and strength with her thoughtful eyes and soft smile—dominating both the lens and our emotions.

“Brooklyn” is another triumph for Hornby, who also adapted the screenplay for the masterful “Wild” with Reese Witherspoon. Both stories are about young women on epic, individual journeys. And even though they have substantial differences, some fascinating parallels remain.

Where the introspective protagonist of “Wild” takes on a grueling, thousand-mile hike up the Pacific Crest Trail with only a backpack, a notebook, and a head full of painful memories, the heroine in “Brooklyn” leaves her homeland to be surrounded by denizens in a noisy milieu swarming with action and life. Along the way, each character confronts different kinds of loneliness, profound sadness, and finally resolve.

There are some twists and surprises, some welcome and others superfluous, but it’s not enough to compromise this moving, exquisitely melancholy piece of work. As much as “Brooklyn” is a story about coming and going, it's also a lyrical metaphor for navigating the undulating, wildly unpredictable vicissitudes of growing up.

Miss Meadows (2014)

Katie Holmes plays a peculiar vigilante in "Miss Meadows"

During the opening scene of “Miss Meadows,” the title character played by Katie Holmes is taking a stroll through her quaint Ohio town—the kind of tree-lined utopia where birds are gently chirping and it’s quiet enough to see a pair of fawns casually prance across a lawn—when suddenly a creepy guy pulls up in a pickup truck and begins to threaten her. Undaunted, she pulls out a short barrel pistol from her tiny purse and shoots him dead without a flicker of emotion.

It’s not exactly the same as discovering a severed human ear in a field, but the way an idyllic, peaceful neighborhood is abruptly jarred by violence is reminiscent of that notorious first sequence of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet.”

Written and directed by Karen Leigh Hopkins, “Miss Meadows” is also a close cousin to the “Death Wish” films, with the titular heroine—who doubles as an elementary school teacher and wears clothes (white gloves, bar shoes) that make her look like she stepped out a 50s sitcom—fearlessly protecting the suburbs from bad guys the way Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey covered the inner city. She’s similarly conflicted, we learn, when a lurid flashback reveals that as a child, she witnessed her mother being slain in a drive-by shooting.

As the body count rises, the dull town sheriff (inertly played James Badge Dale) arrives and instead of arresting Meadows predictably falls in love with her, believing their strange, quickly evolving romance—she gets pregnant during an embarrassingly comic sex scene and they later agree to get married—will turn the deranged sociopath into a suitable housewife and mother. Meanwhile, a sinister looking ex-con moves into the neighborhood and starts skulking around the kids at school, setting up an inevitable showdown with Meadows.

“Miss Meadows” is an intriguing but ultimately messy mix of style and tone, hitting notes of dark comedy and folding in awkward bits of social commentary that feel forced and preachy rather than genuinely edgy or provocative. The usually sunny Holmes gamely takes the lead, but the bizarre vigilante satire has her treading murky waters. There’s ideas and an attitude here, but not enough cohesion.

Spotlight (2015)

From left: Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d'Arcy
Adams, Michael Keaton and John Slattery in "Spotlight."

The most ironic moment in “Spotlight” takes place when a priest, worried that the internet might be providing too much information, laments during a sermon. “Knowledge is one thing,” he cautions, “but faith is another.” Most among his congregation nod along approvingly, but Sacha Pheiffer, a reporter for the Boston Globe, looks on with a mixture of disillusionment and incredulity. She knows hypocrisy when she sees it.

By this point, Pheiffer and her colleagues have figured out that the leader of the Boston Archdiocese, Cardinal Bernard Law, reportedly knew that one of his priests, Fr. John Geoghan, had a history of predatory child molestation. But rather than removing Geoghan from the priesthood, Law shuffled him from parish to parish for years, where his abuse continued.

Directed by Tom McCarthy from a script by McCarthy and Josh Singer, “Spotlight” takes its name from the team of investigative reporters—including Pheiffer (Rachel McAdams), Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) and editor Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton)—who broke the lid off the watershed case with a comprehensive and blistering series of articles in 2002.

Using the Geoghan case as a springboard, the Globe ultimately revealed that more than 80 priests in the Boston Archdiocese committed various acts of rape and pedophilia on hundreds children over three decades, crimes the Church carefully kept out of public view by paying out hush money to scores of victims and seizing official documents. The newspaper eventually published over 600 articles about the scandal and won the Pulitzer Prize.

“Spotlight” is really like two great movies—one is an infuriating, spellbinding document of the most deeply immoral and sinister chapter in the Catholic Church’s history; the other is a soaring, rapturous love letter to the newspaper business itself and a celebration of passionate, professional journalism.

Watching the smart, savvy reporters in this movie painstakingly doing their work—in the office on a Sunday, working from home, researching in the library until it closes, jotting down notes, making phone calls, checking facts, knocking on doors, interviewing subjects, taking more notes—one is reminded of Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane” when he took over at the New York Inquirer and justified turning his new publisher’s office into his personal apartment by declaring, quite succinctly, that the news goes on for 24 hours a day.

There's a wonderful shot that celebrates the subtle, vibrant pulse of a daily city newspaper. Walter is chatting with editor Ben Bradlee (John Slattery) about the story. In between them, at the far end of the newsroom, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber)—the Globe’s intrepid, unpretentious new chief editor—sits in his office late in the day, still working.

Baron, a strikingly composed, baritone-voiced outsider who daringly suggested the Globe take on the church in the first place, is perhaps the unsung hero of the film. At a time when the internet was already beginning to chip away at advertising revenues and the newsroom was staring at cutbacks, Baron committed resources to an important story and showed his faith in the value of essential journalism.

“Spotlight” is a reminder of the measure of stories the public gets when honest and talented reporters are doing their jobs. It’s also about what happens when a venerable daily newspaper functioning at a high level—telling important truths, letting people know what's going on, holding suspects accountable, and just being a responsible citizen—becomes the eyes and ears, the legitimate moral center, of an American city.

Inside Out (2015)

Mind Games: Core emotions--Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust
and Joy--at the controls of a young girl in "Inside Out."

For any befuddled parent that has ever been curious as to what’s going on inside the head of their child, “Inside Out”—the funny and furiously inventive latest entry from Pixar Animation Studios and director Pete Docter—intrepidly journeys behind the eyes of a smart, sensitive 11-year-old girl and opens up the curtains on a warm, wondrous new world full of splendidly offbeat characters, colorfully strange places and endlessly imaginative gadgets.

The main character, Riley (voice of Kiatlyn Dias), is an average, energetic kid from Minnesota whose days revolve around school, friends, hockey practice and spending time at home with her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan). Her life by itself seems pretty mundane, but the magic of “Inside Out” is that what’s happening outside Riley’s head isn't half as interesting as what's going on inside.

That’s where Riley’s distinctly tinted core emotions have taken form. There’s Joy (Amy Poehler, perfectly cast), a yellow bundle of optimism who literally glows like sunshine; Sadness (Phyllis Smith, also terrific), a short, blue figure of depression; Anger (Lewis Black, very funny), a small, red box of grimaces and frowns whose head bursts into flames whenever he gets mad; Fear (Bill Hader), purple, fretful and bug-eyed; and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), green, sardonic and repulsed by anything gross.

The core emotions take up residence in a huge control room in Riley’s mind. There, they anchor and organize her thoughts, collecting memories in small, crystal balls colored for what mood they represent and storing them on towering shelves in cavernous spaces meant for short and long term memory. Beyond the control room are more wonderfully inspired places—floating lands called personality islands (there’s one each for imagination, honesty, and goofiness) symbolizing elements of Riley’s individuality; a deep, yawning abyss where forgotten memories end up; and a surrealistic room for abstract thought that Picasso would have admired.

When dad gets a new job and the family is forced to relocate to San Francisco, Riley confronts an unsettling combination of factors—the anxiety of a new school, having to make new friends, trying out for a new hockey team—that causes her to increasingly miss her old life in Minnesota. Clearly, the dramatic change of scenery leaves her homesick, flooded with melancholy feelings that even she doesn’t quite understand and has difficulty expressing.

Adjusting to a new school is just one of the sweeping changes
for Riley, the main character in Pixar's animated "Inside Out."

Meanwhile, the perpetually upbeat Joy has problems at the controls when Sadness begins touching Riley’s happy memories, turning the bright yellow bulbs to a gloomy blue. Before Joy figures out what’s really going on—that part of growing up requires Riley to need shades of both sadness and happiness to learn to cope with life’s challenging vicissitudes—she and Sadness are whipped from the control room and spend part of the film marooned in other areas of Riley’s mind, each of them visually delightful and highly original.

If “Inside Out” sounds like a carnival funhouse for the eyes, it is that but also a great deal more. Beyond the inventive visuals, amusing one-liners and hilarious sight gags lies an intelligent, perceptive essay about the complexities of being a preteen, the anxieties of communicating with adults, and the challenges of understanding our emotions.

Not since “Pinocchio” has there been an animated movie with such an incisive sense of childhood and such a profound grasp on the nature of growing up. Unlike that dark pit in Riley’s mind where mercurial memories go to be forgotten, the enduring brilliance of “Inside Out” ensures that it’s likely to be remembered—and adored—for a very long time to come.

The Forest (2016)

Natalie Dormer in "The Forest."

Haunted forests have suddenly become a regular subject for horror movies. Last time, we looked at “The Hallow,” a darkly atmospheric tale about an army of malevolent gremlins guarding an Irish forest from tree-cutting developers. Now, in “The Forest,” the setting shifts to Japan, where the dense woods underneath Mount Fuji come eerily shrouded in fog, madness and death.

Natalie Dormer plays Sara, a young American summoned to the far east when she learns that her twin sister Jess (also played by Dormer) went into the woods and didn't come out. It is assumed that Jess committed suicide, as this particular destination is known for such things. But Sara, insisting to have some kind of psychic connection to her sibling, believes her twin is indeed alive.

Once she arrives at the notorious forest, Sara resolves to begin searching for Jess, even against ominous warnings from locals that sinister spirits deep in the forest cause erratic behavior, possibly making her believe and see things that aren't there. Meanwhile, Taylor Kinney plays a seemingly innocuous journalist tagging along for a story, only to have his motives eventually called into question when Sara’s visions and suspicions unravel in a violent panic.

Directed by Jason Zada, the most effective scenes in “The Forest” take place during the few night scenes, when the screen is drenched in blackness and the action becomes increasingly claustrophobic. As Sara tries to find her way using a small cellphone light and Zada’s jittery camera bounces nervously, the movie evokes “The Blair Witch Project,” the indie shocker from the 90s known for achieving scares using striking minimalism.

The Aokigahara Forest, where the movie is filmed, is reportedly Japan’s most popular destination for suicides—a place where vengeful ghosts seek angry retribution on the living as payback for their own violent death. The premise seems ripe for a crackling ghost story, but “The Forest” is too caught up in its own silly narrative to be serious about either ghosts or suicide. It’s a missed opportunity.

A better story about Japanese ghosts, or yurei, can be found in Takashi Shimizu’s “Ju-on” and its American remake, “The Grudge,” which was visually scarier and had a dark subtext about the twisted consequences of raging anger and domestic violence. The biggest problem with “The Forest” is that it never feels half as haunting or disturbing as a documentary might be about the same subject.