Day: September 7, 2014

Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington‘s The Equalizer (Sony, 9.26) starts out coolly and unpretentiously and in no big hurry for the action to start. Which is okay with me. I was actually impressed by the fact that Tony Scott‘s Man on Fire (’04), still the high-water mark for Denzel whoop-ass, delayed the inciting incident (i.e., the kidnapping of Dakota Fanning) until the 45-minute mark.

We all know and accept what The Equalizer is basically about — Denzel bringing pain and death to a slew of bad guys. But I really need the action to be semi-plausible and that means Denzel has to be at least a little bit vulnerable, and I really don’t want the bad guys to just be heavily-armed, standard-issue muscle-bound jerkoffs, glaring and snarling and wearing the same beards and shaved heads and dressed in the usual black bad-guy apparel (black suits, black T-shirts, slick black boots)

When I sat down late this morning I said a silent prayer: “Please, Movie Godz…I know this thing isn’t going to be anywhere near as good as Man of Fire…Fuqua peaked or got lucky 13 years ago with Training Day and it’s been downhill ever since…he’s a much sloppier, less exacting and energetic director than Scott but if The Equalizer could almost as good as Man on Fire, I’ll be more or less content.”

Well, it’s about a third as good, if that. After a fairly promising first half-hour or so The Equalizer goes crazy and becomes less and less believable the bodies pile higher and higher. Denzel kills a lot of bad guys here…15, 20, does it matter? Man on Fire‘s Creasy did almost the same thing, but he operated with stealth and discretion. Here Denzel is playing a one-man army who can’t be killed, and it just goes on and on and on. Very disappointing. Later. It’s really not even worth reviewing this thing. It’s just slick garbage. I don’t mean to be dismissive but…well, actually I do.

To be entirely honest I wasn’t sure at first about James Marsh‘s The Theory of Everything (Focus Features, 11.7), the keenly anticipated biopic about British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Eddie Redmayne‘s performance as Hawking is clearly a technical and emotional knockout on at least a couple of levels (which is quite a feat given the limitations on his emoting due to Hawking’s progressive ALS condition, which kicks in at the 25-minute mark); ditto Felicity Jones‘ internals as his wife Jane, whose book “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen” is the basis of Anthony McCarten‘s screenplay. In any event I was respecting it, admiring it, and experiencing no significant problems. But I was nonetheless waiting for “it” to happen. And then it happened in the third act (I won’t divulge at this stage but I’m referring to three…well, two and a half great scenes) and all was well. Everything has now joined the select fraternity of leading, hot-shit contenders for Best Picture along with Birdman, The Imitation Game and Boyhood. The Equalizer beckons — I’ll write more about Marsh’s film later today or tonight.

I tried to get into yesterday’s public screening of Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young, which Variety‘s Peter Debruge enjoys and admires, but all the tickets had been given away. And today’s public screening doesn’t fit into today’s schedule so I’ll have to see it tomorrow. But for now…

Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts in Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young.

“Though While We’re Young is primarily a comedy — and a very funny one at that, managing to be both blisteringly of-the-moment and classically zany in the same breath — Baumbach has bitten off several serious topics, for which laughter serves as the most agreeable way to engage.

“And so, anchored by Ben StillerThat N’s egoless portrayal of middle-age insecurity, the film examines how as a species, humans are naturally threatened by the younger generation, who possess an energy and an aptitude that daunts the more experienced. We can cower from it or embrace the fear. For Josh and Cornelia, the brush with youth re-energizes their marriage, even as it reveals the depths of Josh’s pettiness, once he realizes that Adam Driver‘s young filmmaker he was so willing to help may actually be on to something interesting.

Read more