J.C. Chandor‘s A Most Violent Year (A24, 12.31), which screened last night at the Dolby on Hollywood Boulevard, is a smartly written, super-gripping, edge-of-your-seat New York melodrama about a driven but principled businessman (Oscar Isaac), married to the tough daughter of a jailed crime boss (Jessica Chastain), who’s struggling to keep his heating-oil business afloat as he deals with truckjacking, an unstable loan situation and possible prosecution for financial impropriety. It’s not some ultra-violent, blood-smeared thing about relentless shoot-outs and punch-outs and squealing tires. The title definitely misleads. But it’ll grab you and then some, especially if you’re over 15 or 16. If you’re semi-educated and over 25 or 30, pig heaven! Especially if you’ve been watching films all your life or…you know, if you’re an HE regular.

Every performance delivers although I wish more scenes and a grander, darker arc had been given to Chastain, who has three or four times the role here that she does in Interstellar, as well as to Albert Brooks, who scores as Isaac’s droll, even-tempered, slightly corrupt attorney. And every scene has been pruned to the bone, and almost every line is note-perfect. A Most Violent Year is not flawless but it’s damn close to that, at least for my money.

Those looking for visceral thrills (and let’s face it — a lot of apes out there are going to see this thing expecting an adrenaline-fueled ride with a lot of blood on the pavement) should know that A Most Violent Year has one of the best car, running-on-foot and subway chase sequences in a dog’s age or maybe decades. It doesn’t quite match the subway-car chase sequence in The French Connection but it definitely belongs in the same ballpark, and that means it’s been shot and cut so that you can actually follow the action. This sequence alone is worth the price, but there’s a lot more to savor and sink into.

And the sound mix! I realized last night that I’ve been more traumatized by Interstellar‘s soupy sound than I knew because as the lights went down I muttered to myself, “Please, God…don’t make this as murky and bassy and hard to fucking understand as Interstellar. I just want to hear the dialogue…please.” And I did! Every word, phrase and sentence was clear and crisp. I didn’t miss a damn thing.

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If Anthony Hopkins is starring in a film, it has to be at least half-interesting. That’s my basic thinking about Kidnapping Freddy Heineken, a forthcoming European-made film about the kidnapping of Dutch businessman Alfred “Freddy” Heineken, the grandson of the founder of the Heineken brewery. His abductors were paid a mind-blowing ransom equivalent to $50 million U.S. dollars. William Brookfield‘s screenplay is based on a book about the kdnapping by Peter R. de Vries. Pic costars Sam Worthington, Jim Sturgess and True Blood‘s Ryan Kwanten. Pic will open in Europe on 3.12.15, so is it playing now at the AFM?

It’s not exactly radical to suggest that some directors tend to express stuff about their natures by focusing on certain themes and scenarios in film after film. That just-posted Vulture video made light of the fact that Interstellar director Chris Nolan has something about dead wives, whatever that means in terms of his psychology. It’s obvious that the Wachowski brothers, particularly the former Larry (now Lana) Wachowski, were expressing an interest in hot lesbians when they made Bound (’96) and again when they included a brief glimpse of some girl-on-girl action in V for Vendetta (’06). (It’s not my business but the general understanding is that Lana likes women.) And as long as we’re discussing (or will soon discuss) getting badly beaten up, it’s obvious that characters played by Marlon Brando, who had a lot of clout in the ’50s and early ’60s, were frequently beaten bloody, whipped, shot full of holes, burned to death, etc. Some have deduced that Brando was expressing some kind of guilt and a need to be punished.

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James Marsh‘s The Theory Of Everything (Focus Features, 11.7) is currently at 82% on Rotten Tomatoes and 68% on Metacritic. The 68% rating could be seen as troubling but the 82% ups the curve. The Academy likes veddy British movies about distinguished or intriguing people with British accents standing up to challenges and overcoming tragedies. Theory and The Imitation Game obviously fit into this slot. The slightly mixed Theory reviews may indicate that Imitation, its closest competitor, will do better in the long run but there’s no telling with these things. The Theory of Everything is all about the last 20 or so minutes. Without them it would be just a pretty good, reasonably effective biopic. But it saves itself at the last minute with the dropped pen/pencil and the time-reverse sequence, and that’s the bottom line.

I should have included Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel in the initial Stu Van Airsdale-inspired HE Oscar Balloon chart (posted on 10.26) by virtue of having included Anderson in the initial Best Director chart (posted on 10.28), but it took a while to get around to it. Birdman still leads, Boyhood is still nipping at its heels and The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything are still holding third and fourth place. Gone Girl demands inclusion because it’s David Fincher exercising his peak powers and making fierce art out of a murderous marital potboiler. Whiplash has surged ahead of the obviously damaged Interstellar and the still-unseen Unbroken. Foxcatcher…fine. And there’s no choice but to position two other keenly anticipated films, A Most Violent Year and American Sniper, at the bottom of the list. I didn’t even include The Gambler because the room is crowded and it mostly seems like a Mark Wahlberg Best Actor opportunity. For now. It screens at AFI Fest next Monday.

Two weeks ago I riffed on a featurette for Rob Marshall‘s Into The Woods (12.25) that used a little sliver of Stephen Sondheim‘s score. It was part of a step-by-step process in which Disney marketers have been revealing that the film is a musical. Last July’s trailer contained no singing at all. Now, today, the cat is totally out of the bag.

In the realm of Star Wars mythology as well as the cosmic flow-stream that Siddhartha, Arjuna, Alan Watts and Howard Beale spoke about with such feeling, “the force” is nothing if not eternal. In the words of Captain Ahab, the force “twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled.” It therefore cannot awaken or get a good night’s sleep or trend or be dormant or take an afternoon snooze. The newly-announced title of J.J. Abrams‘ Stars Wars, Episode VII is therefore, no offense, a bit of a head-scratcher. It also suggests that on some level the force was slumbering or dormant or not up to full strength during the first six episodes. I’m not sure that Yoda, Anakin Skywalker, Emperor Palatine, Luke Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi would agree. The force is not a religion or a downloadable song or YouTube video. Only a select few have midi-chlorians in their blood so how the fuck can the force “awaken”? Unless, I suppose, a person with force-level midi-chlorians has been in a coma or something. Or has been under the weather with a really bad, months-long flu.

Between this satirical Vulture video, Phil Plait‘s mostly science-oriented Slate takedown and yesterday’s Michael Cieply N.Y. Times story about Jessica Chastain‘s Interstellar contract forbidding her from promoting A Most Violent Year, a kind of Interstellar pile-on is starting to happen. Or is it? Any reactions from HE regulars who caught Interstellar yesterday, leaving aside (if you can) the sound issues?

Earlier today Screen Daily‘s Ian Sandwell reported about a deal signed by the London-based Arrow Films to distribute David O. Russell‘s never-finished, long-shelved Nailed under a new title — Politics of Love — sometime next year. The dark Washington D.C.-based dramedy, which stars Jessica Biel, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tracy Morgan, Catherine Keener, Paul Reubens, Josh Brolin, Kirstie Alley and James Marsden, is about a waitress (Biel) who gets accidentally shot in the head with a nail, which leads to unbridled sexual behavior and a weird relationship with a Congressman (Gyllenhaal). Pic will pop in England sometime next spring or summer or whenever. Which means, of course, that sooner or later it’ll stream in the States. Russell is probably pissed about this but I can’t say I’m not curious. I realize it probably doesn’t work but it can’t be a total wipe-out. Russell is too sharp, too exacting. Last May I reported that producer Kia Jam, the guy who sold British rights to Arrow, had recently screened the film in Manhattan for U.S. distributors.

This 11.5 Slashfilm article about Interstellar‘s bassy, soupy, dialogue-obscuring sound mix indicates that people are bitching about it all over the world. I was the first guy to complain about this (i.e., right after the 10.23 TCL Chinese elite-media screening), and a fair-sized percentage of HE commenters suggested it was because I have bad hearing. In any event today I heard from a venerated projection consultant about this issue, and he told me that a “qualified service technician” had applied a fix to the problem in a certain situation. He wouldn’t say what theatre or even what city, but here’s his report:

“On the subject of audio on Interstellar, I have been getting reports that the sound track is mixed such that the dialogue gets lost in scenes of dramatic sound effects,” he said. “This problem does not seem to be related to just the TCL Chinese. In one location the alignment tech boosted the center channel higher than [the] normal cinema spec to bring the dialogue up in relation to the Left/Right channels where most of the effects come from. This made the dialogue more prominent and therefore more distinguishable.

“Normally I would (and might still) argue against changing anything from established industry practices. In this case, I’m withholding judgment. My heart says he did the right thing, but my head tells me he did not.”

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Rupert Wyatt, William Monahan and Mark Wahlberg‘s The Gambler will have its big debut next Monday, 11.10 at the Dolby theatre at 7 pm. The idea is to nudge Wahlberg into Best Actor contention (who’s vulerable among the so-called locked-in gang of four?) and maybe John Goodman also in the Best Supporting Actor race….hey, why not? J.K. Simmons and Edward Norton could use the competition. And what about Jessica Lange (who obviously nails her role as Wahlberg’s mom) elbowing her way into the Best Supporting Actress arena? If Wahlberg really scores it would be him, Birdman‘s Michael Keaton, Foxcatcher‘s Steve Carell, The Imitation Game‘s Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. Except I believe in Tom Hardy (Locke, The Drop) more than Carell.