The Monuments Men

It takes a lot of work to make Bill Murray not remotely interesting. George Clooney obviously spent too much time with his CIA cronies planning the dismemberment of Sudan (South Sudanese now free, how 'bout that?) that he got completely detached from a moviemaking process.

The movie looks like a cheap piece of Cold War propaganda with characters pronouncing poorly written bathetic monologues obviously borrowed from the Voice of America of the "Red Scare" period.  America is a force for universal good, Russians are the cartoonish enemy and Germans are so non-soldierly (children warriors or psychopaths) that they evoke compassion or disdain, rather than being presented as a dangerous foe. Of course, no American philanders, even in Paris, or drinks in excess. The only "our" guys killed are those "furriners" (Brit and Frenchman), who are even more schematic than the majority of characters and their death does not register as a tragedy.

The director of "Good Night and Good Luck" stooped to the level of McCarthy-level agitprop. So what? Christian Socialist Dostoevsky returned from the penal colony as anti-Semitic, Prussian-admiring imperialist. Jacobin General Bonaparte became the Emperor Napoleon and... a Catholic. Power, or the illusion of it, makes wondrous transmutations of character.

Massacres in now "free" Southern Sudan.

Anna Karenina

                                 Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina. Still from the official site of the movie. 

"Tolstoy, you proved with art and talent,

That woman should not make it up

When she is mother, duly married,

Nor with court chamberlain, nor with aide-du-camp."

Epigram by poet Nicolay Nekrasov, Tolstoy's contemporary

Seriously, Tom Stoppard despite his (being a good Czech) disdain for the Russian culture did not do a bad job in translating Tolstoy for a Hollywood screen. Small fault is that he did not understand that Tolstoy hated Karenin and everything he represented but, as a great artist, did not want to succumb to caricature. However, the  most surprising, for somebody living in Britain, is Stoppard's complete lack of understanding of the aristocratic culture. He could read Proust better to understand the difference between "very" and "not very noble" ... Duke. Vronsky family are obviously post-Petrine upstarts. Prince Oblonsky is a Ryurikid and Lowin, as a natural fiancee for a Ryurikid Princess belongs to the lineage of the old boyars (as did Tolstoy himself, though his family's title of Counts was relatively new). Settling him, as director did, in a rich peasant's hut is bizarre. Calling his looks "bourgeois" would be considered a humiliation and result in a duel. 

American Hustle

The first really good movie since unappreciated but genial "Moonrise Kingdom" by Wes Anderson. Though traditional in its cinematic rendering, it has smart dialog, excellent acting and fast, efficient plot. The first half of the movie seems to be wrong on tempo, tangling more plotlines that the director seems to be capable to untangle but it all makes sense in the end.

Inside Llewyn Davis

Brothers Coen must have had a very beautiful childhood and comfortable youth to imbibe that much degree of misanthropy. But unlike, e.g. "Burn After Reading", in the "Inside Llewyn Davis" there is no human emotion one can relate whatsoever. The characters are drones/zombies, who populate the bleak urban desert of 1960s (sic!) America. Their motives and actions are as incomprehensible and alien as in their earlier violence porn "No Country for Old Men" and impress the viewers as little.

Kill Your Darlings

       

An overwhelming approval of the critical world to this movie is additional signature of the decline of American intellectual. While this movie of some interest as a history, it failed to tell why the Beat Generation seemed so important when it emerged or why it is relevant now. It will change very little if the story told was, for instance, about young painters or astrophysicists. Biopics in general are a difficult genre, but there are decent examples. For example "Pollock" could stay on the message of painting and nobody would confuse Harris' character with a writer or computer pioneer.
         I perceive that the approval is the result of the general feeling that the movie is "about culture" and, somehow, must be important or good.

Blue Jasmine

The 80-90% approval of Blue Jasmine by the cineastes is indicative of intellectual decline of American people in the Late Imperial Era. The movie is a senile work with trivial, Hallmark card ideas, such as that the wealthy are immoral and vapid, and "(conjugal) true love turns a shed into a palace", which wastes the talents of great actors and comedians such as Kate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins and Louis C. K. Monologues and dialogues are stale. They are too moralistic for comedy and too lightweight for philosophy. "Why Woody Allen needs to shoot a movie per year? Is he short on money?" Even if he is into it to meet girls, the women of Blue Jasmine (unlike that of his other late movies) are far older than his usual dating contingent.

Lake Bell, In a World

In her NPR interview, multi-talented Lake Bell exercised surprise (mixed with disgust) that a modern culture promotes imitation of child-talk and intonations by the girls as sexy. But a (symbolic) pedophilia among the globalized ruling classes becomes a universal tendency. Half-jokingly, I attributed it to the decline of the American Empire imitating decline of the Roman Empire not only in substance but also in form (see my essay "Model Business" and comments).