Featuring dazzling performances from an all-star cast led by Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore, and Bill Hader, Rebecca Miller (The Ballad of Jack and Rose, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee) delivers a brilliant genre-bending film that works on many levels. Equal parts whimsical, rom-com, and highbrow, Maggie’s Plan feels like a Woody Allen film.

Greta Gerwig plays Maggie, a free-spirited neurotic character we’ve gotten used to seeing her play over the last few years (Lola Versus, Frances Ha, and Mistress America, to name a few). She decides she’s ready to have a baby, despite her good friend (a wisecracking Bill Hader) begging her to reconsider this idea. Maggie becomes desperate enough that she’s willing to accept a sperm donation from a goofy former classmate for artificial insemination. But her plan changes (as the title suggests) when she meets a handsome novelist John (the always wonderful Ethan Hawke). They begin spending more and more time with each other, and once it’s revealed that he’s going through some marital issues with his wife (Julianne Moore), it’s easy to see where the story is heading. But this is when the film does something interesting. It jumps ahead three years to show Maggie with a kid of her own and now married to John. Gradually, Maggie begins to feel neglected and wonders if she made a mistake marrying John. So, Maggie comes up with a new plan.

One of the best qualities of Maggie’s Plan is that, just when you think you know what’s going to happen next, Miller throws a curveball at the traditional story arc. Maggie’s Plan provides interesting perspectives relationships and love, suggesting that love is messy and that it’s not about who you want to spend the rest of your life with, as much as it’s about figuring out who you can’t spend your life without. The only shortcoming is a drawn out third-act that could be trimmed down by about 15 minutes. But aside from that, the film is an absolute delight.

Rating:
8/10

Filmmakers have historically had a difficult time capturing the true essence of the American hardcore scene onscreen. More often than not, cinematic approaches to hardcore feel inauthentic, cheesy, and occasionally even desperate. With Ten Thousand Saints, directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini approach the subject matter admirably, albeit a bit unsuccessfully, before transitioning into a predictably sweet story about the perils of young love.

As a drug-using hardcore kid growing up in 1980s Vermont, Jude (Asa Butterfield) yearns to get out of his hometown. After a devastating accident leads to him moving to New York City to live with his estranged, pot-dealing father (Ethan Hawke), Jude is exposed to a whole new world. After befriending Eliza (Hailee Steinfeld), a directionless cocaine addict, and Johnny (Emile Hirsch), the frontman for a straight edge hardcore band, Jude finds himself reevaluating his past, his present, and his future.

Equal parts redemption story and coming-of-age tale, the appeal of Ten Thousand Saints lies more in its compelling cast of characters than its plot. Extremely character-driven, the film provides a realistic look at teen life. Though it’s set roughly thirty years ago, Jude and Eliza deal with issues that are as relevant now as ever and are sure to be extremely relatable to teenage viewers.

Because the film is based around a subculture, Berman and Pulcini utilize plenty of exposition to keep the audience up to speed, but it always feels like exposition. As Jude navigates through the film, he explains the concept of the straight edge lifestyle time after time after time as if he were reading the definition off of Urban Dictionary. At times, the dialogue is borderline cringe-worthy and most of the characters don’t appear believably to be a part of the hardcore scene, which is distracting. Aside from the musical scenes, Ten Thousand Saints could easily be added to the ever-growing list of movies that don’t accurately capture the essence of the hardcore scene.

Thankfully, the film has plenty of heart elsewhere, particularly in its cast. Performances are strong across the board, with angst-filled teenagers and their equally confused parents proving both empathetic and likable in spite of themselves. Butterfield and Steinfeld share a charmingly awkward chemistry while Hawke and Emily Mortimer provide a majority of the film’s comedy. It’s an interesting dichotomy between generations, and the way in which Berman and Pulcini analyze two vastly different forms of rebellion is very sharp and interesting. There proves to be a vicious cycle as the new generation rebels against their parents who chose to use drugs in rebellion against their parents who remained abstinent and sober.

While this isn’t explored as in-depth as it perhaps could have been, it serves as the basis for the best scenes in the film—most notably one where Jude’s mother and Eliza’s mother have an emotional heart-to-heart conversation about their children. It’s a beautiful moment, wrought with sentimentality, and it sums up the entire film. Ten Thousand Saints, at its core, is about a group of flawed people who all learn more about themselves through their interactions with each other, and try their hardest to become better human beings as a result.

While certainly not a dark comedy in the traditional sense, Ten Thousand Saints consistently finds humor in plenty of tragic situations. Death, drug abuse, unexpected pregnancy, abortion, assault, and adultery are all explored during the film’s 113-minute running time; and while not a decidedly adult film, it ventures into some extremely bleak territory.

Despite not portraying the American hardcore scene in the most authentic light, Ten Thousand Saints is a well-acted, technically sound film with a wonderful ensemble cast and an adequate amount of charm.

America’s drone war is no secret. The media has long been privy to the Air Force’s dirty laundry, and lately movies and TV have caught on as well. What has stayed hazy though are the details, the rules of engagement, the lives of the pilots involved, the kill counts, and who exactly is running the show. Good Kill dares to zoom in on the dark life of a drone pilot and the new, “retaliate first” ethics of war.

Ethan Hawke dons a pair of aviator sunglasses and a flight suit to play Major Tommy Egan, a six tour veteran who has been relegated to flying drone missions from an air-conditioned box outside of Las Vegas. From the start Tommy rallies against being caged on the ground. Being a pilot was his life. It made him happy, and despite the risk, it kept his marriage stable, and him sane. But flying drones has its perks. After landing his UAV Tommy gets to go home to his wife and kids. He gets to barbecue in his Nevada backyard.

Everything changes though when Tommy’s unit, complete with idealist rookie Suarez (Zoe Kravitz), is handpicked to fly special drone missions for the CIA. The ever-present risk of collateral damage is magnified tenfold by the agencies strike first policy, and it isn’t long before Tommy is sinking into the bottle and losing sleep over pulling the trigger. As the operations get more and more ethically blurry, Tommy and Suarez begin to push back against the invisible hand that guides them.

Good Kill, for most of its run time, is as morally pragmatic as a film like this—with such an obvious message—needs to be. The questioning of the government’s drone program is worn openly; characters repeatedly find themselves in debates about the killing of civilians and the creation of extremists. These debates seem to do little for the plot or character, except to show who stands where—as though the soldiers’ banter during their missions wasn’t enough. But Good Kill stays on target. First and foremost it is a film about a man, Tommy, struggling with alcoholism, with keeping his family together, and with the ambiguous necessity of killing innocent people to save American lives.

As Tommy, Hawke is at his brooding best. He’s a man running out of fight, struggling to breathe under the weight on his conscience. It’s a performance that could have been one note, but Hawke manages to make Tommy a fully rounded character (unlike his pure-gruff barkeeper in last year’s Predestination). For all his silence Tommy is still simmering beneath the surface, nursing his dreams of taking flight once again, and still holding onto a happiness he once had.

Written and directed by regular Ethan Hawke collaborator Andrew Niccol (Gattaca and Lord of War when he’s good, In Time and The Host when he’s not), Good Kill is a well crafted drama that functions best when the pilots are hunched before their dazzling array of monitors. The script mines true tension from Tommy, Suarez, and their Colonel (a fine Bruce Greenwood) as they question the orders voiced by an absent Langley, knowing all the while that they will ultimately comply. At home though, as Tommy and his wife Molly (January Jones) try to recapture the spark of their early marriage, and Suarez manages her own romantic feelings, the film falters and the tension crumbles, at least until Tommy can once again take the pilot’s chair. One constant is that the film is richly lensed by Amir Mokri. Everything is sun-baked; the deserts of the war-torn Middle East and dusty Nevada are shot to mirror each other ominously, the view from above suddenly terrifying.

Good Kill is at its best when it is unflinching; while Tommy pushes back against “taking pot shots” at people from the sky, it becomes more and more clear that there isn’t another solution on the table. The war on terror has become a vicious cycle with no end in sight. The only question is who will fight that war. Despite being set five years ago, Good Kill is an urgent film that doesn’t look to serve up answers, but instead to incite debate.

“I go to war for my art form.” That piercing statement comes from legendary, retired concert pianist and active music instructor Seymour Bernstein, a man who, with 85 years under his belt, is a fountain of musical knowledge and refined philosophy. He’s a picture of tranquility, a perpetually calm and contented soul casually scattering nuggets of life-altering wisdom on the ground with a smile, we the hungry pigeons huddling at his feet. At the age of 50, Bernstein played what he thought would be his final performance, a small, impromptu show in New York City. Since then, he’s dedicated his life to transmitting his talent and life lessons to his students, a gift extended to us via Seymour: An Introduction, a rich, serene documentary directed by one of Bernstein’s most high-profile pupils, Ethan Hawke.

The Before Midnight actor appears only briefly in the film, explaining to a small, swanky NYC crowd how Bernstein helped him deal with stage fright over the years. Fear, the retired pianist posits, is inextricably linked with art; he quit performing because the terror involved was too much to handle. Struggling with actor’s anxiety, Hawke sought advice from Bernstein, who passed on the knowledge he’d concluded over years of hard reflection: “The struggle is what makes the art form.” In other words, nerves are good: if you have nerves, that’s a sure sign you care about your work. Inspired by the close friendship that developed between them, Hawke convinced Bernstein to perform once again, on film (hence the small, swanky NYC crowd).

The film does end, unsurprisingly, with that momentous performance, but the music is only half the story. Bernstein’s greatest accomplishment is developing an ultimate understanding of the connection between music and life itself. “You can establish so deep an accord between your musical self and your personal self that eventually music and life will interact in a never-ending cycle of fulfillment,” he says in one of the film’s enlightening interviews. And yes, he talks just like that. Because he’s spent his whole life pondering the nature of the art form that so thoroughly molded him, his carefully composed words resonate just as beautifully as his piano playing.

Bernstein found music at a young age, begging his mother to buy him a piano at six years old. By the time he was 15 he was giving other kids lessons, and some years later his concert debut earned him the headline “Seymour Bernstein Triumphs at the Piano” on the New York Times. Fame and success in the public eye was never of interest to him, though. In fact, he considers acclaim and celebrity to have a decidedly damaging effect on all artists. In a dialogue with his mentor, Hawke supports the argument by suggesting Marlon Brando and Jackson Pollock were “notoriously horrible people.” As further substantiation, Bernstein holds up the late Glen Gould, calling him a “neurotic mess” and a “monster” who was so wrapped up in himself that when he played Bach he infused the music with so much of his own style that it became unrecognizable as a work of the iconic German composer.

Eschewing fame and fortune led to Bernstein finding true peace, composing his own music and teaching private piano lessons in his cozy Upper West Side apartment. The film’s most heartening moments see Bernstein carefully honing his students’ skills, being honest and patient with them as he addresses their technical flaws. He’s the polar opposite of J.K. Simmons’ Terrance Fletcher from Whiplash: When a female apprentice repeats a musical phrase, correcting her flaws per Bernstein’s instruction, he’s overjoyed. “A dream,” he gushes, adding jokingly, “you’re not allowed to play better than me.” His students universally attest to Bernstein having changed the way they view not only music, but the world. This is by design: Bernstien insists that the most important thing about being a teacher “is to inspire an emotional response for all aspects of life.”

Fascinating as Bernstein is on his own, Hawke’s presentation is what really makes the film click. Everything looks elegant, from the lighting, to the editing, to the framing, and the sound design is equally immaculate. Though it’s his first time directing a documentary, Hawke seems to have a firm grasp on how to make a movie flow, almost like, well, music. Editor Anna Gustavi handles the climactic scene brilliantly, in which Bernstein performs Schumann’s “Fantasia”. We slip gracefully between seeing him perform the piece, to practicing it days before, to hearing him explain the history of the piece and why he loves it so much, all while the music hovering over the cuts uninterrupted. He narrates as he plays: “Here it comes, one of the biggest climaxes in all of music!” The awe and rapture in his eyes is reflected in ours. This is classy, dynamic filmmaking that reduced me to tears.

What exhibits Hawke’s maturity more than anything is his decision to not make a soup to nuts biography, opting rather to reveal his mentor’s character via small, candid moments of natural behavior. The film opens with Bernstein trying to work out how to get his pinky finger up to a particularly high piano key in time so as not to disrupt the momentum of a particular musical phrase. In maybe a couple of minutes, we understand his love and dedication to music, and the inner peace he’s discovered as a result of his passion. Aside from a recollection involving Bernstein’s harrowing experiences during the Korean War (“I saw body bags,” he tearfully recalls), the film is pretty low-key, its most poignant moments unfolding organically. Through music “we become one with the stars” Bernstein suggests. It’s a beautiful thought that, like Hawke’s film, is as truthful as it is poetic.

Since the birth of film, Shakespeare has been adapted up, down, and sideways. Not only have his plays been filmed, but they have been reworked to better exploit the possibilities of the silver screen; rewritten, retitled, and subtly masked; and thrown, Shakespearian language and all, into the modern era–all to mixed results. The most recent attempt to prove the Bard’s relevance in the 21st century is Cymbeline.

The film, based on the play of the same name and adapted and directed by Michael Almereyda, finds a band of dirty cops fighting an all out war with Cymbeline (Ed Harris) and his pals, reimagined here as a ruthless biker gang. From the looks of the trailer, things seem to go from bad to worse (or if you’ve read the play perhaps you already know). And while the visuals here really do pop, the film scurried out of Venice 2014 with some less-than-positive notices.

The thing that can’t be ignored here though is the incredibly stacked cast. Joining Harris are the familiar faces of Ethan Hawke (fresh off his Oscar nom for Boyhood), Anton Yelchin, Dakota Johnson, (filmed pre-50 Shades Of Grey), Milla Jovovich, Penn Badgley, and John Leguizamo. Color us intrigued.

Cymbeline trailer

You might be thinking “Already?!” but yes, award season is already starting. Today, New York’s Gotham Independent Film Awards put out their nominees, a list filled with pleasant surprises and some very obvious choices.

Let’s start with the obvious choice: Boyhood. Any indie award would be insane to deny Richard Linklater’s film, possibly the indie event of the year, some love, so Gotham understandably gave it four nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Ethan Hawke), Best Actress (Patricia Arquette) and Breakthrough Actor (Ellar Coltrane). Also unsurprising is Birdman nabbing three nominations for Best Picture and Best Actor (Michael Keaton). Expect to hear even more about Birdman in the months to come.

Because the Gotham Awards are about independent film, that gives some great underrated films and performances the chance for some exposure through a nomination. The biggest surprise might be Under the Skin and Scarlett Johansson scoring nominations for Best Picture and Actress. It’ll be unlikely for Jonathan Glazer’s strange sci-fi to get much love outside of critics’ circles this year, so nominations like these are nice to see. Another great choice by Gotham: Giving Ira Sachs’ wonderful Love is Strange a Best Picture nomination. Sachs’ film, a quietly heartbreaking drama, seems bound to get left out this year once the awards race kicks into high gear (if Best Actor weren’t so competitive this year, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina would have been locks). Any recognition for Love is Strange is a huge plus.

Read on below for the full list of nominees, including the nominees for Breakthrough Director and Actor. For those more interested in the bigger awards, take note of Oscar Isaac’s nomination for A Most Violent Year. The film hasn’t come out yet (it opens AFI Fest next month), so this nomination might be a hint of another shake-up in the coming weeks. And if anyone’s wondering where current Best Actor frontrunner Steve Carrell is, Gotham decided to give Carrell and co-stars Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo a special award for their ensemble performances in Foxcatcher.

The Gotham Independent Film Awards will hold their awards ceremony on December 1st.

Best Feature

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Love Is Strange
Under the Skin

Best Actor

Bill Hader in The Skeleton Twins
Ethan Hawke in Boyhood
Oscar Isaac in A Most Violent Year
Michael Keaton in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Miles Teller in Whiplash (Sony Pictures Classics)

Best Actress

Patricia Arquette in Boyhood
Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond the Lights
Julianne Moore in Still Alice
Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin
Mia Wasikowska in Tracks

Best Documentary

Actress
CITIZENFOUR
Life Itself
Manakamana
Point and Shoot

Breakthrough Actor

Riz Ahmed in Nightcrawler
Macon Blair in Blue Ruin
Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood
Joey King in Wish I Was Here
Jenny Slate in Obvious Child
Tessa Thompson in Dear White People

Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award

Ana Lily Amirpour for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
James Ward Byrkit for Coherence
Dan Gilroy for Nightcrawler
Eliza Hittman for It Felt Like Love
Justin Simien for Dear White People

With last year’s Before Midnight being clearly one of the best of 2013 (at least in our opinion), it would seem Richard Linklater, whose films can be somewhat hit or miss (Me and Orson Welles was a bit more on the miss side), is reaching some kind of maturation. Like a fine wine. It would be easy to say he peaked in the 90’s and early 2000’s where his youthful film angle seemed perfectly suited for his age, but with Before Midnight, he proved he could grow with his subject matter. So how to classify Boyhood? A film that shows that Linklater can not only mature with his work, but one that required planning ahead for over a decade’s worth of work.

Boyhood was shot over 12 consecutive years with the same actors, an impressive feat in and of itself. Complicated production aside, the film is quite simple. 6-year-old Mason (Ellar Coltrane) lives with his single mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and older sister, Samantha (Lorelie Linklater), in Texas. He goes to school, hangs out with his friends, argues with his sister, and watches his mother bounce from failed relationship to failed relationship. Some years they move. Others their estranged father (Ethan Hawke) bounces into their lives, attempting to assert his place in their lives and his genuine love for them. Nothing especially out of the ordinary happens, the height of the drama being an especially bad marriage situation that Olivia is forced to endure and eventually escape from. Mostly we watch Mason grow up. Looking wide-eyed and too-wise as a child, greasy and awkward in middle school, thoughtful and rebellious in high school. This is an average lower-middle class family — divorced, single-parented, all-American. And somehow at an unholy two hours and forty-five minutes, from a man known to embrace free-form “plot-less” filmmaking, there is never a second of Boyhood that isn’t entirely mesmerizing.

While I can hardly imagine being a 6-year-old and committing to spend a few days of every year until college on a movie, Linklater seems to have gotten incredibly lucky with his cast. Each of them somehow managing to channel their character on demand for each consecutive chapter of their, and their character’s, lives while effectively showcasing the undeniable maturity that comes with one’s personal aging. It’s a film full of absolute honesty because it’s made in a format that embraces reality. When Ethan Hawke shows up for his first visit onscreen as Mason Sr., it’s the younger scragglier version of him we haven’t seen since the late 90’s, and by the time the film closes, in a scene where Mason Sr. explains to his son that no one in life really knows what they are doing, he’s the older, grayer Hawke we saw in Before Midnight. And not a drop of CG.

The most extraordinary and intriguing transformation is that of Ellar Coltrane, who must find it surreal to watch a film that showcases his every bad haircut of adolescence, and those in-between years of baby fat and sudden pubescent shift. Within two scenes his voice goes from high and childish to a deeper adult sound, the sort of brutal realism a film is hardly able to capture in its normal production methods. Aside from how intriguing it is to watch Mason/Ellar age, more extraordinary is Linklater’s ability to capture the molding of his mind and personality. All the musings and thoughts we see running through his head, as though we’re literally watching him learn and grow, even when we’re not privy to what those thoughts are. Linklater, a lover of loquacious films, turns off that impulse in Boyhood and allows Mason’s silences and observations to do all the telling.

Even if Mason’s experiences aren’t exactly mirrored personally with audiences, the literal zeitgeist peppering each scene and giving it so much cultural context will make it impossible not to remember those years, not so long ago, and to feel utterly transported. Moreso than other historical-ish films even, because unlike a documentary, this film has literally captured time. Britney Spears songs, Harry Potter book releases, and political references are all genuinely reflective of the fervor surrounding them in real-time. It’s not a nostalgic remembrance — though it induces nostalgia — instead Boyhood is like watching a home video. It’s a preservation of time wrapped up in an every-man/child’s life story.

As a fascinating study in mixing reality and fiction, Boyhood stands out from say scripted reality shows in that it simply and effectively holds a lens up to the reality inherent in all films. A nuance that perhaps couldn’t be captured in anything less than 12 years, and which, it turns out, is so fascinating it turns an almost 3 hour film about almost nothing into a remarkable piece of art.

Boyhood trailer

Shot periodically over a 12 year period, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood chronicles the life of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) between the ages of 6 and 18. That kind of scale for one project isn’t exactly unheard of (Linklater’s Before trilogy takes place over 2 decades, and Michael Apted’s Up series has been going on for over 56 years) but the fact that he’s condensed it within one film makes it an unprecedented experience. With that kind of ambition it isn’t unreasonable to expect something monumental in the end, but surprisingly Boyhood emerges as nothing more than a pleasant slice-of-life film.

Aside from some melodramatic moments early on, Linklater keeps things loose as our glimpses into Mason’s life are mostly relaxed or subdued. The aimless, shaggy dog approach both help and hurt the film. The way major events merely pass by everyone might be the most true-to-life aspect of the film (Arquette’s final scene, one of the strongest in the film, addresses this aspect directly), but by the end there’s a distinct, lacking feeling as a result of Linklater’s filmmaking. The film amounts to a nice collection of the kind of naturalistic scenes Linklater excels at, but none of it comes together in a wholly satisfying way. In other words, it’s less than the sum of its parts.

Just don’t take any of this the wrong way. Boyhood is a good film, and the experience of watching its cast age over 2 and a half hours makes for a unique (but not especially remarkable) experience. It’s just that, considering all the effort put into the film (and the fervent response it’s received since premiering at Sundance), “good” feels disappointing in this case.

As an emerging voice in horror, writer/director Ti West is assembling a team of recognizable faces for his latest feature that is bound to attract attention. His upcoming revenge-Western In A Valley of Violence has added notable actors including Ethan Hawke, John Travolta, Taissa Farmiga, and Doctor Who‘s Karen Gillan (of the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy) to its strong cast. For Hawke and Gillan, Violence will mark a return to Blumhouse Productions (the studio behind successful horror franchises Paranormal Activity and Insidious). Hawke recently starred in two Blumhouse features, Sinister and The Purge, and Gillan headlined Blumhouse’s April horror release Oculus.

Filming for the revenge-Western is set to begin in late June, produced by Jason Blum of Blumhouse, and exec produced by previous Ti West collaborators Peter Phok and Jacob Jaffke. The story reportedly follows Paul (Hawke), a drifter looking for revenge on the thugs that killed his best friend. Farmiga and Gillan will portray sisters that operate the town’s motel and ultimately help Paul on his vengeance quest. Ti West’s last feature, The Sacrament, will be released on June 6th of this year.

Richard Linklater created a coming of age story unlike anything ever done before by remarkably filming the same cast for 12 years in an ambitious project entitled Boyhood. Linklater began filming a six-year-old boy named Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane) in 2002, and over the next 12 years we literally get to see him grow up. Although the film is primarily about life through the eyes of a child, the film is also about parenting, capturing Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as parents struggling to raise a child.

The trailer offers a small taste of how captivating this development process is to watch, see for yourself in the trailer below.

Watch Boyhood trailer

The Best Adapted Screenplay category is the lesser exciting of the two screenplay categories because of the lack of competition within the group of nominees, as well as the lack of films to choose from this year in general. The clear frontrunner this year is John Ridley for 12 Years a Slave, a film about a free black man who got sold into slavery for twelve years of his life. This would be a deserved win for the film as it does stand out against the rest of the competition.

I believe the only film here that could potentially upset 12 Years a Slave is Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope for Philomena—which contains its own heart-wrenching story about a woman searching for her son. Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight may have wooed critics, but a nomination from the Academy is likely all the film will receive. The Wolf of Wall Street certainly portrays the wild (drug induced) ride of Jordan Belfort as a wealthy stockbroker who became a main target of the federal government. Though as exciting as it is to watch, the script benefited from the masterful hand of Martin Scorsese and his crew. The same can be said about Captain Phillips, the story is interesting but not necessarily exceptional.

Though it would be a complete long shot for several reasons, including the fact that it is a foreign language film that is rated NC-17, Blue is the Warmest Color deserved to be nominated for its comic book adaption about a woman’s self-discovery and passionate love for another woman. Blue is the Warmest Color is an admittedly simple story, but one that captures all the raw emotions and intimacy that surrounds a loving relationship. Not to mention that it was the best film of 2013.

Category Predictions

Best Adapted Screenplay Nominees

Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke – Before Midnight (review)

Billy Ray – Captain Phillips (review)

Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope – Philomena (review)

John Ridley – 12 Years a Slave (review)

Terence Winter – The Wolf of Wall Street

Previous Category Analysis

Best Shorts
Best Supporting Actress
Best Supporting Actor
Best Original Screenplay

A special preview screening of Richard Linklater’s ambitious new project, Boyhood, has been added to the Sundance 2014 lineup.

The film, also known as the “12 Year Project”, is an unprecedented undertaking: for the past 12 years, Linklater has made one short film a year that follows a boy named Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane), along with his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the auteur’s daughter), as he navigates the rocky road from boyhood (age 6) to adulthood (age 18).

Coltrane, who began filming in 2000, ages with his character in real time, an idea that, if nothing else, will be visually unlike anything ever seen on film. Playing Coltrane and Linklater’s parents (and aging along with him during the shoot) are Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette. To watch Coltrane physically transform from a tiny tot into a young man within the running time of a feature film, “like timelapse photography of a human being”, as Hawke told The Playlist last year, is a uniquely compelling incentive to keep our eyes on Linklater’s latest.

ABOVE: Linklater in San Francisco, April 2013

This is the auteur’s second project to utilize the real-life passing of time as a storytelling device, following his Before series (whose latest entry, Before Midnight, was my favorite film of 2013), a trio of romance movies separated by 9 years each starring Hawke and Julie Delpy. That series celebrated its 18th birthday last year (a somewhat poetic coincidence). We chatted with Mr. Linklater about the series in an extended interivew last April at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Linklater has a long-standing relationship with the festival, premiering several of his films there: Before Sunrise (1995), subUrbia 1997, Waking Life (2001), Tape (2001), and Before Midnight (2013).

Boyhood premieres Sunday, January 19th, rounding out the 121 feature-length film lineup. The 2014 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 16th-26th in Park City, Utah.

The Purge, a new film starring Ethan Hawke, is a great example of taking an interesting idea and dumbing it down. The idea is interesting; one day a year for 12 hours during what is called the Purge, all crime is deemed legal. The problem with The Purge is that the filmmakers take that great idea and turn it into a basic home invasion flick.

Hawke plays James Sandin, an owner of a business that provides security for homes in the L.A. area. It’s a year round business, but it’s obvious he makes most of his money just before the annual Purge. His entire neighborhood is equipped with his product. His wife Mary, Lena Headey, is just a regular suburbanite house wife, however, is surprisingly the best part of the film.

The Sandin’s have two kids, a son named Charlie (Max Burkholder) and a daughter named Zoey (Adelaide Kane). Charlie mostly keeps to himself and as it turns out is the most empathetic person of the family. When we first meet Zoey she is in the middle of a romantic tryst with her boyfriend. The film hints that Zoey’s parents do not approve of this relationship, but unsurprisingly this plot point concerning it goes nowhere. In fact, it leads to an incident that quite literally doesn’t make any sense.

Once the Purge begins, the Sandin’s house (along with every house in the wealthy neighborhood) goes into complete lockdown. Metal bars slam over windows and even their front door is encased in steel. The film gets interesting when Charlie ventures into the security room of the house and sees a man running down the street crying out for help. The man stops in front of the Sandin’s home and Charlie’s heart outplays his brain. He lets down the house’s guard for less than a minute; more than enough time for the stranger to enter their home.

As soon as the stranger thinks he is safe, a mysterious group emerges from darkness. They have been chasing the man all the way to the Sandin’s home. How many of them is never made clear. It seems like once the film kills off one of them, three more appear. They demand the Sandin’s release their target and they will be unharmed. Of course, James doesn’t have the heart to do it, so a siege is laid upon the household and that’s when things get messy.

The film turns into a violent and disgusting home invasion movie. The final 45 minutes of The Purge is essentially one brutal murder after another. I generally don’t have a problem with violence, but this concept deserves better than just mindless violence. Some stuff didn’t make sense to me. One obvious example is that the villains in the film wore masks. Why? I don’t know. Being that murder is legal for 12 hours, hiding your identity is meaningless; except of course if you’re in a horror movie and it’s supposed to be creepy or scary. Another plot point at the end is just ludicrous. I won’t reveal what happens, but let’s just say it adds nothing to the movie except for 10 more minutes of useless screen time.

The Purge isn’t all bad. The direction is fine and the mood established once the actual Purge starts is undeniable. One small thing I liked was that James Sandin wasn’t an idiot. He thinks he’s killed three assailants and instead of walking away, he puts one shot in each of them with his shotgun just to make sure. Small detail I know. But it’s one that I can appreciate. Hawke also has the great ability of looking like a movie star, yet at the same time, pulls off the everyman shtick. But even Hawke can’t save this from being a below standard mess.

Way Too Indie will be giving away an exclusive The Purge T-Shirt to one lucky reader courtesy of Universal Pictures. The Purge stars Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey as a family whose home is invaded during a period called the Purge where all crime is deemed legal. The mission is to survive the night by all means necessary. The Purge hits theaters this Friday (June 7th).

Way Too Indie is giving away: an exclusive T-Shirt and a mask for The Purge to one (1) winner. Universal Pictures will be supplying the material.

How do you enter the giveaway?

Leave a comment or Email Me your favorite Ethan Hawke film.

For additional giveaway entry Tweet at us your favorite Ethan Hawke film: @WayTooIndie #SurviveTheNight

Take The Purge quiz

Synopsis

“The Purge follows one family over the course of a single night… From sundown to sunrise, for 12 hours, all crime is legal. Four people will be tested to see how far they will go to protect themselves when the danger of the outside world invades their home.”

Watch the trailer

In Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset (1995), twentysomethings Jesse (Ethan Hawke), a gruffly charming American, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French beauty with a wily intellect, meet on a train headed to Vienna. They talk…talk…talk the night away, fall in love, and vow to reunite back in Vienna six months later. Cut to nine years later, 2004’s Before Sunset. Jesse and Celine never met in Vienna, but find each other again, this time in Paris. Their adult lives have advanced—Jesse is now married with a son, Hank, and Celine is an environmental activist. Despite being tethered to their new life pursuits, they find their electric attraction is as strong as ever…

…which brings us to Before Midnight, jumping ahead in the story another nine years. The couple—now middle-aged, living in Paris, and with adorable twin daughters—is on holiday in Greece. They’re as loquacious as ever, but their once burning passion is buckling under the weight of mid-life anxiety. Jesse, now divorced, is desperately (guiltily) trying to maintain a meaningful relationship with Hank, who still lives in Chicago with his mom. Jesse proposes to Celine that they move to the states to be closer to the boy, and Celine mistakes this as an order, a blatant disruption of her own life plans. They engage in venomous, cutting verbal warfare over the hypothetical move (hinting at a larger issue of digression), and their contentious energy threatens their future as a family.

The spat unfolds over the course of three acts, the first of which is a single awe-inspiringly long (17 minutes!) shot of the couple chatting on a leisurely drive through sun-baked Greece. Next is a bitterly revealing dinner with friends in which they discuss the nature, joys, and paradoxes of love. The grand finale, set in a seaside hotel room, is an ego-driven, vicious lovers’ quarrel that feels so real it’s scary. They’ve spent years with each other sharpening their skills as verbal pugilists, and now they’ve finally thrown the gloves off. It’s heartbreaking to see the two be so cruel. “I don’t think I love you anymore.” says Celine. The young, playful lovebirds on that train to Vienna feel like a distant, distant memory.

Delpy and Hawke work like a jazz duo, hitting every beat, every note with precision and impeccable timing (this is most impressive in the early 17-minute scene). Their speech patterns and conversational rhythm are startlingly true to life, and the crescendo of their final showdown is paced perfectly. The virtuosity on display is incredible. Linklater’s camera is deliberate and disciplined, filming space without occupying it. He captures the scenes efficiently, with a low shot-count (though he makes every shot count).

Before Midnight is unblemished and smooth-as-silk, flowing from one moment to the next like water. It’s a seamless experience. Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke explore the minutia of long-term commitment through characters with a history we’ve watched develop over years and years. On its own, the film may feel a little mean-spirited, but it works best when viewed in concert with its predecessors. The context of Jesse and Celine’s previous engagements is crucial to enjoyment. This is the definitive Gen-X love story.

The Before films aren’t showy, gimmicky or loud—they’re humble, honest, and true. They weren’t made for the wrong reasons—they didn’t make a ton of money and there are near decade-wide gaps in between them. They’re something of a film industry anomaly. The ballad of Jesse and Celine exists only because three artists wanted to tell a love story in their way, without compromises. Collectively, the films are an unprecedented, 18-year-long, certifiably brilliant work of art that’s a rare gem in the story of cinema. Before Midnight is the best installment in the series, but with luck, this won’t be the last we see of Jesse and Celine. See you in 2022!

In 1995’s, we met Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, respectively) on a train in Vienna and watched them fall in love as they explored the city in Before Sunrise. Nine years later (in real-world time and in theirs), we revisited them in Paris as they reconnected and rekindled their romance in 2004’s Before Sunset. Now in 2013, we check in on their lives yet again in Before Midnight, Richard Linklater’s third installment of his unprecedented romance saga which we saw at SFIFF. Now in their early 40’s and with twin girls, the couple are on holiday in Greece with friends. With their romantic spark smothered by the stresses of reality and their divergent life ambitions, they wrestles with each other over the control of their family’s destiny.

Independent film legend and director of Before Midnight, Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Bernie), and star Julie Delpy (2 Days in New York, 2 Days in Paris) spoke with Way Too Indie in an in-depth, extended interview. In part 1, they discuss the current state of independent film, working with Godard, growing up with the three films, the prospect of a fourth, and more.

Read Part 2 of our interview with Richard Linklater & Julie Delpy

(Before I could ask my first question, Delpy and Linklater took the reins, jumping into a conversation about eating food during production.)

Julie Delpy: We eat, and we enjoy food.

Richard Linklater: The [food on] the first shoot (of Before Sunrise) was alright.

JD: Paris was ok, but not great. It was ok, though. Greece is the top, food-wise. [This is] all we talk about! (laughs).

RL: Food has never played a part in any of the movies. [Maybe] in the next movie (laughs).

JD: [Jesse and Celine] won’t even try to have sex anymore. They’ll just eat!

WayTooIndie: That would be fantastic! Just them eating together, getting old.

JD: They wouldn’t fight, because they’re fed and happy!

WTI: I want to talk about the film industry today. At the San Francisco International Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh made a ‘State of the Industry’ address.

RL: Who better to ask than the guy who quit!

WTI: Exactly (laughs). He explained his departure from the film industry, and basically said that none of the studios are taking risks and are relying solely on the tentpole film business model, stifling creativity. Let me ask you two—what is the state of independent film?

JD: All of my films are financed in Europe, and [Before Midnight] was half financed in Europe.

RL: Clearly, the risks to take are in the indie realm, but it’s been that way for a long time. I think it’s a good time to be a filmmaker. Technology and distribution are getting better. There are new formats. I think it’s a good time…

JD: …to make indie film! I remember working with Jean-Luc Godard in 1987 on History of Cinema. He was filming in video, and I was like, “Ahh! You’re filming in video, that’s horrible!” He said, “It’s the future of real filmmakers, because it’s going to be cheaper. Those huge films that cost $200 million [and even] tiny films will be shot on video. I was like, “What is he talking about? He’s crazy!” But, Godard is a genius, and his mind is in the future.

RL: He sees forward and backward! (laughs) He’s our professor.

JD: I think he might have invented a time machine. At the time, I was like “Oh, video is horrible!” But he was right! [All the way back in] 1986.

Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise (1995)

RL: I think studios have figured it out. I’ve been lucky enough to have films made at the studio level. Dazed and Confused was a studio film. Universal made that film.

JD: There are good people in some studios, and some terrible people that end up being studio heads. I meet studio people sometimes—they never hire me in the end (laughs), but I meet some that mean well, at least. Then, I meet some that are just businessmen who have no clue what a movie is and they don’t give a shit. You [see] everything in this business.

RL: Again, studios have figured it out—what they do and, most importantly, what they don’t do. Then, it’s just up to the rest of the world to fill in that gap. I like that that’s at least on the table. A lot of time is wasted over years just trying to get films made in the studio system. It’s a different league. Once you accept that and forget about it, there’s nothing really to complain about.

JD: [Studios] don’t really want to dig deep into human nature [in their films], you know? [They don’t make those] kinds of films. I went to a meeting recently for a studio film, and the guy who got the [directing] job was a commercial director who came in with a reel of, like, five [other] films he put together. It was so dumb! [He] put in a bit of Juno, a bit of this, a bit of that, and said “This is what I’m going to do!” Any retard can do that! But that’s what the studio went for. Okay, fine. That’s what the movie is going to be—a combination of those five films. A formula. That’s fair. But that’s why [Richard] and I raise money a certain way.

RL: Everybody is kinda on their own.

JD: Europe has a lot of potential in terms of financing real independent films.

RL: We started off [on this project] studio funded, believe it or not. Before Sunrise had a $7 million budget, but we went through Castle Rock and Columbia back in ’94. We were a ‘trickle-down’ studio funded film. Now, we’re off-the-grid independent, but what’s the difference?

WTI: I was fortunate enough to have grown up with the Before films. I saw the first one when I was about 11.

JD: Wow!

WTI: Years from now, when people look back on this series of films, they’ll experience them in a different way. They’ll pop in Before Sunrise, watch it, then pop in Before Sunset and watch you (Julie) and Ethan (Hawke) age nine years in a matter of seconds. That’s amazing in its own way, but can you talk about the special experience of growing up with the films?

RL: You’re living with the films, aging with the films. That’s the intention. That’s what we’re doing, obviously. Those who are chronologically aligned with the films—that’s a special thing.

JD: [There’s] no aging make-up there. It’s not really acting, you know. There aren’t fake noses or fake wrinkles. It’s the real deal.

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Before Sunset (2004)

WTI: In Before Sunset, you have that scene with Ethan where you mention the line that developed in between his eyes after nine years. You can’t do that in any other type of project.

RL: The lack of vanity with Ethan and Julie is important. In the films—we’re all three of us doing this—we’re taking where we are at that moment and whatever life has thrown at us in the past nine years [and] using that as the clay for what we’re sculpting.

WTI: You’ve talked before about how at the end of filming Before Sunrise, you had no intention to make a sequel. Same for Before Midnight—no plans for it after Before Sunset wrapped.

RL: Oh yeah, that’s for sure.

WTI: How long after wrapping the films do the gears start turning in your heads for making the next one?

JD: About five years. We joke around about it.

RL: Yeah, we joke about it because we know Jesse and Celine are still sort of…out there. We also know, as of right now, we have no ideas worthy of making another sequel seriously. [We] have to live the years.

WTI: When the three of you were joking with each other in the five years following Before Sunset about making a sequel, was there a specific story element or idea that you came up with that was the key to you saying “Yeah, we need to make another one.”

RL: We had some general themes. We knew what we couldn’t do again, and we knew where we had to go, but how we got there—we had the luxury of a couple years where we threw out ideas [at each other], developing what we thought would work. It’s rare that you get the chance to hold onto an idea for months, develop it, and be able to change it, take it somewhere else.

JD: Also, we’re really the deciders [in the process]. There’s no one to tell us what to do. [The time we had] was a luxury we wouldn’t have in the studio system. Doing this third film and going into a place that’s forbidden territory for a studio film—it’s a relationship, they’ve been together for a long time, they fight for 25 minutes [straight], it’s talking all the time, there’s no plot, no FBI or anything like that. It’s forbidden territory, and it’s great that we have the luxury to go there. Richard figures that all out!

Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in Before Midnight (2013)

RL: Before Sunrise was a studio film on a super indie budget. The second one was handled by an indie division of a studio. For this one, we were selling it at Sundance trying to get a distributor, completely off-the-grid. It kind of explains how the studio system has changed. My friends who are in the studio system really like the Before films! They just know the studios aren’t going to make them. The studios don’t [pass on these films] because they don’t like them—it’s just not what they do. It doesn’t pay the bills. I love the studio system, in a way. It’s kinda pure.

JD: At least they’re clear, you know? Sometimes, studios that are trying to make ‘indie films’ that aren’t actually indie bothers me more.

RL: Yeah, I hate that middle ground. It’s almost more annoying. They give you an indie budget, and yet, they expect $100, $200 million dollars. ‘Indie films’ are still cast with big names. I was able to do movies without any name actors. Dazed and Confused is another example of how things have changed. An indie distributor today wouldn’t do Dazed, much less a big studio, because there aren’t a lot of name actors in it.

JD: They’re names now! Now, you’d have to pay $50 million for that cast!

Don’t miss Part two of our extended interview, in which Linklater and Delpy discuss the stresses of pulling off Before Midnight‘s extra-long-takes, the evolution of the series, the significance of the sun and midnight in the films’ titles, the great Robert Bresson, and more.

The new horror film Sinister over anything else, asks the serious question of how much supernatural scary shit would one would put up with before relocating their family to safety. The main character, Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) pushes this theory to the limit. I kept wondering how much terror his family had to endure before he decided it was time to find some new digs. I don’t at all want to sound like this is a negative aspect of the film. I actually enjoyed Sinister quite a bit. It was just silly at times how painfully obvious it was that Hawke’s family was in some serious danger and he just didn’t seem to care.

Sinister is about a true crime novelist, Oswalt, who has just moved into a new house with his family while he writes his latest book about the brutal killing of a family. What Ellison doesn’t tell his wife and kids, is that they moved into the house where the murder took place. The first night at the new home, Ellison finds a box of home movies in the attic. Naturally he takes them out of the attic and into his new office where he will spend a large part of the film researching and writing his new book.

What the home films reveal are gruesome murders of a few different families. Like, GRUESOME. In one of the films a family is tied to pool side chairs and pulled into the pool with ropes and another has a family chained, yes chained, inside of a car and burned alive inside of a garage after being drenched in gasoline.

What’s great about Sinister is that it has a good mean streak to it. No one is safe in the film and that’s a quality I really like. A lot of horror films won’t touch the death of kids. Sinister kills kids without blinking an eye. Don’t read this the wrong way, I don’t get enjoyment out of the killing of kids, but whenever a kid is in danger in a movie 9 times out of 10 you know they’re going to be safe when it’s all said and done, ruining any sense of thrill. Sinister doesn’t care about the safety of any kids at all. They are as expendable as the adults are.

Sinister is aptly titled. The film at times is pure evil. Its subject matter along with its presentation felt unforgiving at times. The film is actually a nice addition to the almost dead ‘found footage’ sub-genre that is (hopefully) on its last legs. When Ellison watches these films we are transported to the events and are shown first-hand how ugly people can be. One of these home films, which also includes one of the best scares I’ve seen in years, is very unsettling to watch.

One of the best aspects of Sinister is the filmmaker’s acquisition of actor Ethan Hawke. Hawke, based on his career, belongs nowhere near this type of movie. What Hawke brings however is credibility to the genre. I don’t know what he saw in the script, but I’m glad he decided to do the film, because he is really good in this.

While it might seem like I’m trying to dissuade you from seeing Sinister, I’m not. The film is hard to handle at times and throws its gruesomeness right smack in your face. The filmmakers are obviously going for a new breed of horror with the film’s constant barrage of terror and unsettling violence. It feels like every 5 minutes Ellison is walking through his house at night, in the dark. Shadows loom around him and scares seemingly come at any moment. These scenes were constant and a huge part of the film.

You could make the argument that Ellison is a complete idiot. Argument number one has been covered. Weird shit happens at night that you can’t explain; you leave. Ellison doesn’t. Argument number two: You don’t walk through your dark house at night after you hear some odd noises in the attic, ESPECIALLY THE ATTIC. Ellison does this night after night after night after night. Ellison seems really dumb for how smart of a person he probably is.

Of course you can probably forgive this given the genre it’s in. Things like this are expected for the genre to work. It’s also forgivable because Sinister works really well at scaring you over and over again. I lost track of how many times I sunk into my seat or how many times my girlfriend clinched my hand tighter.

I don’t know how the film will play to audiences. Horror hounds will probably love it. I’m pretty close myself. But mainstream audiences will probably be split on how terrifyingly violent the film is and how good it is at scaring you. Maybe I’m just getting older but some of the violence I found unsettling. It is just hard to deny how much the film scared me. And in the end, isn’t that why we watch them?

Pawel Pawlikowski returns after an eight-year hiatus with The Woman in the Fifth, a thriller that moves at a snail-like pace despite its 80 minute runtime. While it’s two strong lead performances help anchor the film, the storyline ranges from being dull to downright baffling.

Tom (Ethan Hawke), an American writer/professor, arrives in Paris to meet up with his wife and daughter. The meeting doesn’t go as well as he’d planned when it’s revealed that his wife has a restraining order against him, implying some sort of abusive relationship between Tom’s wife and/or daughter. After getting his suitcase stolen, Tom talks his way into staying at a cheap apartment while the shady landlord (Samir Guesmi) offers him work as a doorman for some sort of illegal operation that Tom doesn’t know about (the first time he tries to find out he’s immediately given a death threat).

At the same time Tom starts up a romantic relationship with Margit (Kristin Scott Thomas) and a Polish girl (Joanna Kulig) who works at the café below his apartment. The first hour or so of the film is mostly spent on Hawke finding ways to reconnect with his daughter while working on a massive letter he intends to give her. It takes a long time before some of the more familiar genre elements begin to show up which makes The Woman in the Fifth feel more like watching the weird misadventures of an American in Paris.

That type of film could have worked if any of it was actually interesting. Hawke, who speaks poor French for the majority of the movie, does a good job of making Tom a sympathetic character while showing him as a person seriously damaged by something (several scenes allude to past stints in jail or being under psychiatric care but nothing is ever explained) but there isn’t anything particularly gripping about his journeys across Paris.

It’s only when Margit comes into the picture that things begin to pick up mostly due to Kristin Scott Thomas’ terrific performance. Her meetings with Hawke are the most exciting scenes in the movie, making the subplots involving the landlord and café worker feel like a slog to get through in comparison.

Things eventually take a darker turn towards the end when certain revelations start to come out involving Tom but these scenes, which are reminiscent of Polanski thrillers like Frantic, feel out of place after the methodically paced first hour. The genre elements soon take over everything else, leading to a finale involving a bizarre fade-to-white that doesn’t earn its placement.

The Woman in the Fifth could have worked better if everything didn’t feel so inert. The first half feels more like it’s treading water than giving any insight towards its main character, and the twisty conclusion is more of a head-scratcher than a satisfying payoff. See it for Hawke and Thomas’ good performances if you must, but other than that there isn’t too much to offer.