Every story told becomes filtered through the lens of its storyteller, and rarely does that implication loom as large as when a son directs a film about his mother. In the case of journalist Jacob Bernstein, his debut documentary Everything Is Copy serves as a semi-reverential tribute to his mom, the late great writer Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle), but one with a distinctly personal investment in the narrative. The immediacy of Bernstein’s relationship with the film’s subject is consistently evident. Interview subjects from famous faces like Rosie O’Donnell and Meg Ryan as well as family friends and Bernstein’s father occasionally refer to Ephron as, “your mother,” Jacob appears on screen himself, and much of the movie is devoted to Ephron the person rather than Ephron the essayist and filmmaker. Often, Bernstein appears to be discovering aspects of his mother’s life in time with the film, assembling a general, but intimate look at an icon as remembered by those close to her.

Though many of the featured talking heads in Everything Is Copy are well known, it’s people like Ephron’s sisters and below-the-line crew members from Ephron’s films that provide the most illuminating details on the late author’s life. People fondly recall Ephron’s magnetism; Meryl Streep speaks in awe of the Julie & Julia filmmaker’s unparalleled abilities as a party hostess, bouncing between cooking and conversation. They’re small glimpses into a trailblazer’s story but not the primary focus of Everything Is Copy.

Instead, Bernstein examines the people and relationships that mattered most to Nora. As one of entertainment’s most formative writers of romance and women’s voices, Ephron drew much of her inspiration at times from a turbulent personal life. Specifically, her marriage and eventual separation from Jacob’s father Carl Bernstein. This lead to Ephron’s bestselling book and 1986 film Heartburn, a movie that the documentary covers extensively for its implications on Ephron’s family life. It’s disappointing when the rest of Everything Is Copy skims over the rest of her film career with the breadth of a Wikipedia entry; however, Bernstein chooses to explore the impact that producing Heartburn had on Ephron’s immediate family.

Everything Is Copy skews toward slick convention in its scattershot glimpse at the experiences that helped to define Nora Eprhon’s life. With striking black & white vignettes of famous actresses—Lena Dunham and Reese Witherspoon among them—reading excerpts from Ephron’s best essays to the exquisitely composed shots of Jacob typing away on his laptop, the documentary moves quickly through Ephron’s life story. The approach feels glossy, perhaps even to its own detriment, despite sleek packaging which gives the documentary a sense of having been consciously constructed.

Everything Is Copy is not the wall-to-wall puff piece one might imagine, though it only samples from Ephron’s less favorable habits. The self-centered choices she made and her thin patience—firing many crew members for single mistakes—are acknowledged in passing. Bernstein understandably focuses on his mother’s successes. The documentary contains a highlight reel of a storied career, resembling a kind of visual obituary. For lovers of her work or those with only a passing appreciation for Nora Ephron, Everything Is Copy provides an intimate peek at the writer’s path to celebrity.

Paul Thomas Anderson makes time travel look so easy. His films jump into the era of their stories so wholly, you’d think Anderson walked into the past with his film crew and shot on location. Inherent Vice is no different, with a milieu perfected by shag carpet walls, leather couches, big cars, smoke screens, and plenty of ’70s Los Angeles pulp. So if you’re looking for a gumshoe noir, the credentials are there in abundance, right down to a deadpan narrator. But if you’re looking for a satisfying mystery, Inherent Vice is two and a half hours of brain-twisting that incites feelings, though satisfaction may not be among them. The plot of the film is secondary, nay tertiary, to the atmosphere and characters leading it. So don’t feel bad reacting with utter perplexity to the film’s storyline. And in fact if that’s what your after, maybe read Thomas Pynchon’s book first, because at least there you can earmark pages and underline names.

Watching the film is a bit like trying to grab a goldfish in water. The film begins when stoner private investigator Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) receives an unexpected visit from his ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston). She spills on him the story of her new man Mickey Wolfmann, a real estate mogul whose wife and her lover have a plan to send him away to the looney bin and take his money. The next day Tariq Khalil (Michael Kenneth Williams) visits Doc at his “office”—a room at a gynecology office Doc uses—and hires Doc to find an old jail acquaintance of his who owes him money. That acquaintance just happens to work for Wolfmann. Doc takes a trip out to see the latest land development of Wolfmann’s and finds a sex shop on the premises. He’s knocked unconscious and wakes up next to the dead body of Khalil’s jail buddy, surrounded by police.

Thus enters Detective Christian “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Josh Brolin) a partner-less, Hollywood fame-seeking LAPD officer both determined to screw Doc and use him to help in his own investigation. The exchanges among Doc and Bigfoot are some of the best in the film. After Doc’s Gilligan’s Island-style maritime lawyer, Sauncho Smilax (Benicio Del Toro) helps him out of the police station, he is visited by yet another potential client. A young widow and ex-drug user, Hope Harlingen (Jena Malone) asks Doc to track down her husband, Coy, believing him to be alive. Doc finds Coy (Owen Wilson) easy enough—perhaps a little too easy—when Jade, a girl from the sex shop leads Doc to him while simultaneously warning him to “beware the Golden Fang.” When Shasta goes missing herself, more mystery unravels.

Like fellow LA-based noir Chinatown, the heart of corruption runs deep, and neither the police or FBI can be trusted. Doc is led all over town, and up to a backwards detox house in Ojai. Run-ins with an Aryan biker gang and an underground drug cartel invariably lead to higher stakes. But don’t expect to feel too much tension.

The mystery gets more knotted as this film goes on, broken up with moments of drug-addled weirdness and flashbacks of Doc’s memories of being with Shasta. But like I said the point isn’t exactly to follow along. There’s a lot of dialogue, most of it directly related to the plot, so missing any of it can seem frustrating, but this seems to be Anderson’s intention. In this drug-fueled reverie we’re at the liberty of a distractible hippie. The side-show of interesting things happening around Doc, not to mention the rambling nature of most of the loopy and stoned characters, make it easy to miss key revelations Doc encounters as he sleuths. It’s probably the closest thing to being high any clean person could experience.

The momentum sputters somewhat when the film’s MacGuffin is revealed and suddenly Doc’s motivations seem iffy. And there’s still quite a bit of film left after that point. Things get a little too languid before we’re thrown back into the tornado, almost too confused to feel invested. At that point Inherent Vice becomes more about its moments than its whole, but there are some great ones.

An attempt to track down the people behind the Golden Fang corporation leads to an amusing, jittery, dope-fueled escapade with a coked-out dentist, Dr. Blatnoyd (Martin Short at his weirdest best), and an addict runaway named Japonica (Sasha Pieterse). The huge cast is rounded out by Reese Witherspoon as Doc’s Deputy DA girlfriend, Penny, who simultaneously helps and hinders him in his sleuthing.

Despite the obvious adaptation flaws that make for a more unrealistic mystery—the ratio of discoveries Doc makes versus those that seem to just find him is rather disappointing—Anderson has crafted a two and a half hour dream sequence that is trippy but also diverting. And believe me it’s even better the second time around, not to mention necessary if you want to feel that you’re truly grasping the plot.

Phoenix proves over and over that in the hands of Paul Thomas Anderson he’s quite malleable, and with his mutton chops and a simultaneously stoned but pleasant expression, he’s a surprisingly likable anti-hero. Brolin and his flat-top haircut embodies menacing and ridiculous with an interesting charisma. But as Doc’s dream-girl, Katherine Waterston is the obvious breakout from the film. She really does shine, though it’s interesting to note that in many ways Inherent Vice is more of a bromance than a romance as Doc and Bigfoot, and to some degree Doc and Coy, have the more curious dynamics.

Anderson is nothing if not a man attuned to detail and the film’s visuals reflect his carefulness. It’s at all times psychedelic and beautiful. Adding ballast to each crafted frame is a perfectly curated soundtrack. Anderson may have erred on the side of density for what will most likely be considered a stoner film, and it’s not likely to earn respect as his best film by any means, but there’s always pleasure in watching an auteur work. If you give yourself up to the madcap kookiness of it all, Inherent Vice will lead you down the rabbit hole on an enjoyable escape and leave you with a contact high that isn’t at all unpleasant.

We’ve been hearing a lot about 2014 as a blah year for movies, a notion seemingly supported by a lack of gut-wrenching and heartrending heavy hitters like last year’s 12 Years a Slave, Dallas Buyers Club, and Gravity. And the performances from those films were just so much more obviously weighty, it wasn’t hard to pick out the ones that gripped us, because, well, they gripped us pretty hard.

But that’s why this year has been so wonderful. Instead of somber dramas, some of 2014’s best films have been comedic (Birdman), scary (The Babadook), and filled with unlikeable characters (Whiplash, Nightcrawler). And this is where the fun of nuancing and parsing out the best performances of this year begins. Because this year we felt different emotions than we did last year, but oh boy did we feel them, and that has all to do with some seriously good acting.

Our list of 2014’s best performances considers all actors as equals regardless of lead or supporting role and with no division of male or female actors. Listed in no particular order is our list of the performances Way Too Indie staff found most compelling this year.

Way Too Indie’s 15 Best Performances of 2014

Dan Stevens – The Guest

The role Stevens plays in Adam Wingard’s The Guest is much more difficult than is usually required for this type of flashy genre film. In the film, “David” must appeal to every character he is trying to dupe in different ways. When he springs himself on the family of a fallen comrade, he has to be a sensitive young man to Laura, an ultra cool badass to Luke, a beer-drinking everyman with Spencer and a hunky protector to Anna. He also, though, has to be all of that (and more) to the viewer, even when we know something is up. The characters in the film may take a while to figure him out (indeed, some of them too late), the nature of this genre throwback sets up the viewer from the start to know “David” isn’t who he says he is, though we may not know the extent of his capabilities. The Guest is one of the funnest movie-going experiences of the year because we love seeing “David” fit all of these roles. We revel in his lie, cheering him on as he beats up high school kids and somehow survives an intense shootout with special forces. But we also genuinely like him. Deep down, he tricks us, too. [Aaron]

Eddie Redmayne – The Theory of Everything

Regardless of your stance on James Marsh’s Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, one thing almost everyone can agree on is Eddie Redmayne’s outstanding performance. The film begins during the early stages of Stephen’s declining physical abilities, the occasional coffee spilling and pen fumbling are chalked up to general clumsiness. While this foreshadows the tragedy ahead, it more importantly allows viewers to witness the famous physicist before the disease takes away his ability to walk and communicate. What’s impressive to watch is the transformation into this physically demanding role, which required limiting all of his body movements while still containing his charming personality. The fundamental testament to Redmayne’s work occurs near the end when he emerges from his wheelchair in a dream sequence. It’s a stunning moment, watching him actually walk and then be subsequently reminded that Redmayne is indeed acting, which speaks volumes to his extraordinary performance. He’s sure to gather notice during this award season. [Dustin]

Essie Davis – The Babadook

There’s a level of fatigue only parents know; it comes with raising a child and it is calculated using the denominators 24, 7, and 365. Still, most parents wouldn’t trade it for all the Sandman’s sand. There are a few who might, though, if given the chance, and one of those parents can be found in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook. Her name is Amelia, and how Essie Davis gasps life into this desperate single mother is staggering. Long before Mr. Babadook wreaks the havoc that spirals Amelia into near-madness, her son Samuel brings a little terror of his own. He is six years’ worth of boundless energy with a volume that Spinal Tap would envy, all complicated by an obsession with a monster that doesn’t (yet) exist. This first half of the film is where Davis mesmerizes. She’s not just the tired single mom with the full-time job and the hyper kid. She’s that woman, plus the one whose husband was killed while taking her to give birth to Samuel six years prior. This background introduces resentment into a mother/child relationship that shouldn’t have such a thing. Davis keeps that resentment one slivery layer below the surface, which puts normal parental fatigue deep in her rearview mirror and has her speeding down the road of emotional exhaustion. With every tired sigh a defeated cry for mercy and with every momentary slouch a little less resistance against the weight of regret, Davis portrays defeated like no one before her. And then the Babadook shows up. [Michael]

J.K. Simmons – Whiplash

Irredeemable. That’s Terence Fletcher in a nutshell. He’s the meanest, nastiest, most abusive jazz instructor on earth in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, and he will never, ever apologize for calling his students “limp-dick fucks” or giving them valuable performance tips like, “That’s not your boyfriend’s dick; don’t come too early.” Playing Fletcher is the incomparable J.K. Simmons, who’s an absolute force of nature in the drummer drama, the veins on his bald head pulsing as he berates his poor students, muscles bulging under his tight black shirt. He calls them faggots, too. Again, no apologies.

What Simmons brings to the role that lesser actors wouldn’t is utter remorselessness: this is who Fletcher is, and you either take it up the ass or he’ll kick you the fuck out. That’s the deal. He’ll make you tremble and weep because he’s not human; he’s evil incarnate, and he doesn’t care about redemption or the happiness of himself or others. He exists for a single purpose, letting nothing stand in his way, least of all sympathy or morality. It’s an unflattering role, and Simmons embraces it without ego. No one could have done better. [Bernard]

Jake Gyllenhaal – Nightcrawler

It’s not entirely surprising that Nightcrawler received comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Despite the differences between those two movies, the hard to resist likability of both films’ psychotic leads makes it hard to root against them completely even as they commit their most vile acts. What makes Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom even more frightening than De Niro’s Travis Bickle is Bloom’s ability to exist within the system. He embodies many of the characteristics of a model employee in a modern, competitive, capitalist climate. His ghostly pale complexion serves to accentuate the dark shadows created on Bloom’s emaciated face (Gyllenhaal lost 20 pounds to help give Bloom that hollowed-out appearance) and make his presence even more unsettling. As Bloom, Gyllenhaal exploits people’s ugliest indulgences to get ahead in the world of freelance crime journalism and is rewarded for his lack of empathy, particularly in people’s darkest moments. The actor brings Bloom to life through an unhinged, masterful performance. Delivering lines of dialog with an unnaturally chipper tone, Gyllenhaal gives Bloom the social acumen of an alien that’s slipped on human clothing. The actor has never been better and the character is hauntingly familiar. [Zachary]

Marion Cotillard – Two Days, One Night

As Sandra, the worker desperately fighting for her job over the course of one weekend, Marion Cotillard pulls off her best performance to date. After taking time off work due to severe depression, Sandra finds out her bosses have given her the boot through a borderline sadistic method: by letting her coworkers vote on either letting Sandra keep her job or receiving their yearly bonus. After convincing her superiors to hold a re-vote after the weekend, Sandra visits each one of her 16 coworkers to ask them to give up their bonus in order to save her job. Cotillard, whose face could act as the definition of sympathy, fully embodies Sandra, and her raw emotions put the viewer right with her when she goes from hopelessly despondent to joyously optimistic. As clichéd as it sounds, Cotillard simply is Sandra. Sometimes it’s hard to watch an A-list star on-screen and separate the performance from the celebrity; that’s never the case with Cotillard, who does it with so much ease it’s no wonder why she’s considered one of the greatest actors working today. [C.J.]

Michael Keaton – Birdman

Acting within the constraints of Birdman’s captivating long-takes would be a challenge for any actor, but as Riggan Thomson, Michael Keaton bears the brunt of the film’s heavy lifting. Without the benefits of traditional film editing pulling together the best parts from several takes, Birdman’s stars are required to be at their best for the duration of every long-take scene they’re in. This is doubly true of Keaton as the film’s lead, guiding the audience and the camera through claustrophobic Broadway backstage hallways during quick-tongued Sorkin-esque walk-and-talks. Riggan teeters on the brink of sanity, and in Keaton’s embodiment of the character you can almost see the threads coming loose. When the tone abruptly shifts, Keaton demonstrates an enviable flexibility as an actor, turning a belly laugh into an unexpectedly poignant confession within only a few lines. As the character facing a series of obstacles that threaten to prematurely end his self-mounted comeback before it can begin, Keaton clutches to whatever empathetic strings are left for Riggan, while also allowing the character to slip further away from lucidity. His performance is simultaneously among the funniest and most heartfelt of 2014. [Zachary]

Patricia Arquette – Boyhood

While Ellar Coltrane grows up in front of our eyes as Mason, the boy in Richard Linklater’s everyday-epic Boyhood, sitting on the periphery throughout the coming of age journey is Patricia Arquette, as the boy’s mom. Mason’s moral makeup is shaped as he watches his single mom face stiff adversity (“a parade of drunken assholes” he once calls it), endure and adapt. We always see her from a distance, the same distance most boys keep from their mom.

She’s his anchor, but what’s special about the character is that she isn’t anchored to the ground herself; she’s on her own life journey, parallel to young Mason’s, and grows as much as he does. Over the colossal 12-year production, Arquette managed to form the most beautiful character arc in the film. Her performance is so rounded, so natural, so cogent, that at times Boyhood feels more like a home movie than a marketable Oscar contender. [Bernard]

Reese Witherspoon – Wild

We all have that friend, the one we watch go through life making incomprehensible decisions and reaping the obvious and inevitable consequences. In Wild, Reese Witherspoon is that friend, walking us through the steps that led to one woman’s particularly devastating life choices. And walking the literal steps that lead to her redemption. Witherspoon evokes our compassion, compelling us not to leave this woman for dead, to sleep in the bed she’s made. Perhaps it is how well Witherspoon helps us identify with Cheryl in the little things: her simple humanity in wrestling with her monster of a hiking bag, the fear in her eyes running into mostly men alone on the trail, her rage-filled meltdown when she loses a boot in the opening scene. All of our interactions with Witherspoon throughout the film are intimate and raw; showing us the heart of Cheryl open and vulnerable. Even her thoughts and muttered curses echo what ours might. Despite the depths that her darkness had reached, Witherspoon has us cheering for her to climb out. Her achievement in this is quite incredible: showing us the humanity in the hopeless. [Scarlet]

Rosamund Pike – Gone Girl

Rosamund Pike’s maliciously delicious turn as Amy Dunne in David Fincher’s Gone Girl stands at the very top of the breakthrough 2014 performance pile for me, precisely because it comes from an actor who’s been around for years. Though making a noticeable presence in every role, Pike has always been in the background. For what feels like her entire career, she’s been playing second fiddle to the likes of Pierce Brosnan (Die Another Day), Tom Cruise (Jack Reacher), Keira Knightley (Pride and Prejudice) and Edgar Wright’s Cornetto boys (The World’s End). But all of those roles were worth their trials and errors because they led her to Amy, the part of a lifetime and one that will assuredly change Pike’s career (she’s looking pretty locked for a deserved Oscar nomination at this point). Amy Dunne is the kind of character that takes the fiddle and in an act of magic, snaps it in half and turns it into a saxophone with enough gusto to lead an entire orchestra. Thanks to the story’s structure, Amy is a bundle of multiple personalities (the charmed girlfriend, the doting daughter, the victim, the victor, the bitch, the cool girl, the wife from a modern nightmare), which Pike unpacks like a pro. “There is before Fincher, and after Fincher,” Pike has said on the Gone Girl campaign trail, so it’s pretty clear where the inspiration comes from, but the talent is hers and hers alone. She captures every complex facet of this satirized monster with such precision, charm, and presence; it’s impossible to root against her even when recoiling from her actions and certain personality traits. She’s a revelation, and here’s hoping strong female roles are written with her in mind from now on. [Nik]

Scarlett Johansson – Under the Skin

Johansson has already had a slew of breakout performances that have put her in the current acting elite (Vicky Christina Barcelona, Her, etc.) but none have been as commanding as her nameless character in Under the Skin. She dons a more-than-passable British accent and often dons no clothing. She has to be realistically enticing without overplaying sexuality. The film is borderline incomprehensible, but it doesn’t matter with the strong force at its center. And the more that has been revealed about the film’s strange production, the more interesting and incredible her performance seems. Many of her nameless invader’s conversations and confrontations happen with non-actors who don’t know they are being filmed. Improvisation is a difficult skill for any actor, but usually improvisation in film is done in a fairly controlled setting – everyone knows their general part and are working together to get the heart of the scene right. Here, though, the environment is unpredictable and Johansson proves she’s always ready for what may come. Not to mention pulling off being one of the world’s most recognizable movie stars slipping about incognito. [Aaron]

Stacy Martin – Nymphomaniac

There are a lot of stars that adorn the sensual confines of Lars Von Trier’s newest controversial film, Nymphomaniac. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgard, Christen Slater, Shia LaBeouf, Uma Thurman and Willem Dafoe are just some of the names that headline. But surprisingly none of them take the spotlight (Thurman comes close) away from film debutant Stacy Martin who makes a big statement as an actress with her role here. It’s been years since we’ve seen a début from a young actress like the one that’s on display here (at the moment, I can’t recall one). Martin is fearless as she portrays a teenage version of Joe (Gainsbourg) who goes from one sexual escapade to another. Von Trier puts her in all sorts of scenes that require contrasting emotional levels. Sometimes she needs to be vulnerable. Sometimes weak, other times powerful. Sometimes even shameless. Sometimes she needs to be more than one at once and never does she shy away. The role would be demanding enough in the hands of any filmmaker but the fact that it’s helmed by Von Trier (who is known for being tough on his leading ladies) only amplifies how impressive her performance is. Mark my words, Martin is going to be a star. [Blake]

Steve Carell – Foxcatcher

When Steve Carell first appears in Bennet Miller’s Foxcatcher, his based-in reality character, John du Pont, invites Channing Tatum’s Mark Schultz into an extravagant trophy room to talk about the business proposal he has. And at first its hard to focus much on what he says because his nose and teeth are so obviously not Carell’s. And then it becomes clear nothing of what we see on that screen is Carell. His slow manner of speech and the strange way he looks down his nose at people and sometimes doesn’t bother to look at them at all. The way he speaks with a pompous pretense, always trying to throw in some tidbit or fact of little circumstance in a weak attempt to prove his superiority. His stiffness, both arrogant and insecure simultaneously. And under it all a boiling tension, an internal battle of psychosis. Carell gives us this in every single scene he’s in. As the spoiled and unloved heir to a massive fortune, his misguided attempts to build love out of the sportsman around him are more than pathetic, they are disturbing. Carell provides layers upon layers to what could easily have been a simple story of mental breakdown and murder. It’s the sort of performance that stays in your head and demands you go home and watch a few episodes of The Office to calm down. [Ananda]

Tilda Swinton – Snowpiercer

To quote Amy Schumer at this year’s Gotham Awards: “Tilda. Fucking. Swinton.” It’s been an amazing year for the Scottish actress, who played three truly memorable roles. It’s just as easy to talk about her amazing turns in Only Lovers Left Alive and The Grand Budapest Hotel, but for us it’s her role as Minister Mason in Snowpiercer that left the biggest impression. Originally written for a man, Swinton came on board and turned the character from a sinister, mild-mannered character to a garish, over the top figure. The absurdity of her character, from the giant glasses to the fake teeth and Yorkshire accent, also gives the film’s gritty first act a bit of levity, while hinting at the bizarre, distorted moments to come as the characters make their way to the front of the train. This is why Tilda Swinton is one of the best; it’s a showy, distinctive role, but it singlehandedly supports and elevates the film to an even better place. [C.J.]

Timothy Spall – Mr. Turner

Mike Leigh has always been something of an ‘actor’s ’ director, often giving his leads opportunities to improvise and find their characters, and in Mr. Turner this approach has been rewarded by a superb performance by Timothy Spall. There are few actors who can inhabit a role quite like Timothy Spall. Spall channels the vivid life of Turner’s paintings into the character, injecting Turner with boundless energy, enthusiasm and a lust for life. Yet Spall also delicately reveals Turner’s flaws; his stubbornness, his lack of empathy for his estranged family and, as he reaches the end of his life, his frustration at his own fragility. What is particularly impressive about Spall’s performance is the sheer array of emotions he conveys non-verbally throughout the film, often saying a thousand words with a simple grunt. Despite being surrounded by a talented cast Spall outshines them all and bears the weight of the film on his shoulders. It is a role that has already earned him the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and there is a strong chance that he could be in the running for Best Actor at next year’s Oscars. [Eddy]

We Can’t Help But Mention:

We could never include everyone we’d like, but some honorable mentions include: Uma Thurman (Nymphomaniac), John Lithgow (Love is Strange), Jonathan Pryce (Listen Up Philip), Rene Russo (Nightcrawler), David Oyelowo (Selma), Sheila Vand (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night), Julianne Moore (Still Alice), Jessica Chastain (Miss Julie), Laura Dern (Wild), the cast of Winter Sleep, the cast of We Are The Best!, the cast of Leviathan, cast of Fury, cast of Interstellar, and Agata Kulesza and Agata Trzebuchowska of Ida.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with an oversized backpack and a boot thrown off a mountain. Or at least that’s how Wild begins, the adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir recounting her decision at 26 to hike the Pacific Crest Trail in an attempt to face the person she’d become. In the film’s opening scene, Cheryl—played with straightforward vulnerability by Reese Witherspoon—sits atop a mountain crest and sings a line from Simon and Garfunkel’s “El Condor Pasa”, her bloody and exposed foot reveals a toenail barely holding on. “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail,” she whispers as she rips the toenail off, rocking backward in pain and incidentally knocking her boot off the mountain. So she takes the other boot off, throws it after its partner and screams in rage. And that’s Cheryl. One part sheer determination, two parts anger.

Wild falls into the same vein as other find-thyself-in-nature style movies, like Into the Wild, with a few of the same frustrations attached. Primarily the scenario of people facing nature with very little experience in naïve attempts to prove themselves. Oh, how nature loves to laugh at such people. It’s hard to be prepared for the harshness of the outdoors while navel-gazing ones way to personal peace and acceptance. I fully expected to find myself annoyed with Cheryl, but here is where director Jean-Marc Vallée proves his worth in his ability to take true-life characters with rough edges and paint them on to the screen in colors that attract and stir emotional identifiability.

Last year Vallée gave us Dallas Buyers Club, a remarkable bio-pic that earned Matthew McConaughey his first Oscar. The same grasp on perspective he offered last year on a feisty HIV survivor in 1980s Texas, he wields delicately in Wild.  The film doesn’t follow a clear line of action, allowing Cheryl’s journey to pull from her the pieces of her past that brought her to her present. In fact, much of the film is her daily routine. Packing up, hiking for miles alone, and setting up camp each night. As she hikes memories from her past surface giving us insight into not necessarily what led to her self-destructive behavior, but how at rock bottom a few months alone in the wilderness seemed as good a way as any to wipe a slate clean.

These memories include many of her mother Bobbi, who raised Cheryl and her brother on her own after escaping an abusive marriage. Bobbi is played by Laura Dern with an uninhibited sense of wonder and optimism that is never idealistic. Bobbi’s wisdom often comes back to her, her mother’s mantra pushing her forward, urging Cheryl to put herself “in the way of beauty.” The loss of her mother to cancer only a few years previous to her hike is clearly a pain she carries, but doesn’t seem to be the reason for Cheryl’s string of rash behavior, including habitually cheating on her seemingly wonderful husband (Thomas Sadoski) and falling in with heroin users. When her escapist behavior leads to an unwanted pregnancy—and the rare scenes we get with Gaby Hoffman as her best friend—Cheryl rashly attaches herself to the nearest wild idea in the form of a pamphlet for the PCT.

Both Witherspoon and Dern are likely to gain some much deserved awards recognition for their roles, especially impressive for Dern who doesn’t actually have that much screen time. But Witherspoon is the one who carries the film with the same fortitude she portrays hauling Cheryl’s comically huge backpack. Narration interspersed throughout the film with Cheryl’s complaints about her bruises, her food options, her varying levels of fatigue, and of course her emotional breakthroughs, are all inserted in an unobtrusive manner and spoken by Witherspoon with no hint of overt sentimentality.

With cinematographer Yves Bélanger on his side, Vallée certainly gets some exceptional footage of the PCT, but there’s hardly a nature shot that doesn’t place Cheryl squarely in the middle of it. The story is hers, and her setting, while gorgeous, is the static unchanging constant that provides her a way to focus in the midst of her tailspin. Nature is of course quite treacherous, but she faces each hardship with the determination that nothing could be more dangerous than the danger she poses herself. She encounters several people in her journey, some of them providing clear examples of the added pressure to be a single woman, vulnerable on the trail (not to mention in life). An interaction with two hunters in a scene in the woods is especially chilling. Nick Hornby adapted the novel for screen, and he excellently weaves Cheryl’s solitude, memories, and interactions along a wayward path, that while not always logical, helps prove Cheryl’s point that we aren’t only the sum of our experiences, in our ‘now’ we’re the interpretation of those experiences.

Wild is funny, harrowing, gritty, and should resonate with anyone who’s had any shred of self-doubt. Those looking for a survival tale will find a decidedly more contemplative story, where surviving one’s own condemnation proves at least equally as challenging as battling the elements.

As a woman who changed her last name to Strayed after her divorce as some sort of personal penance, Cheryl Strayed is clearly the sort of woman who would always need to be loud and explicitly honest about her transformation to feel complete in it. And so she must find it comforting to know her portrayal on-screen holds an amplifier to her story and universalizes it for anyone who’s needed to find their own freedom and the strength to accept themselves.

Closing weekend of the Mill Valley Film Festival just proves the authority of this small festival. It’s rare for a film festival to have such a high percentage of excellent films. No wonder its gained a reputation as a finely curated festival with its tastes squarely in line with mass audience appeal, not to mention the Academy. Surrounded by the beauty of Marin County, and with the emphasis always fixed on the art and not a hectic or saturated film lineup, Mill Valley provides one of the best festival experiences a modern movie lover can have. It’s been an excellent 11 days and the last two days left us especially satisfied.

Part-Time Bad Guy

[Ananda]

With film leads Wes Bentley and Jason Isaacs on hand to support him, first time director Saar Klein happily introduced his film After the Fall Saturday night, immediately telling the audience he wanted them to feel they could laugh, even if it seemed uncomfortable. An award-winning editor, Saar has worked most especially with Terrence Malick with whom he edited The Thin Red Line and The New World. If nothing else, Saar at least picked up on Malick’s sense of quiet storytelling, and his film uses the technique expertly.

The tale of an insurance adjustor, Bill Scanlon (Wes Bentley), who has recently been laid off, the film begins with Bill continuing his daily routine in order to avoid disclosing to his wife (Vinessa Shaw) that their situation has changed. Exhausting all his contacts, Bill tries with no success to find himself another job. At a particularly low moment he takes his pistol, wanders off into the desert and contemplates just what he’s capable of. Driven by thirst he wanders into a nearby model home, stumbling upon an adulterous couple using the house’s accommodations. They mistake his gun in hand as a stickup and offer all their money. Driven to new lows, Bill takes it, willingly. Thus Bill’s entrance into the quick cash life of petty crime, and as the bills pile up, he risks more and more to steal his way into keeping his family afloat.

As an especially upright man in every other aspect of his life, it’s not surprising Bill befriends a local down and out detective (Jason Isaacs), despite the threat this poses to his new career. But Bill’s downfall may just be that he isn’t actually a bad guy. Klein’s morally ambiguous tale is appealing for much the same reasons Breaking Bad sucks viewers in, and it even takes place in Albuquerque as well. But whereas Walter White honed his criminal craft, Bill is always at odds with his new profession, and at every moment at war with himself. Bentley handles the complexity with ease, his face reflecting Bill’s innocence, but always with an undercurrent of tension, ready to snap. Isaacs as Detective McTiernan is more of a stretch, but Klein pulls it all together into an intriguing and compelling film.

In The Way Of Beauty

[Ananda]

As if bringing us the raw and transcendent Dallas Buyers Club last year didn’t prove his worth enough, Jean-Marc Vallée presents another stirring biopic. Based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, the film Wild recounts Strayed’s journey to face her demons by walking 1,100 miles on one of the longest trails in America, up California to Washington. Buying herself REI equipment she doesn’t know how to use, and loading up an enormous hiking pack, Cheryl (mesmerizingly played by Reese Witherspoon) slowly sets out along a path in the Mojave desert with no clear ambition other than to try and find where she went wrong in life. Still in grief at the loss of her mother (portrayed in memories by Laura Dern in scene-stealing loveliness) and having recently divorced her husband after cheating on him multiple times and fallen in with heroin users, Cheryl’s final fall to the bottom was an unplanned pregnancy and subsequent abortion.

Cheryl’s distrust of men is everywhere throughout the film, instilled in her by an abusive alcoholic father, and perpetuated by the occasionally skeezy man  she runs into as a single woman on a reclusive trail. Some of her more harrowing moments have less to do with the wild and more to do with the people she comes across. With a subtle and highly effective narrative running throughout the film, the words of the book are used excellently to showcase the transformation happening within Cheryl during her journey. As she learns to forgive herself. As she learns to let go of her anger at the universe for taking her mother so early. As she finds strength and manages never to give up despite having permission to do so.

While there is clearly plenty of beautiful landscape to look at throughout the film, Vallée’s camera focus always includes Cheryl. It’s her connection to the world she’s trudging through that allows viewers to experience her realizations with her. With exquisite cinematography by Yves Bélanger and a perfectly paced screenplay by Nick Hornby, this film may just win as my favorite of the festival. And I’m not alone in my thinking. The California Film Institute awarded the unparalleled Laura Dern with the Mill Valley Award for her performance in Wild, presented to her by Andrew Stanton, Pixar legend extraordinaire. Her passion for the film was eloquently stated in her acceptance of the award, and I’d be surprised not to hear her name circulating among award buzz in the next few months.

Hope Endures In the Desert Sun

[Bernard]

After watching Abderrahmane Sissako’s stunning ensemble piece Timbuktu, the general feeling people walking out of the theater was one of deflation. “I’m going to need a pick-me-up after that one!” I heard someone say. The film, set in the harsh desert landscape of the titular North African city, does admittedly end on a tragic note. The impression that endures, however, is of the beautiful relationships and quiet moments shared by the characters before the film’s dark finale. C’est la vie.

The film’s handful of stories are more parallel than interwoven, overlapping at key moments. The larger theme of the picture is the contentious, often violent dynamic between the oppressive Muslim jihadists patrolling the streets with their weapons and the indomitable citizens who refuse to compromise their humanity, often paying the highest price for their transgressions.

These are sweet people: We see a loving family of three, living a quiet life under the Sahara stars, herding cattle during the day; a group of musicians, playing their instruments quietly so as not to alert nearby jihadists. Despite their innocuous lifestyles, their oppressors always loom, ready to descend: A young woman is forced to marry a jihadist man, despite her mother’s refusal; a woman fishmonger is taken into custody after refusing to wear gloves. Their fighting spirit is inspiring, and Sissako does African cinema proud.

Joaquin Phoenix wanders through a 70s minefield of strange characters with some impressive sideburns in the first trailer released by Warner Bros. for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s new film, Inherent Vice. In the film, based on the Thomas Pynchon novel, Phoenix plays Doc Sportello, a druggie detective searching for his missing ex-girlfriend. Filled with plenty of 70s craziness, the trailer is a bit hard to follow plot-wise, but features the impressive cast joining Phoenix including Josh Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Jena Malone, Benicio Del Toro, and an incredibly haggard looking Martin Short.

The highly anticipated film has a December 12 release date and is world premiering this Saturday at the New York Film Festival. Be sure to catch our current NYFF coverage and enjoy the trailer below.

Inherent Vice trailer

The Mill Valley Film Festival has built a reputation as a showcase for future Oscar winners and emergent independent and foreign filmmakers. The festival has hosted five of the last six Best Picture Oscar winners, rolling out the red carpet for A-list actors and filmmakers while heavily supporting local filmmakers as well. Nestled in one of the most beautiful places in the world, filmmakers, actors, and attendees alike are drawn to Mill Valley every year by the easy, low-stress atmosphere, the gorgeous surroundings, the varied special events and, of course, the films. In its 37th year, the festival looks to deliver everything loyal festival-goers expect and more.

“Variety has said once–probably more than once–that Mill Valley has the ambience of a destination festival and the clout of an urban festival,” said festival founder and director Mark Fishkin at yesterday’s press conference. “Change” is one of the themes of this year’s festival, with the folks behind the festival embracing the evolving landscape of film and film distribution. Said Fishkin: “For us, change is inevitable, but we are still part of a special division of the film industry, which is theatrical exhibition. We take our role as curators very seriously, whether it’s films that are coming from the Bay Area or films coming from Cannes.”

The Homesman

Tommy Lee Jones‘ latest offering, The Homesman, will open the festival, with star Hilary Swank set to attend. The film is a Western, following a claim jumper (Jones) and a young woman (Swank) as they escort three insane woman through the treacherous frontier between Nebraska and Iowa. Fishkin describes it as a “feminist Western” that is “extremely moving. We’re just so proud to be showing it in this year’s festival.”

Co-headlining opening night is Men, Women, & Children, Jason Reitman‘s new film starring Ansel Elgort, Adam Sandler, Judy Greer, and Jennifer Garner that explores the strange effect the internet age has on parents and their teens. Reitman will be in attendance to present. Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies will also play opening night, completing the killer triple-threat. The film, about a woman stuck in slacker adolescence, stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Keira Knightley, and Sam Rockwell.

The festival looks to finish as strong as it started, with Jean-Marc Valée‘s follow-up to Dallas Buyers Club, spiritual quest movie Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed, who embarked on a 1,100-mile hike to heal deep emotional wounds. Laura Dern also stars, and will be honored with a tribute.

French favorite Juliette Binoche stars across Kristen Stewart in Clouds of Sils Maria. Binoche plays an actress who’s asked to return to a play that made her famous 20 years ago, but this time in an older role, forcing her to reflect on the young woman she once was and what she’s become since. Another French actress who can do no wrong, Marion Cotillard is outstanding in the Dardenne brothers’ new film, Two Days, One Night. Recalling the best of Italian neorealism, the film follows a woman who’s got a weekend to convince her co-workers to forego their bonuses to save her job.

The Theory of Everything

Two emerging young actors will be spotlighted as Eddie Redmayne and Elle Fanning will be in attendance to discuss their respective new films. Fanning stars in Low Down, which views the troubled life of jazz pianist Joe Albany (John Hawkes) from the perspective of his teenage daughter (Fanning). Set in the ’70s, the film also stars Glenn Close, Peter Dinklage, and Lena Headey. In a breakout performance, Redmayne portrays legendary physicist Stephen Hawking in the stirring biopic The Theory of Everything, which is quickly generating momentum on the festival circuit.

Several other films that have been building steam on the festival circuit will play at the festival as well. English landscape painter J. M. W. Turner is played brilliantly by Timothy Spall in Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner, which we loved at Cannes. Also portraying a significant real-life figure is Benedict Cumberbatch, who stars in The Imitation Game, the story of English mathematician Alan Turing and his groundbreaking intelligence work during World War II. Steve Carell‘s highly-anticipated turn in Foxcatcher as John Du Pont, the man who shot olympic great David Schultz, will surely continue to stir up Oscar talk as the film plays late in the festival. Robert Downey Jr. stars as a big city lawyer who returns home to defend his father (Robert Duvall), the town judge, who is suspected of murder.

Metallica is set to play a pleasantly unexpected role in the festival as his year’s artist in residence, with each of the four members of the band presenting a film. Drummer Lars Ulrich has naturally chosen to highlight Whiplash, Damien Chazelle‘s drama about a young aspiring drummer and his relentless instructor. Chazelle will also be in attendance. Lead singer James Hetfield has chosen to present a classic, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, while guitarist Kirk Hammett, one of the world’s foremost horror aficionados, will offer up Dracula vs. Frankenstein. Bassist Robert Trujillo is showing a sneak peek at a documentary he produced himself, Jaco, which tells the story of legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius.

On the local side of things is a special screening of Soul of a Banquet, a documentary by filmmaker Wayne Wang  about celebrity chef Cecilia Chang. Wang and Chang, who both have deep San Francisco Bay Area roots, will be in attendance to celebrate their storied careers and present their film collaboration. Chuck Workman, another Bay Area legend who’s best known for editing the clip reels at the Oscars, will be honored at the festival as well.

Hot off directing 3-time Oscar winner Dallas Buyers Club, Jean-Marc Vallée‘s next film has released its first trailer — check it out below!

Wild seems very much in the groove for Vallée as a true-life drama following a strong central character. Based on a memoir by Cheryl Strayed, the film stars Reese Witherspoon (who also serves as a producer) as a woman who is recovering from a failing marriage and the death of her mother by seeking nature. From the looks of the trailer, this may be a performance to resurrect Witherspoon’s recently quiet career. The ingredients seem to be there for an Oscar nomination push.

Wild‘s screenplay was written by celebrated author and screenwriter Nick Hornby. Laura Dern and Gaby Hoffmann co-star. The film is scheduled for a December release from Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Watch trailer for Wild

Jeff Nichols’ latest film is now finally hitting the theaters after nearly a full year since its warm receptive premiere at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Mud centers on two teenage boys who end up befriending a fugitive that is looking to dodge the men who are out looking for him. Nichols elects to bring back the lead from his previous thriller (Take Shelter) Michael Shannon, but gives him a much smaller role in this film. The lead in Mud is given to Matthew McConaughey, who has been on an amazing ride of films as of late, and dominates the screen the moment he appears. This film just solidifies the fact that Jeff Nichols is a director to keep an eye out for in the future.

Mud (Matthew McConaughey) just can’t seem to catch a break. Just as he is getting settled into his new home in a boat that is stuck in a tree, the appropriately named Mud’s world is invaded by two young boys. The developing friendship is less than ideal, but both groups are sincere and honest with each other, and both have much to learn from the situation. Jeff Nichols finds a nice niche yet again with his original take on the coming of age story. Mud pulls many elements together nicely to mark a solid third film for the young director.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are young, poor, and best friends. The spend most of their free time working odd jobs with family members and dreaming of an easier life. They live on a river in the backwoods of Arkansas and despite their outcast appearance are intelligent and well meaning. While exploring one day, they stumble across Mud, a dirty, mysterious figure living in an unusual circumstance. The two groups decide to form a loose business relationship and the boys soon learn there might be a more dangerous side to their new friend.

Mud‘s screenplay blends a lot of nice dramatic elements and, despite some slow pacing, really hooks the viewer in. The acting is phenomenal on a lot of levels. Matthew McConaughey takes over the film the second he appears on screen. Mud looks like a cartoon character, but is portrayed with a nice subtlety that makes the audience instantly finds themselves sympathetic to his cause. He has made mistakes, but deep down is a good man. The two young friends are portrayed well, they are well meaning, but generally don’t understand the world around them. Their relationship with Mud becomes the most straight forward aspect of their life as they struggle through the tough life lessons of adolescence.

Mud suffers from uneven pacing and while the climax is thrilling and well executed, the final few minutes seem out of place compared with the themes and mood of the rest of the film. Despite some flaws, Mud is a clever film that really hits on a lot of positive notes. Jeff Nichols is steadily developing his craft, and definitely looks to be a big time director in the near future.