ALL EYEZ ON ME Review

Since his death over twenty years ago Tupac Shakur has become something of a prophet in his legacy; a deity of the rap world in which the mythology only continues to grow-building a perception and persona of a man who held some secret as to how our society operated and why when, and this is the most valuable thing the new biopic All Eyez on Me offers, it seems the alarmingly young Shakur was still very much trying to figure out who he was never mind the bigger questions the culture he was raised in implied for his future and the future state of our world. All of that to say director Benny Boom (Next Day Air) and his team of three rather novice screenwriters had a lot to overcome in order to deliver a final product that was not only satisfying, but relevant in terms of adding something substantial to the conversation around the life and times of Shakur. There has been a barrage of material released since the artist's untimely death in September of 1996, but All Eyez on Me would mark the first narrative feature and arguably the one with the best odds of reaching the widest audience. With this weight and presumed pressure of responsibility on his shoulders Boom has delivered what is more or less a by the numbers biopic for what was very clearly an individual who couldn't have operated by the numbers if he wanted to. Shakur was a man who seemingly had a constant conflict of conscience going on within him-attempting to balance the obligation he felt he had as an orator for the black community while simultaneously looking to solve such societal issues in the moment which often times resulted in compulsive acts of violence and/or spouting things from his mouth that he didn't consider before saying them in front of a rolling camera. And while All Eyez on Me and its look-alike lead in newcomer Demetrius Shipp Jr. does in fact attempt to delve into this clash of consciousness Shakur constantly dealt with it's never able to transcend the tropes of the music biography enough to allow the audience to understand what cultivated and motivated these feelings. Sure, we see flashbacks galore and are privy to relationships in Shakur's life many might not be aware of that inherently give new light to this persona that has been crafted by the media and his constituent's since his death, but none of it to such an extent we feel we're inside the mind of Tupac thus restricting us from feeling like we've seen the real story of the man's life.

AMERICAN SNIPER Review

There is an immediate sense of dread from the moment the black fades into the overwhelming tank crawling towards us in Clint Eastwood's American Sniper. Combined with the bombarding sound design that insists your heart start beating faster it's apparent the veteran director intends to put you right in the middle of the action. It's not that the life of Chris Kyle was filled with nothing but dread or other related emotions, but it was certainly filled with a fair amount. Based on the memoir penned primarily by Kyle of the same name, Eastwood and lead actor Bradley Cooper have acquired a no frills way of telling a straightforward story about what seemed to be a very direct man. I have not read Kyle's memoir from which this film was adapted, but if you take away anything from the film version it is the state of mind of which Cooper's Kyle was always in. There is a consistent sense of complete confidence in himself that infiltrates the viewers perception of how events will play out, but where things become gray are in the contemplations of how what he is doing might fit into his overall role in life. From the teachings passed down by his father, he was bred to look at the world as a very black and white place, as a place where only a limited number of personalities existed and where the rule of absolutes made him something of a protector to those who couldn't or didn't know how to defend themselves. When it comes to portraying this type of mentality on screen though one could encounter a few issues given our protagonist isn't the most articulate with his emotions and much of the drama surrounding his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), deals with his long absences during tours that's unfortunately become so common at this point it's hard not to convey without a hackneyed stench hanging over it. Attempting to make something more out of this or dig deeper into the material so as to come up with a kind of insight or original angle would only serve to seemingly overdo what is right in front of their faces though. And so, there are no storytelling flourishes or flowery filmmaking language incorporated, but just like the man himself, this is a very basic and to the point account that speaks volumes after the film ends by not saying much while you're in the midst.

TRANSCENDENCE Review

The typical appeal of a Johnny Depp film is to see what strange, odd or just downright weird concoction of a character the actor has come up with next, but with Transcendence the appeal for me has always been to see what Depp does when asked to play a regular guy. He's done it before, this is nothing new, but he doesn't do it often and the fact his role (in a physical sense anyway) seemed limited to a short amount of the overall running time. Depp is still within his wheelhouse in terms of the type of person he enjoys playing even if the exterior is much more tame than the route he'd typically take, his role as Dr. Will Caster still sees him as a man of extreme intelligence and someone not looking to necessarily change the world as he likes to remind people, but instead always be discovering it, attempting to figure it all out. Despite this positioning Depp as the seemingly obvious star of the film, this is a movie that really belongs to Rebecca Hall. Depp is an influential presence and his character dictates the events in which Transcendence documents and even more he creates many of the questions the film intends to pose to the audience, but in terms of taking this as a piece of entertainment and in evaluating the performances of the actors involved this is Hall's film and it is her emotional investment in the plot of the film that makes this as compelling as it can be. The issue here though is that there isn't a clear line of thought in terms of emotional connection to the audience despite one of the major themes of the film being whether or not technology can develop feelings, affection, fear, etc. or if the thought of artificial intelligence will remain only that: a database of intelligence and nothing more, nothing trying to imitate the inherent nature of primitive life. Though this is somewhat ironic it is hard to fault the film for trying, for so deeply wanting to be something more, something thought-provoking. That is what I found to appreciate in Transcendence in that this wasn't simply a film that ordered itself into a certain set of rules or restrictions, but instead a piece of fiction that wanted to both discuss interesting ideas while at the same time providing an entertaining thriller/action film. This coming from Christopher Nolan's long-time cinematographer Wally Pfister I expected nothing less than that kind of melding of fantastical, large scope ideas and the architectures that match those in cinema, but while Pfister and screenwriter Jack Paglen have many interesting things to discuss here it seems they still need to practice funneling those ideas into a single coherent work.