Abstew's Cinematic Thanks

Editor's Note: I asked Team Experience to tell us what they're thankful for this year during the holiday weekend. Here's abstew in the cinematic spirit.

abstew here. Thanksgiving may be only once a year, but it's always a great time to appreciate the greatness of film. Here are a few of the things I'm thankful for this year...

For Oscar Issac's camel coat in A Most Violent Year - practical and stylish winter wear while waging a war
For Tilda as a love-struck octogenarian socialite. Tilda as a yak-haired vampire. Tilda as a dentured dictator. Proving the existence of extraterrestrial life because, quite simply, Tilda Swinton is a shape-shifting, otherworldly being. 

For two favorite breakout stars: Jack O'Connell (dynamic in Starred Up and 71; I'm eagerly awaiting Unbroken) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (compelling in two very different films, Belle and Beyond the Lights). I'm excited to see what new opportunities come their way for years to come.
For Miles Teller's epic finale drum solo in Whiplash
For Rose Bryne's hilariously spastic take on the line, "Keep it down!" in Neighbors
For Eddie Redmayne's freckles
For the achingly sweet, yet realistically grounded love of John Lithgow's Ben and Alfred Molina's George in Love is Strange

For Uma Thurman bursting in and stealing an entire two-part film in a single scene. "Would it be alright if I show the children the whoring bed?" 
For Emmanuel Lubezki's faux single-take cinematography in Birdman, perfectly translating the immediate, kinetic energy of the theatre into a cinematic equivalent.
For Eva Green's fully committed, go-for-broke performances, elevating everything she's in from the big screen (300: The Rise of an Empire) to the small screen (Penny Dreadful).
For Star Lord's "Awesome Mix Volume 1" cassette tape
For the return of Rene Russo
For the look of Angelina Jolie's Maleficent (if only the perfect character design wasn't wasted on the film...)

For the mouth-watering food porn in A Hundred-Foot Journey and Chef 
For Wes Anderson's candy-colored, intricately detailed world of The Grand Budapest Hotel

For TFE's series Hit Me With Your Best Shot. The single best opportunity to view and explore a film in ways you hadn't thought...and then to gain even more insight after reading what others have posted. If you haven't participated, you should when it returns!

And that I live in NYC, home of the Tribeca Film Festival, NYFF, NewFest and countless other film festivals. That there are still single screen theatres like the Zeigfeld and Paris where it feels like an event to go to the movies. And, most importantly, that I'm actually given the opportunity to see every movie (not just Hollywood blockbusters) in the theatre the weekend they are released.

And finally, for Nathaniel, Team Experience, and everyone who reads and comments. I'm beyond thankful that we have such a wonderful place to share our cinematic obsessions and affections.

 -Andy (abstew)

More Thank Yous: Nathaniel, Amir, Manuel & Jose

Meet the Contenders: Benedict Cumberbatch "The Imitation Game"

Each weekend a profile on a just-opened Oscar contender. Here's abstew on this weekend's new release, THE IMITATION GAME.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game

Best Actor

Born: Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born 19 July 1976 in London, England 

The Role: Norwegian film director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters) makes his English-language film debut with this film starring Cumberbatch as real-life British mathematician Alan Turing, who during WWII was in charge of a team that cracked Germany's Enigma code, thus making it able for the Allies to win the war. The film jumps back and forth between three periods in Turing's life, primarily focusing on his work during the war, his early days as a lonely youth in boarding school, and his post-war conviction for gross indecency after admitting to his homosexuality.

The film had been in development for a few years since Graham Moore's script topping the annual Black List in 2011. At one point Leonardo DiCaprio was attached to star and directors such as Ron Howard and David Yates had shown interest before eventually landing with Tyldum and Cumberbatch.  

Click to read more ...

Manuel's Thanks

Editor's Note: I asked Team Experience to tell us what they're thankful for this year during the holiday weekend. Here's Amir in the cinematic spirit.

Manuel here. This year I'm thankful...

For cinematic girls, be they Gone or Wild. 

For is & Hers performances, be they in quirky suicide dramedies (The Skeleton Twins), Detroit-set vampire films (Only Lovers Left Alive), or fragmented grief studies (The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them).  

For Queer triumphs, be they cross-cultural (Lilting), poignantly local (Love is Strange), or deliciously dangerous (Stranger by the Lake). 

For Oscar-winning actresses on stage, be they doing Genet (Cate Blanchett in The Maids) or Sondheim (Emma Thompson in Sweeney Todd).

For "Lone female" roles in Hollywood hits elevated by their performers, be they comedic (Rose Byrne in Neighbors) or action-packed (Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow) 

For witty nonfiction books by funny ladies, be they by harried working moms (Yes Please) or cripplingly anxious oversharers (Not That Kind of Girl)

For successful second acts by known commodities, be they stage-bound (Roundabout's Cabaret) or small-screen obsessed (The Comeback).

For Angry Julia, be she furrowing her brow along to Larry Kramer's words (in The Normal Heart) or losing an Emmy shortly thereafter. 

For funny ladies on the small screen, be they vice-presidents (Veep), convicted gals (Orange is the New Black), or eponymous protagonists (Jane the Virgin). 

For Hedwig's return to Broadway, be he played by a Broadway supernova (Neil Patrick Harris) or one in the making (Andrew Rannells).  

For Meryl Streep, be she terrorizing Blunt or making unconscionable demands (The Devil Wears Prada Into the Woods)

- Manuel

Related: Nathaniel gives thanks, Jose gives thanks, Amir gives thanks.

The Animated Feature contenders: Penguins of Madagascar

Tim here. I’m going to spend most of the remaining weeks of 2014 taking a look at some of the 20 films submitted to for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. These will mainly be the little underdogs that don’t really have a chance for a nomination, but deserve our attention as lovers of movies anyway.

But first, a different kind of film that doesn’t have a chance at receiving any Oscar buzz: this week’s new Penguins of Madagascar, the 30th release by DreamWorks Animation, and the last wide-release animated feature of the year. If I may confess my sins to all of you, I was actually looking forward to this, kind of: the penguins of the Madagascar film trilogy have been reliable stand-outs for as long as the franchise has existed: a wacky military squadron comprised of an ebullient Skipper (Tom McGrath), no-nonsense Kowalski (Chris Miller), wide-eyed moron Private (Christopher Knights), and demented, dangerous Rico (Conrad Vernon), executing fearless action film maneuvers with no sense of sanity or reason, and giving the gaping chasm of mediocrity of the first two Madagascar pictures precious comic energy for a few minutes at a stretch.

The thing about the penguins, though, is that they were brilliantly used as little shots of free-floating absurdity, random gag machines delighting in cartoon physics and psychology, not so much breaking the rules as ignoring their existence outright. That’s fine for comic relief, especially in a film whose idle state is so dreary as the first two Madagascars. But those little vacations from reality only work when we don’t actually need to care about the penguins beyond knowing that they are surreal and goofy. Putting them front and center over a long running time and a sustained character arc places a demand on the characters that’s totally unsustainable. These aren’t characters, they’re agents of chaos, and they can’t be used like characters.

Yet the three writers and two directors of Penguins of Madagascar go right on ahead and try to fit them into the normal beats of an American kid-focused animated film, down to the sad bit about the character who just wants to be understood for his idiosyncratic ways (“be yourself, love yourself” is a good lesson for children, of course, but it’s one of the dominate themes of, seriously, like every single DreamWorks film). The characters’ one-note personalities, and the limited number of gags that can be spun out of them, turns shrill and noisome over 90 minutes. There’s a plot behind this, but it barely matters: a James Bondian sort of deal with a penguin-hating octopus (voiced with unexpected brio by John Malkovich) on one side, a team of Arctic animal spies lied by a wolf played by Benedict Cumberbatch on the other. And in between, the four penguins whose history with the octopus spurred his rage act with all the insensible fearlessness their braggadocio can support.

It’s manic as all hell, which isn’t really the problem: it’s the routine sameness of it that drags the film down. One setpiece follows approximately the same beats as all the others, and the penguins are designed too specifically to be inflexible, unchanging characters to remain interesting over the course of everything that happens. Even their expressions barely change: the animators don’t even get to play around much with exaggerated gestures or faces. And while any ten-minute slice of the film has some level of playful, unexpected comedy, all of the slices resemble each other to the point where watching eight of them in a row is soporific.

It’s not devoid of good humor and even real wit. Werner Herzog vocally cameos as a deranged Germany documentary filmmaker in a parody of his Encounters at the End of the World, and it comes close to the “anything goes” feel that made the penguins enjoyable to begin with; and there are just enough gags that seem to have been inserted into the film largely because nobody could come up with a reason not to put the penguins in lederhosen, or to have them infiltrate Fort Knox. It’s not insufferable, but it’s awfully tiring, and the packed house of deadly quiet children and parents I saw the film with would seem to back me up that whatever this film is good for, it’s not providing more than the most generically passable entertainment.

Oscar chances: Oh, no. No, no, no. DreamWorks needs to put it all on How to Train Your Dragon 2 and pray.