Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns surprising things about her family from her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) in IDA
IDA (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2013)
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Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida is one of the most gorgeously photographed, beautifully told films of the young century. The international festival favorite and shortlisted Foreign Language Oscar contender is set in Poland in 1962, as eighteen-year-old novitiate Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is preparing to become a nun and dedicate her life to Christ. But the Mother Superior (Halina Skoczyńska) tells Anna, an orphan who was raised in the convent, that she actually has a living relative, an aunt whom she should visit before taking her vows. So Anna sets off by herself to see her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a drinking, smoking, sexually promiscuous, and deeply bitter woman who explains to Ida that her real name is Ida Lebenstein and that she is in fact Jewish — and then reveals what happened to her family. Soon Ida, Wanda, and hitchhiking jazz saxophonist Dawid Ogrodnik are on their way to discovering some unsettling truths about the past.
Lis (Dawid Ogrodnik) and Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) discuss life and loss in beautifully photographed IDA
Polish-born writer-director Pawlikowski (Last Resort, My Summer of Love), who lived and worked in the UK for more than thirty years before moving back to his native country to make Ida, composes each shot of the black-and-white film as if it’s a classic European painting, with cinematographers Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski’s camera remaining static for nearly every scene. Pawlikowski often frames shots keeping the characters off to the side or, most dramatically, at the bottom of the frame, like they are barely there as they try to find their way in life. (At these moments, the subtitles jump to the top of the screen so as not to block the characters’ expressions.) Kulesza (Róża) is exceptional as the emotionally unpredictable Wanda, who has buried herself so deep in secrets that she might not be able to dig herself out. And in her first film, Trzebuchowska — who was discovered in a Warsaw café by Polish director Małgorzata Szumowska — is absolutely mesmerizing, her headpiece hiding her hair and ears, leaving the audience to focus only on her stunning eyes and round face, filled with a calm mystery that shifts ever so subtly as she learns more and more about her family, and herself. It’s like she’s stepped right out of a Vermeer painting and into a world she never knew existed. The screenplay, written by Pawlikowski and theater and television writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, keeps the dialogue to a minimum, allowing the stark visuals and superb acting to heighten the intensity. Ida is an exquisite film whose dazzling grace cannot be overstated.
The most infamous film of 2014 was released in theaters on Christmas after all, following the embarrassing hacking of Sony’s servers and George Clooney and the president sharing their opinions about violent threats from North Korea over a movie — and a stupid movie, at that. But as it turns out, The Interview is stupid fun, even if it does lose its way amid the bizarre absurdity of its final scenes. James Franco — we’re sorry, but we still can’t get enough of him — stars as superbly sycophantic celebrity talk show host Dave Skylark, who just happens to be one of reclusive North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s (Randall Park) personal favorites. So Skylark’s best friend and producer, Aaron Rapoport (Rogen), sets up a live interview with Kim, agreeing to the leader’s rigidly controlled set of conditions delivered by his gorgeous security chief, Sook (Diana Bang). When the CIA hears about the interview, they send agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) to convince Skylark and Rapoport that they must assassinate Kim for the good of the world. But their best-laid plans go awry when Kim charms Skylark as they embark on a brief bromance that threatens the bromance that already exists between Dave and Aaron. Codirected by Rogen and Goldberg, whose collaborations have also included Superbad, Pineapple Express, This Is the End, and other hits and misses, and written by first-time screenwriter Dan Sterling (The Office, King of the Hill), The Interview is, for the most part, a very funny, extremely juvenile comedy that never misses a chance to make a butt joke. With a little bit of Stripes here, a splash of Spies Like Us there, it follows in the tradition of crazy lowbrow military comedies that eventually go off the deep end but contain more than their fair share of laugh-out-loud silliness. Franco and Rogen, who have been working together since the days of the great Freaks and Geeks, are so much fun to watch as a duo that things don’t completely fall apart even when the script lets them down. Oh, and meanwhile, Eminem comes out of the closet, Rob Lowe reveals a frightening secret, and other celebrities show up as themselves in this bromantic comedy that nearly started WWIII.
Unbroken, Angelina Jolie’s second film as director (following In the Land of Blood and Honey), attempts to set itself apart from other real-life dramas right from the start; while other movies claim to be “based on a true story” or “inspired by actual events,” Unbroken boldly, and very clearly, declares itself to be “a true story.” The old-fashioned WWII movie tells the story of Louis “Louie” Zamperini, a troubled kid (first C. J. Valleroy, then Jack O’Connell) who drinks, smokes, and gets in trouble with the law until his life turns around when his brother, Pete (first John D’Leo, then Alex Russell), helps train him to become an Olympic runner. But duty calls, and Louie enlists in the air force. His plane is shot down over the Pacific Ocean, leaving him, Russell “Phil” Phillips (Anna Karenina’s Domhnall Gleeson), and Francis “Mac” McNamara (American Horror Story’s Finn Wittrock) adrift on a pair of life rafts, surrounded by sharks. Later, Zamperini is captured and taken to a POW camp run by the sadistic Mutsuhiro “the Bird” Watanabe (Japanese rock star Miyavi), who decides to make the Olympian his personal punching bag, brutalizing him every chance he gets, daring him to give up, but Zamperini isn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
