Diana

Watching Diana is like watching Nascar.  You stare at some boring nonsense for two hours while waiting for a car crash.  This is a really bad movie.

The film essentially follows Diana from the onset of her post-marriage relationship with Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan until her death.

What to say about this movie?  It's so lifeless and dull that it's hard to find anything to say.  The film feels like a Lifetime Original Movie with better cameras.  A Lifetime movie might've been a better experience than Diana.  At least then I would've had commercials to give me a break from the film.

Naomi Watts is an incredible actress but you wouldn't know it from this movie.  Every actor comes off as if they were in a high school theater production.

Also, is this movie supposed to make the former Princess of Wales seem great or was it trying to tear down some of the "saintly" image people have of her?  If it's the latter, then Diana succeeded.  Diana Spencer, according to this film, is selfish, out of touch, entitled, and a terrible mother.

Stay away from this movie.  Diana should only be used as a non-habit forming sleep aid.  

2.5 out of 10

Austenland

I have never read a Jane Austen novel.  That's not me bragging.  I just never have (does Pride & Prejudice & Zombies count?).  My experience with Jane Austen is limited to having watched more than my fair share of film and television adaptations of her works.  I bring all this up because the film Austenland is about a rabid Jane Austen fan who takes an immersive, period authentic Jane Austen vacation.  I was pretty sure that this was a movie that, at best, I would not be able to relate to.  Fortunately, no familiarity with Austen is required in order to "get" this movie.  And despite by intensely negative response to the trailer, I kinda liked this movie.

The plot is more specifically about a thirty-ish woman whose fanaticism for Jane Austen keeps her from being in a relationship.  Either her fandom frightens away men or men fail to live up to the dashing male characters from Austen's novels.  She finds out about a place called Austenland in the English countryside.  She spends her life-savings in order to go there and finally live her fantasy.  Once there, she must deal with the other patrons, the tyrannical headmistress, and romances both real and scripted.

Austenland is a really sweet.  It's not mean-spirited in any way.  Even the "villain" is allowed to be funny.  Keri Russell seems so well suited to this kind of movie that I kind it shocking that she's not been the lead of dozens of romantic comedies (but Waitress is so freakin' good that it's worth a dozen rom-coms).

The real standout performance comes from Jennifer Coolidge.  I swear that half her lines are probably ad-libbed, and the result is pretty funny.  Her gleefully dense character is what broke my determination to dislike this movie.  After Coolidge's wacky antics got me chuckling, it didn't take much for the easy charm of Keri Russell and Bret McKenzie to go to work on me.

Now, the film does struggle with setting up the love interest.  There are several male suitors but the movie is a little wishy-washy about which one we're supposed to root for.  This makes the ending feel a little rushed but not unearned.

Austenland also benefits from having several original songs from Emmy the Great on its soundtrack.  If you're unfamiliar with Emmy the Great, go buy her albums right now.  You'll thank me later.

I was really surprised to have enjoyed this movie.  It may be the biggest disparity between expectation and actual experience I had in 2013 (and that includes my heart-breaking disappointment in Man of Steel).  Ladies, check it out.  Fellas, watch it with your ladies (you might even like it).  Geez, 2013 was a pretty good year for romance.

6.5 out of 10

The Best Man Holiday

I'm not entirely sure what I just watched.  As I usually do, I watch the original film (if I haven't already) prior to reviewing the sequel.  In watching the previous film (1999's The Best Man), I was surprised by how un-racial it was.  It is essentially a bad romantic comedy script with an all black cast.  Other than the actors casually referring to each other with the "n-word," The Best Man could've just as easily been a white movie or Asian or Latin or multiple colors or whatever.  Despite being a mediocre rom-com, The Best Man was at least accessible to me.  Far too often with "black comedies," I feel like I just don't get it (whereas "black dramas" are totally relatable on a human level).

The Best Man Holiday rides a fine line between being racial and also having accessible, albeit unfunny, humor.  This time around, the color of the actors is constantly referenced.  Even the difference in the way light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks are treated comes up (in a throw-away joke that turned out way more poignant than the filmmakers intended).  Yet the presence of one character's new white boyfriend is not really dwelt on.  He's a momentary sight gag but is immediately accepted (but not for the poster leaving Nia Long to look lonely).  The film has a weird preoccupation with being black.  I don't mean the rapidly dwindling racism that they must face on occasion.  I just mean being this color.  Yet, the "n-word" is only used twice in the entire film, and it results in one of the only jokes that work.

But what is this sequel that arrived 14 years after the original about?  All the characters from The Best Man are back and each of them are mindbogglingly successful.  It's kinda ridiculous, but they are all the best in their respective fields.  So, Mia (the best stay at home mom) invites the entire cast of The Best Man to come visit for Christmas.  But every couple that arrives has its own set of problems to deal with.  Harper (the best author) and Robin (the best chef in New York) are having a baby but Harper can't seem to sell his new book and has lost his job teaching at NYU, but he refuses to tell Robin.  Julian and Candice (the best private school operators) are dealing with a major donor withdrawing his money.  This is due to a YouTube video of Candice accepting money for sex back before she met Julian.  Jordan (the best TV producer) and her new boyfriend, Brian (the best boyfriend), are dealing with Jordan's standoffish personality.  Shelby (the best reality TV star), who everyone hated in the original movie and should never have been invited, is starting to realize that she's a terrible mother.  Quint (the best brand manager) is starting to realize that the bachelor life is lonely.  Mia and Lance (the best football player) are dealing with Mia's cancer.  Since all these things are being kept a secret, many shenanigans and a lot of drama commences.

The Best Man Holiday is weirdly religious.  But it tries to be a raunchy sex comedy too.  For every time that Quint yells the word "titties," there's a discussion about faith.  For every viewing of Candace's prostitution video, there's mention of "a divine plan."  For every time women talk about how great black penises are, there's a grand, life-changing prayer.

This is not a good movie.  And despite having a lot of really, really weird stuff going on, it's not really "so bad it's good" either.  There are plenty of really good actors that I usually enjoy watching in The Best Man Holiday, but it's not the best showcase of them.  I didn't like this movie at all, but I'm sure that there is an audience for it (it made a fair amount of money in theaters).  Hopefully in 2027, the third movie will be better.

4 out of 10

The Counselor

When was the last great Ridley Scott movie?  I'm not talking about a really good movie like Kingdom of Heaven (the extended director's cut) or American Gangster.  I'm not even talking about a fairly good movie like Matchstick Men.  Ridley Scott is one of the greatest directors of the last 40 years.  So what was the last truly great movie from Ridley Scott?  It's Black Hawk Down back in 2001!  Most of his output since then has been an interesting mess.  Y2K must've struck Mr. Scott especially hard.

The Counselor is an interesting mess about an unnamed lawyer who willingly decides to participate in a drug deal.  Despite warnings about the ruthlessness of the drug cartels if things don't go right, he proceeds with his plan.  Things don't go right.

Ridley Scott takes more than a couple pages from his dearly departed brother's playbook (I miss you Tony!) for this movie.  The movie is filmed in various shades of orange with an intense chiaroscuro lighting especially on characters' faces.  That coupled with Ridley's gritty sensibilities and always flawless art direction make The Counselor an extremely attractive movie.  The pacing could've been faster which is crazy to say because a lot happens in this movie, but for the most part, the problems this movie has are all script related which is equally crazy to say because Cormac McCarthy wrote this movie.

Cormac McCarthy is one of America's greatest living authors but that talent did not transfer well to screenwriting.  The dialogue is awkward.  The story is a vague jumble of events.  I think Ridley Scott and his cast did their absolute best (Cameron Diaz is excellent in this movie) but could not elevate this material.

There's so much awesome stuff happening in The Counselor and so many great actors that it's weird to have to say that the movie is mostly boring.  Of Ridley Scott's interesting mess movies, The Counselor is definitely the worst.  It's not like watching a train wreck per se; it's more like coming across an old rusty car in a field and wondering how it got there... for two hours.

4.5 out of 5

All Is Lost

I'm not sure how things are nowadays but when I was a boy, there was a lot of books and magazines for kids filled with stories of survival.  The thing is, those stories were usually fairly positive with the emphasis on hope and the never-ending ingenuity of mankind.  These stories captivated me.  There was something Romantic about the idea of overcoming nature.  All Is Lost takes that story of survival and strips away all the Romanticism as well as all the clichés that bog down these types of films.

Robert Redford plays an unnamed man (and the only character in the entire film) whose sailboat is damaged and despite making repairs, he must abandon the ship for the safety of an inflatable life raft.  But the ocean has plenty of hardships to throw at this man, and he must use all his wits and luck if he is to have any hope of survival.

One thing that drives me crazy about movies about survival is how often the character's problems are caused by the character himself.  They must overcome their own ineptitude as well as the elements.  All Is Lost, however, features one of the most competent characters I have ever had the pleasure of watching.  No matter what the world throws at him, he immediately goes to work on the problem with a quiet determination.  He is not a man who took a sailboat into the middle of the ocean without knowing how to deal with the myriad issues that one might encounter on the high seas.  He is knowledgeable and effective.  The drama comes not from his being out of his element; it comes from his element being so much greater than his copious skill.

The film is also strikingly beautiful.  The sea is not just deadly; it is majestic.  Frank DeMarco and Peter Zuccarini's cinematography is the closest that the film comes to Romanticizing the survival story.

Being that the film only has one character, dialogue is minimal.  Therefore, the music becomes an integral part of the story.  Despite being a fairly minimal score, it is beautiful and one of the bigger slights for the Academy Awards this year.

But All Is Lost is not without any Oscar recognition.  It's nominated for Best Sound Editing!  And boy do Steve Boeddeker and Richard Hymns edit the hell out of that sound.  I'm just a little surprised that that was all it got nominated for.  It got the Fight Club treatment (also only nominated for Sound Editing) although I'm not sure if All Is Lost will have as enduring a legacy.

This was an incredible movie.  I can't recommend it enough.  Robert Redford proves that, even after he's been turned into wrinkled leather, he still has the chops and star power to carry a film single-handedly.

8 out of 10

Ender's Game

What happened?  If you've ever read the book, you'd know that Ender's Game seems very well suited to a cinematic adaptation.  With computers able to render even the wildest of ideas, a modern film of the book should've had no problems.  But it does.  It may actually be a film made entirely of problems.

For those who never read the book, Ender's Game is the story of a boy named Ender who is sent to a military school in space (this movie takes place in the early 22nd century).  The school is supposed to train children to be officers since, in this reality, kids can process large quantities of information better and faster than adults and can therefore create battle strategies on the fly more effectively.  Why do we need battle strategies?  Because we are at war with an alien race called the Formics.  Time is running out until the next big Formic invasion and with Ender appearing to be humanity's greatest hope, Ender must bring together his fellow classmates and complete his training.

Maybe the smallest issue is that the movie takes place over the course of a month.  In the book, it is several years of training.  Having a shorter timeline wasn't chosen as a way of making the story suit a two hour film, it's there in order to provide the film with a "ticking clock" because the script lacks any suspense or drama on its own.  It's a crummy cheat to try to hide larger more fundamental problems the film has.

The biggest problem is the sacrificing of theme and character in favor of generic action sequences.  Ender's Game is a book with ideas that have shown to be quite prescient.  Drone warfare, video games, and wars under false pretenses are all a major part of the book.  This movie could've done what all great science fiction does: it serves as a scathing indictment of the modern world.  Instead, the film is bogged down by dull laser fights and a CG mouse.

This isn't a spoiler because the movie gives away the book's ending right off the bat, but the kids don't know that they their "tests" are actually remote battles with the Formics.  This change from a twist ending in the book is important.  By revealing this early on, the film turns the adults into weak villains and robs Ender of his greatest emotional growth.  In both the book and the film, Ender has unknowingly committed genocide.  But in the book, we're rooting for Ender to ace his test and become a great officer which results in the reader also unknowingly rooting for genocide.  The film not only negates the power of its own finale, it also robs the audience of having a powerful emotional realization.  I wrote to a friend on Facebook:

"I think they were worried that they'd get backlash from asking the audience to realize that they were rooting for something so horrific. It's like the end of Starship Troopers when the audience realizes that they fell for the same war mongering/brainwashing techniques that the Nazis used on the German people. People were so appalled from realizing that they had that in themselves that they projected that disgust on the film. But now Starship Troopers has been steady rising in status and is considered to be a modern masterpiece of satire. Ender's Game could've had that too. It takes courage to make important art. And when Lionsgate (the studio behind the film) had that opportunity, they flinched."

The only good thing that Ender's Game really has going for it is that it will be forgotten about.  It's not a terrible movie but it terribly mediocre.  This is something to watch on cable one day when nothing else is on and you're looking for any excuse not to clean your house.  Go read the book.

4.5 out of 10

Baggage Claim

Baggage Claim is the worst kind of romantic comedy.  It not only lacks any decent comedy, it also makes women look awful.  If this movie had been more widely seen, it would've set feminism back at least 10 years.

The premise of the movie is this: a woman named Montana (I'm not kidding) whose younger sister is getting married.  She already is unable to be alone, but her sister's engagement and pressure from her mother (who has been married five times) has her determined to be able to announce her own engagement by the time of her sister's wedding in 30 days.  She and her friends feel that she doesn't have time to start a new relationship and secure an engagement in one month, so they decide to try to rekindle relationships with Montana's exes.  Being  that she and her friends are flight attendants, they begin monitoring her exes travel plans and put Montana on the flights they are using.  All of her exes turn out to be single, handsome, wealthy, and eager to marry her.  So, which one will she choose?

I don't know where to begin with this movie.  Is TransAlliance the only airline in the United States?  This movie makes it seem so.  The whole plot is one of convenience.  Only one airline so that she has access to her exes.  It's "the holidays" and they tell us that everyone travels around "the holidays."  And sure enough, every currently single ex Montana has takes a flight in the month before her sister's wedding.  I did love the brief moment when Montana's friend, Gail (who is depicted as a wacky slut but is actually the most empowered woman in the movie), realizes that their scheme is a violation of federal law but promptly dismisses the thought because... love, I guess.

The movie keeps demanding that you accept that Montana is a strong, self-sufficient woman, but her constant need to be defined by a man says otherwise.  Even in the end when (SPOILERS FOR THE TERRIBLE MOVIE THAT IS BAGGAGE CLAIM!!!) Montana turns down the proposal from the one ex who seems to be perfect in favor of being her own woman, she immediately finishes her "empowered" woman speech and rushes off to find her next door neighbor who promptly proposes and she accepts.  Every woman in this film is dependent on their relationships with a man.  No woman in Baggage Claim can be without male companionship.

Another problem that kills any rom-com is a lack of chemistry.  None of the male suitors have even the tiniest spark with lead actress Paula Patton.  Because of this, they all feel interchangeable.  Who cares who she marries?  I sure didn't.

I liked Patton in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, but she is terrible in this movie.  She is constantly grinning like a maniac regardless of the tone of the scene.  It's off-putting.  Also, her smokey voice is a little too smokey in this film.  I think she was suffering from bronchitis throughout the production.

Baggage Claim is terrible.  I can't recommend it on any level.  I almost always recommend a movie with Djimon Hounsou, but not this time.  Derek Luke does seem capable of being a charming leading man and I liked seeing Tia Mowry in a movie and... I don't know.  I'm really struggling to find something nice to say.  Just go watch something else. 

2.5 out of 10

Free Birds

I'm not sure what this movie was trying to do.  The messages and images were all over the place.  Before I get into it, let's talk about the story.

Reggie is a turkey who is well aware that, come November, he and his friends are to be eaten.  Just before Thanksgiving, Reggie is selected by the President to be the recipient of a pardon (this is real thing that happens every year) and brought to live at Camp David.  Reggie is soon taken by another turkey named Jake who insists that they steal a time machine from an underground government facility and use it to travel back to the first Thanksgiving and prevent the tradition of turkey eating from being started.

The animation in Free Birds is pretty good.  The jokes are rarely funny.  The actors sound like they're sleepwalking through their performances.  It's not a terrible movie.  It's more bland than anything.  What is interesting about the movie are the various messages being presented in the movie.  Let's look at some of those.

1) Animal cruelty- Reggie is a "free range" turkey.  Jake was raised in a turkey factory.  Jake's origin flashback is a very short scene, but it plays out like a PETA video.  It's all cages and mechanization.  Turkeys are force fed to fatten them up for slaughter.  But the logical point to showing these images is never addressed.  Are we to promote vegetarianism?  No.  Even the turkeys eat pizza with meat toppings (anchovies, but still).  So, just promote "free range" turkey then?  No.  We're not supposed to what Reggie to be eaten.  Even wild turkeys are off the menu.  That a movie would be so specific about not eating turkey is very odd.

2) Native American genocide- The wild turkeys that Reggie and Jake befriend in the past are Indians.  Like full on war paint and feather headdresses.  The Pilgrims don't just want to kill a few turkeys for dinner.  They want to exterminate the turkeys.  It's all very uncomfortable especially in a kid's movie.

3) The Holocaust- So many of the images, not just of the turkey genocide but also Jake's captivity, are straight out of the Holocaust.  Free Birds is, at times, the low-quality children's version of Schindler's List.  Not that kid's can't learn about that stuff.  It's just a matter of having a point.  In Free Birds, it's just for the sake of imagery and feels weirdly exploitative.  Kids already have an amazing, animated movie detailing the struggles of Jewish animals.  It's called An American Tail.

If Free Birds had been explicitly about an innocent-yet-imprisoned man who is pardoned and teams up with a Holocaust survivor in order to travel through time to convert American to vegetarianism and, in the process, they prevent the slaughter of the American Indian by early settlers, I would've been on board for at least the insanity of it.  Instead, we get a cartoon about turkeys trying to stop Thanksgiving from being a holiday.  It's too bad that the movie didn't make much money.  I hear the sequel would've been about chickens who travel back in time to stop the resurrection of Jesus, so that people will stop stealing their eggs for Easter.  I'd watch that movie.

4 out of 10

About Time

The last time Rachel McAdams was in a romantic movie where her husband could travel through time, the results were the bizarre and disgusting The Time Traveler's Wife.  So, what was I to think about this movie?  The trailers looked awful.  The plot sounds awful.  And after sitting through all two hours of About Time, I have to say that I loved every second of this movie.  I never should've doubt the man who wrote and directed Love Actually.  I'm a sucker for Love Actually.

The story revolves around a young man named Tim whose father sits him down on his twenty first birthday (the son's birthday, not the dad's, but you never know with time travel) to explain to Tim that all the men in this family can travel through time simply by shutting oneself in a closet and clenching one's fists really hard (see what I mean about how deceptively stupid this sounds?).  The time traveling is limited to going into one's own past.  After experimenting with his powers for a summer, Tim leaves for London to be a lawyer.  There he meets Mary and utilizes his abilities in order to woo her and start a family.

The important thing that makes About Time a good time travel romance and The Time Traveler's Wife a garbage time travel romance is that About Time isn't really about time travel.  The Time Traveler's Wife is all about time travel.  It gets so wrapped up in the science fiction nonsense that Rachel McAdam's character starts having miscarriages because the fetuses keep time jumping out of her womb (it's a seriously messed up movie).  About Time uses time travel as a way to show how we all need to appreciate the ups and downs of life and make the most out of our days.

Domhnall Gleeson carries the movie very well.  His portrayal of Tim is very relatable.  He's never all powerful.  He never gets cocky.  He's an everyday guy who just wants to live a good life with people he loves.  Rachel McAdams is amazing as always.  She's so effortlessly endearing.  She makes you believe that she's the kind of gal that a guy would alter time (over and over again) to be with.

I laughed a lot watching About Time.  Richard Curtis is a smart writer and he knows to temper the heavy stuff with comedy.  In fact, the movie is so predominately funny that it's really the comedy that's tempered with heavy drama.  But the sad bits are that much more brutal because of the humor.  This is a movie that'll pull happy tears as well as sad tears out of you.

About Time is a movie that will be getting several more views out of me.  I appreciate when a movie can make me feel anything even if it turns me into a sappy, weepy lump on the couch.  This is one of 2013's really great films.

8 out of 10

Escape Plan

Escape Plan is not a spinoff of The Expendables franchise, but it sure feels like it.  I don't just mean because it has aging 80s action icons in it.  It has more to do with the questionable quality while maintaining a sense of fun about it.  Even that sense of fun is dubious as the only folks who would think it's fun are people with an affinity for 80s and early 90s action films.

The film is about a man named Ray Breslin (Stallone) whose job is to escape from prisons in order to uncover the flaws in security.  Breslin is the best prison escaper money can buy.  He wrote the book on escaping prison.  No, literally.  Breslin wrote a rather sizable text on the subject of breaking out of jail.  He is approached by the CIA with the offer to test an inescapable prison. What he doesn't realize is that not only is he being tricked into being taken out of commission, but this prison was designed based on his book!  Under the watchful eye of the cruel warden, Breslin must team up with another prisoner, Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), in order to break free.

The story is dumb.  The characters are one-dimensional.  The dialogue is laughable.  So how is this even remotely a watchable movie?  Because it's made to be an old school action flick that rides on the screen presence of its leads and fun action scenes.

Escape Plan does suffer from some pacing issues.  There are a lot of times when the film drags a bit.  It does seem as if they trimmed as much as they could to speed up the movie, but Stallone and Schwarzenegger (but especially Stallone) talk so slowly that the film loses some energy.  These two men, who are as well known for their unintelligible speech as they are for their muscles, fill every patch of dialogue with long pauses and/or "intense" grumbles.  But it's worth trying to decipher their speech as the dialogue is hilariously bad at times (use subtitles if you must).

Stallone plays Stallone.  He's "the best there is."  He's a renegade.  He's hyper-masculine.  It's what I expect from Stallone and he's mastered this performance over the decades.  Schwarzenegger, however, plays his part differently than I expected.  Sure, he has some dorky one-liners as one would assume Schwarzenegger would.  But he plays his part a little off kilter.  A little nuts.  Schwarzenegger essentially was cast as Stallone's wacky sidekick, and Schwarzenegger plays it so wacky (especially next to the steroid mannequin that is Sylvester Stallone) that he steals the whole movie.  Jim Caviezel deserves some mention as the evil warden.  He revels in his evil-ness and that is not only fun to watch in a "Bond villain" kind of way, but it also helps the audience forget that all the "good guy" inmates are terrorists. 

Escape Plan is a dumb movie with some truly hideous CG effects, but I still got a kick out of it.  Despite being a dumb movie, there are some clever escape bits.  It has a fun cast including Amy Ryan, Vincent D'Onofrio, Vinnie Jones, 50 Cent, and Sam Neill.  There's a couple of knowing jabs at the dumb-ness of these kind of movies in the script which made me laugh.  All in all, Escape Plan may not go down as a classic in the action genre, but it's a good way to spend a couple hours.

6 out of 10

Dallas Buyers Club

With Dallas Buyers Club comes a lot of expectations.  The film is nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture.  Now, expectations can be a good thing sometimes.  Especially bad expectations.  Bad expectations at least leave you with the possibility that the film will exceed your expectations.  But with positive expectations or even hype, a good film can feel disappointing just because it wasn't a great film.  Dallas Buyers Club rides the line between good and great.  If this had been back when the Oscars only had five nominees for Best Picture, then this film would not make the cut.  With the field of nine candidates this year, Dallas Buyers Club feels just right.  Good enough to get noticed but not actually a real contender to win.

The movie is "inspired by true events."  Basically, a man named Ron Woodroof had AIDS in the 1980s and the rest of the film is a fabrication.  However, that does not detract from what is a story of a homophobic man who is diagnosed HIV positive and starts smuggling pharmaceutical drugs to treat his disease.  He starts a "buyers club" to take advantage of a loophole in FDA regulations.  This allows him to sell these drugs to other HIV patients in the Dallas area.  Through his interactions with the gay community of Texas, he begins to lose his bigotry and become a better man.

This is a very performance driven movie.  And since the story is entirely about Ron Woodroof, it becomes a very Matthew McConaughey driven movie.  McConaughey is really great in this.  To say nothing of his massive weightloss, he is performing a range of emotions that I didn't know he could perform.  It not the biggest and loudest acting, but it never feels false.  I think part of why he's nominated for Best Actor is that no one expected this kind of acting from McConaughey.  But I don't think that that's all of it.  He's really phenomenal.  Jared Leto is also nominated but for Best Supporting Actor.  He also lost a crazy amount of weight for the film.  But the real power of his performance is that he is acting on one level where he's a flamboyant cross-dresser complete with a catty attitude and a lisp.  It's almost wildly stereotypical and, if that was the performance alone, would seem very dull.  But Leto plays Rayon on another level as a person who uses that flamboyance as a shield between the real man and the world.  The powerhouse scenes for Leto are when Rayon dresses in a business suit and goes to his father without makeup (without a shield basically) and in the end as the disease begins to take a stronger hold.  It's those scenes that give an insight into how multifaceted his performance is.

This isn't a depressing movie, but it is a very heavy movie.  It's constant drama and conflict.  There are very few moments of levity.  Dallas Buyers Club won't set the world on fire.  It'll probably be largely forgotten in a couple years, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out.  Basically, watch it before the Oscars.  It's definitely worth your while.

8.5 out of 10