Leviathan
In the Bible, Job suffers endlessly. God lets Satan take his children, his wealth and physically afflict him with no end in sight. It’s a test of faith, and a parable (or that rationalizing opium of the masses that Marx was so down on) as to why God allows such inequitable ills to wreak havoc on the faithful good. A similar ordeal faces the unfortunate Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov) in director Andrey Zvyagintsev’sLeviathan. Kolya becomes the target of the corrupt mayor (Roman Madyanov, brilliantly conjuring up shades of Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday and current Russian President Vladimir Putin) in a northwestern Russian province, near the Finnish border. The unscrupulous magistrate desires Kolya’s land because of its strategic locale, situated between the sea and a broad waterway—and he’s more than willing to bend his official rule to legally wrest the holding. Continue reading
The Jolie slam gave me pause. She’s always conducted herself in ways that have invited ridicule (her blood vial marriage to Billy Bob Thornton, the incestuous podium posing with her brother and the weird, estranged relationship with dad, actor Jon Voight). But how could the woman who won an Academy Award (for “Girl Interrupted”) and made an impressive directorial debut with “Blood and Honey” – a provocative, Bosnian-Serbian updating of “Romeo and Juliet” – be “talentless”? 
Vallée’s not the only person on “Wild” wearing two hats: Witherspoon bought the film rights to Strayed’s memoir and earns a producer’s cred as well. She’s dutiful as Strayed (not the writer’s given name, but the apt name she takes after her personal demons derail her first marriage) setting out on the arduous walkabout to find herself, purge and repent. When we meet her she’s angry at the mountain and nature, having just lost her hiking boots atop a summit, and we flash back to the start of the trek to see Strayed even more naive in the ways of navigating the wild. 
While “The Cruise” was a straight-up documentary, “Capote” (2005) and “Moneyball” (2011) were liberal, adapted spins on real lives and real events, both featuring outstanding performances by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and the latter garnering perhaps the finest performance of Brad Pitt’s long career. Miller’s latest, “Foxcatcher” is dead in the mold of those films, and the indie auteur’s most soul-plumbing film so far. 
The good news for all our collective futures is that farmer Matthew McConaughey is a former NASA pilot; the bad news is that NASA no longer exists, but through a paranormal, “Close Encounters” kind of interference, the southern drawling actor’s Cooper is pointed to a grid point on the map not too far away where the vestiges of the space agency – and the hope of humankind – reside with Michael Caine and his daughter, Anne Hathaway. Cooper is the only one with mission experience, and before the clock ticks any further he and Hathaway’s Amelia Brand are on a turbo-charged space shuttle-like vehicle and heading toward a black hole. 
For What it's Worth 