Showing posts with label Keira Knightley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keira Knightley. Show all posts

Saturday, November 7, 2015

2014 SQUID Actress of the Year

The race for SQUID Actress of the Year is always a tough one, you can check out the previous winners below and notice that it's slightly less about volume than it is about purely incredible performances. While 2014's candidates may not be as plentiful as their male cohorts, the four horses in this race are proved that they are the real deal.

Jessica Chastain, most exceptionally featured in Interstellar, proved to be the most prolific actress. She also starred in A Most Violent Year, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, Miss Julie, and Salome. 

Shilene Woodley firmly entrenched herself as the zeitgeist queen with her various YA vehicles over the past couple years. This year brought forth two particularly noteworthy entries with variable results. The odorous Divergent series sprung forth, starring her amicable performance in a cookie cutter role. The well received adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars garnered a little more genuine praise. Her best received role was in the film White Bird in the Blizzard. All noteworthy but none too special.

Scarlett Johannsen dropped a quartet of films whose range goes unmatched. From swinging and flipping through an explosive blockbuster (Captain America: Winter Soldier) to being center face as the lead in the colorful actioner, Lucy. She went from the deepest depths of strange in the alien-indie Under the Skin, all the way to a sweet supporting job in Chef, Jon Favreau's darling little food truck film. Johannsen brought her stuff in 2014 and it took some serious destiny for her not to win.

Our champion is the holder of that destiny. She's wasn't as present as the others but her performances showcased the wide spectrum of her craft.

Coming from the world of franchises, after dabbling and succeeding quite a few times with heavier fare like Atonement, her 2014 roles were more dominating than she has ever been. As with the SQUID Actor of the Year, our recipient was unquestionably a force to be reckoned with on the silver screen.

Keira Knightley is crowned as 2014 SQUID Actress of the Year. With electric performances, requiring both acting and singing in Begin Again, and beyond-compelling work in the remarkable film, The Imitation Game, she puts forth a twosome that towers above every other actress' work this year. Her characters and her performances in those roles, defied convention spectacularly showing how female characters can be whole, can be an actual agents of change in their story. She added Laggies, a lackluster and contradictory film as far as women's progress goes, but one where she sported an amusing American accent. Knightley was tagged in with the botched attempt to revive a franchise with Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. She has managed to build a formidable career after Pirates, one that soars to the top in 2014. Knightley begins 2015 in the adventure ensemble, Everest, where she'll look to carry the momentum of a victory she'll never hear of.  


SQUID Actress of the Year recipients:

2014 winner - Keira Knightley
The Imitation Game, Begin Again, 

2013 winner - Amy Adams
American Hustle, Man of Steel, Her

2012 winner -  Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence
Hathaway - Les Miserable and The Dark Night Rises
Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook and The Hunger Games

2011 winner - Emily Blunt

Your Sister's Sister, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Adjustment Bureau, Gnomeo and Juliet, The Muppets

Friday, January 23, 2015

Begin Again (2013/2014)

Written and Directed by John Carney (Once)
Starring:
Mark Ruffalo (13 Going on 30)
Keira Knightley (Bend it Like Beckham)
James Cordon (Doctor Who)
Adam Levine (Iran So Far)
Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
Catherine Keener (40 Year Old Virgin)
Yasiin "Mos Def " Bey (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)
Ceelo Green (Mystery Men)

Character, baby! This is what I'm talking about! Carney once again proves his knack at topographic authenticity. He constructs raw, ruptured, whole characters that grow and change in the span of two hours. The first half of the film employs a fluid structure allowing lives to weave in and out of each other yet avoids feeling repetitive. Simple cut-away shots, throw away dialogue, and clothing choices all work to give every small character a palpable depth. The film builds itself up on separate time frames adding more and more meaning after each revelation until we are rolling full steam ahead to a straightforward culmination of the plot heading to a delectably satisfying finish.

Begin Again also offers some genuine movie magic. That ghost performance was a thing of beauty. Fueled by happiness and excitement, those recording scenes are remarkably infectious and vault the otherwise simple idea of the outdoor studio to be something exceptional. Carney manages to construct intimately meaningful scenes using the simple joys we all wish we could experience any given day. It might be a product of my deplorable social life but do you know how rare it is to listen to music with someone else and you both enjoy it? Sharing music is one of the hardest achievements in real life and this film shows the ideal fulfillment while giving the characters a convincing emotional journey to have deserved experiencing it. Carney shines a spotlight on the power of friendship and showcases a mutual respect devoid of clingyness and constructed naturally out of the story. I can't tell you how vitalizing the moment was when I realized the two leads are not going to get together.

Ruffalo's man-on-the-brink performance gave me something I always want to see, a character's struggle to improve. Carney allows his characters to make good decisions after suffering for bad ones. 

Lovely dabs of humor lift the potentially depressing traps in the plot. From ripping on Levine's absurd beard to letting a Ruffalo and an underused James Cordon throw out quick witty dialogue, the movie is never short on pleasantness to accompany the depth. I got a real Blues Brothersy vibe from the time spent putting the band together, as well. It turned in to the movie I wanted Inside Llewyn Davis to be. Carney trumped the Coen Brothers. 

As with  Markéta Irglová in Once, Carney continues to show his savvy for subversion of standard female romanticism. Here, Knightley's sandal-loving songstress, Gretta James (such a classically inspired name, isn't it) is allowed to choose as much as the male lead and she is *gasp* individually capable of thought, undergoing such glorious glorious progression. 2014 was a solid year for both original films and strong female characters and my final ranking will reflected just that.

I'll end with the driving force of the movie. Without good songs, this would be a decent film. Instead we have, like Once before it, a film littered with moody and melodic tunes sung by the actors that are really good and once more, well deservedly up for Best Song at the Oscars. As if Keira Knightley didn't have enough talent, she can sing right up there with Adam Levine.

Bottom Line: A thoroughly satisfying musical that tickled every sentimental bone in my body and mesmerizes on both a technical and creative level.

10 out of 10


Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Imad Siddiqui Presents: The First Annual SQUID Film Rankings


Welcome to the inaugural SQUID (Siddiqui Quality Unquestionably Imad's Decision) Rankings. One individual recognizing excellence in cinema while remaining slightly noncommittal and intensely superficial. The SQUID award is inspired by the quite gross, Humboldt Squid.  The statuette is pure platic and three inches tall, spray-painted neon green and bedazzled with unpolished diamonds to represent the filthy nature of humanity's creative spirit. A representative of the top film is allegedly given the award in an imaginary, untelevised ceremony.

The 2014 calender produced a most expansive selection of films ranging across all genres, from biopics to scifi, from action-comedy to scifi-action-comedy (or Scifactiedy). That may not distinguish a single year from any other, but what was special about 2014 was the alarmingly consistent, impressively high level of movies that it birthed onto our screens. Films of the highest caliber debuted in a year of instant classics and exhilarating thrills. A year that saw a return to originality and a welcomed trend towards strong-willed and well-rounded female characters. A year that has been an absolute pleasure to have sat back and watched.

We begin with a simple ranking, accompanied in parentheses by the respective MVPs of the films. Be advised, this is a list composed out of films seen by me, a humble watcher of movies. I am not a licensed critic (that's a thing right?) or part of any association. Under consideration are films released in the past 12 months, obviously. Reading it means you have read it. If you tell me your filthy opinion of this list in person in the comments below, I will reward you with chocolate.* Also, no, Keanu Reeves did not pay me.

26. Bad Words (The Scream)
Rottantomatoes Score: 65% IMDb: 6.7

25. Godzilla (Bryan Cranston)
Rt: 74% IMDb: 6.6

24. Noah ()
Rt: 77% IMDB: 5.9 

23. The Guest (Dan Stevens)
Rt: 90% IMDB: 6.7

22. How to Train Your Dragon 2 (Final Battle)
Rt: 92% IMDB: 8.0

21. The Skeleton Twins (lip sync duet)
Rt: 87% IMDB: 7.0

20. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Tank takeover)
Rt: 90% IMDB: 7.8

19. X-Men Days of Future Past (Quicksilver)
Rt: 91% IMDB: 8.1

18. Calvary (Two Gleesons)
Rt: 89% IMDb: 7.5
17. The Raid 2 (Final 3 fights)
Rt: 79% IMDB: 8.1

16. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (Wizards and Elves vs. Shadows of The Nine)

Rt: 60% IMDb: 7.9

15. Birdman (The beautiful drumming)
Rt: 92% IMDb: 8.7

14. Into the Woods (Agony)
Rt: 72% IMDb: 7.2

13. Gone Girl (NPH's house)
Rt: 88% IMDb: 8.2

12. A Walk Among the Tombstones (Dan Stevens)
Rt: 68% IMDb: 6.6

11. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Knives)
Rt: 89%  IMDb: 7.8

10. Guardians of the Galaxy (Awesome Mix Vol. 1)
Rt: 90% IMDb: 8.3

9. Snowpiercer (Grey)
Rt: 95% IMDb: 7

8. Begin Again (James Cordon)
Rt: 83% IMDb: 7.5

7. 22 Jump Street (The End Credits)
Rt: 84% IMDb: 7.2

6. The Grand Budapest Hotel (The Symmetry)
Rt: 92% IMDb: 8.2

5. Live, Die, Repeat: The Edge of Tomorrow (The Full Metal B****)
Rt: 90% IMDb: 8

4. The Lego Movie (Everything is Awesome)
Rt: 96% IMDb: 7.9

3. The Imitation Game (Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, and Keira Knightley)
Rt: 89% IMDb: 8.3

2. Interstellar (TARS)
Rt: 72% IMDb: 8.9

1. John Wick ("Oh")
Rt: 85% IMDb: 7.7

And now a smattering of specific recognitions.

Performances of Note
-Lead 
Benedict Cumberbatch - The Imitation Game
Jake Gyllenhaal - Nightcrawler
Michael Keaton - Birdman
Rosamund Pike - Gone Girl
Keira Knightley - Begin Again
Brandan Gleeson - Calvary
Andy Serkis - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

-Supporting
Keira Knightley - The Imitation Game
James Cordon - Into the Woods
Jillian Bell - 22 Jump Street
Karen Gillian - Guardians of the Galaxy
Jason Clarke - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Toby Kebbell - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Dan Stevens - A Walk Among the Tombstones


Golden Humboldt for Excellence in Ruthlessness 
John Wick. (Hero) John Wick

Lord Business (Villain) Lego Movie



Golden Humboldt for Direction 
Phil Lord and Chris Miller
for The Lego Movie and 22 Jump Street

Best Use of Overhead Shot
Gone Girl - That one scene. 

Crimson Humboldt for Best Kill
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - Thranduil beheading six orcs. 

The Humboldt for Outstanding Overuse of Slow Motion
X-Men: Days of Future Past - Quicksilver in the Kitchen


Tracking Shots of the Year
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - (Rotating Tank) 
All of Birdman. 

Vertigo Shot of the Year
Need for Speed - (Aaron Paul zoning in) 

Headless Humboldt for Most Violent Film
The Raid 2

The End. Thank you for reading and, hopefully uniformly agreeing with everything you just read.

In the coming days the awards for Actor and Actress of the Year will be presented to the actor and actress who are in multiple roles while also bringing to life exceptional characters throughout the year. To artificially manufacture a sense of prestige, here is recap of the previous years' unannounced honorees:

SQUID Actor of the Year Winners
2013 winner - Benedict Cumberbatch 
12 Years A Slave, Star Trek into Darkness, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, August: Osage County, The Fifth Estate, The Simpsons

2012 winner - Joseph Gordon Levitt
Premium Rush, Looper, Lincoln, The Dark Knight Rises

2011 winner - Michael Fassbender 
Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, Shame, Haywire, A Dangerous Method

SQUID Actress of the Year
2013 winner - Amy Adams
American Hustle, Man of Steel, Her

2012 winner -  Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence
Hathaway - Les Miserable and The Dark Night Rises
Lawrence - Silver Linings Playbook and The Hunger Games

2011 winner - Emily Blunt
Your Sister's Sister, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Adjustment Bureau, Gnomeo and Juliet, The Muppets


*Chocolate must be demanded in person. 

Friday, December 12, 2014

The Imitation Game (2014)

Directed by Morten Tyldum (Headhunters)
Written by Graham Moore 
Starring:
Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock)
Keira Knightly (Bend It Like Beckham)
Mark Strong (Stardust)
Charles Dance (Game of Thrones)
Matthew Goode (Watchmen)
Allen Leech (Primeval)
Rory Kinnear (Skyfall)
Tuppence Middleton (Trance)


BE ADVISED: The following contains intense gushing praise. 

When The Imitation Game is at full power, your emotions belong to this movie. It takes you completely with its Britishness. Holds you by the face, clutches your cheeks and injects a cold, swirling sense of life into the core of your mind. By the end, The film opens your eyes to a truer history and you walk out to a broken world. Not bad for a biopic. Especially noteworthy is how three timelines all tell one vastly necessary story and each feeds into one another to build a masterpiece. 

Like any masterpiece, this film operates as more than just a drama. It's a war movie, its a biography, its a revisiting to the still relevant horrid hatred of homosexuality. Yes, its about all those serious things, but they can be depressing and bitter when not mixed and treated with a little sugar. The humor and confidence boasted by the cast throughout the film is brilliantly handled, and vitally so. We are never unaware of the perils surrounding Alan Turing and his crew of World War II Enigma code breakers but we are given the positivity to emotionally survive the ordeal through sharp wit and renegadian dialogue. The delivery of those lines make me feel cool just thinking about them. For instance, literally every word out of Mark Strong' s Col. Maj. Stewart Menzies will get a woman pregnant. 

The pinnacle scene where they fracture the enigma is gorgeously handled. A burst of realization sparking in Turing's eye performed like nothing else in the universe mattered, a moment of such euphoric eureka that we, as the audience are enthralled beyond all reason. 

Speaking further to all of the above, Tyldum, in his English language directorial debut, maximizes every bit of tension, humor, and love out of his film. There is even a sense of muted style to the camera work. People are often positioned off center, intentionally keeping your eyes active. Tyldum takes the top screenplay of the 2011 blacklist, and former DeCaprio starring vehicle to wonderful heights. Paired with Cumberbatch, Tyldum honors Turing's memory justly. 

Romance is also capably handled as the it never becomes annoying. The movie sweetly portrays friendship and trust. Showing that we can be more by looking towards others. Knowing that we all need help. The major scene between Knightley and Cumberbatch (Lets go a ahead and add his name to the old Portable Turing Machine's dictionary) that lays their relationship out in the open is as good as it gets. The actors, the score, the direction, the momentum of the entire story, it all swirls into a perfect storm powerful enough to engulf every ounce of attention you have. In that moment I had to break away and look around. I had to see the faces in the crown that were gone, completely absorbed by the screen. Prisoners of the moment in a jail so finely constructed only those whoare waiting for the tide to pass over them can escape. Everyone else belongs to that scene. Belongs to the movie. 

Their relationship is also beautifully summed up by the most important adage of the film:


 "Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."

I think I instantly became a better person the moment after hearing that line. Thankfully it was repeated so that I may more easily remember it. 

Aside from the two leads (albeit one far leadier than the other), this movie benefits from having a supremely talented supporting cast who are allowed to fully flesh out their deeply human roles. Charles Dance is superbly capable and prickly as the Lanniseresque Commander Denniston. Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, and the rest of the code breakers are also immensely effective in their work. Rory Kinnear helps bring meaning to the scenes set in the 50s. Tuppence Middleton also quite nicely maximized her screen time and made her otherwise cliched character be more than it could potentially have been. And lest we forget, the childhood scenes are handled so somberly by Alex Lawther. (Although, I am a bit sad about a lack of Tom Hiddleston who could easily slip in for Matthew Goode. The dream of having him, Cumberbatch, and Strong on screen together must wait. This movie instead joins the ranks of War Horse as another trifecta close call.)

No movie can reach the upper echelon of cinema without a penetrating score. Zimmer's Interstellar set the bar this year and here Alexandre Desplat(Argo) rise to match him. Desplat, who apparently had only three weeks at his disposal, does a philomenal job (Anyone catch that? Philomena...no?) The piano tune is immaculately simple yet profoundly immersive,  Listening to it feels like you're swimming in a field of snow. 

And finally we get to Benedict himself. The absolute, unquestioningly best part of this movie is his performance. He controls the movie from the very first second. His voice....what more can be said. It is a force of nature. A monsoon of deepness that loosens all joints in your body. He is on the list of people that I would like to be yelled at by, right next to Michael Fassbender and Judi Dench. Cumberbatch shows shades of Sherlock here as well with his superb ability to portray characters whose minds are on a different plane of existence. Already the reigning Actor of the Year for 2013, Imitation Game marks him firmly in contention for a repeat win. 

As for the bad stuff...I wish the two adorable elderly ladies to the left of me would've had fewer conversations. God, I love free screening. But seriously, there is severe difficulty in finding any fault here. Scouring the negative reviews of this film leads you to see that the only bad thing is that it is a biopic and some people have watched too many to allow another good biopic to exist. Sadly, I am still in the shallow end of that pool so these eyes have yet to be jaded. Although this did elicit a similar response to watching A Beautiful Mind for the first time, which is yet another positive accolade to bestow on this movie. 

To steal a word from Selina Meyer, this is a robust year for movies. How many times can a film buff allow his top spot to be toppled? We may be looking at the unholy unordered top ten by year's end. You're up Peter Jackson. Good call in having Cumberbatch play two roles in one movie.  

Bottom Line. Stunning performance. Stunning Film. 

10 out of 10.