Synopsis A washed up actor, who once played an iconic superhero, battles his ego and attempts to recover his family, his career and himself in the days leading up to the opening of a Broadway play. The events leading up to the Saturday night premiere prove to be one disaster after another as the original lead actor is injured while on set and Riggan scrambles to find a replacement, but the replacement proves to be exactly who he needs - a method actor who takes the job way too seriously. But Riggan has a hard time juggling between the set, his replacement actor, his equally washed up daughter, and a host of other disasters that prevent a proper staging of the play. Meanwhile, a New York Times critic who Riggan has to woo threatens to shut down production of the play before it even starts with a scathing review of the opening night performance. Does Riggan have a hit on his hands or will he even make it past opening night? I enjoy the art house genre that this clearly belongs to. I don't know if this is a spoiler alert or not, but if you're waiting for the moment when the loose ends are all tied together in any coherent manner, you will be waiting in vain. That said, Michael Keaton and the cast give wonderful if sometimes overacted performances. You can see why critics like it - it's not the pap that they are forced to view day in and day out because it's their job to watch it. Professional critics, for their own sanity, grasp at any opportunity to promote something different or unusual. But just because it's good for them doesn't make it good for us, the casual movie goer. Since this is a play within a movie that is set in a theater, I got the feeling that there are inside jokes that those in or familiar with the business such as critics will get but which is over the heads the audience. Debuting at Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, the film closed an already impeccable New York Film Festival on Saturday morning for press and industry colleagues. It's a film that resonates profoundly, and may just be the best film of 2014. The movie tells the story of Riggan Michael Keaton , a washed up actor who used to play a superhero icon called Birdman. In a valiant attempt to reclaim his career, he adapts, directs, and stars in a Broadway play. With problems from one of his very method actors Edward Norton , assistant daughter Emma Stone , emotional co-star Naomi Watts , overly sexual girlfriend Andrea Riseborough , flamboyant producer Zach Galifanakis , and loving ex- wife Amy Ryan , Riggan prepares for the breaking point of his career. It's downright hilarious in parts, probably the funniest film of the year, and then there's the dramatic edge that comes into play, and simply breaks your heart. It's an audacious achievement that floors just about every aspect of film witnessed in 2014. This will move him up in the ranks with the Scorsese's, Spielberg's, and Eastwood's. He familiarizes us with the stage and the theater. He makes the surroundings a very palpable character for us to know and enjoy. At 63, Michael Keaton has been criminally underutilized in his career, despite some iconic performances. Where Keaton was passed over was for his dramatic capabilities. It's such a studied turn, you feel the accuracy and precision in which he executes every move and mannerism of Riggan. It's the role that Keaton has been waiting decades for. It's the role of his career. If we're talking about underutilized actors, then Edward Norton needs to be mentioned. A scene-stealing standout, Norton makes us realize how unspoken dialogue between characters can be just as humorous without the punchline. She finds the heart and soul of Sam, laying her on the screen meticulously and transparent. Though brief in screen time, the vivacious Naomi Watts, the sexy Andrea Riseborough, and the seasoned Amy Ryan make their marks exquisitely. Watts gets the most chuckles out of the ladies while Ryan has the greatest arc for us to explore. I hope and pray that Zach Galifianakis continues down a path in independent cinema. Fully realized and delivered, he layers the film with a beautiful sympathy, vocal and restrained, he finds the meaning of Riggan and presents him to us. That is a sentence, statement, and just pure cinematic meaning nowadays. You can't watch a movie shot by the Academy Award winning Cinematographer and not find yourself more intimately contained and available to the realm of the movies. We are present in every scene, every movement, and every thought that a person is having. We feel as though Riggan and the cast are interacting with us. When they're laughing, we're laughing, when they're crying, we're crying. He is an absolute magician. Tapping your feet and bobbing your head, Sanchez elevates the film to new heights. Editors Douglas Prise and Stephen Mirrione may be the unsung heroes because in the film, we are nearly in one continuous take, which hardly ever gives up at least to the untrained eye. In no way do I call myself someone who can spot a digital edit, but I spotted no more than a dozen cuts throughout. I'm sure there were dozens more, but you couldn't catch them. At a time where movies feel like they have to choose to between comedy and tragedy, Inarritu's beauty works on us from the inside-out. It's a human story, comedy, thriller, mystery, all rolled into one. All told by a master filmmaker and storytellers. The year's must-see experience. Reviewed by Turfseer 3 'Birdman' is the latest overpraised and over-hyped 'art' film by the acclaimed director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Michael Keaton, who was known for playing Batman in the late 80s and early 90s, is cast here as Riggan Thomson, a washed-up Hollywood actor, once famous for playing a superhero Birdman character in the movies, now making a comeback on Broadway, acting in an adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story. The entire film is shot as if it's one long take in a cinema verite style. Perhaps the best thing about the film is the behind-the-scenes peek at the technical aspects of a Broadway theater production. Initially, the narrative takes the form of a black comedy in which we're asked to laugh at the denizens of the theatrical world, all of whom are depicted as deeply flawed. Riggan's big fault is he's deeply ashamed of 'selling out' years earlier when he took on his superhero role and now by attempting to mount a 'serious' Broadway play, he has a chance to redeem himself. But his Birdman persona keeps appearing in the form of a disembodied voice and later hallucinations , telling him that he will fail. The idea that there are those performers who believe that 'art' is anathema to commercial success in the performing arts, is mocked incessantly throughout the film, but we get the joke early on, and eventually it becomes tiresome. When the lead actor in the play is mysteriously knocked out by a falling stage light, Riggan is desperate to find a replacement since previews are about to begin. At first the well known 'method' actor, Mike Shiner Edward Norton , appears to be a godsend that will save the show; but soon it becomes apparent that Mike is exceptionally unstable. We're supposed to laugh at a character who gets drunk during his first rehearsal and later attempts to rape one of the female actors while they're on stage, lying on a bed, under the covers, before an audience who misinterprets the scene as comic. Later, in a bar, Mike puts Riggan down further by pointing out that the napkin that was given to Riggan and signed by Raymond Carver, was given to him in a bar while he, Carver, was drunk. Mike tells Riggan that he's too untalented for Broadway and introduces him to Tabitha, the vicious Times critic, who later tells Riggan that she'll never give him a good review because anyone who sells out to Hollywood can never do anything good in the 'legitimate' theater. The negative Times critic is just another example of the exaggerated caricatures sprinkled throughout the film, which simply aren't funny a more realistic portrait of theater people should highlight both their positive and negative attributes! Also in the mix is Riggan's daughter, Sam Emma Stone , who has just been released from rehab for drug abuse. Riggan receives a double dose of humiliation when he first is locked out of the theater in his underwear and is forced to perform before the audience au naturel and later when we discover the slimy Mike, has had sex with his daughter. By the time we experience the 'twist' of a 'happy ending' at the denouement, there's nothing left for the audience to laugh at, since Mr. Inarritu has smugly shot down all of his straw men caricatures. Riggan 'triumphs' first when he blows off his nose with a gun loaded with live ammunition and Tabitha then gives him a favorable review, dubbing the performance an exercise in 'ultra-realism'. His new prosthetic nose appears to resemble Birdman's, and Inarritu has Riggan fly away, now self-actualized, having had a Broadway hit. The whole idea that commercial success and 'art' is mutually exclusive is not borne out by reality. Even Riggan acknowledges that actors like Robert Downey Jr. So basically 'Birdman' becomes a silly, 'one-joke' idea, not based on reality nor worth hammering down our throats, ad infinitum.
