Birdman

Birdman written and directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, starring Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Ryan, and Lindsay Duncan.

Overrated?  Without a doubt.  But still worth seeing just for the direction alone.  Everything else in the movie had a been there and down that feel and done better.  See Sunset Boulevard for the story line done much better and with everything blending well together.

One of the few times I will say this - the direction is the star of this movie and stole the entire movie from everyone acting in it and from the story line itself.  That being said - the direction failed this movie because it was so apparent with the single long takes that it took me away from the story, to where I was focusing on the direction alone.  I found this long take format worked much better in last years Gravity where the long takes really helped to sell the expansiveness of space and blended with the movie much better than it did there.  I just didn't find any reason for the direction to be like it was in this movie other than as a gimmick but a gimmick that wasn't justified and in the end felt like a gimmick.  Here's some movies that came out a few years that were gimmicks but worked and didn't feel like a gimmick when I was watching them because the story line and characters dominated the movie not the direction: Locke (takes place in a only a car - the camera never leaves the car) and Boyhood (chronicles the life a boy through 12 years of his life - shot over 12 years) see my review of these on my blog.  But in Birdman everything feels like a gimmick.  The characters don't seem real and seem more overblown and cliched to the point I didn't feel any real connection to them or what was going on in their life.  Like I said before I was more drawn to the direction of the movie than what was going on with the characters and story line.  Actually I thought the movie Whiplash, which came out the same year as Birdman, was much better acted, directed, with better characters and an even simpler storyline.  It got me to care about drumming, something I know next to nothing about, but it got me involved with the main character and fully understand where he was coming from.