Pawn Sacrifice: For Queen, Rook, Self, and Country

Tobey Maguire stars as Bobby Fischer in "Pawn Sacrifice"

In 1972 in Iceland, Bobby Fischer attempted to become the first American-born man to win the World Chess Championship, seeking to wrest the crown from imposing Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky. Now, if you think that sounds challenging, try making a movie about it. Sure, sports films are only tangentially about the sports themselves, but they almost always revolve around some degree of dynamism or athleticism, some sort of physical heroism for the camera to capture. But Pawn Sacrifice, Edward Zwick’s dramatization of Fischer’s famous battle against Spassky and the Iron Curtain, is about chess, which is basically the least cinematic sport imaginable. Zwick’s seemingly impossible task is to transform a thoroughly sedate affair—one in which two men stare at carefully sculpted figurines, furrow their brows, and think—into an actual thriller of tangible urgency and excitement. He mostly succeeds. Functional, beautifully acted, and curiously engrossing, Pawn Sacrifice resembles the best traditional sports movie Zwick possibly could have made on this subject. In other words, it isn’t half-bad.

The film opens in medias res, after Fischer has forfeited the second game of the Championship (the rules provided for up to 24 total games) and has barricaded himself in his rented cottage, flinching at the slightest sound. It then flashes back to his childhood in New York, a predictable device that immediately illustrates both the benefits and the drawbacks of Zwick’s orthodox approach. The flashback, which is mercifully brief, does its job: It bluntly illustrates that Fischer (played as a young boy by Aiden Lovekamp and then as a teen by Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) is both a genius and a prick. Expressing the former element proves problematic for Zwick; unable to telegraph Fischer’s virtuosity visually, he settles for dialogue, with adults repeatedly gushing about the boy’s brilliance, followed by a montage of handshakes soundtracked to laudatory notices from newscasters. (To be fair, Zwick initially toys with using graphics to convey Fischer mentally maneuvering pieces on the chessboard, but it’s a gimmicky tactic that he wisely abandons.) But he efficiently articulates Fischer’s petulance, as when the youth loudly berates his mother without a hint of remorse. This kid has no time for sensitivity—he has chess to play. Read More

Pitch Perfect 2: Straining to Hit Those High Notes Amid New Lows

Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson lead the way in "Pitch Perfect 2"

The dirty little secret of Pitch Perfect is that, as delightful and refreshing as it may have been, it wasn’t a good movie. (In this, it was essentially the musical equivalent of Love Actually.) Its characters were one-dimensional, its romance was insipid, and its story was inane. Yet isolated parts of the movie—the riff-off, the “Since You Been Gone” auditions, anything involving Rebel Wilson’s Fat Amy—were so transcendently joyful that it became a classic anyway, an irresistible send-up of the sports movie transplanted to the goofy arena of competitive a cappella. It may have been familiar, but thanks to its inspired staging and tap-your-foot singing, it also felt fresh. Now, Pitch Perfect 2 attempts to repeat the first film’s formula; almost axiomatically, it is only half-successful. The unaccompanied musical numbers once again range from robustly enjoyable to deliriously fun, but the element of novelty has vanished. It’s hard for your movie to feel fresh when all of your material is recycled.

Anna Kendrick again stars as Beca, the too-cool-for-school member of the Barden Bellas who has embraced her role as the group’s primary arranger, even as she’s also covertly pursuing her dream of becoming a music producer via an internship at a record studio. She’s still dating Jesse (Skylar Astin), and to the movie’s credit, it doesn’t manufacture any lame complications between the two lovebirds and instead just shunts Beca’s bland boyfriend to the sidelines. (Astin does get to show off his vocal chops in an early scene.) That makes room for a far more interesting romantic pairing: Fat Amy (Wilson remains the franchise’s strongest asset, which is saying something, given that Anna Kendrick is involved) and Bumper (Adam DeVine), the buffoonish villain of the original who is now both pathetic and strangely endearing. Their love story is extravagantly goofy and commensurately enjoyable; there’s a funny scene in which Bumper feebly attempts to court his intended via forced grownup talk (“So, there’s a war, and also, the economy.”), but it’s dwarfed by the sight of Fat Amy subsequently serenading him with Pat Benatar’s “We Belong” while standing in a rowboat. Read More