Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's Birdman with Michael Keaton gets huge buzz

Michael Keaton stars in Birdman, the story of an aging washed up actor trying to revive his career after it went downhill since playing a famous super hero in his younger years. After hearing the description of the film I couldn't help but be interested since this story can in some ways relate to Keaton's career after his famous portrayal as Tim Burton's Batman in 1989. After seeing the trailer for the movie with a glimpse of interest I became expectant, the trailer made me anticipate the movie, in my opinion it looks like a very interesting story that could be very funny, charming and have heart. Look below for the trailer.

The film premiered this week in the Venice International Film Festival and received nothing short of praise from the critics, which will do nothing but help the film when it hits theaters on October 17th. Below you can find some comments from those lucky enough to see and review the film.

Hollywood Reporter:
Birdman flies very, very high. Intense emotional currents and the jagged feelings of volatile actors are turned loose to raucous dramatic and darkly comedic effect in one of the most sustained examples of visually fluid tour de force cinema anyone’s ever seen, all in the service of a story that examines the changing nature of celebrity and the popular regard for fame over creative achievement.

TheWrap:
Putting aside [its] baseless and infantile loathing of the critic class, ‘Birdman’ is an often intelligent and unpredictable look at actors, loving their spontaneity and creativity glossing over their emotional needs and volatility. Riggan is so consumed with self-doubt that he often hears the voice of Birdman in his head, telling him to abandon this artsy-fartsy stage business so he can return to the screen for the ‘apocalyptic pornography’ that global audiences crave.

Hitfix:
“Birdman” (or “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance” – the alternate title resolves satisfyingly in the film) proves to be a sparkling tonic to [Inarritu's] life-is-hideous trilogy (“21 Grams”, “Babel” and “Biutiful”) containing a bitter shot of gin, calculated to give industry egos a knowing but energizing kick in the pants.


It’s also a technically superlative exercise (as was last year’s Venice opener “Gravity”). The much-vaunted single-take effect achieved by DP Emmanuel Lubezki and editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione (with a couple of exceptions the film appears to play without cuts) is not a gimmick, but a storytelling technique that achieves an arguably superior effect to that realized by Alfred Hitchcock in “Rope.” Where “Rope’s” apparent single take ended up feeling a little stagy, as if the original play was being filmed live, “Birdman” is alive in every frame – the effect is of staying up several days in a row, watching the sunrise and carrying on, events slurring together with strung-out nervous energy. 

Variety:
‘Birdman’ offers by far the most fascinating meta-deconstruction of an actor’s ego since ‘Being John Malkovich,’ and one that leaves no room for vanity… Inarritu’s approach is mind-boggling in its complexity, nearly as demanding on [cinematographer Emmanuel] Lubezki as ‘Gravity’ must have been… It’s all one big magic trick, one designed to remind how much actors give to their art even as it disguises the layers of work that go into it.

Empire:
What the film ultimately talks about, however, is more rich and profound that Iñárritu’s earlier works, dealing with issues of art, artistry and why we create. That Iñárritu has done so with a multi-layered script is a thing of wonder in itself, but the perfect physical precision with which he has done so – his restless camera takes us into every peeling nook and cranny of the theatre, until its dank corridors become as familiar as home – is a miracle. The ending will baffle or delight, but like the rest of the film it is uncompromising, a true throwback to the ‘70s – Alan Arkin’s Little Murders springs to mind – a time when surrealism and abstraction weren’t alien terms and people watched Batman for laughs.